QM has equations that yield probability densities that accurately predict experimental results. This is why it is said that QM is the most successful scientific theory of all time. It doesn’t bother the leaders of physics that QM provides no picture of the quantum world, and denies that there is such a thing as a real microphysical world. They believe that mathematical equations ARE reality, much as Plato thought that the Forms, and not the physical world, were what was real.

What QM doesn’t do is to make a picture of the quantum world which the human mind is capable of understanding. Since physicists don’t believe there is such a physical reality, they have no interest in the second kind of validity. Therefore, attempting to get physicists interested in TEW is pretty much impossible.

A pivotal experiment is the Bell test experiment with delayed choice. It is almost universally believed that QM is the only possible explanation of that experiment, including the idea that mathematical equations are real whereas physical reality (with its local cause and effect) has been proved to be either non-existent, or hollow (in the sense that you may see and touch physical objects, but at the quantum level they don’t exist).

I am working with a physics journal to publish an article in which we show that there is an explanation of the Bell test experiments with delayed choice (based on TEW), an explanation that uses local causation and endorses the existence of a physical reality at the quantum level. My current hope is that this article will make a small dent, and may allow physicists to see that TEW could be helpful to them inside that small niche which QM does not address: the existence of a physical world.

Astonishment would dawn on the faces in front of me. One man said, “But I thought that was well established! Wave-particle duality is a cornerstone of quantum mechanics.” I then had their full attention. No one was sarcastic or skeptical. One person said, “How come I haven’t heard about this before?” Another said, “So, are they going to give you a Nobel Prize?”

“In the double slit experiment,” I said, “the waves could be coming from the target screen, and you would get exactly the same  results. This illustrates that quantum mechanics and TEW are symmetrical theories.” Symmetry is well known to physicists, i.e. mirror image theories describing the same reality and sharing the same mathematics. “We claim that TEW can explain the entire mountain of quantum experimental data, and all of quantum mathematics. Both theories are parallel but reciprocal with one another. In the past, no one, not even Einstein, recognized that quantum weirdness would disappear if the waves were recognized as going in the opposite direction as the particles.

“So,” I continued, “if you have two theories, TEW & QM, that are both equally valid, both of which are able to explain all quantum experiments, then how do you tell which one is true?” Here the other person might nod, or say, “Yes, how do you?”

I said that there are five experiments in which QM and TEW go head-to-head, predicting different results. (Another nod from the audience.) In all experiments that have tested this so far, the experimental results contradict QM and support elementary wave theory. (The audience looks astonished.) “Take for example this experiment published by Kaiser in 1992, about a neutron interferometer.” I then explained that experiment. “I am a physician as my day job; I do physics on nights and weekends,” I said. “We have designed three other experiments as you will learn from our website.”

The more I talked, the more intrigued they were. They would, in the end, usually write down the address of our website. Overall this was our most successful APS convention so far. We are beginning to build momentum.

This led many physicists to conclude that it is unscientific even to inquire as to the nature of those physical processes. One must stick to the equations of QM because they work. Anything else is dismissed as “metaphysics.” They say that physics is about mathematics, not about subatomic reality. Anything other than equations is allegedly “metaphysics”! Many physicists believe that logic and reason apply to the macroscopic domain, but do not apply to the subatomic world. But the problem is not located in the subatomic world; it is located in the assumptions of QM.

Even when physicists try to ignore reality and focus only on math, they fail. Reality cannot be completely ignored! Consider the double slit experiment. There is a picture of reality here: a particle source, a screen with two slits, a target screen, waves and particles that are assumed to be in a “duality.” This is the real life context for the mathematical equations relevant to that experiment. No one can deny it.

The picture mentioned three sentences earlier is still the foundation of those equations, and the foundation has an error embedded in it. The assumption that waves and particles travel in a “duality” is wrong. If waves and particles go in opposite directions, then the Reciprocity Theorem would say that we end up with the same equations, but a different picture of “reality.” This is not just a different “interpretation” of QM.

Those contradictions of QM don’t disappear simply because scientists choose to ignore them. They do disappear if one corrects the  erroneous assumption: the direction of the waves. TEW provides a better foundation for quantum mathematics, without ignoring reality.