Are the Mysteries of Quantum Mechanics Beginning To Dissolve?
Can the work of Wojciech Zurek (right) build on that of Erwin Schrödinger (top left) and Niels Bohr (bottom left) to explain how observable reality emerges from quantum theory?
Wojciech Zurek（右）的工作能否以 Erwin Schrödinger（左上）和 Niels Bohr（左下）的工作为基础来解释可观察的现实如何从量子理论中出现？
one of the leading interpretations of quantum theory are very convincing.
量子理论的主要解释之一非常令人信服。
They ask us to believe, for example, that the world we experience is fundamentally divided from the subatomic realm it’s built from.
例如，他们要求我们相信，我们所经历的世界与它所构建的亚原子领域有着根本的区别。
Or that there is a wild proliferation of parallel universes, or that a mysterious process causes quantumness to spontaneously collapse.
或者平行宇宙的疯狂扩散，或者神秘的过程导致量子性自发崩溃。
This unsatisfying state was a key element of Beyond Weird , my 2018 book on the meaning of quantum mechanics.
这种令人不满意的状态是我 2018 年关于量子力学意义的书《Beyond Weird》中的一个关键要素。
It’s no wonder experts are as divided as ever about what quantum theory says about reality, a century after the theory was developed .
难怪在量子理论发展一个世纪后，专家们对于量子理论对现实的看法一如既往地存在分歧。
At the subatomic scale, things only make sense from a quantum perspective.
在亚原子尺度上，只有从量子角度来看事情才有意义。
How do those non-intuitive rules make the leap to classical physics, the macro language of everyday life?
这些非直观规则如何跃迁为日常生活的宏观语言——经典物理学？
But after reading Decoherence and Quantum Darwinism , a book published in March 2025 by the physicist Wojciech Zurek, I’m excited by the possibility of an answer that does away with all those fanciful notions.
但在阅读了物理学家 Wojciech Zurek 于 2025 年 3 月出版的《退相干和量子达尔文主义》一书后，我对可能找到一个消除所有这些幻想概念的答案感到兴奋。
Zurek, of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, has been working for decades to resolve the question of how the quantum rules that govern the behavior of atoms and subatomic particles switch to those of classical physics — Newton’s laws of motion and so on — that operate at the scales of everyday life.
新墨西哥州洛斯阿拉莫斯国家实验室的祖雷克几十年来一直致力于解决控制原子和亚原子粒子行为的量子规则如何转变为在日常生活尺度上运行的经典物理规则（牛顿运动定律等）的问题。
Zurek’s key idea about how this transition occurs, called decoherence, is fairly well established.
祖雷克关于这种转变如何发生的关键思想（称为退相干）已经相当成熟。
But his book brings together for the first time all the elements he has been developing into a grand synthesis.
但他的书首次将他正在开发的所有元素汇集在一起，形成一个宏大的综合体。
He argues that the old mysteries of quantum theory are starting to dissolve.
他认为量子理论的古老谜团正在开始解开。
To my eye, Zurek has almost tied up the loose ends that have been confounding physics for 100 years, without invoking any substantially new or speculative assumptions.
在我看来，祖雷克几乎解决了 100 年来困扰物理学的未解之谜，而没有援引任何实质上新的或推测性的假设。
In doing so, he claims to unite the previously irreconcilable.
他声称这样做可以团结以前不可调和的事物。
Let’s see how far his approach takes us, and where the remaining mystery lies.
让我们看看他的方法能带我们走多远，以及剩下的谜团在哪里。
If you know something about quantum mechanics, you can be forgiven for thinking that the big, strange deal is the quantum part: the idea that the world at the finest scales is grainy, that particles can only change their energy in abrupt quantum jumps by exchanging little packets of energy with fixed sizes.
如果你对量子力学有所了解，你可能会认为最重要、最奇怪的部分是量子部分：这种观点认为，最精细尺度的世界是颗粒状的，粒子只能通过交换固定大小的小能量包，在突然的量子跳跃中改变它们的能量。
But that’s not really such a head-scratcher in itself.
但这本身并不是那么令人头疼的事情。
Or you might imagine the weirdest thing is Werner Heisenberg’s famous uncertainty principle, which stipulates that there are some pairs of properties — such as the position and the momentum of a particle — that we can never know at the same time with accuracy beyond a certain limit.
或者你可能会想象最奇怪的事情是维尔纳·海森堡著名的不确定性原理，它规定有一些属性对——比如粒子的位置和动量——我们永远不可能同时知道超过一定限度的准确度。
Measure precisely where a particle is, and where it’s going becomes unknowable.
精确测量粒子的位置，而它的去向就变得不可知。
But this uncertainty is just a symptom of a deeper problem.
但这种不确定性只是更深层次问题的征兆。
I n philosophy, “qualia” refers to the subjective qualities of our experience: what it’s like for Alice to see blue or for Bob to feel delighted.
在哲学中，“感受性”指的是我们体验的主观品质：爱丽丝看到蓝色或鲍勃感到高兴是什么感觉。
Qualia are “the ways things seem to us,” as the late philosopher Daniel Dennett put it.
正如已故哲学家丹尼尔·丹尼特所说，感受性是“事物在我们看来的方式”。
In these essays, our columnists follow their curiosity, and explore important but not necessarily answerable scientific questions.
在这些文章中，我们的专栏作家追随他们的好奇心，探索重要但不一定可以回答的科学问题。
Ultimately, the arguments over quantum mechanics have much bigger stakes: what reality is.
最终，关于量子力学的争论有更大的利害关系：现实是什么。
The basic problem is that the theory tells us what we can expect to observe if we make measurements of a quantum system such as an atom or an electron.
基本问题是，该理论告诉我们，如果我们测量原子或电子等量子系统，我们可以期望观察到什么。
That might not sound so different from any other scientific theory, but it is.
这听起来可能与任何其他科学理论没有太大不同，但事实确实如此。
For what quantum mechanics actually supplies is the probabilities of measurement outcomes.
量子力学实际上提供的是测量结果的概率。
That alone doesn’t permit us to deduce anything about what the world was like before we made the measurement.
仅凭这一点并不能让我们推断出在进行测量之前世界是什么样子的。
It doesn’t tell us how the world is, only what we’ll see if we look .
它并没有告诉我们世界是怎样的，而是告诉我们如果我们观察就会看到什么。
Quantum uncertainty, the physicist and philosopher Jeffrey Bub of the University of Maryland told me, “doesn’t simply represent ignorance about what is the case, [but] a new sort of ignorance about something that doesn’t yet have a truth value, something that simply isn’t one way or the other before we measure.”
马里兰大学的物理学家和哲学家杰弗里·布布告诉我，量子不确定性“并不简单地代表了对实际情况的无知，而是对尚不具有真值的事物的一种新的无知，在我们测量之前根本不是一种或另一种方式的事物。”
In the formulation of quantum mechanics presented by Erwin Schrödinger in 1926, the state of a quantum system is represented by a mathematical entity called the wave function.
在埃尔文·薛定谔 (Erwin Schrödinger) 于 1926 年提出的量子力学公式中，量子系统的状态由称为波函数的数学实体表示。
The wave function is an abstract construct that allows us to predict the probabilities of the various possible outcomes of a measurement of that quantum system.
波函数是一个抽象的结构，它使我们能够预测量子系统测量的各种可能结果的概率。
Before we measure one of its properties — an electron’s location, say — all its possible locations are represented in the wave function as a “superposition,” meaning each is potentially observable with some probability.
在我们测量其属性之一（例如电子的位置）之前，其所有可能的位置都在波函数中表示为“叠加”，这意味着每个位置都可以以一定的概率观察到。
Any given observation or measurement will only ever see one of those outcomes, and successive, identical experiments may see different ones.
任何给定的观察或测量都只会看到这些结果之一，而连续的、相同的实验可能会看到不同的结果。
The act of measurement seemingly makes this hazy quantumness go away, replaced by something definite and more in line with our experience of classical reality.
测量的行为似乎使这种模糊的量子性消失了，取而代之的是某种确定的、更符合我们对经典现实的体验的东西。
The sculpture Quantum Cloud in London, designed by Antony Gormley, appears to be a collection of random particles, but resolves into a human figure in the center.
伦敦的雕塑量子云由安东尼·葛姆雷设计，看似随机粒子的集合，但在中心分解为一个人形。
It draws inspiration from how classical reality emerges from quantum physics.
它从量子物理学中出现的经典现实中汲取灵感。
Thus the wave function can’t tell us what the quantum system is like before we measure it.
因此，在我们测量量子系统之前，波函数无法告诉我们量子系统是什么样的。
By contrast, in macroscale, classical, Newtonian physics, things have well-defined properties and positions, even when no one is looking.
相比之下，在宏观、经典、牛顿物理学中，即使没有人在看，事物也具有明确定义的属性和位置。
The classical and quantum worlds seem divided by what Heisenberg in the late 1920s called a “cut.” For him and Niels Bohr in Copenhagen, reality had to be described by classical physics, while quantum mechanics was the theory that we, as classical entities ourselves, needed to describe what we observed about the microscopic world.
经典世界和量子世界似乎被海森堡在 20 年代末所说的“切割”所划分。对于他和哥本哈根的尼尔斯·玻尔来说，现实必须用经典物理学来描述，而量子力学是我们作为经典实体本身需要描述我们所观察到的微观世界的理论。
Nothing more, nothing less.
不多不少。
But why should there be two distinct types of physics — classical and quantum — for big and small things?
但为什么对于大事物和小事物应该有两种不同类型的物理学——经典物理学和量子物理学呢？
And where and how does one take over from the other?
一个人在哪里以及如何接替另一个人？
To Bohr and his colleagues, the scale of atoms and that of people seemed so profoundly disparate that the question didn’t seem to matter much.
对于玻尔和他的同事来说，原子的尺度和人的尺度似乎截然不同，以至于这个问题似乎并不重要。
In any case, they said, we have some choice over where we place the cut, depending on what we decide to include in our quantum equations.
他们说，无论如何，我们可以选择切割的位置，具体取决于我们决定在量子方程中包含什么。
But today we can probe the world over many length scales, including the in-between mesoscale of, say, a few nanometers, where it’s not clear whether quantum or classical rules should apply.
但今天我们可以在许多长度尺度上探测世界，包括中间尺度，比如几纳米，目前尚不清楚是否应该适用量子规则或经典规则。
And in fact we can still — if the experiments are controlled and sensitive enough — find quantum behavior in objects big enough to be seen with an ordinary optical microscope.
事实上，如果实验受到控制且足够灵敏，我们仍然可以在大到足以用普通光学显微镜看到的物体中发现量子行为。
So there’s no avoiding the problem of how to explain the quantum-to-classical transition — the “becoming real” that seems to happen when we zoom out or make a measurement.
因此，如何解释量子到经典的转变是不可避免的问题——当我们缩小或进行测量时，似乎会发生“变得真实”。
Quantum mechanics itself didn’t seem to explain this measurement process, in which all the quantum probabilities represented in the wave function “collapse” into a single observed value.
量子力学本身似乎并没有解释这个测量过程，其中波函数中表示的所有量子概率“崩溃”为单个观测值。
For Bohr and his colleagues in Copenhagen, the collapse was just figurative: a reflection of the classical world we experience.
对于玻尔和他在哥本哈根的同事来说，崩溃只是象征性的：反映了我们所经历的古典世界。
Others have tried to explain the collapse as a real, spontaneous, randomly timed physical event that picks out a unique outcome from among the many possibilities — although just what factors would cause such a physical collapse are unclear.
其他人试图将崩溃解释为一个真实的、自发的、随机时间的物理事件，它从多种可能性中挑选出一个独特的结果——尽管尚不清楚哪些因素会导致这种物理崩溃。
Others invoke the description postulated by Louis de Broglie and later developed by David Bohm, in which a particle does have well-defined properties, but it is steered by a mysterious “pilot” wave that produces the strange wavelike behavior of quantum objects, such as interference.
其他人引用了路易斯·德布罗意假设、后来由大卫·博姆发展的描述，其中粒子确实具有明确定义的属性，但它是由神秘的“导频”波引导的，该波产生量子物体的奇怪波状行为，例如干涉。
And others have adopted Hugh Everett’s 1957 interpretation, now commonly called “many worlds,” which supposes that there is no collapse, but that all measurement outcomes are realized in parallel universes, so that reality is constantly branching into multiple, mutually inaccessible versions of itself.
其他人则采纳了休·埃弗里特 1957 年的解释，现在通常被称为“许多世界”，该解释假设不存在崩溃，但所有测量结果都在平行宇宙中实现，因此现实不断分支成多个彼此无法访问的版本。
All this has always struck me as fanciful.
这一切总让我觉得有些异想天开。
Why not just see how far we can get with conventional quantum mechanics?
为什么不看看传统量子力学能走多远呢？
If we can explain how a unique classical world arises out of quantum mechanics using just the formal, mathematical framework of the theory, we can dispense with both the unsatisfactory and artificial cut of Bohr’s “Copenhagen interpretation” and the arcane paraphernalia of the others.
如果我们能够仅使用理论的形式数学框架来解释一个独特的经典世界是如何从量子力学中产生的，我们就可以免除玻尔“哥本哈根解释”中令人不满意的人为切割以及其他人的神秘用具。
This is where Zurek’s work comes in.
这就是 Zurek 的工作发挥作用的地方。
Starting in the 1970s, he and the physicist H.
从 20 世纪 70 年代开始，他和物理学家 H.
Dieter Zeh looked closely at what quantum theory itself tells us about measurements.
Dieter Zeh 仔细研究了量子理论本身告诉我们的有关测量的内容。
(This might have happened much sooner if researchers had not been discouraged for decades from asking questions about these foundational but unresolved issues in the theory, on the grounds that it was all just pointless philosophy.)
（如果研究人员几十年来没有因为理论中这些基础但未解决的问题而被阻止提出问题，那么这种情况可能会发生得更快，因为这只是毫无意义的哲学。）
The central element of Zurek’s approach is the phenomenon called quantum entanglement, another of the nonintuitive things that happen at quantum scales.
祖雷克方法的核心要素是称为量子纠缠的现象，这是在量子尺度上发生的另一种非直观现象。
Schrödinger named this phenomenon in 1935, arguing that it is in fact the key feature of quantum mechanics.
薛定谔于 1935 年命名了这种现象，认为它实际上是量子力学的关键特征。
He came up with the name after Albert Einstein and colleagues pointed out that, after two quantum particles come into contact via physical forces, they appear to be weirdly interconnected; if you measure one of them, it looks like you instantaneously influence the properties of the other, even if they’re no longer close together.
在阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦（Albert Einstein）及其同事指出，两个量子粒子通过物理力接触后，它们似乎奇怪地相互关联之后，他提出了这个名字。如果你测量其中一个，看起来你会立即影响另一个的属性，即使它们不再靠近。
“Looks like” is the essential term here: Actually, quantum mechanics says that the interaction and resulting entanglement renders the particles no longer separate entities.
“看起来像”是这里的基本术语：实际上，量子力学认为相互作用和由此产生的纠缠使粒子不再是独立的实体。
They are described by a single wave function that defines the possible states of both particles.
它们由定义两个粒子可能状态的单个波函数来描述。
For instance, the joint wave function might say that whichever direction one of them is magnetically oriented, the other must be oriented in the opposite direction.
例如，联合波函数可能会说，无论其中一个方向磁性定向，另一个方向都必须定向为相反方向。
Ultimately, the arguments over quantum mechanics have much bigger stakes: what reality is.
最终，关于量子力学的争论有更大的利害关系：现实是什么。
When particles interact, entanglement is inevitable.
当粒子相互作用时，纠缠是不可避免的。
This means something for the measurement process: The quantum objects under observation become entangled with the atoms of the measuring instrument.
这对于测量过程来说意味着一些事情：被观察的量子物体与测量仪器的原子纠缠在一起。
“Measurement” here doesn’t have to imply probing the object with some fancy bit of scientific kit; it applies to any quantum object interacting with its environment.
这里的“测量”并不一定意味着用一些奇特的科学工具来探测物体；而是指用一些奇特的科学工具来探测物体。它适用于任何与其环境相互作用的量子物体。
The molecules in an apple are described by quantum mechanics, and photons of light bouncing off the surface molecules get entangled with them.
苹果中的分子是用量子力学描述的，从表面分子反射的光子与它们纠缠在一起。
Those photons carry information about the molecules to your eyes — say, about the redness of the apple’s skin, which stems from the quantum energy states of the molecules that constitute it.
这些光子将有关分子的信息传送到你的眼睛，例如，有关苹果皮肤的红色的信息，这源于构成苹果皮肤的分子的量子能态。
In other words, Zurek and Zeh realized, entanglement is ubiquitous, and it is the information conduit between quantum and classical.
换句话说，Zurek 和 Zeh 意识到，纠缠无处不在，它是量子与经典之间的信息管道。
As a quantum object interacts with its environment, it becomes entangled with it.
当量子物体与其环境相互作用时，它就会与环境纠缠在一起。
Using nothing but regular quantum math, Zeh and Zurek showed that this entanglement “dilutes” the quantumness of the object because it becomes a shared property with the entangled environment, so that quantum effects quickly become unobservable in the object itself.
Zeh 和 Zurek 仅使用常规量子数学证明，这种纠缠“稀释”了物体的量子性，因为它成为与纠缠环境的共享属性，因此物体本身的量子效应很快变得不可观测。
They call this process decoherence.
他们称这个过程为退相干。
For example, a superposition of the quantum object becomes spread out among all its environmental entanglements, so that to deduce the superposition we’d need to examine all the (rapidly multiplying) entangled entities.
例如，量子物体的叠加态分布在其所有环境纠缠中，因此为了推导出叠加态，我们需要检查所有（快速繁殖的）纠缠实体。
There’s no more hope of doing that than there is of reconstructing a blob of ink once it has dispersed in the ocean.
做到这一点的希望就如同一滴墨水一旦分散在海洋中就无法重建一样。
Wojciech Zurek (top) has worked for decades to close the quantum-classical divide, with collaborators Jess Riedel (bottom left) and the late H.
Wojciech Zurek（上）与合作者 Jess Riedel（左下）和已故的 H.
Dieter Zeh (bottom right).
迪特尔·泽（右下）。
Courtesy of Wojciech Zurek; Rod Searcey; Rolf Kickuth via Wikimedia Commons
由沃伊切赫·祖雷克提供；罗德·瑟西；罗尔夫·基库斯（Rolf Kickuth）来自维基共享资源
Decoherence happens incredibly fast.
退相干发生得非常快。
For a dust grain floating in the air, collisions with photons and surrounding gas molecules will produce decoherence in about 10 -31 seconds — about a millionth of the time it takes for light to traverse a single proton.
对于漂浮在空气中的尘埃颗粒来说，与光子和周围气体分子的碰撞将在大约 10 -31 秒内产生退相干——大约是光穿过单个质子所需时间的百万分之一。
In effect, decoherence destroys delicate quantum phenomena almost instantly once they encounter an environment.
实际上，一旦遇到环境，退相干就会立即破坏微妙的量子现象。
But measurement is not just about decoherence.
但测量不仅仅是退相干。
It is entanglement with the environment that imprints information about the object on that environment — for example in a measuring device.
正是与环境的纠缠将有关物体的信息印在了该环境上——例如测量设备中。
For the past two decades or so, Zurek has been working out how that happens.
在过去二十年左右的时间里，祖雷克一直在研究这是如何发生的。
It turns out that some quantum states have mathematical features that allow them to generate multiple imprints on the environment without being blurred into invisibility by decoherence.
事实证明，一些量子态具有数学特征，使它们能够在环境中产生多个印记，而不会因退相干而变得模糊不清。
These states thus correspond to properties that “survive” into the observable, decohered classical world.
因此，这些状态对应于“存活”到可观察的、解相干的经典世界中的属性。
This is possible because the interactions that generate each imprint retain the quantum system in the state it had before the interaction, rather than knocking it into a different state or mixing it up with others.
这是可能的，因为产生每个印记的相互作用将量子系统保留在相互作用之前的状态，而不是将其撞入不同的状态或与其他状态混合。
Photons, for example, can bounce off an atom and carry off positional information about it without changing the quantum state of the system.
例如，光子可以从原子上反弹并携带有关原子的位置信息，而不会改变系统的量子态。
Zurek calls these robust states “pointer states,” because they are the ones that can cause the needle in a measuring device to point to a particular outcome.
Zurek 将这些稳健状态称为“指针状态”，因为它们可以使测量设备中的指针指向特定结果。
Pointer states correspond to properties that are classically observable, such as position or charge.
指针状态对应于经典可观察的属性，例如位置或电荷。
Quantum superpositions, meanwhile, don’t have this property; they can’t generate copies robustly, and so we can’t observe them directly.
与此同时，量子叠加不具备这种性质。它们无法稳健地生成副本，因此我们无法直接观察它们。
In other words, they aren’t pointer states.
换句话说，它们不是指针状态。
Zurek shows that pointer states can be efficiently and robustly imprinted again and again in the environment.
Zurek 表明，指针状态可以在环境中一次又一次有效且稳健地印记。
Such states are the “fittest,” he told me.
他告诉我，这样的州是“最适合的”。
“They can survive the process of copying, and so the information about them can multiply.” They are, by analogy with Darwinian evolution, “selected” for translation to the classical world because they are good at becoming amplified — replicated, you could say — in this way.
“它们可以在复制过程中幸存下来，因此有关它们的信息可以成倍增加。”与达尔文进化论类比，它们被“选择”翻译成古典世界，因为它们擅长以这种方式被放大——你可以说被复制。
This is the “quantum Darwinism” of Zurek’s book title.
这就是祖雷克书名的“量子达尔文主义”。
These imprints multiply extremely quickly.
这些印记繁殖得非常快。
In 2010, Zurek and his collaborator Jess Riedel calculated that within a microsecond, photons from the sun will imprint the location of a grain of dust about 10 million times.
2010 年，Zurek 和他的合作者 Jess Riedel 计算出，在一微秒内，来自太阳的光子将印记一粒尘埃的位置约 1000 万次。
Zurek’s theory of quantum Darwinism — which, again, uses nothing more than the standard equations of quantum mechanics applied to the interaction of the quantum system and its environment — makes predictions that are now being tested experimentally.
祖雷克的量子达尔文主义理论——同样，仅仅使用了应用于量子系统及其环境相互作用的量子力学标准方程——做出的预测现在正在接受实验检验。
For example, it predicts that most of the information about the quantum system can be gleaned from just a very few imprints in the environment; the information content “saturates” quickly.
例如，它预测有关量子系统的大部分信息可以从环境中的极少数印记中收集到；信息内容很快“饱和”。
Preliminary experiments confirm this , but there’s more to be done.
初步实验证实了这一点，但还有更多工作要做。
Each imprint, as we’ve seen, corresponds to a classical observation: something we can consider an element of our reality.
正如我们所看到的，每个印记都对应于一个经典的观察：我们可以将其视为现实的一个元素。
The electron is magnetically oriented upward, say, in this imprint.
比如说，在这个印记中，电子的磁力方向是向上的。
But isn’t it conceivable, because the original quantum state contains probabilities of different outcomes, that one imprint might correspond to “up” and another to “down,” so that different observers see different realities — not a superposition exactly, but a clear consequence of it in the form of multiple versions of classical reality?
但是否可以想象，因为原始量子态包含不同结果的概率，一个印记可能对应于“上”，另一个印记对应于“下”，这样不同的观察者就会看到不同的现实——确切地说不是叠加，而是它以经典现实的多个版本的形式出现的明显结果？
This leads us to another revelation of decoherence theory, the one that persuades me that Zurek’s theory now tells a complete story.
这给我们带来了退相干理论的另一个启示，它让我相信祖雷克的理论现在讲述了一个完整的故事。
It predicts that all the imprints must be identical.
它预测所有印记必须是相同的。
Thus, quantum Darwinism insists that a unique classical world can and must emerge from quantum probabilities.
因此，量子达尔文主义坚持认为，一个独特的经典世界可以而且必须从量子概率中出现。
This imposition of consensus obviates the rather mysterious and ad hoc process of collapse, in favor of something more rigorous.
这种强加的共识避免了相当神秘和临时的崩溃过程，有利于更严格的东西。
The object being observed, surrounded by a cloud of identical, observable imprints of it in its macroscopic environment, forms an element of “relatively objective existence,” as Zurek puts it.
正如祖雷克所说，被观察的物体被宏观环境中一团相同的、可观察到的印记所包围，形成了“相对客观存在”的一个元素。
It becomes a part of our concrete classical reality, which he calls an extanton.
它成为我们具体的古典现实的一部分，他称之为外延。
This is where the theory promises to dissolve disputes about interpretation.
这就是该理论有望解决解释争议的地方。
Zurek says that it achieves what might have seemed impossible: a reconciliation of the Copenhagen and many-worlds interpretations.
祖雷克说，它实现了看似不可能的事情：哥本哈根和多世界解释的调和。
In the former, the wave function is considered epistemic : It describes what we can know about the quantum world.
在前者中，波函数被认为是认知的：它描述了我们对量子世界的了解。
In the latter, the wave function is ontic : It is the ultimate reality — a description of all branches of reality at once — even though we can only ever experience one branch of this quantum multiverse.
在后者中，波函数是本体的：它是终极现实——同时描述现实的所有分支——尽管我们只能经历这个量子多元宇宙的一个分支。
Zurek says the wave function is actually both.
祖雷克说，波函数实际上是两者兼而有之。
“The two conflicting views of quantum states, [epistemic and ontic], and the insistence that states must be one or the other is wrong,” he told me when I quizzed him about the story his book tells.
当我向他询问他的书所讲述的故事时，他告诉我：“关于量子态的两种相互冲突的观点（认知论和本体论），以及坚持认为状态必须是其中之一的观点都是错误的。”
Instead, states are “epiontic.” That is, before decoherence takes place, all the quantum possibilities are in some sense present.
相反，国家是“情绪化的”。也就是说，在退相干发生之前，所有量子可能性在某种意义上都存在。
But decoherence and quantum Darwinism select only one of them as an element of our observable reality, without any need to assign all the others a classical reality in some other world.
但退相干论和量子达尔文主义仅选择其中一个作为我们可观察现实的元素，而无需将所有其他元素指定为其他世界的经典现实。
The other states exist in an abstract space of possibilities, but they stay there, never getting the chance to grow via entanglement into observable realities.
其他状态存在于一个抽象的可能性空间中，但它们停留在那里，永远没有机会通过纠缠成长为可观察的现实。
I wouldn’t want to claim that Zurek’s picture clears up quantum mechanics at last.
我不想声称祖雷克的图片最终澄清了量子力学。
Why, for example, does this outcome get selected in a given measurement and not that one?
例如，为什么在给定的测量中选择这个结果而不是那个结果？
Must we (as Bohr and Heisenberg insisted) just accept that it happens randomly, without any cause?
我们必须（正如玻尔和海森堡所坚持的那样）接受它是随机发生的，没有任何原因吗？
And at what point does the quantum world commit itself irrevocably to a particular measurement outcome, such that we can no longer “gather up” a superposition from the entangled web of interactions between object and environment?
量子世界在什么时候会不可逆转地致力于特定的测量结果，这样我们就无法再从物体与环境之间纠缠的相互作用网络中“收集”叠加态？
And most importantly: How can we test the theory more rigorously?
最重要的是：我们如何更严格地测试该理论？
Some experts I’ve spoken to about Zurek’s picture express guarded enthusiasm.
我采访过的一些专家对祖雷克的照片表达了谨慎的热情。
Sally Shrapnel of the University of Queensland in Australia, for instance, told me that Zurek’s program “represents an elegant approach to explaining the emergence of classicality from the basic postulates of quantum theory,” but that it still doesn’t address “the thorny question of what the underlying ‘quantum substrate’ actually is.” How, for example, are we supposed to think about the domain in which all possibilities still exist before decoherence?
例如，澳大利亚昆士兰大学的莎莉·施拉普内尔告诉我，祖雷克的计划“代表了一种优雅的方法，可以解释量子理论基本假设中古典性的出现”，但它仍然没有解决“潜在的‘量子基质’实际上是什么的棘手问题”。例如，我们应该如何思考退相干之前仍然存在所有可能性的领域？
How “real” is it?
它有多“真实”？
Renato Renner of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich is not persuaded that resolving the conflict between the Copenhagen and many-worlds interpretations solves all the problems.
瑞士苏黎世联邦理工学院的雷纳托·雷纳（Renato Renner）并不认为解决哥本哈根和多世界解释之间的冲突就可以解决所有问题。
He points out that it’s possible to construct weird yet experimentally feasible scenarios in which different observers can’t agree on the outcome.
他指出，有可能构建奇怪但实验上可行的场景，其中不同的观察者无法就结果达成一致。
Even if such exceptions seem contrived, he thinks they show that we’ve yet to find a quantum interpretation that really works.
即使这些例外看起来是人为的，他认为它们表明我们还没有找到真正有效的量子解释。
Still, the philosophy of Zurek’s approach seems right to me.
尽管如此，祖雷克方法的哲学对我来说似乎是正确的。
Instead of trying to concoct elaborate stories to resolve the measurement problem of quantum mechanics, why not patiently and carefully work through what standard quantum mechanics can say about how information regarding a quantum object gets out into the observable world?
与其试图编造复杂的故事来解决量子力学的测量问题，为什么不耐心、仔细地研究标准量子力学如何解释有关量子物体的信息如何进入可观察的世界呢？
Here the quantum pioneers left a lot of work unfinished in the revolution they started a century ago, prematurely foreclosing the issue (usually by insisting on the Copenhagen interpretation or just accepting it without question).
在这里，量子先驱们在一个世纪前开始的革命中留下了许多未完成的工作，过早地排除了这个问题（通常通过坚持哥本哈根解释或毫无疑问地接受它）。
Now we can at least hope to complete that task.
现在我们至少可以希望完成这项任务。
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