Podcasts · Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

323 | Jacob Barandes on Indivisible Stochastic Quantum Mechanics

28 Jul 2025 · 2 h 58 min · Episode 323

The search for a foundational theory of quantum mechanics that all physicists can agree on remains active. Over the last century a number of contenders have emerged, including Many-Worlds, pilot-wave theories, and others, but all of them have aspects that many people object to. Jacob Barandes has taken up the challenge, proposing a new formulation of quantum theory in which there is no wave function, only real degrees of freedom with fundamentally stochastic dynamics. We talk about this new theory and the challenges facing it.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/07/28/323-jacob-barandes-on-indivisible-stochastic-quantum-mechanics/

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Jacob Barandes received his Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University. He is currently Senior Preceptor in Physics and Associated Faculty in Philosophy at Harvard. He teaches both physics and philosophy courses at Harvard, where he has been the recipient of several teaching awards.

• Web site • Harvard web page • PhilPeople profile • Google scholar publications

Links in the notes 7

• https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.16935
• https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/07/28/323-jacob-barandes-on-indivisible-stochastic-quantum-mechanics/
• https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll
• https://www.jacobbarandes.com/
• https://www.physics.harvard.edu/people/facpages/barandes
• https://philpeople.org/profiles/jacob-barandes
• https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=BepZY0gAAAAJ&hl=en

The episode on the publisher’s site ↗ (opens in a new tab)