{"id":33621,"date":"2017-01-19T23:06:32","date_gmt":"2017-01-20T07:06:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2017\/01\/the-pbr-theorem-explained"},"modified":"2017-06-04T13:51:11","modified_gmt":"2017-06-04T20:51:11","slug":"the-pbr-theorem-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2017\/01\/the-pbr-theorem-explained","title":{"rendered":"The PBR Theorem explained"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-pbr-theorem-explained.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The PBR theorem is another theorem of quantum mechanics, which could go alongside <a href=\"http:\/\/freethoughtblogs.com\/atrivialknot\/2016\/12\/04\/bells-theorem-explained\/\">Bell\u2019s Theorem<\/a> and the <a href=\"http:\/\/freethoughtblogs.com\/atrivialknot\/2016\/12\/07\/kochen-specker-theorem-explained\/\">Kochen-Specker Theorem<\/a>. I wrote this explanation <a href=\"http:\/\/skepticsplay.blogspot.com\/2011\/11\/new-theorem-quantum-states-are-real.html\">in 2011<\/a>, before the paper was officially <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/nphys\/journal\/v8\/n6\/full\/nphys2309.html\">published in Nature<\/a>. Since then, it\u2019s been recognized as a moderately important theorem, and it has been named after its three authors (Pusey, Barrett, and Rudolph). But at the time I didn\u2019t really know whether it would become important.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a new paper on arxiv called \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/xxx.lanl.gov\/abs\/1111.3328\">The quantum state cannot be interpreted statistically <\/a>\u201c. It has a theorem which proves that, given a few basic assumptions, the quantum state (ie the wavefunction) must be real, rather than a merely statistical object. Nature has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/news\/quantum-theorem-shakes-foundations-1.9392\">an article<\/a> which mostly just harps on how \u201cseismic\u201d the paper is.<\/p>\n<p>Nature (correction: the article\u2019s author, not Nature itself) compares its importance to Bell\u2019s Theorem, which is a very important result indeed from 1964. Bell\u2019s theorem proved that if there were \u201chidden variables\u201d underneath the quantum state, then entangled particles must be communicating with each other faster than light. I\u2019ve explained <a href=\"http:\/\/freethoughtblogs.com\/atrivialknot\/2016\/12\/04\/bells-theorem-explained\/\">Bell\u2019s theorem<\/a> in the past.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"http:\/\/freethoughtblogs.com\/atrivialknot\/2017\/01\/19\/the-pbr-theorem-explained\/\">http:\/\/freethoughtblogs.com\/atrivialknot\/2017\/01\/19\/the-pbr-theorem-explained\/<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The PBR theorem is another theorem of quantum mechanics, which could go alongside Bell\u2019s Theorem and the Kochen-Specker Theorem. I wrote this explanation in 2011, before the paper was officially published in Nature. Since then, it\u2019s been recognized as a moderately important theorem, and it has been named after its three authors (Pusey, Barrett, and [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":395,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/395"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33621"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65320,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33621\/revisions\/65320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}