Rem Quantum Sums!

Tuesday
So there was a teevee show on last night featuring Hugh Everett's son. Mr Everett seems to be the boy who posited the idea of parallel universes, or the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics.

You don't know bugger all about this, Hotboy. I know, Jack. If I knew anything about sums, I wouldn't be two grand in debt, but what the hell? Here's how it seemed to go.

There's a particle wave duality. Subatomic particles seem to exist as waves and particles at the same time. BUT if you look for particles, you find particles. If you look for waves, you find waves. Niels Bohr has the Copenhagen Interpretation which seems to be that the "fact that a human being had observed some event changed the reality of the event."

Let's let that one sink in, Jack. That's a beauty! Has this strayed into the area of consciousness? Consciousness is awareness of something surely.

Then along comes Schrodinger's Cat. The pussy is in a box and it's life depends on the behaviour of a sub-atomic particle. Unless you look in the box, the cat is alive and dead at the same time. Maybe it's half alive and half dead at the same time. Brilliantly absurd. This is a contadiction it is hard to live with. So you've got to sort that one out somehow. Or else there seems to be some kind of border or barrier where this quantum stuff operates and the classical physics stuff doesn't. Along comes Hugh Everett.

He posits the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics which seems to imply parallel universes where every story has a plot. It's harder for me to get this ... maybe the cat's alive somewhere and dead somewhere else.

Maybe this deals with the absurdity of the quantumy world, but it's still sounds crazy and impossible, etc. Hmmm.

The boy in the programme kept saying, well, why can't human beings exist in two different places if atoms (he didn't say sub-atomic particles!), electrons and such like can exist in two different places.

Of course, there have been claims forever of Christian and Hindu saints being in two places at once. Also, isn't buddha nature supposed to be in everything, everywhere. I think someone said electrons can be everywhere and not just in two places at once. Maybe if you were to become a buddha you'd be able to kind of jump the quantum border or barrier. The answer to all this nonsense must lie somewhere in consciousness surely, or the level of consciousness you can attain. Do buddhas then embody the unified theory that answers the problems of the real life and sub-atomic dichotomy?

Probably not, but there you go. Stuff like this just nips my heid!!