Weinberg: Why quantum mechanics might need an overhaul

The actual theory is not wrong. But all the standard interpretations of the theory are.

A New Classical Interpretation of Quantum Correlations

Rob McEachern

It could be cool if Professor Weinberg came here on FQXi to explain his ideas with us.He is relevant.The article is very interesting.

The most telling sentence in that excellent article is, "So far a compelling theory that succeeds in generalizing quantum mechanics does not exist."

The generalization that Weinberg seeks will be an information-first theory: Quantum mechanics emerges out of a deeper informational theory (it from bit). "It's not really a good idea to hold new physical theories too strictly up to some preexisting philosophical standard," says Weinberg, and presently that standard is the insistence that bits come from its. This is the preexisting philosophical standard we need to get over. I have a book coming out in a couple of weeks, The Simplest-Case Scenario, that argues this and proposes a direction to move forward.

Weinberg clearly wants to preserve realism: something has to be "going on" without any observer, and there has to be an objective "out there" where it's happening. I don't think progress is possible while holding fast to those requirements.

Weinberg makes a very good point. If quantum is so great, why do so many very smart people argue endlessly about what it means? Philosophy is a discourse that never ends since philosophy involves asking questions that really have no answers. This seems to suggest that quantum philosophy asks questions that have no answers.

Some quantum questions do not have answers and that is the rub. Why can we ever ask questions that we cannot then answer? Relativity asks and answers all questions up until the limits of the classical event horizon, but quantum questions persist even beyond the event horizon.

We live in a largely classical and a very causal reality where things happen because of local causes. Quantum phase messes with that classical causal reality since entanglement makes is seem like a cause can be a long distance from an effect. Since classical reality does not include quantum phase, it should not be surprising that there is no classical analog for entanglement.

What remains surprising is that very smart people continue to argue about the quantum nature of reality. My feeling is that classical matter spectra of a causal reality work great for many predictions of action. Classical matter spectra do not have phase, but quantum spectra do have phase. A matter spectrum with phase can show entanglement and a source can therefore exist as a superposition of spectra.

Until there is an acceptable story about our classical matter spectra that includes quantum phase, arguments will continue...

Jim, the difficulty is that we can not directly have knowledge of what is happening without forming a relationship with it, that relationship defines how it will be described; and not without utilizing apparatus or observer sensory system that affects the outcomes that are identified as the external reality, but are not.

While it is true that the measurements can not exist without the measurement process, seeming to come into existence upon measurement, it doesn't mean there is no pre-measurement reality.(Though that will be different because it is prior to the provocation causing the response that is taken as the measurement.) Reclaiming an independent non relative material reality dispels the grandfather paradox that is present, when only the relationship of observer to information is considered.

I've seen many hopeful discussions about ideas for reclaiming, rescuing, restoring "physical" or "material" reality. And I don't see any progress towards that goal after almost 100 years. Nor do I see any meaningful new definitions of "material" or "physical" - and without those definitions, maybe the lack of progress isn't surprising.

Jim,

What is wrong with general definitions of material? Things like the matter, or substance, or things with chemical composition. I often qualify it with made of atoms, or fermion particles. Material thigs are also actualisations, things within Object reality.

I have talked about 'physical on the 'rescuiing reality' page

"There's always a third possibility," Weinberg said, "that's there's something else entirely, that we're going to have a revolution in science which is as much of a break with the past as quantum mechanics is a break from classical physics. That's a possibility. It may be that a paper from a graduate student tomorrow morning will lay it out. By definition I don't know what that would be."

Well, FQXi have tried to invite him/her in during the last 10 years without any success. That isn't incomprehensible, because you do not only need that really smart graduate student, there must also be clever scientists to recognise the extraordinary of the contents of his/her paper. Because a revolution in physics is not possible with the help of modern phenomenological physics, the foundations cannot be the same. Moreover, most clever scientists are very busy to promote themselves during their career, so they are not interested in awkward papers that are compelling their grandeur. So I feel sorry for that imaginary graduate student. He/she will face a very frustrated live: "Please, read my paper! Please, read it!" Nobody will take attention.

Georgina

Defining 'matter' as structures of particles is fine, but what about the particles themselves?

I'm not a scientist, but my layman's understanding is that the attempt to decompose reality to the lowest possible level has revealed a fundamental granularity that isn't particles, just observed facts about particles; and a fact might be about one particle, or a group, in the case of entanglement. We get an observed position of one particle, an observed momentum of another, an observed spin of 2 that are widely separated. So we can no longer talk about consistent entities called particles, only these separate observations. What does 'material' mean in this context? Should we continue to look for a yet deeper decomposition that somehow restores a comforting sense of a 'material' world? I feel comfortable accepting that reality is literally made up of facts, as strange as that initially seemed.

Hello Georgina, Mr Hugues,

Georgina is right you know Mr Hugues, the matter is quantifiable.We have the mendeleev table and the standard model giving properties to this matter.The matter or substance or the mass are the same thing, it is quantifiable.It is the meaning of a matter,it is quantifiable and has properties.Now what is a particle?

There are several models ,the strings, the points,....sphères in my model of spherisation.The mass and matter are the same ,they are quantifiable simply.Let's take for example a molecul composed by atoms like an amino acid(guanin,cytosin,thymin or adenin)they have a number of H C N O and like H C N O is quantified with the mendeleev table, so we can calculate all mass.A mineral,an animal or a vegetal ,all in fact gas, liquid, solid, plasme...all these matters are always quantifiable because we know the number of atoms.Your mass in kg is this add of all your atoms simply.All mass is in this logic.If we find what are the particles and if we go more far in the quantum scales,we shall have always a correlation with this mass.If the particles are strings or sphères, they are quantifiable.

Best Regards

Marcus Meijer, I agree totally.

My outsider's perception is that within physics the 'realists' are now grabbing most of the attention, based on hopeful assurances that some new theory "restoring realism" is right around the corner. And who wants to oppose something called "realism"? We all want to be seen as realistic, to be in touch with reality. Framing the issue as being between "realism" and "idealism" takes advantage of the emotional baggage those words carry. It's also all too easy to dismiss an idea as "New Age nonsense", delivered with a patronizing smile.

These are political tactics that are only impeding progress.

Hi All,

I agree with Weinberg's views that something needs to give, if we have to understand quantum mechanics better. I posted some of my thoughts here:

Going beyond space-time and quantum theory

Tejinder Singh

Do the people at online resume writing think we appreciate this kind of smarmy, sneaky, advertising hijacking a discussion forum. I certainly will not be using their services.I 'm fed up with the number of people doing this kind of advertising thing.

Thanks Zeeya and Steve Agnew for introducing Weinberg's excellent article for discussion.

Recently Gerard 't Hooft published a book proving Quantum Mechanics can emerge from Cellular Automata (CA). He has bitterly complained of his peers ignoring his efforts here is his forum about this .

I found his ideas greatly encouraging, as my own rudimentary model for reconstructing physics from new first principles is essentially a CA, albeit with qubits for cells. Beautiful Universe Model

However for any brilliant graduate student to have half a chance to convince the mainstream (seemingly a multi-billion dollar empire with hundreds of thousands of physicists trodding the path from unquestioned verities) of his new ideas, a lot of backtracking has to be made. We have to check once more whether the most successful theories today are built on flimsy even wrong assumptions, leading to the hodge-podge and dead-ends of today. Here is my current fqxi essay tracing the trouble to an unwitting Einstein and suggesting the steps needed to be taken to clear the old and prepare for the new. I and many others much more qualified than me have been saying this for years; I am glad the Nobelist big-wigs of physics are now starting to speak out even half-hesitantly as they are doing.

Vladimir ( still hopeful in old age!)

Dear friends,

Let's return to Zeeya first's post, asking "Just because physicists disagree on which interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct, does that mean we have the whole thing wrong? ".

My answer is NO! Physicists disagree on which interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct, because, as Feynman said, no one know WHAT REALY THE MECHANISM (of quantum mechanics) IS? Then what followed is that we are facing with the crazy problem such as wave function of what, how electron particle could manifest wave property, etc. Of course this does not mean that it has no physical mechanism; quantum mechanics is physics - not magic!

The reason behind THE NO MECHANISM (of quantum mechanics) was fist seems come from Einstein's idea of light wave propagation using NO medium acting as the mechanism, and then was amplified by Feynman which said that light is a self-sustained wave that could propagate via mutual creation between electric and magnetic wave; but the problem is that both the waves are in phase then CANNOT do so because it will violate the principle of causality!

Of course I know that the Michelson - Morley experiment's result was conventionally interpreted that there is no such thing as the aether; anyway it is not an obvious one, so it is better to prove by using a more clear cut - simple scientific experiment with magnetic field energy of the two solenoids in the paper attached.

Armed with a physical mechanism for the Schrödinger wave equation, then what we got is a more complete quantum mechanics; and which could explain how the wave collapse work, quantum entanglement is possible or not, etc.

Sincerely,

Nimit Th.

click here.

Dear friends,

In my early post, I said that we could see detail of "simple scientific experiment with magnetic field energy of the two solenoids in the paper attached." Anyway it is just an introduction, so here I have attached the detail file below.

Sincerely,

Nimit Th.

attached file

Hi folks. I just joined. I study mathematical patterning in electronic and nuclear shell systems, and have for nearly a decade. There seems to be a pervasive Pascal Triangle motivation for much of it, due to the fact that the quantum harmonic oscillator always delivers numbers of stable states whose values come from Pascal Triangle diagonals- which diagonal depends only on the dimensionality of the system.

So consider the harmonic oscillator shell model for spherical nuclei. The magic numbers are 2,8,20,40,70,112,168..., which turn out to be exactly, and only, doubled tetrahedral numbers from a term-doubled Pascal Triangle. Doubling comes from spin-opposition, so we're counting pairs of nucleons. The shell sizes are all doubled triangular numbers:

1s=2

1p=6

1d2s=12

1f2p=20

1g2d3s=30

1h2f3p=42

1i2g3d4s=56

1j2h3f4p=72

It also turns out that for ellipsoidally deformed harmonic oscillator nuclei, the numarator and denominator of the oscillator ratio, which detail the polar and equatorial extents of the matter wave, determine how these doubled triangular number intervals work between magics. The oscillator ratio (OR) can stand in for the usually chosen deformation parameters (beta, delta, epsilon).

The sphere, as default ellipsoid, has OR 1:1. It has ONE copy of each doubled triangular number interval between each magic, and each doubled triangular number interval is used only once to generate magics. But for a prolate nucleus of OR 2:1, each interval is used TWICE, generating a magic each time, thus 2,2,6,6,12,12,20,20.... resulting in new magics 2,4,10,16,28,40,60,80... which match published lists. For OR 3:1, each interval is used THRICE, and so on. The numerator MULTIPLIES the use of each doubled triangular number interval.

For oblate nuclei, the denominator of the OR DIVIDES the system. So for an OR of 1:2, there is one doubled triangular number interval between EVERY SECOND magic, and for 1:3 between every THIRD, and so forth. The only exceptions occur at the beginnings of magic sequences, when the series haven't yet accumulated the denominator's worth of magics. In such cases the magics are themselves doubled triangular numbers.

It also turns out that total shell energy, under the simple harmonic oscillator model, is conserved over deformation. As each component of the shells varies its energy over deformation, this means that they are all coordinating their relative energies in some manner.

The more realistic model of shell structure incorporating spin-orbit couplings shifts the spherical magic numbers, by monotonically increasing amounts, due to so-called 'intruder' levels adding their nucleons to the harmonic oscillator shells. The new magics become 2,*6,14,28,50,82,126,184... Interestingly the sizes of the intruders are coordinated such that they increase the size of the harmonic oscillator shells (already doubled triangular numbers) to the very next higher doubled triangular numbers. Thus 1g9/2(10 nucleons) adds to 1f2p(20) to give total 30. And 1h11/2 (12) adds to 1g2d3s (30) to give 42. And so on.

Moreover, the depths of insertion of intruders are also doubled triangular numbers- 1g9/2 is 2 nucleons deep into the previous shell, 1h11/2 is 6, 1i13/2 is 12, 1j15/2 is 20, at least for neutrons. There is some ambiguity for protons, with 20 found when 12 is expected, as if the system were anticipating the trend somehow (and because the shell structure allows it).

It also looks like conservation of total shell energies also work under the spin-orbit model.

You won't find any of this described in professional papers and books. I guess everyone already just understands it all tacitly.

The electronic system (in terms of the periodic system) also shows Pascal Triangle motivation. Organized so that orbital introduction is the primary structural motif, rather than chemical behavior, has the s-block on the RIGHT after the p-block. It places He with the other s2 elements. This is the Left-Step Periodic Table described by the elderly French polymath Charles Janet in 1928, following upon then new-fangled quantum mechanics. The organization ends periods not with noble gases, but with all the s2 elements. It seems to have escaped most workers that every other atomic number of the s2 column are tetahedral numbers (4,20,56,*120), in fact, every other tetrahedral numbers. And all the intermediate atomic numbers are the arithmetic means of the flanking tetrahedrals (so 'triads' as discovered by Dobereiner in the early 19th century). This allows the periodic system to be rationalized as a tetahedron of close-packed spheres, each representing one element. Rhombi (which contain square numbers of spheres, just like 'duals' of same-length periods), may be 'skewed' to tetrahedral dihedral angle, and then stacked like Russian dolls, leading to ever larger tetrahedra. And if the skew rhombi are bisected, one may tesselate the tetrahedral surface allowing complete continuity of Mendeleev's line (the numerical sequence of atomic numbers). There are no other simple geometrical models which can maintain such continuity- yet for the tetrahedral model there are *8* variants that work. Researchers have found similar Pascal Triangle motivation for harmonic oscillator models of hemipsherical atomic clusters, so the applicability could be substantially larger than even outlined above.

Well hello, Jess.

Nice to see some serious work presented on introduction. Ignore the inevitable nay sayers, they come out from under their bridges when scientific method is demonstrated in studious efforts. You have opened a new door for me, I'll have to read up some on Pascal. But it sounds to me that you have researched quite well, the questions that arise in theoretical representations of atomic structure and molecular arrangement.

Tetrahedra have interesting orientations when representing polarity. I personally like Octahedral representational schemes, passing a plane midway and parallel to any two opposites faces results in a Hexagon as most commonly found in molecular arrangements. Also constructing radii as additional axii through midpoints of the eight sides gives 14 potential dimensional orientations, which might be satisfying to String Theorists.

I thought it important that you can state that total shell energy is conserved over deformation in the simple harmonic oscillation model, as this would relate well with topological modeling of any unitary field definition of particulate matter. Too much emphasis is often given to the methodical difference between Quantum and Classical paradigms, when both are commonly incorporated in most areas if real research. And both seem to be embraced by your studies of mathematical patterning. Good Luck in finding kindred spirits, some do come here. I have been shying away for some time as there seems to be an army of irrelevant posters spewing blueline links of questionable origin and potential viral pedigree ever since Google implemented system wide reCAPTCHA protocols that over-rode the previous FQXi sub-routine. best jrc

The email I sent to the circulation list concerning the shell energy conservation:

Hi folks. On page 20 of https :// application .wiley -vch.de/

books/info/0-471-35633-6/toi99/www/struct/struct.pdf 'Appendix Nuclear Structure', which I generally use to analyze shell model data graphically, is the harmonic oscillator plot of energy levels versus deformation.

As some of you may remember, all the spherical magic numbers in this simple model are exactly (and only) doubled tetrahedral numbers from a term-doubled Pascal Triangle. The doubling comes apparently because in fact we are counting spin-opposed PAIRS of nucleons.

The intervals between these counts are from period analogues, with orbitals of all the same parity (alternating positive and negative). The sizes of such period analogues are always here doubled triangular numbers in size, thus:

1s=2

1p=6

1d2s=12

1f2p=20

1g2d3s=30

1h2f3p=42

1i2g3d4s=56

1j2h3f4p=72

The energy levels in the harmonic oscillator plot at the site above are all straight line 'component rays' (I'm not sure how generally that term is used, but I've seen it in several papers and books). As such they have fixed slopes.

The orbitals are still split here, but in the sphere NOT differentiated by energy value (unlike in the spin-orbit model).

Slopes are (in terms of h-bar, omega-bar (energy) versus delta (deformation parameter, as defined in the paper):

1s1/2 0/3; *1s-1/2 -3/3 (hypothesized empty level to keep math consistent)

1p3/2 1/3; 1p1/2 -2/3

1d5,2 2/3; 1d3/2 -1/3; 2s1/2 -4/3; 2s-1/2 -7/3

1f,7/2 3/3; 1f5/2 0/0; 2p3/2 -3/3; 2p1/2 -6/3

1g9/2 4/3; 1g7/2 1/3; 2d5/2 -2/3; 2d3/2 -5/3; 3s1/2 -8/3; 3s-1/2 -11/3

1h11/2 5/3; 1h9/2 2/3; 2f7/2 -1/3; 2f5/2 -4/3; 3p3/2 -7/3; 3p1/2 -10/3

1i13/2 6/3; 1i11/2 3/3; 2g9/2 0/3; 2g7/2 -3/3; 3d5/2 -6/3; 3d3/2 -9/3; 4s1/2 -12/3; 4s-1/2 -15/3

1j15/2 7/3; 1j13/2 4/3; 2h11/2 1/3; 2h9/2 -2/3; 3f7/2 -5/3; 3f5/2 -8/3, 4p3/2 -11/3; 4p1/2 -14/3

You can see from the above that each move to the right, within any period analogue and between contiguous suborbitals within the all-harmonic-oscillator model, is a change of -3/3 slope. And all moves downward between the highest slopes are all +1/3.

On a hunch, yesterday I worked out that when level occupancy is factored in (that is, how many particles are actually in each level), then something very interesting happens.

Multiplying the slope by its occupancy to give a product, and then adding all the slopes within any shell to give a sum, yields result of ZERO. Within the harmonic oscillator model there appear to be no exceptions to this new rule.

Thus the TOTAL ENERGY of any level is conserved despite the deformation, even though INDIVIDUALLY each component ray varies linearly, but they all do so in a coordinated manner. This reminds me strongly of J, the total spin, in spin-orbit systems. And I wonder whether it relates at all to conjugate variables.

My bisected skew rhombi models, where 4 successive periods cover a tetrahedron surface (2 same length smaller, 2 same length larger), seem to share a bit in common with Penrose tilings. They cannot be said to be periodically organized (from a tiling perspective), and they scale up (where tiles for 2p3s, 3p4s have the same outline as 3d4p5s, 4d5p6s, 4f5d6p7s and 5f6p7d8s, and so on. Only the 1s and 2s look different, if only because they only present two spheres each. I can't say if there is any quasicrystalline quality to this mapping. Perhaps one day a mathematician will tell me.

Jess Tauber

Crystal like, for sure. And I may be able to explain why I consider this to be a fact if you would like to know.

Hi Sherman. Yes, I'd like to hear more about this.

BTW, are we allowed to post pictures here on the forum? I have a graphics of tetrahedral periodic table arrangements so people can see what I'm referring to.

You can "add file attachments" 1MB file size limit. I am not sure of restrictions as to file type. Also you can see "link help page" for instructions on linking to other web sites.

The system doesn't seem to recognize picture files, so I'll just let you know you can see them at my Facebook page, The Family Atomics. That's a Dune reference, if you don't recognize it. Alternatively I'll try this:

Continuous Mendeleev's Line Tetrahedral Model

Please see the attached file.

A model, built on orthodox Wave Mechanics with no changes, is validated against a list of experiments. John Bell: "so long as the wave packet reduction is an essential component, and so long as we do not know exactly when and how it takes over from the Schrodinger equation, we do not have an exact and unambiguous formulation of our most fundamental physical theory." The model answers this. It solves the measurement problem, the wave function collapse problem, and the micro verses macro problem. The model shows that the EPR experiment and EPR like experiments do not require any communication between detection points. It shows that in Quantum Teleportation, the teleportation distance is not a factor. It shows that some dreams for functionality from entanglement are too optimistic, ... and more.

Yet Quantum Mechanics Model is just a model. There was never any claim that this is the true material, structure and mechanism that runs the universe. It IS claimed that the Static Universe Model and Quantum Mechanics Model are much more useful than Copenhagen or any of the other interpretations of Quantum Mechanics. The author submits that it is a certainty that none of these is the true material, structure and mechanism that runs the universe.

It is my conjecture that, for those seeking the true material, structure and mechanism that runs the universe, Quantum Mechanics Model with the Static Universe Model is a much better starting point than Copenhagen or any of the other interpretations.Attachment #1: QuantumMechanicsModel.pdf

Please see The file QuantumMechanicsModel.pdf attached to the parent to which this is a reply. Please see the file UnifiedModel.pdf attached to this reply.

The main objective of Quantum Mechanics Model was to get a more sensible model of basic Quantum Mechanics. The secondary objective of Quantum Mechanics Model was to get a model of basic Quantum Mechanics that is fundamentally, right from the start, friendly to General Relativity.

UnifiedModel.pdf suggests an approach to get a Unified Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity Model, using the more friendly Quantum Mechanics Model. It is only a suggested approach. This is a call for Theoretical Research by others to either build such a unified model or convincingly show that this approach cannot lead to such a model.Attachment #1: UnifiedModel.pdf

Hello Mr Sager,

Thanks for sharing your ideas about this unification of our quantum theory and general relativity. It's not easy to unify even G,c and h, that does not converge actually,we have a problem about the quantization of our quantum gravitation. We have several models trying to explain it but it lacks Something.The twistors of penrose,the loops,the E8 exceptional Lie group and geometrical algebras,the non commutativity of Connes.....But we cannot quantize it. I read a paper of Penrose,Fuentes,Howl published 3 monts ago on arxiv,it was an interesting approach with the Bose einstein condensate.Penrose is so relevant. I try to find the correct road correlated with my theory.But the formalisation is difficult mathematically speaking.I consider spherical volumes and sphères like foundamental mathematical and physical objects.Not points or strings,but I can recognise several relevances about these branes and properties.The mathematical strings have many relevant works considering the waves ,fields.... We can converge with the oscillating rotating spherical volumes,spheres. At the difference of strings, I Don't consider a 1D main field philosophically speaking, but a gravitational coded aether from the central cosmological sphere.These main informations probably are series finite of sphères playing with cold and heat between this zero absolute and the planck temperature,after all the combinations appear in function of codes.That implies our geometries,topologies,properties of matters.Imagine the combinations with these oscillations,densities,informtions,encodings,volumes,surfaces(relevant about the pixels at these surfaces for the informations with superimposing,sorting,synchronizationthe densities become relevant and the emergent proportions),the Density seems interesting to analyse. About the Planck scale,so I Don't consider strings like you can see but these spherical volumes,spheres.All this to tell too that we can consider that-this-Dark matter can be superimposed at our standard model.If this matter exists at our cosmological scale so it is too encoded in nuclei.This matter balances the systems at all scales in logic,that becomes relevant to consider so this cold. This cold seems more than we can imagine it seems to me humbly. The Bose Einstein condensate has probably many properties that we Don't know.All this is interesting generally because we can unify G,c and h and explain this matter dark. Gravitons,darkphotons,axions.....are beautiful approachs,that said we have probably an other logic.Regards

Please see the file Quantum Mechanics Model Addendum.pdf after the parent Quantum Mechanics Model.

A non-local model solves problems. Facing Reality. A few of Wigner's Friends. A fun Popper's Diffraction Experiment. Frauchiger - Renner Paradox: No paradox, but, in Copenhagen, we need some serious thinking here. No Physical Virtual Particles. Force Carrying Bosons. The Casimir Effect. The Lamb Shift. Saving the universe (fixing The Cosmological Constant).

QuantumMechanicsModelAddendum.pdf

System has refused the file upload. Try one more time to upload.

If this doesn't work, you can get the file at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346650113_Quantum_Mechanics_Model_Addendum

I'd like to say something about Schrodinger's cat. Attribution of a state or value for a property can be relative,, Velocity, momentum, kinetic energy, orientation, direction of rotation are all examples of that. Some characteristics are absolute. I.e, "viewed or existing independently and not in relation to other things; not relative or comparative." definition from Oxford Languages. Un-decayed and-decayed (atom), unbroken and broken (flask) and alive and dead (cat) are all examples of absolute not relative differences. Herrin lies the problem with the thought experiment.

Heads and tails of a coin are relative differences. As which is called depends on the relation to the observer or measuring device. Milled edge or smooth edge of the coin is an absolute difference. It can only be milled in all observation scenarios for smooth in all scenarios. The relation to the observer or measuring device does not affect the state outcome. From this argument: Some states are in actualized 'superposition'. Both states being potentially observable for that reason. Some so called superpositions are not actualized superpositions of relative states. Instead they are different variants of an unknown absolute state. These are different situations. Superposition of relative states applies to something real. Whereas superposition of absolute states is unreal.

Position of a fermion particle, atom, ion or object such as a buckyball is absolute not relative. Such a particle can not pass through two slits of the double slit experiment at the same time nor be on two separate paths of an apparatus. What could be happening is the concentrated existence known as the particle passes through one slit or path with some environmental disturbance caused by its motion, and just environmental disturbance associated with the particle passes through/along the other. This allows interference of the particle associated disturbances to interfere when they meet; guiding the onward path of the particle in the double slit experiment.

What about photons? They are different from particles and objects that have mass. It makes sense that they are a disturbance of base existence, rather than just having some disturbance associated with them. The disturbance is cohesive and non dissipating. Which is likely due to the properties of the medium of base existence. Just because only whole photons are produced by electron energy level transition, and only whole photons can be detected, does not mean they are never divisible. If under particular circumstances they are divisible parts of the photon disturbance can take different paths. It would not be correct to say the photon takes both paths, as the parts are not photons. Also if the whole photon took both paths that would be double the energy. The last two posts are arguing against the oft repeated saying that- quantum particles can be in two places at once.

The Hafele-Keating experiment and the double slit experiment are consistent with the hypothesis that there is base existence. In the former experiment it having an effect upon matter with mass. More so with greater absolute motion. In the latter case the motion of matter with mass having an effect upon it.

Clarification; 'base', as in the base of a soup

One whole photon taking two paths is two photons, twice the energy. Energy is not created, so that is not happening.