Entanglement
How can two distant things share one state?
No pairs measured
Both results revealed together
Two entangled particles, detectors 0 degrees apart. No pair measured yet.
Explained by
Copenhagen
The orthodox viewThe pair is one object described by one state, however far apart the two halves travel. Measuring here completes the description for both — but Copenhagen offers no account of a mechanism, because there is no story about what happens between preparation and click.
Bohr treated the two measurements as aspects of a single indivisible phenomenon rather than as two separate events with something passing between them. That is why no signal is needed and none is available. The standing objection is not that this is wrong but that it declines to answer: the correlation is predicted exactly and explained not at all.
Many Worlds
Everything happensNeither detector selects anything. Both results happen at both ends, and what gets correlated is which branch each observer occupies. That correlation only shows up when the two records are finally brought together — which happens no faster than light.
Because measurement never picks an outcome, there is no distant selection to explain, and supporters argue this makes the account genuinely local. The far particle's state is unchanged by your measurement; what changes is which version of you is reading which record. The comparison of notes is an ordinary, slower-than-light meeting.
Pilot Wave
Particles, guidedBoth particles have definite properties the whole time, and the guiding wave connects them: how your detector is set really does affect how the distant particle is steered. The theory takes Bell's result on the chin rather than hiding it.
The guidance equation for one particle depends on the instantaneous configuration of the other, at any separation — explicit nonlocality, exactly what Bell showed no theory of this kind can avoid. You still cannot send anything, because the outcomes on either wing alone are randomly distributed. The unresolved cost is relativistic: the theory seems to want a preferred notion of simultaneity.
Objective Collapse
Collapse is physicsCollapse is a physical event, and it takes the entangled pair together — localizing one localizes the other. The correlation has a mechanism, and that mechanism reaches across the separation.
In GRW-type models a spontaneous localization affecting one particle collapses the joint state, so the far particle's properties settle too. This is nonlocal in the way Bell requires, and building a relativistic version is an open research problem. As with all collapse models the payoff is that the dynamics differ measurably from standard quantum mechanics, so experiments can keep testing them.
QBism
Probability is personalNothing at the far end changed when you measured — your expectations did. The state was your betting book about experiences you might have, so updating it after a result is bookkeeping, not physics happening at a distance.
For a QBist the entangled state is a single agent's set of gambles about two future experiences. Learning A's result revises the odds for B, exactly as drawing one card revises the odds for the next, with quantum theory supplying the discipline. Critics accept that this removes the spooky mechanism and ask what the world must be like for those particular odds to be the right ones.
Relational
Facts are relativeA result at A is a fact relative to A's detector. It is not yet a fact for B, or for you. Since there is no observer-independent list of what has happened, there is nothing for an influence to travel to — the correlation appears when the two records interact.
Rovelli's move keeps everything local by giving up absolute facts. Each interaction settles values relative to the systems taking part; comparing two accounts is itself an interaction, and it happens where the records meet, at no more than light speed. What has to be abandoned is the intuition that there is a single true story of the pair that both observers are sampling.
Consistent Histories
Histories, not measurementsChoose a framework in which both detector readings are defined, and the correlation is an ordinary joint probability over histories. What the rules forbid is mixing frameworks — and that mixing is what makes the correlation look like an influence.
Within a single consistent family the pair's behaviour is unremarkable probability. Griffiths argues that the appearance of nonlocality comes from combining incompatible families, which the single-framework rule disallows, so no influence need be posited. Critics reply that the freedom to choose frameworks is itself unexplained, and whether this dissolves the puzzle or relocates it remains contested.
Key assumptions
- The wave function is a predictive tool, not an object
- Measurement is a special, unanalysed act
- A classical world of labs and screens is assumed, not derived
What it gets right
- Matches every experiment with the least machinery
- No extra worlds, particles, or equations
- The working physicist's default for a century
What it gets questioned on
- Never says what counts as a measurement
- Puts a movable, unexplained cut through reality
- Not one doctrine — Bohr and Heisenberg never fully agreed
Key assumptions
- The wave function is physically real — and is all there is
- The equation holds always, with no exceptions for observers
- Branching structure emerges through decoherence
What it gets right
- No collapse, no special role for measurement
- Fully deterministic at the level of the whole
- Removes a rule rather than adding equations, supporters argue
What it gets questioned on
- An enormous inventory of worlds no one can see
- The Born rule must be argued for, not assumed
- What exactly counts as one branch?
Key assumptions
- Particles with definite positions at all times
- A real guiding wave obeying the usual equation
- An initial statistical distribution (quantum equilibrium)
What it gets right
- A single definite world — no collapse, no branching
- Observers appear nowhere in the laws
- Recovers the non-relativistic predictions exactly
What it gets questioned on
- Openly nonlocal — awkward with special relativity
- Only position is definite; spin and the rest are contextual
- Extending it to quantum field theory is hard work
Key assumptions
- The wave function is a physical object
- The standard equation is slightly, stochastically wrong
- Collapse rate grows with the number of constituent particles
What it gets right
- Observers play no role at all
- Draws the quantum–classical boundary quantitatively
- Makes predictions that experiments can chase
What it gets questioned on
- The wave function never quite vanishes — the problem of tails
- Standard versions heat matter slowly — later variants patch this
- Each null experiment shrinks its living room
Key assumptions
- Probabilities are personal degrees of belief
- A measurement is an agent's action on the world
- The formalism is a normative rule for betting, not a map
What it gets right
- The measurement problem simply dissolves
- No nonlocal mechanism — updating isn't physics
- Takes the probabilistic core of the theory seriously
What it gets questioned on
- Seems to abandon the third-person picture science expects
- The world between agents is left undescribed
- Critics hear solipsism; QBists insist it is not
Key assumptions
- States describe relations, not intrinsic properties
- Every physical system can serve as an observer
- Facts are complete only relative to an interaction
What it gets right
- No collapse, no extra worlds, no new dynamics
- Dissolves paradoxes by forbidding the view from nowhere
- Kinship with the spirit of relativity
What it gets questioned on
- A world of many partial facts takes getting used to
- Comparing observers' accounts needs delicate care
- Critics ask: relations between what, exactly?
Key assumptions
- Probabilities attach to histories, not measurement outcomes
- Only mutually consistent families of histories may be combined
- The formalism applies to closed systems, observers included
What it gets right
- Measurement loses its special status entirely
- Applies to the whole universe — no outside observer needed
- Stays close to the standard formalism, adding no new dynamics
What it gets questioned on
- No rule selects which framework to use
- Different frameworks license incompatible descriptions
- Critics ask what, if anything, actually happens