Website review: Parallel universe proof boosts tim...
Maxismax discovered this in Physics
•14 reviews since Sep 22, 2007
physics, time-travel, parallel-universe
•telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml
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Maxismax discovered 10 months ago- From the page: "Parallel universes really do exist, according to a mathematical discovery by Oxford scientists that sweeps away one of the key objections to the mind boggling and controversial idea." It took this fella years of study to figure this out....only took me a bottle of tequila.
- MandoV rated 10 months ago
- From the page: " Parallel universe proof boosts time travel hopes"
- kroztron rated 10 months ago
- I should not have tried to read this after consuming a mysterious cookie from my co-op. Oh well, this stuff is my secret passion.
- CastorQuinn rated 10 months ago
- I'm not going to pretend I am anywhere even in the vicinity of understanding the actual maths going on here, but the interesting point here is that whatever this guy has done, it explains away 'the problem with probability'. This problem is (in very basic terms) that in some cases waveforms don't collapse in the direction we predict, for no apparent physical reason. This proof applies effectively a mathematically-supported version of the weak anthropic theory: every waveform collapses to every possible particle in some universe, and sometimes we just happen to be in the universe where the less-probable collapse occurs.
I couldn't say how strong the mathetmatical support for this actually is, but the implications of Many Worlds are pretty hefty. For instance, whenever a waveform collapses into multiple particles, it doesn't exactly create a new universe; all the universes split off by that collapse have always existed, since they have a complete history over time for the entire duration of that universe. So here we have the creation, at this moment, of an eventuality which has always existed, but which was still only created at this moment, at the moment when the waveform collapsed. So does this mean that all collapses of all waveforms are already predicted from the start-state of the multiverse, and any individual collapse is simply the realisation of the switch-point between them? Or is it just that a waveform, as it exists in ten dimensions, can act 'out of time', retroactively creating a universe where its collapsed state can be realised? What does this mean for cause and effect in quantum mechanics?
As for the implications for this with time travel ... although the point here is that mathematically you can now justify retroactive transitions between universe-states, killing your grandfather effectively splits off a universe which is still internally inconsistent, as you can't exist there any more than you can here. Dimension hopping and true time travel are very different things, and I'll have to read more to see exactly what impact this proof has on the real issues of time travel. I'm not holding out hope though: at the very best, this would allow you to jump to a universe where an event in your past never happened to you, but this wouldn't have any effect on the rest of the people in your home universe, as they are still stuck in their original reality. - I'm not going to pretend I am anywhere even in the vicinity of understanding the actual maths going on here, but the interesting point here is that whatever this guy has done, it explains away 'the problem with probability'. This problem is (in very basic terms) that in some cases waveforms don't collapse in the direction we predict, for no apparent physical reason. This proof applies effectively a mathematically-supported version of the weak anthropic theory: every waveform collapses to every possible particle in some universe, and sometimes we just happen to be in the universe where the less-probable collapse occurs.
- jack-black rated 10 months ago
- BREAKING NEWS: If I had a Time machine...
The Three Degrees - or should that be TimeLords?: David Deutsch, William Saunders, and David Wallace: three Oxford cosmologists/philosophers prepared to countenance multiverses and time travel.
If I had such a machine I would whisk these twenty-first century Oxford hippies straight back for a barbering with Occam's razor. William of Occam was a thirteenth-century Oxford mathematician who had much to say of multiverses, hypothetical entities and the principles underlying science itself - and he also wrote cogently on Time. His razor was the sharpest instrument known to empirical science and is still held in esteem. It was a "law of parsimony" or "succinctness" which stated that: entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, -- "entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity." That is, "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the right one." Whereas, as British-Australian physicist Paul Davies jokingly observes of Deutsch's position of many-worlds it is "cheap on assumptions but expensive on universes." There is nothing especially new about the multiverse theory as it has cropped up in philosophy before (Leibnitz).
Get a bleedin' haircut Dave!
For a sneak preview of some fascinating forthcoming work by Dr Wallace here is an abstract which can be read in full at his site.http://users.ox.ac.uk/~mert0130/
'Language use in a branching Universe'
David Wallace
December 2005
Abstract
I investigate the consequences for semantics, and in particular for the
semantics of tense, if time is assumed to have a branching structure not
out of metaphysical necessity (to solve some philosophical problem) but
just as a contingent physical fact, as is suggested by a currently-popular
approach to the interpretation of quantum mechanics. - BREAKING NEWS: If I had a Time machine...
- ericthehamster rated 10 months ago
- I love stories like this. So often have people scoffed at me for my love of science fiction, and now more and more of the favourite science fiction concepts are being embraced by scientists - I think it is wonderful! From the page: " If one accepts Everett's interpretation, our universe is embedded in an infinitely larger and more complex structure called the multiverse, which as a good approximation can be regarded as an ever-multiplying mass of parallel universes. Every time there is an event at the quantum level - a radioactive atom decaying, for example, or a particle of light impinging on your retina - the universe is supposed to "split" into different universes. A motorist who has a near miss, for instance, might feel relieved at his lucky escape. But in a parallel universe, another version of the same driver will have been killed. Yet another universe will see the motorist recover after treatment in hospital. The number of alternative scenarios is endless. In this way, the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics allows a time traveller to alter the past without producing problems such as the notorious grandfather paradox. But the "many worlds" idea has been attacked, with one theoretician joking that it is "cheap on assumptions but expensive on universes" and others that it is "repugnant to common sense." Now new research confirms Prof Deutsch's ideas and suggests that Dr Everett, who was a Phd student at Princeton University when he came up with the theory, was on the right track." Seen on the marvellous pages of LadyFromShanghai.
- icequeen057 rated 10 months ago
- "Parallel universes really do exist, according to a mathematical discovery by Oxford scientists that sweeps away one of the key objections to the mind boggling and controversial idea." Whoa. That's pretty heavy, Doc.
- socalsamba rated 10 months ago
- "Parallel universes really do exist, according to a mathematical discovery by Oxford scientists that sweeps away one of the key objections to the mind boggling and controversial idea." Compelling headline of the day.
- LadyFromShanghai rated 10 months ago
From the page: "Parallel universes really do exist, according to a mathematical discovery by Oxford scientists that sweeps away one of the key objections to the mind boggling and controversial idea."
I don't think it can be proved, but it's predicted by mathematical theories.
- ketogah rated 10 months ago
- Scientists at Oxford say parallel universes do indeed exist. I wonder if there is a parallel universe where there is not all this war and global catastrophe. from the page: "Science fiction looks closer to becoming science fact, reports Roger Highfield Parallel universes really do exist, according to a mathematical discovery by Oxford scientists that sweeps away one of the key objections to the mind boggling and controversial idea. The work has wider implications since the idea of parallel universes sidesteps one of the key problems with time travel. Every since it was given serious lab cred in 1949 by the great logician Kurt Godel, many eminent physicists have argued against time travel because it undermines ideas of cause and effect to create paradoxes: a time traveller could go back to kill his grandfather so that he is never born in the first place. But the existence of parallel worlds offers a way around these troublesome paradoxes, according to David Deutsch of Oxford University, a highly respected proponent of quantum theory, the deeply mathematical, successful and baffling theory of the atomic world. He argues that time travel shifts between different branches of reality, basing his claim on parallel universes, the so-called "many-worlds" formulation of quantum theory."
