Kevin Wampler wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> Chambers wrote:
>>> Now, quantum interactions appear random to us, but if it were possible
>>> to "zoom in" sufficiently, we might determine otherwise.
>>
>> As I understand it, this has been conclusively disproven in ways not 
>> too difficult to understand.
> 
> Unless you mean merely to imply that such "zooming in" is theoretically 
> impossible, to my (very limited) knowledge on this subject I don't think 
> that this is true.  At least as far as classical quantum mechanics is 
> concerned, it is possible for the predictions to arise from entirely 
> deterministic, with the caveat that you have to allow for 
> faster-than-light interactions.

Yes. And recently, they've used a variant of the Bell Inequality to disprove 
that it's due to non-local interactions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kochen-Specker_theorem

(Or, for a more popular treatment:)
http://richarddawkins.net/article,2991,Do-subatomic-particles-have-free-will,Science-News

I'm not sure if this is the one I read about, but I think someone did an 
experiment and validated this experimentally, basically by running Bell's 
Inequality sorts of tests on a whole sphere of points rather than just two 
directions.

http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR08/Event/76135
disagrees.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v446/n7138/abs/nature05677.html
may be what I remember reading about, but I don't know where the popular 
reference to it is.  I can't seem to find the article about someone actually 
doing the experiment that the math implies and finding it worked, but it was 
pretty clear that they eliminated non-local interactions thereby.

> The most relevant theorem is known as Bell's theorem: 

Yes, I've pointed that out to people here before, I believe. :-)

> In fact, a deterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics has been 
> mathematically laid out 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohm_interpretation, although I don't know 
> how well it lends itself to attempts to unify it with general relativity 
> (although afaik, it's not clear how well standard QM is either).

AFAIK, QED and GR are at odds because GR assumes a non-quantum 
everywhere-differentiable space, basically.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   The NFL should go international. I'd pay to
   see the Detroit Lions vs the Roman Catholics.

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