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Re:Pilot-wave hydrodynamics (Quantum phenomena in macroscopi... by amelius on Sunday November 01, 2026 @06:30AM (#50324618)
What is the propagation speed of this pilot wave?

EDIT: ok, I asked AI and this speed is infinite, which is why the theory doesn't mesh well with relativity.

Re:Pilot-wave hydrodynamics (Quantum phenomena in macroscopi... by pja on Sunday November 01, 2026 @07:31AM (#50325004)
Quantum effects travel instantaneously in standard QM, no pilot wave required: What’s limited to light speed is /information/.

You can entangle two particles in QM, separate them by light years & when you measure the state of one of them you will instantaneously determine the state of the second one, no matter how far away it is. But you cannot transfer information by doing so - information must plod along at light speed between the two.

Re:Pilot-wave hydrodynamics (Quantum phenomena in macroscopi... by fpoling on Sunday November 01, 2026 @07:57AM (#50325211)
This notion of instantly getting knowledge hides the weirdness of QM. It is not surprising that when one reads a note from a box one instantly can get the knowledge about events in a distant galaxy. What is really weird with Copenhagen interpretation is that content of the note about what happens in a distant galaxy is not determined until the observer looks at it.
Re:Pilot-wave hydrodynamics (Quantum phenomena in macroscopi... by quantum_mcts on Sunday November 01, 2026 @12:25PM (#50327626)
First of all, your example doesn’t show any «instantaneous travel». You can shuffle two playing cards, send them by light years. Flip one of them and instantaneously determine what on the other one.

There are more complicated correlations in QM than cannot be explained by hidden variables - but those are still correlations and, analogously, don’t imply any «instantaneous travel»

Re:Pilot-wave hydrodynamics (Quantum phenomena in macroscopi... by pja on Sunday November 01, 2026 @02:13PM (#50328694)
Flipping one card doesn’t change the state of the other one. Measuring the state of one of a pair of entangled particles does change the other one & that change appears to be instantaneous. We know this - Aspect carried out the experiment in the early 80s & those results have been confirmed by later, larger scale experiments.

(IIRC It’s possible that a super-deterministic hidden variable system could explain Aspect’s results. But that pretty much requires the universe to deliberately plot against you, which seems very unlikely.)

Re:Pilot-wave hydrodynamics (Quantum phenomena in macroscopi... by tome on Sunday November 01, 2026 @04:57PM (#50330342)
> Flipping one card doesn’t change the state of the other one

Right, but you didn't say "change" you said "determine".

> Aspect carried out the experiment in the early 80s

I have a write up of the maths behind this if anyone is interested, accessible to an undergraduate: https://h2.jaguarpaw.co.uk/posts/bells-theorem-made-simpler/