On Aerts' overlooked solution to the EPR paradox

TL;DR

This paper revisits Diederik Aerts' 1980s solution to the EPR paradox, emphasizing its importance in understanding the limitations of quantum formalism in describing separate systems, which has been largely overlooked.

Contribution

It highlights and explains Aerts' overlooked solution to the EPR paradox, clarifying its implications for quantum theory and the description of separate systems.

Findings

Aerts' solution addresses the structural shortcomings of quantum formalism.

The EPR paradox's validity is independent of Bell-test results.

Quantum formalism cannot fully describe separate physical systems.

Abstract

The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox was enunciated in 1935 and since then it has made a lot of ink flow. Being a subtle result, it has also been largely misunderstood. Indeed, if questioned about its solution, many physicists will still affirm today that the paradox has been solved by the Bell-test experimental results, which have shown that entangled states are real. However, this remains a wrong view, as the validity of the EPR ex-absurdum reasoning is independent from the Bell-test experiments, and the possible structural shortcomings it evidenced cannot be eliminated. These were correctly identified by the Belgian physicist Diederik Aerts, in the eighties of last century, and are about the inability of the quantum formalism to describe separate physical systems. The purpose of the present article is to bring Aerts' overlooked result to the attention again of the physics' community, explaining its content and implications.