‘Anyone who claims to understand quantum theory is either lying or crazy,’ physicist Richard Feynman once said, according to legend.

That situation hasn’t changed much in the roughly 90 years since quantum mechanics was first introduced, as evidenced by a new poll, detailed online this month, showing that physicists are still divided over the theory’s meaning.

The 16-question poll was given to 33 physicists, philosophers and mathematicians at a conference on ‘Quantum Physics and the Nature of Reality’ in Austria in July 2011. The poll probed the experts’ thoughts on fundamental tenets of the theory, such as the randomness of nature and the impact of outside measurements on quantum systems.

Though the pollsters admit the sample size is small and the test not completely scientific, they found a striking divide among the experts on some of the most basic principles of quantum mechanics.

‘Nearly 90 years after the theory’s development, there is still no consensus in the scientific community regarding the interpretation of the theory’s foundational building blocks,’ the authors of the poll, led by physicist Maximilian Schlosshauer of the University of Portland, wrote in a paper describing the results posted on Jan. 6 on the preprint site arXiv.org. ‘Our poll is an […]