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Does Quantum Immortality Save Schrödinger’s Cat?
To quote eminent scientist Tyler Durden: “On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.” Actually… not necessarily true. If the quantum multiverse is real there may be a version of you that lives forever. f we can’t ever peer into these other realities that are used to explain quantum mechanics, how do we know they exist? In order to understand what happens to those different branches, and to understand why we find ourselves in one of them, we need to embrace one of the interpretations of quantum mechanics. For example, the Copenhagen interpretation, which says that the wavefunction branches that we don’t observe somehow vanish…
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How Decoherence Splits The Quantum Multiverse
Why is it that we can see these multiple histories play out on the quantum scale, and why do lose sight of them on our macroscopic scale? Many physicists believe that the answer lies in a process known as quantum decoherence. Does conscious observation of a quantum system cause the wavefunction to collapse? The upshot is that more and more physicists think that consciousness – and even measurement – doesn’t directly cause wavefunction collapse. In fact probably there IS no clear Heisenberg cut. The collapse itself may be an illusion, and the alternate histories that the wavefunction represents may continue forever. The question then becomes: why is it that we…
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Does Consciousness Influence Quantum Mechanics?
It’s not surprising that the profound weirdness of the quantum world has inspired some outlandish explanations – nor that these have strayed into the realm of what we might call mysticism. One particularly pervasive notion is the idea that consciousness can directly influence quantum systems – and so influence reality. Today we’re going to see where this idea comes from, and whether quantum theory really supports it. The behavior of the quantum world is beyond weird. Objects being in multiple places at once, communicating faster than light, or simultaneously experiencing multiple entire timelines … that then talk to each other. The rules governing the tiny quantum world of atoms and…
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Are there Infinite Versions of You?
If the universe goes on forever, does that mean there are infinite versions of you out there? The cosmological equations that so beautifully describe our universe make an uncomfortable prediction: interpreting them in the most straightforward way, they tell us that the universe may be infinite. Or not; it could turn out that the universe contains enough matter and energy to close in on itself and be finite, or perhaps the simplest interpretation of the cosmological equations is TOO simple. But according to our best theoretical understanding, an infinite universe seems at least possible – and some would say likely. If so this raises an even more crazy possibility. An…
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Hacking the Nature of Reality
In particle physics, we try to understand reality by looking for smaller and smaller building blocks. But what if that has been the wrong philosophy all along? In standard use, the S-matrix can be calculated if you understand the forces in the interaction region – for example, in the nucleus of an atom. But what if you don’t know those internal interaction forces? Heisenberg sought a way to ignore that internal structure and, rather, treat the S-matrix as fundamental. The S-matrix was to become the physics of the interaction, rather than an emergent property of more fundamental, internal physics. Heisenberg’s made some progress in the 40s, but the approach came…
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Is The Universe Finite?
The universe is big, really, really big. Although according to a new paper, it may literally be infinitely smaller than we previously thought. Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Check out the Space Time Merch Store https://pbsspacetime.com/ Guest AuthorAll Guest Author Posts are submitted or additional content Wave Chronicle has added to the website. To be a Guest Author please visit our "Post Your Article" page.More Posts - Website
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How Many Universes Are There?
The universe is big, but it’s peanuts compared to the eternally inflating multiverse. But just how many universes are there? What are they like? And most importantly, what can they tell us about … aliens? Imagine it: the observable part of our universe is 93 billion light years across, and that’s just a small fraction of the stuff created in our Big Bang. But in the eternal inflation picture, ours is just one among uncountable bubble universes. Bubbles that are continuously appearing and growing within a vastly larger spacetime that itself expands at an exponentially accelerating rate. A greater inflationary spacetime whose expansion never ends. We looked at the bizarre…
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Could We Terraform Mars?
Humanity’s future is glorious. As we master space travel, we’ll hop from one lifeless world to the next. Life will blossom in our path and the galaxy with shimmer with beautiful Earth-like orbs. Hmmm… maybe. This won’t sound so far fetched if we prove we can do it at least once. If we successfully terraform Mars. Support Space Time on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Check out the new Space Time Merch Store! https://pbsspacetime.com/ We already have the technology to bring humans safely to Mars and set up small settlements – or at least could do within a generation. But those settlements will need to be cocooned – shielded against the deadly cold,…
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Why Quantum Computing Requires Quantum Cryptography
Quantum theory may seem like an obscure subject of questionable relevance to the average person. But in fact, much of our technological world depends on our understanding of the quantum properties of the subatomic universe. And soon, perhaps very soon, we’ll be interacting with the weirdness of quantum mechanics even more directly – with the coming of quantum computing and the quantum internet. Quantum computing is a topic that’s that has been well covered, so we’re going to be talking about the quantum internet. Specifically quantum cryptography and quantum key distribution – the foundations of the prospective quantum internet. We may come back to the quantum computer in detail –…
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The Real Science Of The EHT Black Hole
You can learn more about CuriosityStream at https://curiositystream.com/spacetime How do you take a picture of a black hole and what can we learn from it? Our first ever actual bona fide photo of a black hole, made by the Event Horizon Telescope and revealed to the world in a press conference on April 10th. Since then it’s got plenty of coverage, because … I mean look at it. It’s a freaking black hole. It’s black, it’s holey, it’s everything we hoped it would be. Now that the giddiness has subsided and I personally have stopped spending hours on end staring at a black spot, we can take a breath and…
