parallel universes/many worlds — Hugh Everett

[opalescent]

Just watched a show on Hugh Everett, the physicist who proposed the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics in opposition of accepted theories of the day. Wow.

Here’s a link to the PBS site, tons of info here.

The Many-Worlds Interpretation
An interpretation of quantum mechanics, first proposed by the American physicist Hugh Everett III in 1957, according to which, whenever numerous viable possibilities exist, the world splits into many worlds, one world for each different possibility (in this context, the term “worlds” refers to what most people call “universes”). The phrase “many worlds” was first used by Bryce DeWitt, who wrote more on the topic following Everett. In each of these worlds, everything starts out identical, except for the one initial difference; but from this point on, they develop independently. No communication is possible between the separate universe, so the people living in them (and splitting along with them) would have no idea what was really going on. Thus, according to this view, the world branches endlessly. What is “the present” to us, lies in the pasts of an uncountably huge number of different futures. Everything that can happen does happen, somewhere. Until the many worlds interpretation, the generally accepted interpretation of quantum mechanics was (and perhaps still is) the Copenhagen interpretation. The Copenhagen interpretation makes a distinction between the observer and the observed; when no one is watching, a system evolves deterministically according to a wave equation, but when someone is watching, the wavefunction of the system “collapses” to the observed state, which is why the act of observing changes the system. The Copenhagen interpretation gives the observer special status, not accorded to any other object in quantum theory, and cannot explain the observer itself, while the many worlds hypothesis models the entire observer-observee system.

Here’s the first part of the video on YouTube:
[youtube:1mjgf24r]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7BHFieatVE[/youtube:1mjgf24r]

[Orissa]

I really enjoyed watching the videos, Opalescent.I’ve delved into the basics of quantum physics previously & both of the healing modalities that I use are also based on the principles of quantum physics & the Copenhagen interpretation. One of them does in fact incorporate parallel universes & realities so I am very familiar with that concept & working with parallel realities but I had never heard of Hugh Everett before or his theory .

Thanks for posting the info.

[Neiru2012]

Ahh yes, this is one of my favorite scientific theories! I actually came up with it independently from Hugh Everett (as I’m sure did many sci-fi authors), but since he came up with it first I don’t mind giving him credit for it. 😛

[Author]

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