MWH+Theory+2


 * __Many Worlds Interpretation__ **
 * __By Prayush Singh and Johnny Page__ **

Table of Contents flat

=Outline: = The Many Worlds Interpretation (also known as MWI or MWH Theory) is one of the many possible solutions to the Anthropic Principle which states that observations in our physical universe must be compatible with it. The Many Worlds Interpretation states that there are multiple parallel universes and that for every event that happens in our world, a different outcome is presented in each of all the other parallel universes. From the Many-Worlds point-of-view, the universe is like a tree that branches and re-branches into hundreds of new sub-branches with every passing picosecond. And each of these new branch universes has a slightly different sub-atomic "history". Because an observer happens to have followed one particular path through the diverging branches of this Universe-Tree, he never perceives the splitting combination. A good example of this is Schrödinger's Cat, a thought experiment performed by Erwin Schrödinger. In his experiment there is a live cat inside a box. There is also a valve that releases poison into the box if it detects radiation from a radioactive source. Then poison may be released or it may not be released, causing the universe to split into one where the cat lives and another in which the cat dies. This experiment actually helped to prove MWI even though it had been designed to negate it because it showed that for every event that occurs, it can happen differently in another universe.

media type="youtube" key="aYCoU6PNUQg" height="480" width="593" align="left" The video above shows the fictional super-hero Mario in the video game Super Mario Bros. Every time he gets to a point where there are multiple possibilities and outcomes of his actions, he is multiplied into another Mario for each action.

=History of the MWI Theory =  According to Niels Bohr, ours is the only universe and all the other outcomes simply disappear when measured. But in 1954, Hugh Everett (pictured), who disagreed with Bohr's idea, came up with the Many Worlds Interpretation during one of a series of sessions with Charles Misner and Aage Petersen in which they would come up with what they called ridiculous implications of quantum mechanics. In the weeks that followed, he began developing it into a dissertation. Unfortunately, his theory was not widely accepted at thetime and Everett left the world of quantum mechanics and got a research job at the Pentagon. Later, in 1977, Everett was asked to give a seminar on the MWI Theory at the University of Texas and it was after this seminar that more people began to accept the MWI Theory. In our world, at least, Everett died five years later in 1982 at age 51. See Hugh Everett's original thesis on the MWI Theory

=Wave Functions and Wavefunction Collapse = A wave function is a mathematical list of every possible configuration of a quantum object. According to the Copenhagen Interpretation, wavefunction collapse is when all possible configurations of a quantum object is reduced to one and was used to describe the universe we that we live in and is the most widely accepted theory of quantum mechanics. In the Many Worlds Interpretation, there simply is no wavefunction collapse: every possible configuration of a quantum object exists in a different universe for each configuration.

=Quantum Suicide Experiment = The quantum suicide experiment is a thought experiment created by MIT professor Max Tegmark. In it a man sits down in front of a gun which is rigged to a machine that measures the spin of a quantum particle. Every time the trigger is pulled the machine measures the spin of the quantum particle. If the particle is spin up the gun will fire. It the particle is spin down, the gun will not fire. But no matter how many times he pulls the trigger, he will only hear clicks. If we go back in time to the beginning of the experiment we would see the man pull the trigger for the very first time, and the quark is now measured as spinning up. The gun fires. The man is dead. The man already pulled the trigger the first time and an infinite number of times after and we already know the gun didn't fire. The man is unaware, but he's both alive and dead. Each time he pulls the trigger, the universe is split in two. It will continue to split, again and again, each time the trigger is pulled and the man will keep on hearing only clicks. This process will lead the man to quantum immortality in which the man will remain alive and, thus, never be able to experience his own death in at least one of the universes in this "set" of universes.

=Chemical Explanation= The nature of atomic structure is based on probabilities. Schrödinger, Heisenberg, and others determined that an electron is best thought of as a wave until an observation is made. Before an observation is made, the electron is in an indeterminate state. This uncertain state is the statistical combination of every possible location and energy for the electron. When an electron interacts, it does so in a way that is consistent with this statistical model. The majority of the time, the electron is found in the shell described by quantum mechanics, yet there is a chance that an electron can be found further away. An electron on Earth could be found on Mars or beyond. This uncertainty means that an atom can behave differently depending on probability; this uncertainty is what the Many Worlds Interpretation tries to explain.

Every time one atom interacts with another atom, it can be thought of as one wavefunction interacting with another wavefunction. These wavefunctions behave differently than what we consider to be physical objects, they seemingly can exist in multiple states at the same time. However, when an experiment or chemical reaction determines the location or state of a particle, an exact answer is given. The Many Worlds Interpretation explains this paradox, it says that every possible outcome of an interaction or experiment occurs, except it occurs in a different universe. This means that for every electron on Earth, there is a universe for which it is on Mars. In addition to extreme examples like the Quantum Suicide Experiment, every simple chemical reaction leads to a new universe. The Many Worlds Interpretation states that any outcome of a chemical reaction occurs in a separate universe. The success or failure of a second reaction depends on the outcome of the first reaction, a third reaction depends on the outcome of the second, and so on. In this way, completely different universes can be constructed based on the tiniest of changes.

There are between 100-200 trillion cells in a human body and each of these cells undergo many chemical reactions every second. The Many Worlds Interpretation suggests that there are trillions of new universes created every second. Although this seems difficult to imagine, the Many Worlds Interpretation has some big advantages over other theories. These advantages are outlined in the following section.

=Importance= The Many Worlds Interpretation is an important view upon quantum mechanics because it satisfies the requirements of many paradoxes such as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) Paradox and Schrödinger's Cat. The Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics is unable to satisfy either of these two paradoxes, so the Many Worlds Interpretation has an advantage over the Copenhagen Interpretation. There is also evidential support for Many Worlds by the theory that our universe should have been through a vacuum state in which all life would have ended. This has not happened, which supports the Many Worlds Interpretation because it may have happened in a different universe, but not in the one I am currently in.

=Sources = http://science.howstuffworks.com [] [] [] [] Greene, Brian. //The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality//. New York: Vintage, 2005. Greene, Brian. //The Elegant Universe//. New York: Random House Inc, 2000.