Catmachine

When considering the many worlds of the multiverse the picture that probably springs to mind, born of a thousand popular physics documentaries, YouTube videos or books, is of the universes like a sheaf of A4 paper or the pages of a book, all stacked neatly on top of one another, running in parallel, minding their own business until the science communicator sticks a sharp pencil through the stack for some reason. It's not that though. Another common mental model is of a constant bifurcation and splitting so that whenever a decision is made a new universe is created (which seems a bit of a waste if the decision is just about which pair of socks you're going to wear that day). It's not quite that either though. The multiverse is much more like a dark smoke-filled room, a continuum of possibility, probability and particles that simultaneous contains all conceivable universes and sock choices. What you decide doesn't create a universe, it just moves you into that part of the...

"The first thing to realize about parallel universes is that they are not parallel. It is also important to realize that they are not, strictly speaking, universes either." — Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless I have been reading about The Mandela Effect. This is a name for collective false memory whereby a significant amount of people will swear blind that something in the past was one way whereas in actual fact it was another and furthermore there's written, photographic and filmed proof. The most likely explanation for this is that misconceptions which lead to a false memory of something are common misconceptions and that people susceptible will develop similar false memories, which they can then reminisce with each other about thereby strengthening them. A more outlandish theory—and much more interesting from a fantasy point of view—is that the people remembering things differently are now living in a different parallel universe from the one in which the memory was first...

"Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it" Niels Bohr So, smelling is quantum. No really. As mentioned in an earlier blog entry , it turns out that the underlying biological mechanism that allows us to smell relies on quantum tunnelling to get the job done. It seems to me that if one neurological mechanism - and quite an old one at that - uses the very structure of reality itself to function, then it's likely they all do. But what would the implications be if we discover that our very thoughts are subject to the new physics? As is so often the case I have to put in a disclaimer; I Am Not A Scientist . I am someone interested in science; someone who, upon reading about the latest bleeding edges of physics in the quest for ultimate truth, starts performing thought experiments based on his very dim understanding of what he's just read. So bear in mind that I may very well be talking rubbish. Don't slouch, Albert I am not shocked by quantum...

Quite why anyone would actually want to go back in time and shoot their own grandfather is beyond me. It's said so glibly and yet I'm forced to think that even if I possessed a time machine and a desire for grandpatricide, I would have absolutely no idea how to go about procuring a gun. Nevertheless this rather bloodthirsty scenario is often cited as a clinching proof of the impossibility of time travel. I'm not so sure. I feel sure it could be solved given the application of Many Worlds Theory (MWT). Broadly put, Many Worlds Theory states that everything that can happen, did happen. That is not to say that the universe is watching and decides to split in two every time you toss a coin; it's more that at a very basic quantum level everything happens. We can work upwards from that. This means that Schrödinger's famous cat is alive in one universe and dead in another - no spooky co-existence in both states until observed is necessary. Mind you, I wouldn't be ...