"So what I'm saying is why don't we think about changing Schrodinger's equation at some level when masses become too big at the level that you might have to worry about Einstein's general relativity"
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Penrose is doing a very Penrose thing here: treating the “foundations” of quantum mechanics not as sacred scripture but as an engineering problem that physics has been politely avoiding. The casual phrasing - “why don’t we think about changing” - masks a radical suggestion: maybe the linear, unitary Schrodinger equation is only an approximation, and it quietly breaks when gravity stops being ignorable.
The intent is surgical. He’s pointing at the seam where two wildly successful theories refuse to sew together: quantum mechanics governs small stuff with probabilistic superpositions; general relativity governs big stuff with deterministic spacetime geometry. Penrose’s subtext is that the measurement problem isn’t just philosophical angst about observers; it’s a symptom of missing physics. When “masses become too big,” you’re no longer just adding more particles; you’re adding gravitational self-energy, spacetime curvature, and with it a new source of instability for superposition. In his larger project (objective reduction), collapse isn’t a human-centered event triggered by “measurement.” It’s a real, mass-dependent process that could be testable.
Context matters: decades of “shut up and calculate” pragmatism on one side, and ever-more ambitious quantum gravity programs on the other. Penrose is staking out a contrarian middle path: don’t quantize gravity at any cost; consider that gravity might be what forces quantum probabilities to cash out into a single classical reality. The line reads like a gentle prompt, but it’s a challenge to the reigning assumption that quantum mechanics never flinches, no matter how heavy the cat gets.
The intent is surgical. He’s pointing at the seam where two wildly successful theories refuse to sew together: quantum mechanics governs small stuff with probabilistic superpositions; general relativity governs big stuff with deterministic spacetime geometry. Penrose’s subtext is that the measurement problem isn’t just philosophical angst about observers; it’s a symptom of missing physics. When “masses become too big,” you’re no longer just adding more particles; you’re adding gravitational self-energy, spacetime curvature, and with it a new source of instability for superposition. In his larger project (objective reduction), collapse isn’t a human-centered event triggered by “measurement.” It’s a real, mass-dependent process that could be testable.
Context matters: decades of “shut up and calculate” pragmatism on one side, and ever-more ambitious quantum gravity programs on the other. Penrose is staking out a contrarian middle path: don’t quantize gravity at any cost; consider that gravity might be what forces quantum probabilities to cash out into a single classical reality. The line reads like a gentle prompt, but it’s a challenge to the reigning assumption that quantum mechanics never flinches, no matter how heavy the cat gets.
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| Topic | Science |
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