Vindication: Extra Nerdy Edition · 12:19pm May 27th, 2017
So, I was looking at the latest issue of Scientific American, and the cover carried the text "The Quantum Multiverse." I dug in immediately, because I love me some highest-order polycosmic structures. Then I noticed a certain familiar phrase in the article's summary. Then I read the thing.
Long story short, it turns out that I might be on to something by conflating the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum physics with the multiverse concept. Plus, there's this:
The multiple universes in this case do not all exist simultaneously in real space—they coexist in "probability space," that is, as possible outcomes of observations made by people living inside each world.
Nomura, Yasunori. "The Quantum Multiverse." Scientific American, June 2017, pp. 28-35.
Yeah. I wasn't expecting to see that term pop up.
(Also, the term "bubble universes" came up quite often, so that's a bit of hilarity in hindsight with regard to a certain explorer of probability space. 
)
The takeaway from this is that either I have an instinctive understanding of existence at the highest conceivable level or my stopped clock was right at this particular moment. Either way, I'm both amazed and thrilled that my headcanon for reality may yet be confirmed. This cosmic model is actually testable! 
good job
you have done a great service to humanity
So the universe is Derpy Hooves? That... explains too much.
Wait, how would it be testable? I'm confused :-/
It's always nice when you're headcannon is confirmed!
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I'm not claiming responsibility. It's just an amazing moment of staggering coincidence.
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That or my "bubbles = universes" interpretation of her cutie mark has way more traction than it has any right to.
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According to the quantum multiverse model, while each universe is finitely bounded when seen from without, from within that universe, it appears to be infinite due to cosmic inflation outpacing the speed of light. (We can't see the edges, therefore it might as well go on forever since we can disregard the bits that have no causal impact on us.) This discrepancy means that if this model is true, space should have a slight but detectable negative curvature. Which is to say, if this is the case, the universe is saddle-shaped.
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Not quite my reaction, but I was definitely pleased.
Many years ago, (2005-2007 I think) I wrote this:
✶ ✶ ✶
“I did tell you I don’t particularly like the cat box analogy. Tell me, what do you know of the original Schrödinger’s thought experiment?”
“Hmm… Only that the cat inside the box which cannot be observed is either alive or dead, because of a mechanism attached to a Geiger counter that breaks a vial of poison. For some complex reason related to quantum theory, the event that causes the vial to break doesn’t actually exist until the box is open, and so the cat is both alive and dead.”
“Close enough. What everyone forgets is that Schrödinger described his box because he wanted to demonstrate what was absurd about the conclusions people make from quantum theory.”
“Quantum physics is confusing as hell, since I understand pretty much none of it, but I don’t think it’s actually absurd. Too many important things are based on it!”
“But it was never meant to apply to cats! That a particle can behave in that fashion is no surprise. You can’t observe a particle while it actually exists anyway. Replace it with a cat, and a physicist knows it’s nonsense. Schrödinger was worried that while hunting for particles, physicists were playing with things that aren’t even real. Caused quite a stir back then.”
“So how did they deal with it?”
“Several interpretations of quantum theory evolved, and they all offer a way for the cat to be either alive or dead, but not both… well, unless they use more than one cat. But even then, what they say exists is sort of a sum of all possible cats.”
“Doesn’t that mean that no way two truths can actually coexist from the physics point of view, and we’re misunderstanding the whole thing?”
“It’s truth about particles. Truth about people is different, and the analogy falls short by mixing the two up. There’s only one cat in the box, which is either alive or dead, it’s just an academic question as long as you can’t open the box. But once the box is opened, it will be answered.”
“Oh. I see. You said that ‘truth about people’ may not actually exist at all. That would mean that even opening the box might not help?”
“Worse. Conflicting ideas about a particle collapse into one certainty upon measurement, when the particle ceases to exist. But the most important things in every person’s world only exist through perception of that world. Truths about people never actually collapse. People just live in different stories.”
“That’s like there’s actually more than one cat in the box, that can’t be right!”
“Replace the cat with love …and it can.”
✶ ✶ ✶
I guess I should write a story and call it “Sum Of All Cats.”
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I have taken the requisite college classes to understand why, mathematically, that sentence makes sense and fits this conversation.
We're still using a PONY website, though, so that pun made me giggle :-P
I'm very familiar with Everett's, and the sentence you quote is kind of nonsensical. (Although in general I suspect you do understand the basic ideas, yes.)
The key here is that wavefunctions don't actually "collapse" and become individual particles. When a wave appears to collapse, it's because you have become entangled with the wave. The reason things seem physical and definite at our level is that everything is entangled with everything else. The full entanglement between you and your environment defines which one of the (error number too large) universes you're "in".
This is hacking, and I'm reporting you to God.
For Science!
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I find it mildly amusing that the scientist quoted has the name "Yasunori," since the composer for the Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross soundtracks is Yasunori Mitsuda. And, off course, "Nomura" is also a well-known name in gaming.
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This actually reminds me of a thing I wrote a few years back, where a guy had the power to bend time (I dubbed it "The Bender of the Stream") and he was in an interview or something, just so I could have him talking about how his time control worked, even working in some things about how space worked. One section I particularly enjoyed was "This would be so much easier to explain with a 3D graphing system. There's only so much four dimensional physics that can be shown on a two dimensional piece of paper."
I said that myself when explaining the concept to my dad (we're a very intellectual family; my dad once wrote a thing on his first laptop about how "the universe is everything that is me and not me.")
I mean, on a technical level, the many worlds theory can't ever be fully disproven, so it's almost like a science God, but it's nice to see that people with actual credentials are looking into the theory.
Glad someone knows how it all works. I was greatly distraught when my own "waffle multiverse" theory of existence was pressed, heated, buttered and drowned in maple syrup.