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The Multiverse: Science, Religion, or Pseudoscience?
🕑 Added 2022-09-10 12:01:01 +0000 UTC[This is a transcript of the video.]
Why do physicists believe there are universes besides our own? I get a lot of questions about the idea that we live in this “multiverse”. Is it science, religion, pseudoscience, or just wrong? That’s what we’ll talk about today.
First things first, what’s a multiverse? You may guess that’s a new form of poetry, and you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. A multiverse is a collection of universes, either infinitely many or a number so large no one’s even bothered giving it a name. It’s an idea that has sprung up in some esoteric corners of theoretical physics and has, not so surprisingly, caught the imagination of science fiction authors, script-writers, and also the public. And it is poetic somehow, isn’t it, all those universes out there.
There isn’t just one multiverse but several different ones, so multiple multiverses, if you wish. The multiverse shouldn’t be confused with the metaverse, which is what universes evolve into when they’ve been fed enough Zuckerberg candy.
How many different multiverses do we have? Well, Brian Greene has written a book in which he lists 9 different ones, but you know how scientists are, the moment the book came out they jumped up to complain about what wasn’t on his list. And I can totally understand that. I mean, everyone knows that a list needs ten items. Nine is just not right. So let me just briefly run through the three types of multiverse that you most often hear about.
1. Many Worlds
The probably best-known and least controversial type of multiverse is the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. If you remember, in quantum mechanics we can make predictions only for probabilities. We can say, for example, a particle goes left or right, each with a 50 percent chance. But then, when we measure the particle, we find it either left or right, and then we know where it is with 100 percent confidence. So, when we have measured the particle, what happened with the other possible outcome?
In the most common interpretation of quantum mechanics, often called the Copenhagen Interpretation, the moment you make a measurement you just update your probabilities because you got new information. The possibilities which you didn’t observe disappear because now you know they didn’t happen. This is called the measurement update, or sometimes the reduction or collapse of the wave-function.
In the many worlds interpretation, in contrast, one postulates that all possible outcomes of an experiment happen, each in a separate universe. It’s just that we live in only one of those universes and never see the other outcomes.
Of course then you have to explain why we don’t spread over all universes like the outcomes of experiments do. Mathematically, this works the same way as the sudden update of the wave-function. This means for what observations are concerned, many worlds is identical to standard quantum mechanics. The difference is what you believe it means.
If you believe in the many worlds interpretation, then every time a quantum object is measured, the universe splits into as many different universes as there were possible outcomes of the measurement. And this doesn’t just happen in laboratories. A measurement in quantum mechanics doesn’t require an apparatus. Anything that’s large enough can cause a “measurement”, that may be Geiger counter, but also banana, or, well you. This means that measurements happens all the time and everywhere. They constantly create new universes, and more are being created as we speak. Which means more bananas! And more yous!
For example, each time the wave-function of a photon spreads into all directions, but then it hits your eye, and the universe splits. In some, the photon arrived in your eye. In others, it hit the wall next to you, in some it went right through your head. And this could be happening to all photons. So, in some universes, an elephant is standing in front of you and you don’t see it. It’s unlikely, but, well, it’s possible, and according to the many worlds interpretation anything that’s possible is also real. I hope you make friends with the invisible elephant. I think that would be nice.
2. Eternal Inflation
We don’t know how our universe began and maybe we will never know. We just talked about this the other week. But according to a presently popular idea called “inflation”, our universe was created from a quantum fluctuation of a field called the “inflaton”. This field supposedly fills an infinitely large space and our universe was created from only a tiny patch of that, the patch where the fluctuation happened.
But the field keeps on fluctuating, so there are infinitely many other universes fluctuating into existence. This universe-creation goes on forever, which is why it’s called eternal inflation. Eternal inflation, by the way lasts forever into the future, but still requires a beginning in the past, so it doesn’t do away with the Big Bang issue.
In Eternal Inflation, the other universes may contain the same matter as ours, but in slightly different arrangements, so there may be copies of you in them. In some versions you became a professional ballet dancer. In some you won a Nobel Prize. In yet another one another you are a professional ballet dancer who won a Nobel prize and dated Elon Musk. And they’re all as real as this one.
Where did this inflaton field go that allegedly created our universe? Well, physicists say it has fallen apart into the particles that we observe now, so it’s gone and that’s why we can’t measure it. Yeah, that is a little sketchy.
3. The String Theory Landscape
String theory is an approach to a unification of gravity with the other forces of nature. Or maybe I should say it was, because it’s rapidly declined in popularity in the past decade. Why? It just didn’t lead anywhere.
String theorists originally hoped that one day it’d be possible to use their theory to calculate the values of the constants of nature, such as the masses of elementary particles and the strength by which they interact and so on. This didn’t work, so they gave up and just postulated that any value is possible. And since they couldn’t explain why we only observe a specific set of values they declared that they all exist.
And so this gives you another version of the multiverse. This collection of universes with all possible values for the constants of nature is called the string theory landscape. It contains universes with different types of matter or that have other laws of nature. For example, in some of them gravity is much weaker than it is in our universe. In some, radioactive decay happens much faster. And some universes expand so quickly that stars can’t form. If you believe in the string theory landscape, this isn’t just theoretically possible, it all actually happens.
You can combine these multiverses in any way you wish. So you can get married to Elon Musk hopping around at half the strength of gravity, with elephants in the room which you coincidentally can’t see. If you believe in the multiverse, then you have to believe this is possible.
There are some other multiverses which I didn’t talk about, like Max Tegmark’s mathematical universe in which all mathematics supposedly exists, or the simulation hypothesis, according to which our universe is a computer simulation. Because if you can simulate our laws of nature, why not simulate some others too? I don’t want to go through all the different multiverses because they all have the same problem.
The issue with all those different multiverses is that they postulate the existence of something you can’t observe, which is those other universes. Not only can you not see them, you can’t interact with them in any way. They are entirely disconnected from ours. There is no possible observation that you could make to infer their presence, not even in principle.
For this reason, postulating that the other universes exist is unnecessary to explain what we do observe, and therefore something that a scientist shouldn’t do. Making an unnecessary assumption is logically equivalent to postulating the existence of an unobservable god, or a flying spaghetti monster, or an omniscient dwarf who lives in your wardrobe. Fine if you do it in private, not so fine if you publish papers about it.
But. This does not mean that other universes do not exist. It merely means that science doesn’t say anything about whether or not they exist. If you postulate that they do not exist, that’s also unnecessary to explain what we observe, and therefore equally unscientific.
So now what, is the multiverse unscientific or pseudoscience or religion? Well, depends on what you do with it.
If you assume that unobservable universes exist and write papers about them, then that’s pseudoscience. Because this is exactly what we mean by pseudoscience: pretends to be science but isn’t. If you accept that science doesn’t say anything about the existence of those other universes one way or another, and you just decide to believe in them, then that’s religion. Either way, multiverses are not science. They’re like Tinker Bell, basically, they exist if you believe in them.
You might find this whole multiverse idea rather silly. And I wouldn’t blame you. But some physicists are quite serious about it. They believe these other universes exist because they show up in their mathematics. You see, they have mathematics, and some of that describes what we observe. And then they claim therefore everything else that their mathematics describes must also exist. They are confusing mathematics with reality.
There are some standard “objections” that physicists always try on me. You have probably heard some of them too, so here’s how you can deal with them.
Objection 1: Black Holes
The first point that multiverse fans always bring up is that we say that the inside of a black hole exists, even though we can’t observe it. But that’s just wrong: You can observe the inside of a black hole, you just can’t come back to tell us what you observed. Besides, we know that black holes evaporate, so they eventually reveal their inside.
Objection 2: Cosmic Horizon
Second objection that I hear is that we can only observe a patch of our own universe because light needs time to travel, and it’s got only so far since the Big Bang. But certainly no one would say that therefore the universe stops existing outside of the part we can observe. No of course not. No one says if you can’t observe it, it doesn’t exist. The point is: if you can’t observe it, science says nothing about whether it exists or not.
Objection 3: Observable Multiverses
The third standard objection is that some physicists have tried to come up with cases in which the presence of other universes would be observable. For example, there has been the idea that another universe could have collided with ours in the past, leaving a specific pattern in the cosmic microwave background. Or our universe could have been entangled with another one. So, the nobel prize winning ballet dancer isn’t married to this Elon Musk but has a quantum connection to an Elon Musk in another universe. Again this would leave a specific pattern in the CMB.
The answer to this objection is that people have looked for these patterns in the CMB and they are just not there. But to be fair, the testable multiverse models are a different problem than the one I named above. The big problem with multiverse ideas is that physicists mistake mathematics for reality. The problem with the testable multiverse ideas is that they think just because a hypothesis is testable it is also scientific. This is not what Popper meant. He said if it isn’t testable it isn’t science. Not “if it’s testable, then it’s science”.
Objection 4: It’s simple
The fourth and final objection is that the multiverse is good because it’s a simple theory. You see, multiverse fans argue that if you don’t make assumptions about what the values of the constants of nature are, but just say “they all exist,” then you have fewer assumptions in your theory. And a simpler theory is better, because Occam’s razor and all.
But look, if that argument was correct, then the best theory would be one with no assumptions at all. There’s just a little problem with that, which is that such a theory doesn’t explain anything. I mean, it literally isn’t a theory, it’s nothing. Just saying that it’s simple doesn’t make a scientific theory a good one. For a theory to be good, it still has to describe what we observe. It’s like just telling my hair to “please stay put” may be simple but doesn’t make it a good hair day.
And that’s exactly what happens in those multiverse theories, they’re too simple to be good for anything. If you don’t specify the values of the constants of nature, then you just can’t make predictions. To be fair, I would agree it’s simpler to not make predictions than making them, but even in physics you can’t publish predictions you didn’t make. At least not yet. Which is why multiverse physicists always end up making assumptions for the values of those constants.
They don’t always do this directly, sometimes they instead postulate probability distributions from which they derive likely values of the constants. But that’s more difficult than just using the constants and certainly not simple.
Same issue with the many world’s interpretations. Those who work on it claim that their theory is simpler than standard quantum mechanics because it just doesn’t use the measurement update. But if you don’t update the wave-function upon measurement, then that just doesn’t describe what we observe. We don’t observe dead-and-alive cats, that was Schrödinger’s whole point.
Therefore, you have to add other assumptions to many worlds, about what a detector is and how the universes split and so on, which for all practical purposes amounts to the same as updating the wave-function. In most cases these prescriptions are actually more complicated than the measurement update. So multiverse theories are either simple but don’t make predictions, or they make predictions but are more complicated than the generally accepted theories.
Let me finish by saying I am not against the multiverse or poetry. I would like to apologize to all the poets watching this. It’s not like I think science is the only thing that matters. You may find the multiverse inspirational, or maybe comforting, or maybe just fun to talk about. And there’s nothing wrong with that – please enjoy your stories and articles and videos about the multiverse. But don’t mistake it for science.
Comments
Your King believes in science, your Queen has faith in math, they talk fast and think me slow. For a show of gold, they make lengthy prayers. How long will you worship stone dials and idolize electric fields? You have the power to animate a black hole but instead, you try to give life to dark matters. How can you see the Moonshine pouring through your windows when you are still drunk from the heat of the Sun? My beloved, how long will you worship stone dials?
Terry Bollinger
Tracey DeLaney, on 2022-09-14.16:20 EDT Wed, said: >... So, you’re letting me down gently, I’m not really in the running for a Nobel Prize. :-) ---------- 2022-09-14.17:33 EDT Wed Terry Bollinger Tracey, let’s put it this way: The simplest explanation for quantum uncertainty is nothing more than saying the total data storage capacity of the universe is finite and thus a bit ratty at the edges. That is the only path out of a paradox that has hamstrung physics for over a century. You just did that, so in my book and with complete seriousness, the comment you made is worth more than 50 years of superstring math fantasies. I’ve noted offline to Sabine (which does not mean she believed me or that you should either!) that I anticipate at least 20 Nobel Prizes to pop out of the impending transition from infinities-are-free, infinite-differentiability math to finite-data emergent-smoothness equivalents and, in some cases, replacements. When the math model changes profoundly, it impacts everything, from advanced theory to most textbooks. That’s a lot of work and, more importantly, an enormous opportunity. So, seriously, please don’t underestimate the importance of your Pocahontas County wi-fi deprival-induced insight [1]. It was a deeper and more critical insight than you may realize. ---------- [1] The lack of radio-anything in the Greenbank vicinity takes some getting used to, doesn’t it? And yes, it is a gorgeous area. My friend has excellent stories on how tricky it is to move an antenna that size without accidentally tearing it apart into itty-bitty pieces. He is a true genius in control algorithm design. Greenbank made good use of his skills, even after he retired. Considering what happened at Arecibo, one should never underestimate the value of top-notch engineering skills and a prescient understanding of potential dangers at facilities using massive, complex instruments. ---------- 2022-09-15.00:45 Thu - Addendum: Using computers in another universe that is infinitely precise and classical doesn’t work as a strategy for limiting information storage in our (simulated) due to the inability of fully formal, xyzt-class universes to deal with entanglement. The inability to implement entanglement makes such universes incompatible with implementing the quantum behaviors of our universe. To limit resolution in our universe, you need to create finite information via mechanisms unlike computers, which are hyper-classical devices. What do I mean by that? Start by abandoning xyzt as “fundamental,” or, for that matter, even the concept of mathematical orthogonality as a “given.” Instead, information has to emerge from something akin to a Poincare symmetry space in which entanglement and special relativity are two sides of the same coin. The universe is... strange... at the bottom. Feynman was the first to point out the incompatibility of classical computers with the implementation of quantum logic[1][2]. His paper on that is now considered a founding paper of quantum computing, which is ironic since Feynman’s main point was not to use quantum effects to compute classical results. Instead, he wanted to emulate the computationally intractable entanglement behavior of one quantum wave function by leveraging the entanglement behavior of another “general purpose” quantum function: a quantum wave emulator. A regular computer then takes care of the ordinary calculations. Folks like Yuri Manin were both a bit earlier than Feynman and, I think, closer in concept to the modern idea of quantum computing [3]. ---------- [1] R. Feynman, Simulating Physics with Computers, International Journal of Theoretical Physics 21, 6 (1982). https://catonmat.net/ftp/simulating-physics-with-computers-richard-feynman.pdf [2] A nice feature of Feynman’s paper and approach is that he avoided getting sidetracked into the appealing but decidedly counterproductive strategy of strangling quantum behavior down to a slight relaxation of the hyper-classical concept of an infinitely reliable two-state bit. Computers were still a bit new and magical to most folks then, including physicists, and the Frankenstein effect of making something new into magic (“Lightning! It’s alive!” or “Radioactive spider! Superpowers!”) was very much in play. Manin got off to a promising start but also was responsible for quickly abandoning analog low-power models in favor of “virtualized” computers. [3] Yuri Manin, Computable and Uncomputable, pp. 14-15. Soviet Radio (1980). https://sarxiv.org/ref.2020-10-03.2046.pdf ---------- Terry Bollinger CC BY 4.0 2022-09-14.10.16 EDT Wed PDF: https://sarxiv.org/apa.2022-09-14.1016.pdf
So, you're letting me down gently and I'm not really in the running for a Nobel Prize. :-)
Terry, it's real nice to have you back and posting regularly again. I always enjoy your writings. Specifically, I grew up in a physics/astronomy department with no particle people and no physics foundations research and, as a result, I only know the basics of quantum mechanics -- the stuff of textbooks that want us to "shut up and calculate." I never even knew until relatively recently that there was a "Copenhagen interpretation" and an "Everett interpretation." Thanks for filling in some of the missing details in my mind.
Terry Bollinger
2022-09-14.10:16 EDT Wed Tracey DeLaney on Sat 7:47 PM (2022-09-10.19:47 EDT Sat) said: >... [amusing tongue-in-cheek prelude] ... “I think I’ve finally figured it all out ... the measurement problem is clearly the glitch that indicates that the universe is a computer simulation.” After I stopped laughing, my main thought was, “Yeah, except for needing a computer, that’s about right. Nobel for Tracey!” One of the most profound ironies in quantum physics history was its early decision to commit fully to infinitely smooth, infinitely differentiable modeling of the new, profoundly non-smooth phenomenon of quantization. Such methods, by definition, refuse to consider the possibility that the physical universe has a finite resolution — a minimum grain size — that unavoidably generates random outcomes at scales comparable to that grain size. One of the few notable physicists of that time who pushed against assuming infinite smoothness in physics was Boltzmann, who angered and annoyed important people by promoting his idea that the grubby, material atomicity statistics were fundamental to defining the nature and direction of time. His position came at a high cost. Mach, who advocated infinite smoothness to the point of denying the existence of atoms, hounded Boltzmann relentlessly. In the end, sadly, Boltzmann committed suicide. If you take a more Boltzmann approach to quantum randomness, quantum collapse could, for example, be nothing more than a subtler, local-only entangled version of something akin to the grainy randomness of Brownian motion. In Brownian motion, randomness arises not from an assigned probability function but from the inability of finite-size atoms to continue the illusion of infinitely smooth pressure when the object they are pushing is small enough to feel the bumping of individual atoms. You don’t need computers to create blobs since, for example, quantum granularity inversely proportional to energy works fine. Stable wave functions such as electron orbitals follow this rule and provide all the graininess needed to generate quantum-Brownian randomness, but only if that possibility is allowed in the math models. >... “In a real universe, quantum mechanics and general relativity would work properly together at all times on all scales, and bashful electrons would never appear to self-interfere on their passage through slits, whether we watch them or not. Thus, no multiverses would need to be postulated.” True, but the relatively simple point that almost always gets overlooked in such classical continuum “real” universes is this: Every particle has infinite precision, implying infinite information storage capacity and mass-energy. Cheers, Terry
Thanks again. I understand better upon re-reading. So, the other universes are like sub-waves of the main wave.
Terry Bollinger
[Start 2 of 2] In any real system containing sufficient information capacity to host extremely (but never infinitely) complex waves, we call the result noise or heat and leave it at that. In all forms of experimentally observable noise, quantization keeps a tight lid on emerging complexity and ensures absolute conservation of energy. That's why the noise frequencies in a room full of people talking cut off at the high end. If sound could instead become infinitely complex and energetic, the high end of the sound spectrum would enter a runaway loop of complexity creating still more complexity -- noise begetting noise -- until the ultrasonics vaporize everyone in the room. Since self-vaporization rarely occurs in actual cocktail parties, additional physics is needed. That physics is quantization, which keeps energy finite by forcing waves that get too complex to collapse into simpler, less energetic forms. Everett just dumped all of this annoyingly restrictive energy conservation and quantization stuff, and instead said "But the wave equations are _so_ pretty, let's just use those!" Thus, Colleen, to get back, at last, to your question: I don't know whether Everett's universes-as-waves interact with each other. The universe waves in his model go so far beyond the actual behaviors of actual classical and quantum waves in actual labs that he could have them do whatever he chose to say they do. Fiction is fiction, regardless of whether it's written using impressive words or impressive equations. [End 2 of 2]
Terry Bollinger
[Start 1 of 2] Colleen, I suspect I exceeded Patreon's cryptic message size limit this morning in my response to your question about whether multiverse universes interact. Patreon has a delightful habit of _seeming_ to accept too-long comments, then deleting them _after_ you exit. Ouch! I'll try one more time. It's not a biggy and it's _way_ overkill, but it does help point out some of the odd math issues. I'll split this try into two parts at the end of the main thread to see if that works better. ---------- The original Everett premise for invoking multiverses was pretty simple, though not something seen experimentally: (1) There is a universal quantum (Schrodinger) wave that encompasses all matter and energy, and (2) Unlike any wave seen in labs -- including, ironically, hyper-delicate Schrodinger waves -- Everett's waves never quantize and thus can become infinitely complex over time. From that ever-increasing complexity, he sees new universes emerging as... I'm not clear on how this is supposed to work?... as a set of independent universal waves whose linear sum is the increasingly complex overall wave. The analogy seems based on how Fourier transforms add infinitely many pure sinusoidal waves to create any desired waveform, but these supposed "simple" universal waves are anything but simple. [End 1 of 2]
The default Universe in all modern discussions is that of the Big Bang model. That Universe is a simultaneously existing entity whose simultaneous existence depends on a singular simultaneous creation event - the Big Bang. The Big Bang however, is not a well founded (in observation and measurement) scientific model; it is a creation myth that lies beyond the boundaries of science. All contemporary discussions of the Universe are constrained by the fundamental conceptual error of the Big Bang model, that the Cosmos we observe is a singular, simultaneous, expanding entity. That model is a scientific failure in as much as all of its defining elements make no appearance in the Cosmos we observe. The "expanding Universe" is a conceptual error very much akin to geocentrism. The model based on it is a scientific dead-end. No one discusses the vast Cosmos we now observe except in terms of fitting all contemporary observations to a 100 year old model that was conceived when the observed Cosmos barely extended beyond our own galaxy. That model is, by any reasonable scientific standard, a failure. Sure you can fit the model to observations with some mathematical tinkering - but the resulting physical models make no physical sense. The Cosmos we observe is not studied on its own terms but only in relation to everybody's favorite model. That is a scientific disgrace. So what does the Cosmos look like on its own terms? One way to think about it is to adopt the early impression of the first astronomers to observe galaxies beyond our own - the galaxies are island universes. Couple that to General Relativity's prohibition of a universal simultaneity and you get - a multiverse. This is not an invisible multiverse - it is just what we observe, assuming each galaxy has its own relational spacetime frame and there is no overarching "universal frame". Is that the only possible model that could be derived from cosmological observations? No, of course not, but any model based on current observations rather than century-old assumptions would be better than what we have now. There is a lot of interesting research that could be pursued, both observationally and theoretically, but for the stranglehold the BB model has on the modern scientific imagination. The Big Bang is dead and it's long past time for cosmologists to move on.
Thanks Terry, that's interesting. I've been studying music production, so what I've learned about how sound waves work does help me visualise 'waves' in physics a bit more easily.
@Terry Hi! Does that mean that these alternatives overlap?
Of course. That's where theories and hypotheses need to explain observations, be testable and also be observable/measurable to be worth anything as science, to reiterate. (I've learnt these criteria from Sabine, more or less, so credit to her there.) I think it's more likely than not Yeshua the Anointed existed but that the Gospels are a combination of facts, myths and mis-reportings.
The multi verse
And when answers are not found, scientists should accept that fact and either consider a different hypothesis or drop it. That they don't indicates that they have lost their way.
I have no doubt that Jesus was a real person, he was referenced by Josephus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus), but that he was a real person has no relevance to being evidence of him being a Pauline Christ. The Church has generally stated that it doesn't operate on evidence, such as when the Shroud of Turin was investigated, so the faithful should ignore the research, also because it knows full well that there are a lot of frauds.
Rad Antonov
Yes, faith in a process, not an authority.
Yes. There is a pixel of probability around the detection event. It narrows the position and momentum expected vector value distributions to a sharp peak centered on that detection pixel. Given that boundary condition, we might re-compute the probability that the 'particle' was someplace in-between the emitter pixels and the detector pixels when it was in-transit. It can still have passed through either slit.
It gives rides to their offspring and Elon rides it to work sometimes. Sabine feeds it cheese and grapes.
Is there an invisible elephant, by chance, living in their yard in this universe?
Hi Terry, I don't know any of the engineers on site. There are a couple of the scientists I know, but most of the science staff are in Charlottesville at NRAO headquarters on the campus of the U of Va. I mostly work with the Education and Public Outreach staff. I know what you mean Colleen. I can show all kinds of pretty pictures and even fly off to the planets and fly around them in the planetarium, but after the show, when we look at the planets and Moon through the telescope, that really lights people up. Yeah, Rad, Green Bank has been vitally important to astronomy since its inception. Not only with pioneering radio observations, and with Frank Drake's project Ozma, but with the development of interferometers that lead to the construction of the VLA and even these days with the development of AI to search through all of the radio data for new phenomena, ETs, new pulsars, etc. We were boozing it up in last night in the Drake Lounge, where a whole history of famous astronomers all boozed it up at one time or another. I encourage anyone who is ever passing through these parts to stop in to the visitor center here. You can get a tour of the facility and you can even walk the grounds. It's one of the most beautiful places in the world with the surrounding mountains.
Rad Antonov
Sounds like a great time in the no WiFi zone. I didn’t know about this observatory and now that I look at their site, I see they were part of the EHT collaboration that imaged Sagittarius A*. Also RIP Drake. Thanks for cluing me in.
Hi y'all, now I'm wondering about the version of reality where Sabine and Elon are together. Maybe she made him fix up his act and they've both been solving the woes of the world.
Sounds fantastic, Tracey. The nearest large research telescope to me was at Mt. Stromlo in the ACT. That got burnt out in a bushfire though. I've been to a few public viewing nights at a visible-light observatory out near Sydney; it's astounding to see objects from their own light rather than on a screen, although JWST is currently blowing my mind.
Terry Bollinger
Nice video! The PDF version of my long YouTube comment is at: https://sarxiv.org/apa.2022-09-10.2120.pdf
Terry Bollinger
Tracey DeLaney, did you by any wild chance ever meet Tim Weadon at GBT? He worked on the dish control system for many years before retiring.
Terry Bollinger
Hi Colleen! I believe the nominal answer to your question is that each splitting decision is "entangled" with the entire universe, and through that entanglement creates two new universe spanning entanglements that hold together their exponentially weakening shares of the finite total mass-energy budget of the multiverse. As Sean Carroll notes rather emphatically in his many defenses of MWI, that energy budget _must_ remain finite to keep the multiverse from collapsing into a black whole. Why a black hole? Because in most MWI models, gravity crosses universe boundaries. None of these nominal behaviors, especially entanglement splitting, match up well with physics as observed in labs. I think that's one reason MWI folks tend to steer clear of these details.
Indeed. Ta for the update. 🙂
I think that science does require faith that information and answers are there to be found and that scientists can come up with ways to get them. 🙂
There are Christian apologetics that cite what they believe to be historical evidence of Jesus existing, and attempts to link certain phenomena with God/a Creator. I was discussing the strength of this purported evidence with my brother, an ardent Christian, and I ended up saying that if the evidence were as strongly supported as the evidence for COVID-19 existing and for the vaccines, *then* I'd believe in Jesus/Christianity.
I'm not doing any observations this weekend, we're just here training up some college kids in science communication. The Green Bank Telescope (GBT) isn't useful for my own work on supernova remnants, for that I need the Very Large Array, but I do help train up high school kids in the state to look at data from the GBT to search for pulsars; the program is called the Pulsar Search Collaboratory. These kids also get to use the much smaller 20-meter dish they have on site to observe bright pulsars and we also train up kids to use the small 40-foot dish to do observations of neutral hydrogen in our galaxy. The education and public outreach crew here at Green Bank are phenomenal and always have programs for kids of all ages, college students, and teachers in order to spread the love of science.
Rad Antonov
Hola Tracey, can you grab us some right handed neutrinos while you are in the simulation? I gather those necessarily appear in any model of fermions on a lattice, no matter how fine the grid. We’ve looked around and can’t find any in our universe. Also, do tell if you notice that the electrons behaving badly are systematically being replaced by pictures of cute kittens. That’s a sure sign the Zuckerborgs are taking over. No matter how tempting it is to live in a universe entirely made of cute kittens, we’ll have to come get you. If it’s no secret, what are you looking at with the telescope?
Hi everyone, I'm joining the conversation a little late today as I'm currently in Green Bank West Virginia, home of one of the largest fully steerable objects in the world, the Green Bank Telescope, and I'm in the National Radio Quit Zone, so I had to wait all day to get back to my room for internet. Given the delirium tremens I was experiencing from the withdrawal of wi-fi, I think I've finally figured it all out -- quantum mechanics (the icky bits, like the measurement problem) is clearly the glitch that indicates that the universe is a computer simulation. In a real universe, quantum mechanics and general relativity would work properly together at all times on all scales and bashful electrons would never appear to self-interfere on their passage through slits, whether we watch them or not. Thus, no multiverses would need to be postulated. Now, I think I can get my paper published in Nature Physics as long as I include an equal number of underrepresented female electrons in my study.
A new update from USPS tracking today shows the book arriving in Sydney back on Sep 3. Interestingly, Australia Post tracking has no updates beyond Aug 18 when the book was still stuck in Chicago. Anyhow, the cost of the book should mean a short time for customs clearance on your end and delivery at your door should be imminent. Now, about your question above, I think I have a similar problem as you with Many Worlds -- not only would the "information jump" be instantaneous, how would the mass/energy transfer work?, and in every moment, an effectively infinite number of worlds are created for every wave function collapse everywhere in the multiverse of universes in that moment. How can this possibly satisfy an Occam's Razor test compared to a "simple" wave function collapse? It just seems to me like magical thinking.
Good presentation. It seems that there is something in our nature that loves a good mystery and that something allows people to believe in things that exist only in one's mind. Religion is based on faith and rejects evidence while science rejects faith and is based on evidence. So, as you point out, theorists are truly lost in math; Schrodinger's cat is not in superposition to the cat.
My take is that "collapses" simply means that at measurement there is certainty, within limits of measurement.
Rad Antonov
Indeed, it is not science, but it often steals the spotlight from what is. Instead of belaboring the point, I’ll iplug a recent favorite podcast of mine that gives top notch scientists an opportunity to talk about their work: Steve Strogatz’s “The Joy of Why”. The host is a math professor who prepares diligently for each episode and asks incredible questions. The experiment described at the 30 min mark of this https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-joy-of-why/id1608948873?i=1000571384551 episode blew my mind. There were lots of other great conversations this season, including one that gives a very technical reason why you couldn’t simulate this universe, not that any of us are particularly worried about it.
- As the author of 'Lost In Math' ... I am surprised that you repeat the 'wave-function collapses' story. It would seem to me that the simpler explanation is that the measurement adds a new boundary-condition ... allowing us to recompute the probability field.
Lost in Math ... again? - Math is a shorthand, a notation, describing a 'model' ... a simplification. To confuse the map with the territory is an obvious mistake. But, all too frequently theorists talk about their model as if it were a known reality. This is very similar to what story-teller guilds (religions) do.
Can I use this spot to plug your new book, which was, as expected, excellent? You make a convincing argument that both free will and the passage of time are illusions. However, in our day-to-day lives we must act as if they’re real. Indeed, at the present time, we have no other choice.
Dave Muth
Great! I loved reading it. Now, I'm going to love the video. I'm also really happy that some-kinds-of-infinities of kitties are uncondemned, now.
Mathematics is not reality. This is what my mother said to me.
So how does the information of an entire universe jump across and manifest in Many Worlds along with other probabilities occurring? I'm assuming that if this isn't a completely inane question there's papers and articles explaining this but I would like a 'random online ignoramus'-level explanation if someone doesn't mind. Or, random speculation would be cool too. I don't think there's any universe or realm other than this one (in which I get to talk to a bunch of great people who are smarter than I currently am, and I did learn how to belly-dance for a few months, and I didn't die yet.) I do understand the appeal, to me it's the same reason people practice magic, read the future, use mediums and whatnot - the desire to have something different happen than what is.
