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!

Quantum Improbability

Guess what's back!  November is over, I have another bizarre and objectively bad 50,000 word rough draft to my name that you can totally check out here (because I forgot to actually supply a link here during November): Foxtrot

It's not even technically done-- I skipped parts at the end and never actually finished writing the finale.  I'll get to that soon, I swear.

So, what should I write about to commemorate the blog still existing?  Yeah, I was thinking bizarre pseudo-scientific theories about immortality too, what a coincidence.

I'm not talking about how that life extending drug discovered a year and a half ago, although, holy shit, have you heard about that?  It's like a super-molecule, it takes on more middle age life shortening diseases than Bruce Lee takes on ninjas.  Also, any time your research group is "obese mice" you have to be doing something right, because fat mice look hilarious.

It would totally sound exactly like that fat nerd from high school. 

No, I'm talking about weird philosophical concepts that get their start in some strange phenomena we run into in quantum mechanics, because it turns out if you tack 'quantum' on top of anything, people will flip their shit first and think later, and most people skip the latter step by force of habit.  It's how McDonalds is still in business.

Which means I'm going to have to be careful and not end up like this asshole and get it all goddamn wrong.  Quantum Mechanics doesn't somehow prove the power of positive thinking, or God, and anyone who says that either is referencing the wrong experiment or trying to understand high level concepts without first even beginning to grasp the basics.

The experiment you're looking for about the power of positive thought was started by Masaru Emoto, who claimed that he could get water to form more regular repeating molecular shapes by taping, to beakers of water, the same messages your mom left you in your lunch box in elementary school if she loved you.  His experiments have never managed to work through a double-blind test, so all the other scientists make fun of him.  They also make fun of you when you buy into his bullshit.

So bear with me as we get a little technical for a bit, before dropping out to the wider implications that people actually want to read about.  Because if numbers and physics of very tiny sub atomic particles made you happy about life, you'd all be scientists.

Anyway, the theory is called quantum suicide, which is a little weird for a theory about immortality but again, bear with me.  It took me a while to dig up a real link, but as I understand it from people far smarter than me at Princeton, the basic idea is this-- actually, no wait, back up.  We should probably cover what we're talking about first.

Flip the board, Jensen!  They're not ready!  Also, did your wife kick you out of the house and make you sleep in the office again?

Quantum Mechanics is the attempt by science to understand what the heck his happening at the smallest level of existence-- at atomic and sub-atomic particles.  It turns out, electrons, neutrons, protons and all that jazz do not play by the same rules that you and I do when it comes to concepts like mass, acceleration, force and energy.  They regularly pants classical physics, like a bunch of stuck up brats making fun that old man in the corner who smells vaguely of prunes, talks about how things were 'back in his day', and may or may not just have pissed himself.

So, scientists designed an entire new body of physics, quantum mechanics, to deal with these assholes.  A large part of quantum mechanics is that we, uh, can only really guess at most of it.  Really-- at the smallest level of existence, nature is governed more by probabilities than actual hard numbers.  The problem is that sometimes these probabilities are sort of alive/dead either-or things.  You can't have a probability, it has to be one or the other.

Light is a classic example-- it's either a particle (called a photon) or a wave (called a wave).  It behaves drastically different as a particle or as a wave, and particles and waves themselves are mutually exclusive, you can't be both (one has mass and matter, the other is a transfer of energy).

Except, it could be either thing depending on how its feeling that day.  And sometimes, its both at the same time, until it makes up its mind (which it tends to do the moment a scientist tries to prove its always in one state)-- I'm sure you heard someone ranting about this once.  A lot of things in quantum mechanics are like this, the most popular being electron 'spin'.

Electrons spin either up or down, except when they are in a superimposed state and we have to say that they're both.  At the same time.  Just run with the paradox.

The idea is that if we were somehow to rig up a device that would kill you if electrons were to spin one way, and leave you alive if they spin the other way.  So... are you dead?  You've got a 50% chance of survival... but nothing would happen until someone actually came to check on you, and the electron 'decided' which way to spin, right?

You should recognize this as Schrodinger's Cat, except now you're the cat.  Also, you can thank me for the Internet love later.

Now, its time for some weird shit-- according to the Many-Worlds theory, you must be alive.  But to the experimenters, you could be dead.  Welcome to the mind-fuck, ladies and gents, so sit your ass down and pay attention.  There are coloring books for those of you who just lost higher-order brain function in back.

Yes, the bad man who kept saying things that should not be is gone.  Orange is a nice color.

Ok, so how the hell does that work?  Simple (oh, hai, blatant lie, how are you?).  The reason is that its not that the electron is in some 'undecided' state, its in both states, so by forcing a binary decision on it, you've actually rent the universe in two, one where the electron spins down, the other where the electron spins up.

You see, you've put yourself in a superimposed state-- one where you're dead, and one where you're alive.  And the alive state will persist, no matter how many times the experiment is run.

I'll talk about the bizarre effects of such a theory in another post, but have some other food for thought.  The other prevailing theory of quantum mechanics, the Copenhagen interpetation more or less says that systems forced into such a superimposed setup automatically collapse, and the electron is forced to chose one or the other.  However, because no one really knows what state you're in until someone checks on you (going back to the many-worlds theory here), the mathematical consequences for both are the exact same.

According to Many-Worlds, you will always survive in some universe.  According to Cpenhagen, you can survive, its just very improbable that you do.  The only thing that is different is that you have made your own existence very improbable.