Nobel Laureate Says Quantum Mechanics Is on The Wrong Track

Insider Brief

• Nobel Laureate Gerard ’t Hooft told Scientific American he believes quantum mechanics is fundamentally flawed and impeding scientific progress.
• ’t Hooft argues that superposition is not a real physical phenomenon and calls for a return to deterministic, classical models of particle behavior.
• He warns that reliance on quantum mechanics limits breakthroughs and urges scientists to rethink core assumptions and pursue alternative frameworks.

While quantum mechanics is often referred to the most accurate scientific theory in history, one Nobel Laureate isn’t a big fan.

Gerard ’t Hooft, one of the most respected figures in theoretical physics, believes the foundation of modern quantum theory is built on a misconception — and that belief is holding back progress in science.

In a wide-ranging interview with Lee Billings, of Scientific American, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist expressed his growing dissatisfaction with quantum mechanics, calling the standard interpretation “nonsense” and arguing that researchers must rethink their assumptions if they want to make real breakthroughs in understanding the universe.

“I think the physical world itself is a very ordinary one that is completely classical,” ’t Hooft told Scientific American. “But in this completely classical world, there are still too many things that we don’t know today, there are ‘steps’ we’re basically missing on our path to deeper understanding.”

Superposition is Nonsense

Known for his foundational work in gauge theories and the Standard Model of particle physics, ’t Hooft has long challenged conventional thinking. But his latest critique strikes at the core of how physicists have described the quantum world for nearly a century. Superposition — the idea that particles exist in multiple states at once until measured — is, in his view, not a physical truth but a mathematical convenience.

“And I’d argue that superpositions of states are not real,” he said. “If you look very carefully, things never superimpose. [Erwin] Schrödinger asked the right questions here: You know, take my cat, it can be dead; it can be alive. Can it be in a superposition? That’s nonsense!”

His view puts him at odds with much of the quantum science establishment, including the booming field of quantum information and computing. While many researchers believe superposition and entanglement are essential to quantum speedup and encryption, ’t Hooft suggests these effects are misunderstood and that progress will come not from refining quantum mechanics, but from replacing it.

“What I’m saying is: we must unwind quantum mechanics, so to speak, as to see what happens underneath. And until the quantum technologists start doing that, I believe they won’t make really big progress.,” ’t Hooft said.

The implications are especially relevant for quantum computing, he added.

“For instance, quantum computers always make errors, and their designers and operators try to correct them,” ’t Hooft told Scientific American. “And if you’re trying to correct these errors, what that means to me is: you want to go to more basic degrees of freedom that do not ever carry any error in them because they’re exact—they’re just classical. But to have this realization is apparently very difficult. This is my feeling as to why we don’t make breakthroughs. We should think about things in a different manner.”

Fundamental Models

According to Scientific American, ’t Hooft has spent recent years exploring more fundamental models of physical behavior — ones rooted in determinism rather than probabilities. In one such model, described in a preprint paper, he uses the metaphor of a grandfather clock: a deterministic pendulum driving the movement of a clock hand. In his analogy, the pendulum is quantum and the hand is classical, but their motions are tightly linked. The idea, he said, is meant to show that precise, clockwork-like systems could underlie what now appears to be random behavior in the quantum world.

But the physics community has been largely unmoved.

“But I got very few reactions to this,” ‘t Hooft told the magazine. “I would have thought that people would say, “Oh, yes, of course. Now we understand how to continue!” But instead they’ve said, ‘Okay, right, ’t Hooft has another hot idea, another crazy idea. And he has many of those crazy ideas. Let him be happy with it; we’re going to do our own thing.’ And that’s the most common reaction I’ve gotten.”

That frustration runs deeper than theory. ’t Hooft also lamented what he sees as a lack of creative risk-taking in the field. With thousands of theoretical physics papers uploaded each year to preprint platforms like arXiv, he says few are asking truly new questions.

“But I would like to advise to the new generation of scientists: don’t worry about that, because the real reason why there’s nothing new coming is that everybody’s thinking the same way!” he told Scientific American.

He encourages younger scientists to break from the pack.

Optimistic About Potential

Despite his skepticism about the direction of quantum theory, ’t Hooft remains optimistic about the potential for new discoveries. But he says this will require reexamining core beliefs—starting with the idea that quantum mechanics is as fundamental as many believe.

“If you believe right from the beginning that quantum mechanics is a theory that only gives you statistical answers and never anything better than that, then I think you’re on the wrong track,” he said. “And people refuse to drop the idea that quantum mechanics is some strange sort of supernatural feature of the particles that we will never understand. No! We will understand, but we need to step backward first, and that’s always my message in science in general: before you understand something, just take a few steps back..”

That backward step, he argues, might eventually replace statistical quantum rules with deeper, deterministic ones — more like how Newton described falling apples or Maxwell explained electricity. He sees quantum theory not as a final truth but as a practical tool, similar to how early scientists treated thermodynamics before the rise of atomic theory.

‘I Have a Big Problem With That’

Still, the cultural pull of quantum mystique remains strong. ’t Hooft is wary of how ideas like the holographic principle — which he helped pioneer — have been taken far from their original intent and turned into speculative scenarios about simulation universes or cosmic-scale computer programs.

“Maybe I should have never talked about the holographic principle because, yes, some people are galloping away into nonsense, linking this idea with supernatural features and poorly defined dimensionality, all to sound very mysterious,” he told Scientific American. “And I have a big problem with that. “

He calls for a more grounded approach, one that strips away mysticism and returns to clarity and logic. And that means scientists may even need to abandon beloved concepts like wavefunction collapse or Hilbert space.

“Quantum mechanics is the possibility that you can consider superpositions of states. That’s really all there is to it,” he said. “And I’d argue that superpositions of states are not real.”

As Scientific American reported, ’t Hooft’s latest honor—the $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics — recognizes a lifetime of paradigm-shifting contributions. But the physicist shows no signs of resting on past achievements. For him, the next great advance in physics won’t come from bigger machines or more complex math, but from someone willing to ask the questions everyone else has stopped asking.

“We should try not to be supernatural; if we, as scientists, only leave a wake of mysteries behind us, we’re not doing the right thing,” ‘t Hooft tells Scientific American.