It's an interesting theory though. What makes it less mainstream than other interpretations? (And is any interpretation of quantum mechanics a consensus?)
John Bell himself, the original author of one of the impossibility theorems, recognized its irrelevance, but he was systematically misquoted, misunderstood, or ignored as he tried to call attention to it. Ironically, he was then portrayed as being against Bohmian mechanics, despite the fact that he was its prime supporter during his lifetime.He said:
“But in 1952 I saw the impossible done. It was in papers by David Bohm. Bohm showed explicitly how parameters could indeed be introduced, into nonrelativistic wave mechanics, with the help of which the indeterministic description could be transformed into a deterministic one. More importantly, in my opinion, the subjectivity of the orthodox version, the necessary reference to the ‘observer,’ could be eliminated…
But why then had Bohm not told me of this ‘pilot wave’?... Why did von Neumann not consider it? More extraordinarily, why did people go on producing “impossibility” proofs, after 1952, and as recently as 1978?... Why is the pilot wave picture ignored in textbooks? Should it not be taught, not as the only way, but as an antidote to the prevailing complacency? To show us that vagueness, subjectivity, and indeterminism, are not forced on us by experimental facts, but by deliberate theoretical choice?”
John S. Bell, "On the impossible pilot wave". Foundations of Physics 12 (1982)
Can't say i can explain it, but the words you're looking for are "local realism".
I really like the pretty pictures from walking droplets, and it makes the thing seem very intuitive. But they're a little disingenuous. It's easy to imagine, or just see a drop of water bouncing in the air on a wave of water. But all this stuff happens in 3d. There's (as far as i know) no separation like air and water. It's more like a sound wave expanding out in all directions.
How do you surf on a sound wave? Not saying it can't be done, it's just that the pretty picture has to be a lot more complicated for the particle to have something to bounce off of. Maybe there are some weird hard thin shells that hover around particles. Who knows? For sure i can say 'not me'.
Yep, you are right — 3D version will be very different. Why not to conduct such experiment in space, where 3D version can be constructed with ease?
Moreover, electromagnetic waves are very different from sound waves, so physic process involving them will be very different. Can you imagine an experiment, which will be closer to reality?, e.g. spinning eccentric charged particles in space.
We have, at this point, strong evidence [1,2] against the straight-forward version of pilot wave theory. Thus pilot wave theory is forced to add more and more epicycles. This, IMO, is part of the reason why it's not becoming more mainstream today.
Can you explain how these are evidence against pilot wave theory? It's entirely compatible with Bell's inequality and indeed makes all the same predictions as other, more popular interpretations of QM, so it's not clear why these papers would be evidence against it.
When any theory has to add more and more complexity to explain the data it tends to be an indication that there is something wrong with the theory and that another theory may be more supported.
> (And is any interpretation of quantum mechanics a consensus?)
There is, broadly speaking, a consensus view. Whether this is because the consensus best matches reality or whether it's dogmatic is probably up for debate, but I don't personally know any professional scientists who believe pilot wave theory (Bell's theorem largely disproved it).
