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You may think you\u2019re the protagonist of your own story. According to Oxford physicist Vlatko Vedral, however, you\u2019re more like a puppet \u2014 whose strings are being pulled into a million parallel universes at any given time.<\/p>\n
As Vedral argues in a recent issue of Popular Mechanics<\/a>, the pop-sci version of the \u201cobserver effect<\/a>\u201d \u2014 where the act of observation or measurement affects a system \u2014 gets the cause-and-effect backward. The typical story goes something like this: quantum objects hang out in multiple states at once, until some observer glances over. At this point, the multiple states collapse and only one is left, an assumption that can lead various woo-woo interpretations<\/a>, like that we create reality simply by observing it.<\/p>\n Physics, Verdal says, does not support that idea. That collapse effect isn\u2019t a special power of human consciousness, but rather a fact of physics that says interactions \u2014 any interaction \u2014 forces a quantum system to commit to a definite state. <\/p>\n For example, when a photon hits your sunglasses, it isn\u2019t waiting around for your brain to take notice. The photon either passes through the lens or reflects off it, depending on the precise variables at play. In other words, the photon\u2019s path isn\u2019t shaped by you. Instead, Verdal asserts that you are shaped by the photon\u2019s path: the \u201cyou\u201d that receives that particular photon is different from the \u201cyou\u201d that didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n Extrapolate this out and it gets dizzying quick. But at the core of Verdal\u2019s argument is the idea that both \u201cyous\u201d will go on to exist simultaneously, though the \u201cyou\u201d that consciously perceives the light is necessarily shoved off onto a different quantum path than the one that doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n \u201cWithout too much exaggeration, it\u2019s fair to say that all quantum experiments are really just more or less complicated versions of Schr\u00f6dinger\u2019s,\u201d Vedral argued.<\/p>\n With so many forks and branches splitting from each tiny interaction into their own parallel universe, there are infinite \u201cyous\u201d subtly coming into being at any given time, subtly leaving the observable you holding the bag. As Verdal writes it, the \u201celements of reality that are encoded into quantum objects are fundamental, and you \u2014 in this reality and others \u2014 are shaped each time you observe them.\u201d<\/p>\n To sum it all up: somewhere out there, a cooler and luckier you is living your best life \u2014 while the version of you reading this blog has evidently been stuck with the short end of the stick.<\/p>\n