To quote eminent scientist Tyler Durden: "On a long enough timeline, the survival rate
for everyone drops to zero."
Actually… not necessarily.
If the quantum multiverse is real there may be a version of you that lives forever.
In the last couple of episodes we’ve been delving into a key mystery of quantum mechanics
- why don’t we have quantum magical powers?
Or, more scientifically, what causes the divide between the weird behavior of quantum world
and our large-scale, macroscopic world?
In particular, what causes quantum systems to transition from simultaneously existing
in many states at the same time, to having only one clear observable state at the moment of measurement?
This is the measurement problem.
We’ve been exploring decoherence as a mechanism for this quantum-classical transition - and
we’re not done yet.
But today I want to take a step back to think about and acknowledge something very important:
by itself, decoherence does NOT solve the measurement problem.
It only explains why separate branches of the wavefunction - separate “alternate histories”
- stop being able to interact with each other.
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 at the moment of measurement.
Or the Many Worlds interpretation, which states that those other branches are just as valid
as ours - 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.
The problem with these interpretations is that, on the surface, they seem untestable.
We can’t ever peer into these other realities, so how do we know they exist?
Today I’m going to offer a test.
Admittedly NOT a very useful test - but one that is very fun to think about.
We’ll call this test quantum immortality.
It’s based on the famous Schrodinger’s cat thought experiment.
As a refresher: a cat is in an opaque box with a vial of deadly poison, which is released
on the radioactive decay of an atom.
There’s a totally random 50-50 chance of the radioactive decay over a certain period
of time - that means the quantum wavefunction of the atom splits equally - the atom is simultaneously
decayed and not decayed until we observe it.
So then surely the cat’s wavefunction splits too - into dead and alive.
According to Copenhagen, one of these results becomes “real” when the physicist opens
the box, while the other branch of the wavefunction vanishes.
But in Many Worlds both branches continue forever - and the physicist’s wavefunction
also splits into two - I guess into guilty and relieved.
Neither version of the physicist knows about the other - and it seems like there’s no
way for them to confirm the existence of the other branch of the wavefunction.
But there is one test - a rather morbid one.
The physicist could crawl into the box instead of the cat.
And instead of a vial of poison attached to one radioactive atom, connect the vial to
many atoms - so that the poison is released if any of them decay.
Let’s be specific - there are 100 polonium-212 atoms, with half-life 300 microseconds - so
each atom has a 50% chance of decaying in that time.
After 300 microseconds the connection between poison and polonium is cut, and the experiment
is over.
So what are the chances of the physicist surviving?
Pretty bad I guess - that chance that any one atom does NOT decay in that 300 microseconds
is 50-50, but the chance that none of the 100 atoms decay is basically zero.
It’s .5^100.
If we run this experiment over and over, every 300 microseconds, we need to do it for nearly
a million times the entire age of the universe in order for the physicist to be likely to survive once.
But the point is they can’t repeat the experiment - at least according the the Copenhagen interpretation,
which tells us that there’s ultimately only a single result from each quantum event, so
a single result from the “Schrodinger’s physicist” experiment.
According to Copenhagen, all branches of the wavefunction besides “definitely dead”
get cut off with ruthless efficiency almost all the time.
But that’s not true in Many Worlds - according to which all branches of the wavefunction
persist.
So even after trying this experiment even once, there’ll be a branch of the wavefunction
where the physicist opens the box and crawls out, to the amazement of their lab assistant,
and hopefully their relief - although this physicist is clearly pretty wack, so who knows.
The physicist now has very good evidence that Many Worlds is right because the chance survival
under any other interpretation of quantum mechanics is basically nil.
Many Worlds, on the other hand, guarantees their survival in at least one branch of the
quantum wavefunction.
The problem with this test is, of course, that 10^30 physicists need to die in other
timelines for one to crawl out of the box feeling smug.
And essentially no one besides that one lucky physicist can ever know.
Even in the rare survival timeline, everyone else will probably assume the experimental
apparatus broke.
This thought experiment is sometimes called quantum immortality.
You can imagine that any process leading to mortality is ultimately a sequence of quantum
events - so there are timelines in which those incremental steps towards death never happen.
Keep that in mind before you try crawling into Schrodinger’s box yourself - you’re
already testing Many Worlds by just existing.
Hugh Everett, who first came up with the many Worlds interpretation, actually believed in
this sort of quantum immortality.
He smoked 3 packs a day, drank heavily, didn’t exercise, and died of a heart attack at age
51.
At least in THIS timeline.
Max Tegmark makes a good point regarding quantum immortality - which is that death is an incremental
process, not a single quantum event.
So the closer you are, the fewer Many Worlds timelines include your survival.
And even if some insanely rare branches of your wavefunction keep you alive beyond your
years, I’d advise you to quit smoking and do some crunches anyway - from where you stand
now, your thread of consciousness is going to have to experience every single one of
the bad future timelines.
Might as well try to make more of them good.
Also, Many Worlds might be wrong - I say live as though this is your one quantum timeline
While we’re discussing dubious methods for predicting survival times - I think it’s
time to answer the Doomsday Challenge question.
This was from our Doomsday Argument episode a couple of months back - sorry to be slow
- I wanted to check my results by making sure humanity survived at least this long.
So far so good.
Anyway, if you want to try the challenge you should pause here because spoilers.
But to refresh your memory real quick, the argument goes like this: we are typical members
of the human race, which means we should find ourselves at a typical point the span of humanity’s
existence.
So more likely near the middle of our species existence rather than right at the start or
right at the end.
Based on this, if we infer that there are likely to be too many more humans born after us than were
born before us then we can guess how much longer humanity has left.
So the challenge question was this: if you are the 100 billionth person born, what are
the chances that humanity will last until the year 3000?
Assume population doubles every hundred years.
The key is to figure out how many people will have been born by the year 3000, and then compare
your birth rank to that number.
If population is doubling every hundred years there’ll be around 7.7 trillion people by
then.
But that’s not the total people who existed up until then.
For that you need to include the ones that have died also.
Now, people used different approaches - but they all amount to integrating an exponential birth
rate over the next 1000 years.
Depending on some assumptions like the average lifespan you get that something like 17-18
trillion people will have lived by the year 3000.
That would place you in the first .6% of people who ever lived - and the Doomsday Argument
argues that, therefore, there's less than a 1% chance that so many people will ever
exist - less that 1% that we’ll make it to the year 3000.
Now, some people used much more sophisticated probability arguments including Bayesian analysis or thinking
in “observer years” rather than observer lifetimes.
But none of that helped - the probability for humanity's survival to the year 3000 remained at about a percent or lower.
Others pointed out that probably the global population will level off at 10 billion or
so people, so it’ll take a lot, lot longer to get to several trillion humans.
That would push the 99% doomsday date to something like 10,000 years from now if we extend our
average lifespan to 100 years.
And the smaller our population is, the longer humanity lasts - according to the Doomsday
argument.
This has nothing to do with sustainability - it’s just this weird statistical argument.
Which I guess means if the population was only 100 people we’d last for trillions of years … Hmmm,
that does make the Doomsday Argument seem even more absurd.
Anyway, if your name appears you’re one of the winners of the challenge question and
you get your pick from the space time merch store.
Congrats - we’ll shoot you an email to sort out your prize.
We tried to make sure all correct answers got a prize in at least one quantum timeline
- so if you didn’t see your name here, please congratulate the other you who did.
And to all of you - thanks for joining me on this wavefunction branch.
I have a feeling it’s going to be a hell of a ride, even if we’re not a quantum-immortal
in branch.
So let’s stick it to all those alternate realities, and make this the best of infinitely
many diverging histories of space time.
Hey Everyone!
Before we get to comments, I wanted to let you know about “Antarctic Extremes,” a
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Caitlin Saks and Arlo Pérez take you through the biology, the geology, and the astronomy
being done at the South Pole.
Find Antarctic Extremes on PBS Terra, PBS Digital Studios’ new science channel.
Check out the episode in the description below, and tell them, politely, that SPACE TIME sent
you.
We skipped last week's comments, so today I'm going to address both our episodes on the
role of conscious observation in quantum mechanics and on quantum decoherence as a better path
to understanding the measurement problem.
Rwitaban Goswami points out that the different matter configurations between experimental
aparatus and the brain of different observers means decoherence should proceed differently
along those paths.
So why do different observers always agree on the result of the experiment?
Well, Vampyricon answers this partically, saying that each observer will be on one decohered
branch of the wavefunction.
Each decohered branch will have its own set of observers.
In other words, not all observers agree on experimental outcomes - it's just you never
meet the ones who don't agree with you.
So this explanation works in the context of the many worlds interpretation.
You have sets of observers who make consistent observations, and who are unaware of observers
on other wavefunction branches who make different observations.
Decoherence doesn't determine which experimental outcome YOU will see - all it does is ensure
that you won't see multiple outcomes at the same time - you don't see macroscopic quantum
superposition.
It ensures that sensible and consistent macroscopic realities are observed across each branch.
We're going to explore this in much more detail next week, when we look at the role of quantum
entanglement in decoherence.
eddybox on the spacetime discord asked about the quantum eraser, as did several people
in the comments.
eddybox asks whether the eraser experiment RE-introduces coherence somehow...?
The answer is essentially yes - in a typical quantum eraser experiment you use entangled
photon or other particle pairs - one of the pairs goes through a double-slit experiment
and the other carries information about which slit was traversed.
The entanglement is the very first step in the decoherence chain, which ultimately spreads
relative phase information to the environment in an irreversible way.
But in the quantum eraser, we haven't reached true decoherence - relative phase information
is spread across only two particles, and so decoherence is reversible.
The exact mechanism varies by quantum eraser experiment, but this is true even in the infamous
delayed choice quantum eraser, which is absolutely NOT as mystical as it seems.
I'll expand on that another time.
because I guess it deserves its own episode.
Gh Oxon asks whether the double slit experiment is usually performed in a vacuum, and if not,
why doesn’t interaction with gas cause immediate decoherence.
Well these days double-slit experiments are usually done with single photons or other
particles.
These are difficult to produce and precious, so you don't want to be losing or disturbing
them by interactions with the air - so most are done in near vacuum.
But actually, most visible-light photons will travel the length of a typical double-slit experiment
without actually scattering off air particles, and more minor interactions don't necessarily
decohere the light - instead they introduce small phase shifts that can blur out the interference
pattern without destroying it.
Remember the that first double-slit experiment was performed by Thomas Young in 1801
and there wasn't much in the way of vacuum technology.
You can also prove it to yourself right now.
Place two fingers in front of your eye with a tiny gap and look towards a light - you
can see bright and dark fringes of Fraunhofer diffraction.
Some of you may recall that this is also the official salute to identify yourself as someone
capable of seeing the wavefunction.
AKA, a space time nerd.
Nick Lucid over at The Science Asylum channel is pleased that we share his annoyance at
horrible missuse of quantum mechanics to promote pseudoscientific nonsense.
As Nick says, "Quantum mechanics is not magic!".
And to quote another of the greats, Arthur C. Clarke, "Any sufficiently advanced technology
is indistinguishable from magic."
Likewise, any sufficiently unintuitive science is indistinguishable from magic.
And of course, we have a long history of unscrupulous charlatans taking advantage of that fact - whether
to sell snake oil, or books on quantum healing, or $80 crystal infused water bottles.
When confronted with clues to greatest mysteries of the universe, are you gonna be like "hmm,
how can I obscure these cosmic insights in order to trick people out of a bit of cash"?
Hm... fundamental insights into reality ... bit of cash ... tough choice.
ohsteeev suggests that a more interesting question than does consciousness influcence
quantum mechanics is the other way around: "Does quantum mechanics influence consciousness".
I can verify that it does.
Despite my fascination with the subject, I've dosed off in MANY quantum mechanics lectures.
Quantum UNconsciousness achieved.