Pilot Wave theory is making a comeback, as previous arguments against it are being struck down:https://www.quantamagazine.org/pilot-wave-theory-gains-experimental-support-20160516/
The article is claiming experimental support for pilot wave theory, but this doesn't make any sense. The important point is that they are saying that the experiment results match pilot wave theory, but they do not mention what the Copenhagen interpretation says. For their experiment it sounds like the results are also consistent with the Copenhagen interpretation. With both theories predicting the same result, the results of the experiment are irrelevant. The only important thing would be that they have come up with a way to show theoretically that pilot wave theory is consistent with Copenhagen in this case.Until someone comes up with the equivalent of Bell's inequality for these 2 interpretations of quantum, no experiment can be claimed to differentiate between them.
Until someone comes up with the equivalent of Bell's inequality for these 2 interpretations of quantum, no experiment can be claimed to differentiate between them.
Valentini has devoted his career to almost single-handedly resurrecting the pilot wave idea. Now his years of work actually have a chance — a small one, he admits — of being vindicated. Of the many interpretations of quantum theory, pilot wave theory is unique in that Valentini has found a way in which it might be experimentally tested. No other interpretation of quantum mechanics can make that claim. Many Worlds, Bohr’s interpretation and others are all experimentally indistinguishable — they reproduce the results of standard quantum theory. But if Valentini is right, certain effects predicted in pilot wave theory may have left an imprint on the cosmic microwave background, the primordial radiation left over from the Big Bang that still pervades all of space.The temperature of that radiation is almost a perfectly uniform 2.725 degrees Celsius above absolute zero. Detailed observations, however, have found slight variations in the radiation. Standard quantum theory can explain nearly all of these variations, but in 2015, new data released by the European Space Agency’s Planck spacecraft revealed evidence of small anomalies in the background radiation. And that is just the kind of thing Valentini has been looking for. While conventional quantum theory predicts that random quantum fluctuations in the early universe have left celestial imprints, pilot wave theory predicts fluctuations that are less random, leaving slightly different wrinkles in the cosmic microwave background radiation.“It’s tantalizing,” Valentini says. “We’re carrying out the analysis partly to understand things better and partly to see what the data can tell us about the predictions that we have.” Another two years of data and analysis should settle the question.