I guess I’ve always been confused by the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics and the fact that it’s taken seriously. Like is there any proof at all that universes outside of our own exist?
I admit that I might be dumb, but, how does one look at atoms and say “My God! There must be many worlds than just our one?”
I just never understood how Many Worlds Interpretation was valid, with my, admittedly limited understanding, it just seemed to be a wild guess no more strange than a lot things we consider too outlandish to humor.
None.
It is, however, actually simpler than other theories, in that if you just let quantum mechanics do it’s thing without extra (unknown) parts to limit it, it produces many worlds. So, by Occam’s razor…
Specifically:
Quantum systems are in more than one classical state at a time, unavoidably. You can see this in the double slit experiment. Even if you send a single particle at a time through the slits, it passes through both and creates the interference pattern. (There’s also ways to formally prove that making quantum mechanics normal would require fate, or faster-than-light trickery which would actually be worse than fate)
Early physicists were very confused by this. The Schrodinger’s cat was used as a thought experiment meant to illustrate how that’s absurd, and it was decided there must be something that causes quantum states to “collapse” to one state before they can cause any trouble.
That’s not definitely wrong, and it’s still debated in versions by modern theorists, but it turned out not to be necessary. The reason for that is that if a part of a quantum system becomes entangled with something outside of it, the interference will no longer happen, and it becomes indistinguishable from multiple slightly different copies of the same system.
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Per rule 9, could you provide a source for your interpretation of the double slit experiment, specifically that “there is no sort of wave collapse” and “the photons absorbed by film or eyes were just not impacting the surface because they were absorbed elsewhere, causing less friction between the photons and changing the patterns on the surface.”?
This appears contradictory to the standard quantum mechanical explanation for the interference pattern, which is that the wavefunction of the photons passes through both slits, interfering with itself and changing the probability of detection or interaction at specific points along the film/sensor.
The effect isn’t unique to photons and has been observed with electrons, atoms, and even large molecules. As long as the slit size and spacing are comparable to the wavelength of the particle wavefunction it’ll work.
The photon wavefunction being a superposition of position states that self-interact, and then collapse into a single state/location when interacting with a non-quantum object are fundamental to quantum mechanics, and are part of the reason this experiment is such a great introduction to QM. The many worlds interpretation of wavefunction collapse is not fundamental- it’s one of many interpretations for what the math of QM means and not even the most popular amongst theorists (that’d be the Copenhagen Interpretation).
No, it’s not. Exactly one photon (or electron) still arrives. You can refer to Wikipedia for this one. And refer to the no-go theorems if you’re trying to push a homebrew hidden variable theory.
Yes, which is why they had to come up with collapse, and later multiple worlds theory. Just not doing QM isn’t an option.
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Your first sentence is a rule 1 violation (“be respectful and inclusive”), could you amend or remove it? Criticize the ideas (preferably with sources) but not the person. Thanks!
And the comment I replied to violates rules 3, 6, and 9. Why am I being singled out?
Edit: I am incorrect, my apologies.
You are not being singled out. I’ve given the author of the other comment a warning with the opportunity to fix the rule violation with an edit, same as you. In both cases, the comments will be removed if they aren’t addressed in a reasonable timeframe.
I apologize.
In that case I will go ahead and remove my comment
Okay, cool, whatever. Maybe go write a paper about that. I’ll even read it so you don’t have to bother actual peer reviewers.
I don’t know where to start. There are so many things wrong with this comment that I’m confused as to how you even became confident enough about these falsehoods to write them. Where in the world did you get this idea of the Double Slit Experiment?
Just to be clear, what you are saying is literally that Quantum Physics in general is false, which flys in the face of the last century of science. This is literally flat earth tier
Crackpots seem to fundamentally misunderstand how science works, and mistake a hunch (maybe the photon has just been absorbed somehow, or it’s like friction somehow) for a discovery. They also seem to think everyone else who’s looked at a problem is stupid. In both cases, I kind of get it, because there’s cultural forces promoting that - we’re told you’re allowed to believe whatever you want about metaphysics without needing to support it, and we’re told that certain individuals can see a persistent problem and come up with a billion dollar idea to solve it all on their own.
Hopefully I’m not breaking any rules by guessing a diagnosis here.