The ghosts haunting modern physics

Historically, physics has been a pillar of the materialist philosophy, Its explanations were mainly dealing with concrete objects and waves moving and interacting in the visible world.

It is not so anymore since the advent of quantum physics: according to its standard model, ghosts statistical distributions interact with the material world to determine the movement of particles. Ghosts are haunting the laboratories and the mind of physicists...

However surprising it may seem to some, it is what can be deduced in a straitforward way from how physicists describe the behavior of electrons.

In the manuals of physics, an electron is usually considered to be a point-like particle. In other words, a particle so small compared to an atom that in comparison we may think of it as a dimentionless point.

Manuals also state that an electron doesn't follow a continuous path in space. It only has a likelihood of being detected at various points in space. This likelihood of really finding the electron at a given point depends on the mathematical combination of all possible paths where the electron could move in theory. Those numerous paths influence the outcome of the measure at any given point.

You have to notice that the likelihood distribution function of the electron doesn't result form the interaction of various material factors. The standard model of physics states that it comes from the intrinsic and irreducible caracter of the individual particle.

It seems justified to qualify this mathematical function as a ghost. It is not a simple caracteristic of a particle, it is a complex entity. In front of us we have an immaterial entity that influences the material world. That is exactly what we mean when we speak of ghosts. Even if physicists don't use that annoying word, no other word is better suited.

Moreover, according to the standard model, particles continuously appear and disappear in the vacuum. Vacuum is considered as a sea of negative energy (following Dirac's theory elaborated around the year 1930) where the emergence and vanishing of particles must take place in a very short time interval (the time interval must be shorter than the minimum determined by a mathematical relation, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle).

Ghost particles can therefore be found in quantum physics in addition to ghost mathematical entities.

Modern physics still rely on impressive calculations and measurements

Many quantum physics manuals cover annoying ideas with complex formulas and calculations. And, to win puzzled students to these ideas, they emphasize that the predicted results are very precisely obtained in the laboratories .

As a matter of fact, modern physics is more than ever a very serious and precise experimental science. But its ghost particles and its ghost mathe-matical entities are the siblings of the ghosts we find in the peoples imagination. All these ghosts refer to an immaterial reality. What exists at a theoretical or metaphysical level is used to explain what happens in the material world that surrounds us. Immaterial entities are used to explain what we still cannot  explain in terms of interacting material objects and beings. The issue is avoided and the complex explanation is put in terms of unobservables.

Don't get me wrong: the results of the actions of the quantum ghosts correspond very precisely to what is really observed. Numerous experiments are there to prove it. I don't put them in question in any way. But that doesn't prove that we have to refer to ghosts. And that should not keep us from trying to find a materialist or «realist» explanation.

According to many pragmatic quantum physicists, for whom only results really matters, the use of quantum ghosts is not a temporary flaw and a problem to resolve. Many even assert that it is impossible to find a materialist explanation to the probalistic behavior of particles (beginning with Bohr and Heisenberg who stated it first in the years 1920, followed by Feynman and most of the authors of academic physics manuals).

But many other physicists are not at ease with all that, as was also the case with Einstein. That is haunting them because their general world conception tend to be more materialist.