{"id":71126,"date":"2020-05-16T06:10:31","date_gmt":"2020-05-16T10:10:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wavechronicle.com\/wave\/?p=71126"},"modified":"2020-05-02T15:04:33","modified_gmt":"2020-05-02T19:04:33","slug":"does-quantum-immortality-save-schrodingers-cat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wavechronicle.com\/wave\/?p=71126","title":{"rendered":"Does Quantum Immortality Save Schr\u00f6dinger&#8217;s Cat?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>To quote eminent scientist Tyler Durden: &#8220;On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.&#8221; Actually\u2026 not necessarily true. If the quantum multiverse is real there may be a version of you that lives forever.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/QTZZUjnrbF8\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>f we can\u2019t 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\u2019t observe somehow vanish at the moment of measurement. Or the Many Worlds Interpretation, which states that those other branches are just as valid as ours &#8211; implying that reality may split and multiply in all possible ways. In that case, we only see one branch because we live in that branch, and the others are rendered inaccessible by decoherence. But today I\u2019m going to offer a test. Admittedly NOT a very useful one &#8211; but one that\u2019s fun to think about. We\u2019ll call this test quantum immortality. It\u2019s based on the famous Schrodinger\u2019s cat thought experiment.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"style-scope yt-formatted-string\" dir=\"auto\">Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord!<br \/>\n<\/span><a class=\"yt-simple-endpoint style-scope yt-formatted-string\" dir=\"auto\" spellcheck=\"false\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/redirect?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.patreon.com%2Fpbsspacetime&amp;event=video_description&amp;v=QTZZUjnrbF8&amp;redir_token=cPo7Pjp8lo_da-EFqR2Yhiw3_sN8MTU4NzQwNjUzNUAxNTg3MzIwMTM1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/pbsspacetime<\/a><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"style-scope yt-formatted-string\" dir=\"auto\">Sign up for the mailing list to get episode notifications and hear special announcements!<br \/>\n<\/span><a class=\"yt-simple-endpoint style-scope yt-formatted-string\" dir=\"auto\" spellcheck=\"false\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/redirect?q=https%3A%2F%2Fmailchi.mp%2F1a6eb8f2717d%2Fspacetime&amp;event=video_description&amp;v=QTZZUjnrbF8&amp;redir_token=cPo7Pjp8lo_da-EFqR2Yhiw3_sN8MTU4NzQwNjUzNUAxNTg3MzIwMTM1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">https:\/\/mailchi.mp\/1a6eb8f2717d\/space&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"style-scope yt-formatted-string\" dir=\"auto\">Check out the Space Time Merch Store<br \/>\n<\/span><a class=\"yt-simple-endpoint style-scope yt-formatted-string\" dir=\"auto\" spellcheck=\"false\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/redirect?q=https%3A%2F%2Fpbsspacetime.com%2F&amp;event=video_description&amp;v=QTZZUjnrbF8&amp;redir_token=cPo7Pjp8lo_da-EFqR2Yhiw3_sN8MTU4NzQwNjUzNUAxNTg3MzIwMTM1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">https:\/\/pbsspacetime.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n<div>\n<div id=\"0DE9E47C-871A-4F90-8440-B190C216800A_1\" class=\"mcafee_OK\" style=\"margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background: url('chrome-extension:\/\/fheoggkfdfchfphceeifdbepaooicaho\/images\/annotation\/green_icon.svg') center center \/ contain no-repeat transparent; height: 16px; width: 16px;\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To quote eminent scientist Tyler Durden: &#8220;On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.&#8221; Actually\u2026 not necessarily true. If the quantum multiverse is real there may be a version of you that lives forever. f we can\u2019t 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\u2019t observe somehow vanish at the moment of measurement. Or the Many Worlds Interpretation, which states that those other branches are just as valid as ours &#8211; implying that reality may split and multiply in all possible ways. In that case, we only see one branch because we live in that branch, and the others are rendered inaccessible by decoherence. But today I\u2019m going to offer a test. Admittedly NOT a very useful one &#8211; but one that\u2019s fun to think about. We\u2019ll call this test quantum immortality. It\u2019s based on the famous Schrodinger\u2019s cat thought experiment. Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/pbsspacetime Sign up for the mailing list to get episode notifications and hear special announcements! https:\/\/mailchi.mp\/1a6eb8f2717d\/space&#8230; Check out the Space Time Merch Store https:\/\/pbsspacetime.com\/ &nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":9298,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127],"tags":[97,551,853],"class_list":["post-71126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-edu","tag-education","tag-education-saturday","tag-space-time"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wavechronicle.com\/wave\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wavechronicle.com\/wave\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wavechronicle.com\/wave\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wavechronicle.com\/wave\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wavechronicle.com\/wave\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71126"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/wavechronicle.com\/wave\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71127,"href":"http:\/\/wavechronicle.com\/wave\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71126\/revisions\/71127"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wavechronicle.com\/wave\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wavechronicle.com\/wave\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wavechronicle.com\/wave\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wavechronicle.com\/wave\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}