That's interesting, because "parallel universes", like gods, are mere dogmas and does not exist anywhere but minds of believers and has been built out of "social" mental constructs (memes) supported by flawed (correlation is not causation) "empirical evidences".)
So, in your opinion, scientists are not allowed to discuss theories when they try to investigate the so far unknown? As opposed to regurgitating well-supported knowledge or - in your case - mere phrases?
Our inability to observe in details and measure exactly gives rise to "theories".
I think is has a lot to do with so-called probabilistic models, like, you know, particles are "out there", but we can't tell where exactly they are in a given moment (perhaps, because a "moment" has nothing to do with particles) , so, we speculate that the universe we "observe" is a "snapshot of locations of all the particles", while there are could be many others. But no, there aren't any other. They does not exist, they just does not happen, at least to this particular observer.
Each observer observes exactly one snapshot of the Universe, while every observer "sees" the same Universe from a different angle. But this is the same Universe. Multitude is just a mental flaw, mistaking different perspectives (views) for different "things".
Ironically, this description fits perfectly to ancient notions of gods (and universes). There are many of them, but the mechanism which made them all - a human mind - is one and the same.
I am not a quantum physicist, of course, neither I am a philosopher, but I prefer to rely on philosophy.)
Old addiction. I started with FIDOnet. At that time, in the dawn of networking, it was generally a good idea to explicitly put "smiles" - an ugly way to communicate a "mood of not being too serious". Something like that fake, polite smile in Japanese culture, intended to relax a "tough" adversary. It worked well back then.
One small update: One could say that "because for each observer an "instant snapshot" of the Universe is "slightly" different (not exactly the same) there are many Universes.
This is nothing but word games. OK, for each observer it is not exactly the same "snapshot" (because two observers cannot be situated in the same location) and it is possible to claim that because two "snapshots" are not exactly same there are two parallel universes, but this is just an delusion.
An appropriate analogy could be of a tourists taking pictures of the same Boudhanath stupa in Kathmandu. Each picture would be different, but the stupa is the same. To say that due to change in light and shadow, rains and moving particles in the air, the stupa is never the same would be a correct observation, but to say that there are multiple parallel stupas that are "colliding" with each other, is nonsense indeed.
Here we discarding the illusory conception of "sameness", of "unchanging" (looking at a physical object as a set of continuous processes on various levels) but we never assume that there are more than one such set.
Btw, things which are parallel (lines or planes) have no common point by definition. As long as they are "collide" they are not parallel but concurrent. So there are, indeed, multitudes of concurrent and parallel (they have nothing in common) processes which together form what we used to call Universe.
Claiming that two process which "happen at the same time" have "the same time" in common is also a delusion.
Suppose there are two beams of light from the same source which are propagating in orthogonal directions. Saying that they happening at the same time is just a mental construct. They are two "parallel processes" and have nothing in common. "Universal time" is just a mental construct. Each process has its own time.
I thought MWI is considered an established hypothesis in physics community. I went to Wikipedia and it confirmed my impression. Perhaps I’m missing something.
You're not. The "problems" this article suggests for MWI are actually only problems for people who don't fully understand it. Attempting to count worlds, for example, is a mistake right from the start; perhaps MWI is badly named, but decoherence doesn't produce fully disjoint worlds. They always overlap with their neighbours.
For an analogy, trying to count MWI worlds is like trying to measure the length of Norway's coastline. It depends on how you count, but "worlds" also aren't a fundamental building block; it doesn't affect the predictions of the theory.
"Since its foundation the journal's impact factor has been increasing and for the first time passed that of the older and prestigious non-open-access journal Physical Review Letters for the year 2013. This makes Physical Review X currently the journal within the family of Physical Review journals with the highest impact factor."
I'm just spitballing here, may be they are not fully parallel. May be it's one aspect of the universe that's parallel to its counterpart of the other universes. Other characteristics of a universe could still interact with each other, thus making their presence felt.
The Vice headline does not accurately reflect the article. The hypothesis is that interaction between parallel worlds could lead to the observed behavior we currently describe using quantum mechanics.
entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. We don't understand “our own” universe and pulling a “parallel” one out of the proverbial hat is supposed to help anything? I just view that as a violation of Occam's razor.
I just like thinking about things out of my depth, so take my non-expert rantings with a grain of salt:
I actually have a personal theory similar to this, but instead of multiple parallel universes, just one other universe. Dual Universes.
I came up with this idea when thinking about dark matter and antimatter. I seem to understand that dark matter is more plentiful away from planetary bodies. When thinking about the big bang, the mathematics/physics that governed the forming of galaxies, stars, planets, black holes, etc, seem to indicate a desire of a certain "order".
What if another universe somehow broke into this one, and all the matter in it spewed forth as a different type of matter into ours? Perhaps that matter seeks to find it's original origin, perhaps in the form of a black hole back into that other universe. (discounting the blackhole/whitehole theory), but since black holes are fairly rare, in the mean-time, that matter seeks to gather until it can pass that point of no return to become a black hole.
In essence my idea is that gravity is a byproduct of matter seeking to return to it's antimatter state in another universe.
Lots of unfounded hypothesis there, so forgive me if I've gone off the deep end with that one. I'm just a curious george.
It seems to me that wave particle collapse and the second law of thermodynamics have something in common.
The latter can be explained by simple statistics. There are far far less ordered states than unordered so it's much more likely that a system would eventually go into an unordered state.
In fact I consider life to be an interesting counteraction to the second law of thermodynamics!
Now, something like that could happen to probability when you simply go up to macro scales. When you have a huge number of particles all interacting together then the variance is reduced to such an extent that it is as if the wavefunction collapsed.
After all there is a chance I could go through a wall in quantum mechanics, just astronomically small because that would need to happen with all the particles at once.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 65.6 ms ] threadI don't know how else you expect the field to evolve…
Hardly dogma. Lots of physicists hold to the rival Copenhagen interpretation, and have yet to be expelled from the halls of academe for heresy.
> supported by flawed (correlation is not causation) "empirical evidences".
Could you give an example of such a flaw?
I think is has a lot to do with so-called probabilistic models, like, you know, particles are "out there", but we can't tell where exactly they are in a given moment (perhaps, because a "moment" has nothing to do with particles) , so, we speculate that the universe we "observe" is a "snapshot of locations of all the particles", while there are could be many others. But no, there aren't any other. They does not exist, they just does not happen, at least to this particular observer.
Each observer observes exactly one snapshot of the Universe, while every observer "sees" the same Universe from a different angle. But this is the same Universe. Multitude is just a mental flaw, mistaking different perspectives (views) for different "things".
Ironically, this description fits perfectly to ancient notions of gods (and universes). There are many of them, but the mechanism which made them all - a human mind - is one and the same.
I am not a quantum physicist, of course, neither I am a philosopher, but I prefer to rely on philosophy.)
Now it looks rather silly, I admit.
This is nothing but word games. OK, for each observer it is not exactly the same "snapshot" (because two observers cannot be situated in the same location) and it is possible to claim that because two "snapshots" are not exactly same there are two parallel universes, but this is just an delusion.
An appropriate analogy could be of a tourists taking pictures of the same Boudhanath stupa in Kathmandu. Each picture would be different, but the stupa is the same. To say that due to change in light and shadow, rains and moving particles in the air, the stupa is never the same would be a correct observation, but to say that there are multiple parallel stupas that are "colliding" with each other, is nonsense indeed.
Here we discarding the illusory conception of "sameness", of "unchanging" (looking at a physical object as a set of continuous processes on various levels) but we never assume that there are more than one such set.
Btw, things which are parallel (lines or planes) have no common point by definition. As long as they are "collide" they are not parallel but concurrent. So there are, indeed, multitudes of concurrent and parallel (they have nothing in common) processes which together form what we used to call Universe.
Claiming that two process which "happen at the same time" have "the same time" in common is also a delusion.
Suppose there are two beams of light from the same source which are propagating in orthogonal directions. Saying that they happening at the same time is just a mental construct. They are two "parallel processes" and have nothing in common. "Universal time" is just a mental construct. Each process has its own time.
For an analogy, trying to count MWI worlds is like trying to measure the length of Norway's coastline. It depends on how you count, but "worlds" also aren't a fundamental building block; it doesn't affect the predictions of the theory.
That, however, is also true for all other QM interpretations.
"Since its foundation the journal's impact factor has been increasing and for the first time passed that of the older and prestigious non-open-access journal Physical Review Letters for the year 2013. This makes Physical Review X currently the journal within the family of Physical Review journals with the highest impact factor."
I actually have a personal theory similar to this, but instead of multiple parallel universes, just one other universe. Dual Universes.
I came up with this idea when thinking about dark matter and antimatter. I seem to understand that dark matter is more plentiful away from planetary bodies. When thinking about the big bang, the mathematics/physics that governed the forming of galaxies, stars, planets, black holes, etc, seem to indicate a desire of a certain "order".
What if another universe somehow broke into this one, and all the matter in it spewed forth as a different type of matter into ours? Perhaps that matter seeks to find it's original origin, perhaps in the form of a black hole back into that other universe. (discounting the blackhole/whitehole theory), but since black holes are fairly rare, in the mean-time, that matter seeks to gather until it can pass that point of no return to become a black hole.
In essence my idea is that gravity is a byproduct of matter seeking to return to it's antimatter state in another universe.
Lots of unfounded hypothesis there, so forgive me if I've gone off the deep end with that one. I'm just a curious george.
The latter can be explained by simple statistics. There are far far less ordered states than unordered so it's much more likely that a system would eventually go into an unordered state.
In fact I consider life to be an interesting counteraction to the second law of thermodynamics!
Now, something like that could happen to probability when you simply go up to macro scales. When you have a huge number of particles all interacting together then the variance is reduced to such an extent that it is as if the wavefunction collapsed.
After all there is a chance I could go through a wall in quantum mechanics, just astronomically small because that would need to happen with all the particles at once.