Talk:Ghirardi–Rimini–Weber theory

Energy/Momentum non-conservation
When I read the paper, I was struck by the property that the collapse of an isolated particle, not as a result of entangling with another particle, would violate momentum conservation. The particle collapses to a region of size "a" with some probability, leading to a momentum uncertainty, but there is no other particle to dump the momentum change into. So this theory might be in conflict with experimental bounds on energy/momentum conservation. I saw that there are other people who have said this, it's not an original observation, but I didn't read the references carefully. I think this should be mentioned here.Likebox (talk) 15:04, 29 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Likebox. So it's been over a year since you pointed this out, but I thought I'd acknowledge your concern. Yes, as a matter of fact, the GRW theory is not conservative with regard to energy/momentum. However, the degree to which the universe would be heated up by the extra energy is small enough that it's consistent with our current observations. (This is part of the reason why particles do not collapse to a perfect eigenstate of position).


 * This article really needs to be expanded, since GRW is one of the few interpretations of QM that's actually viable (it's also the only one which makes different predictions than the orthodox quantum theory). ZRPerry (talk) 01:45, 10 October 2009 (UTC)


 * As I understand, the energy/momentum conservation violation in GRW is called Universal Warming. This defiantly should be mentioned in the article, it's one of the main features of the theory. Pulu (talk) 18:56, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Measurement claim is false?
We can easily prepare an electron to have a spin that is mathematically both up and down, for example, but any experimental result will yield either up or down and never a superposition of both states.

Doesn't this only hold if we are measuring whether the spin is up or down along the axis for which we have defined these? For example, if we measure the spin along x we can get superpositions of z-up and z-down spins.

What experiments could test this theory
Have any experiments been carried out or proposed ? Comment 2 above mentions "experimental bounds on energy/momentum conservation" Can we list the different predictions compared with other QM interpretations ? - Rod57 (talk) 13:30, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

The Quantum Formalism and the GRW Formalism 2012 mentions Universal Warming on p10 but seems unclear if GRW can be experimentally verified/tested. - Rod57 (talk) 13:45, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

In one of his classes, Bill Wootters said that it is testable. 137.165.163.199 (talk) 17:13, 19 September 2018 (UTC)