Quantum Immortality... because you're dead. Probably.

So, two days ago, I talked about some pretty far out shit man.  There was like, atoms, and immortality, and like all these crazy things happening at a level so small, we can't even see it with light based microscopes, and in a very general sense, lots and lots of weed.

Metaphorically, of course.  The last time stoners ended up anywhere near a quantum physics experiment, people started talking about how the LHC was going to create black holes and send us back in time, simultaneously, with the outside possibility of sending the black holes back in time and creating more paradoxes than a season of LOST.

Which, by the way, was bogus.  In order for black holes to be created by the LHC, gravity would have had to take a hike.  And everyone knows if gravity suddenly stopped working, scientists would be way to busy floating around and shouting 'weee!' at the top of their lungs.

XKCD counts as scientific opinion, right?

Actually, we'd all float up into the upper atmosphere, suffocate, and die, while the Earth violently broke apart beneath us.  Planet-wide fissures would erupt as the continents rended themselves apart, causing massive volcanoes, tusmanis, and earthquakes.  Most of what you might hold on to the keep yourself on the ground would be destroyed, as the ground itself started breaking apart and drifting away.  After a little while, even if you were in some shock-proof concrete bunker, you'd be fucked because the atmosphere would fade away as the planet that keeps most of that in check would break apart.

Well, that turned out to be grim.  The lesson here, kids, is that life is meaningless, because at any instant someone could type 'import antigravity' into python and rip the world apart.  Also, you're not special and all love is a lie.  Now go run along and play, also, have a good Friday tomorrow!

*ahem* Back on topic!

We did talk last time about the Many-Worlds approach to quantum physics, which basically says that whenever there is a binary probability where one state must be chosen, instead both states happen.  The most popular example of this is electron spin.  If you were to rig up an experiment where if the electrons spin one way, you die and another way, you live, you'd do both-- because the electron would spin in both directions at the same time.

Got it?  Great.  Obviously, you can't be alive or dead, so the moment someone came to see the results of your quantum experiment, in one universe, you'd die.  In another one, you'd live.  If you ran the experiment N times, N - 1 times you'd die, but there would always be one universe where you're alive.

Now, how often does quantum behavior like this happen?  Well... no one is really sure, due to decoherence. Decoherence is when another atom manages to snap the superimposed atom out of its 'both' state and into a 'one or the other' state, so in practice, we never see two events that should not be happening at the same time, happening at the same time.

I refused to scroll down after seeing that "Impossible Geometry" got 528 hits. The Getty Image Archive will not drive me insane today.   I'm gonna go sacrifice a goat to Cthulhu and the other Elder Gods now.

So, it's very possible that stuff like this is happening pretty much all the time-- considering the billions of atoms that are knocking around in the general space around you, surely some are getting superimposed and decohered at any given moment, right?

So, when you factor that into the whole '100% survival rate' supplied by the Many-Worlds theory... well, you can't die, can you?  Your friends might think of you as dead, but there is always a universe where you survive the car accident/gunshot/ piano dropped from the 10th floor window of an apartment building.  What's even weirder is that from your perspective, nothing would have changed-- its not like you suddenly get transported into the universe where crows are finally sick of our shit and rise up against us (which is only a matter of time).  Everything else would be the same, outside of a few atoms being in a slightly different spot.

Death becomes something that happens to other people-- sometimes you're in the universe where someone else miraculously survives, sometimes you're in the one where that dude dies.  Well, technically, you'd be in both... but we're aware of only one universe at a time.. right?

Maybe.  No one has really done any work here-- as we're well outside the bounds of science at this point, but technically, every time an atom snapped out of a superimposed state, both realities that could have been from that state play out.  Most of these are not lethal, so there should be billions of 'yous' each in their own universe.  Now, there is some debate on how different each universe is.  After all, can subatomic particles make _that_ much a difference?

I don't know.

The psudo-science breaks down after a while-- there must be causes for death that are not involved with subatomic interactions, or then everyone would live forever in some play out of the universe, which doesn't fit.  And then you start realizing that any cause of death that we would contemplate has nothing to do with subatomic interactions, so we'd die in almost any case we could consider anyway.

The other issue is which universe is chosen for "you" when your life isn't on the line.  Assuming all universes aren't unfolding in perfect parallel, when someone else runs the experiment on themselves, do you see them die?  Technically, no, as there will always be a you in some universe that watches them live, but which one are you experiencing?  Who chooses that?  How?

So, yeah.  You might live forever because in some universe you always narrowly avoid death.  So, life isn't actually short at all.  Good luck explaining that tattoo of those Chinese characters that mean 'stupid american' to your grandchildren!