Modern space-time and undecidability

TL;DR

This paper explores how integrating general relativity and quantum mechanics into the concept of space-time leads to fundamental undecidability in physics, challenging traditional notions of reality and measurement.

Contribution

It proposes a new perspective where quantum mechanics can be formulated without a reduction process, highlighting a fundamental undecidability in physical theories.

Findings

Quantum mechanics can be formulated without a reduction process.

Two experimentally equivalent theories can have different conceptual descriptions.

Fundamental undecidability arises in the interpretation of space-time and quantum mechanics.

Abstract

The picture of space-time that Minkowski created in 1907 has been followed by two important developments in physics not contained in the original picture: general relativity and quantum mechanics. We will argue that the use of concepts of those theories to construct space-time implies conceptual modifications in quantum mechanics. In particular one can construct a viable picture of quantum mechanics without a reduction process that has outcomes equivalent to a picture with a reduction process. One therefore has two theories that are entirely equivalent experimentally but profoundly different in the description of reality they give. This introduces a fundamental level of undecidability in physics of a kind that has not been present before. We discuss some of the implications.