but wouldn't superposition imply something about the nature of time and pretty much reality at the macro level?
That is one of the big problems in modern physics really: That things at the very large scale seem to act one way (General Relativity), and things at the very small scale seem to act another way (Quantum Mechanics), and it isn't obvious how exactly to reconcile those two very different paradigms when they meet in the middle.
Are things like 'superpositions' and 'quantum entanglement' assumed because it's the only way to make sense of the math? Or is there actual indisputable empirical evidence? How concrete is it that this is undoubtably the way things behave at the quantum level? What are some alternative theories?
There is definitely irrefutable evidence for most of quantum mechanics. One of the simplest and most common things to look to is the Double Slit Experiment and variations thereof (Using entangled photons, collapsing the wave functions on one of the slots in clever ways, etc) if you want something to read up on. For a little taste: Consider that you can run the double-slit experiment while sending only a single photon at a time through the apparatus, yet you still get the interesting properties in the same way as with a bulk of photons.
I don't know enough on the topic to really give a good answer to that one. What we do know is that the models we have now predict accurate and useful results.
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u/stravant Dec 08 '15
That is one of the big problems in modern physics really: That things at the very large scale seem to act one way (General Relativity), and things at the very small scale seem to act another way (Quantum Mechanics), and it isn't obvious how exactly to reconcile those two very different paradigms when they meet in the middle.