Friday, May 16, 2014

The Many Worlds theory

by Tate
--------------
Confession time: Listverse (http://listverse.com) is awesome. My favorite all-time list is "10 Mind-Bending Implications of the Many Worlds Theory." Here's a brief explanation of the Many Worlds Theory from the intro to the list:
---------------


• In quantum physics—the scientific study of the nature of physical reality—there is plenty of room for interpretation within the realm of what is known. The most popular mainstream interpretation, the Copenhagen interpretation, has as one of its central tenets the concept of wave function collapse. That is to say, every event exists as a “wave function” which contains every possible outcome of that event, which “collapses”—distilling into the actual outcome, once it is observed. For example, if a room is unobserved, anything and everything that could possibly be in that room exists in “quantum superposition”—an indeterminate state, full of every possibility, at least until someone enters the room and observes it, thereby collapsing the wave function and solidifying the reality.
• The role of the observer has long been a source of contention for those who disagree with the theory. The strongest competition to this interpretation, and probably the second most popular mainstream interpretation (meaning, a lot of incredibly smart people think it’s a sound theory) is called the Everett interpretation after Hugh Everett, who first proposed it in 1957. It’s known colloquially as the Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI), because it postulates simply that the wave function never collapses; it simply branches into its own unique world-line, resulting in every possible outcome of every situation existing in physical reality.

































I highly recommend that you click THIS LINK
http://listverse.com/2013/02/22/10-mind-bending-implications-of-the-many-worlds-theory/
to read the full list. Here are a few of the juiciest bits: 

• MWI concludes that all values are rolled in some timeline somewhere, even the most unlikely ones—and inevitably, the timeline where the low-probability value gets rolled will be ours. As evidenced by the play described above, which totally happened and decided the outcome of a divisional playoff game.
And there is no ceiling of improbability, other than physics—whatever could possibly occur.
• If reality is a continuous cycle—along the lines of “Big Bang, expansion, contraction, collapse, Big Bang again”—then, given what we believe about the Multiverse and its infinite world-lines, you have existed before. In fact, all the infinite versions of you have existed before, and will exist again—and the same goes for all of us, along with every possible idea, creation and situation throughout all of our past and future, across all realities.... In one fell swoop, this concept explains instances of both deja vu and strong feelings of predestination.
• ...while we will all experience dying, we will never experience death—the termination of our consciousness.
• After all, if everything—Atlantis, Luke Skywalker, your neighbor Bill—is as real as everything else, then what is reality but what we perceive? And what is our perception, if not our creation?


No comments:

Post a Comment