This is really something that defies explanation! <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wEzRdZGYNvA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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Can you find something a little better than some kid doing a go animate slide? I know you're a student, and this idea didn’t originally sit well with some physicists who were like, what? That sounds stupid. One of whom was Schrödinger, who wrote back and forth with Einstein about the issue. Einstein compared the inability to predict the behavior of particles to a keg full of unstable gun powder: at some point the keg would contain both exploded and unexploded powder, right? Right. Schrödinger still didn’t like this idea, and was like, Alright, what if instead of a keg of gunpowder, it was something alive. You’re gonna tell me that something living, something with a consciousness could be alive and dead at the same time? That until we look at it, its fate is undetermined? And thus, our kitty in a box thought-experiment was born. Take a cat, put it in a box along with some radioactive material that has an equal chance of decaying or not decaying over the course of an hour. If it does decay, a Geiger counter goes off and breaks open a vial of poisonous gas. If it doesn’t decay, no poisonous gas. So there is a perfectly equal chance at the end of the hour that the cat is alive or dead (although, really, if you’re locking a cat into a poison gas box, how much of an “equal” chance is there for the cat to be alive? BUT ANYWAY.). Quantum mechanics says that until you open the box and see whether the cat is alive or dead, the cat is both alive and dead. And it is the act of observing the cat that determines the end result. To complicate matters even further, some have taken this idea to the next logical place: so, if when you open the box, and you find a dead cat, what happened to the alive cat? And this gives birth to our multiverse theory. In this interpretation, at the moment of observation of the dead cat, a new universe branches off in which the cat in the box is alive and well. And the two universes never meet. (Unless you’re on Fringe, in which case all bets are off.) In this thinking, there are an infinite number of universes out there, forever branching off of every little decision each of us make. And then branching off from those decisions. And then branching off of those decisions, FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER. Explain that Go!AnimatE!
My aunt is a PHD professor/researcher for the Center for Quantum Devices at Northwestern. Crazy world.
I'm not sure if you're serious, but... I just thought the juxtaposition of the two videos would be humorous (an explanation for something which defies explanation). For what it's worth, the kid who made the video is 50 years old and has a ton of in-depth videos on his channel. Not sure why he made a cartoon out of this one - the others seems to be more sophisticated. I often ponder multiverse theory, which is crazy enough if we only consider infinite outcomes for things we consider significant, but what about the trivial things? Potentially, there's a universe exactly like this one, but where I'm 1/100th of an inch taller...and it just goes on and on from there.
I guess my point is that there is so much more out there that is not only unexplainable, but fascinating. The change in observing causes change? As far as I know, only cognizant creatures do that. So does that mean electrons are thinking? Is there a puppet-master behind them? I just love the variables. I soooo hope time-travel becomes something viable, as stupid as that sounds. It is simply something that has always been something I'd like to see consequences of.
