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by Ma8ee
611 days ago
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It used to be that there was some experimental result or other phenomena that required explanation which lead to a theoretical model that could be tested. That worked very well. Now there’s some theoretical considerations that leads to a theoretical model that can’t be tested. It didn’t work for Aristotle and it doesn’t work for string theorists (and similar). |
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We know (for example) silver atoms have mass, and that massive objects exert gravity (which we understand as warping of space-time according to GR).
We know that we can put silver atoms in quantum superpositions of being in different positions (for example in a sequential Stern-Gerlach type experiment).
We have (essentially) absolutely no theoretical understanding of what is going on to space-time when a thing with mass is in such a superposition. Quantum mechanics does not successfully model gravity, and general relativity contains no superpositions, so the situation is completely beyond our theoretical understanding. This isn't a theoretical consideration, this is something real that you can do in an undergrad physics lab experiment pretty easily.
Now the problem is that the models we have developed so far to deal with this situation turned out to be (wildly) too difficult for us to test. I think it is very far from clear that the Oppenheim & co model falls into this category - imo its completely reasonable for them to be spending theoretical effort working out what is needed to test their model.