Before I leave Grand Cayman, I’ll write a quick post to cover the final session of the FQXi meeting on Sunday evening, “Possibility at the Foundation: Quantum Reality.”

Wojciech Zurek, of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, started with the huge claim that he can explain how the fuzzy quantum world turns into a crisp classical reality when it’s observed, without invoking wave function collapse.

How God Plays Dice (Courtesy: Wojciech Zurek)

The bad news is: I don’t have time to tell you what he said. The good news is: Zurek was one of FQXi’s recent grant winners and we already have an article up by Anil Ananthaswamy explaining how his theory, called “Quantum Darwinism,” works. And you can check out his presentation slides here.

Next came Anton Zeilinger, who admitted he felt like the odd one out as an experimentalist at a meeting filled with theoretical physicists. Zeilinger ran through some of the ground-breaking experiments, pushing the boundaries of quantum mechanics by demonstrating its weird effects over larger distances and ever bigger objects. Once again, I’ll refer you to an FQXi article, this time on work being carried out by his group in Vienna, “Quantum Upsizing” for more details.

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