Quantum Reality, Complex Numbers, and the Meteorological Butterfly Effect

Abstract

Meteorology is a wonderfully interdisciplinary subject. But can nonlinear thinking about predictability of weather and climate contribute usefully to issues in fundamental physics? Although this might seem extremely unlikely at first sight, an attempt is made to answer the question positively. The long-standing conceptual problems of quantum theory are outlined, focusing on indeterminacy and nonlocal causality, problems that led Einstein to reject quantum mechanics as a fundamental theory of physics (a glossary of some of the key terms used in this paper is given in the sidebar). These conceptual problems are considered in the light of both low-order chaos and the more radical (and less well known) paradigm of the finite-time predictability horizon associated with the self-similar upscale cascade of uncertainty in a turbulent fluid. The analysis of these dynamical systems calls into doubt one of the key pieces of logic used in quantum nonlocality theorems: that of counterfactual reasoning. By considering an idealization of the upscale cascade (which provides a novel representation of complex numbers and quaternions), a case is made for reinterpreting the quantum wave function as a set of intricately encoded binary sequences. In this reinterpretation, it is argued that the quantum world has no need for dice-playing deities, undead cats, multiple universes, or ?spooky action at a distance.?