Quantum mechanics has always challenged our everyday understanding of reality. In the quantum world, particles can exist in a superposition of states, meaning they can occupy multiple possible positions or configurations at the same time. Physicists describe these possibilities mathematically using a wavefunction.
That picture is very different from ordinary life, where an object appears to be in one place and one state at a time. To bridge that gap, standard quantum mechanics says that when a quantum system is measured or observed, its wavefunction collapses into a single definite outcome.
Now, with support from the Foundational Questions Institute, FQxI, an international team of physicists has explored a more radical possibility. Their work suggests that certain alternatives to standard quantum mechanics, known as quantum collapse models, could have surprising consequences for the nature of time itself and for the ultimate precision of clocks.
The findings, published in Physical Review Research, also point to a possible new way to test these unconventional theories against standard quantum mechanics.
"What we did was to take seriously the idea that collapse models may be linked to gravity," says Nicola Bortolotti, a PhD student at the Enrico Fermi Museum and Research Centre (CREF) in Rome, Italy, who led the study. "And then we asked a very concrete question: What does this imply for time itself?"
