Does Quantum Immortality Save Schrödinger's Cat?
Check out Antarctic Extremes on PBS Terra: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvRAuy1ZmTc
Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord!
https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime
Check out the Space Time Merch Store
https://pbsspacetime.com/
To quote eminent scientist Tyler Durden: "On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero." Actually… not necessarily true. If the quantum multiverse is real there may be a version of you that lives forever.
Hosted by Matt O'Dowd
Written by Matt O'Dowd
Graphics by Leonardo Scholzer, Yago Ballarini, & Pedro Osinski
Directed by: Andrew Kornhaber
Executive Producers: Eric Brown & Andrew Kornhaber
If we can’t ever peer into these other realities that are used to explain quantum mechanics, how do we know they exist? In order to understand what happens to those different branches, and to understand why we find ourselves in one of them, we need to embrace one of the interpretations of quantum mechanics. For example the Copenhagen interpretation, which says that the wavefunction branches that we don’t observe somehow vanish at the moment of measurement. Or the Many Worlds interpretation, which states that those other branches are just as valid as ours - implying that reality may split and multiply in all possible ways. In that case we only see one branch because we live in that branch, and the others are rendered inaccessible by decoherence. But today I’m going to offer a test. Admittedly NOT a very useful one - but one that’s fun to think about. We’ll call this test quantum immortality. It’s based on the famous Schrodinger’s cat thought experiment.
Special Thanks to Our Patreon Sponsors
Big Bang Supporters
Alexander Tamas
David Barnholdt
David Nicklas
Fabrice Eap
Juan Benet
Morgan Hough
Quasar Supporters
Christina Oegren
Mark Heising
Vinnie Falco
Hypernova Supporter
Chuck Zegar
Danton Spivey
Donal Botkin
Douglas Cantrell
Edmund Fokschaner
Hank S
John Hofmann
John Pollock
John R. Slavik
Jordan Young
Joseph Salomone
Julian Tyacke
Justin Ash
Mathew
Matthew O'Connor
Syed Ansar
Timothy McCulloch
Gamma Ray Burst Supporters
A G
Adrian Hatch
Adrien Molyneux
AlecZero
Andreas Nautsch
Angela Prigge
Arefa Ahmad
Bradley Jenkins
Brandon labonte
Brian Blanchard
Craig Stonaha
Dan Warren
Daniel Lyons
David Bethala
DFaulk
Eric Kiebler
Frederic Simon
Geoffrey Short
Graydon Goss
Greg Smith
John Funai
John Robinson
Jonathan Nesfeder
Josh Thomas
Kevin Lee
Kevin Warne
Kyle Hofer
Malte Ubl
Michael Conroy
Nick Virtue
Nick Wright
Nickolas Andrew Freeman
Patrick Sutton
Paul Rose
Protius Protius
Randall Sylvia
Robert Ilardi
Scott Gossett
Sean Warniaha
Shane Calimlim
Sipke Schoorstra
Steve Bradshaw
Tatiana Vorovchenko
Tim Stephani
Tonyface
Tybie Fitzhugh
Yurii Konovaliuk
PBS Space Time
Space Time explores the outer reaches of space, the craziness of astrophysics, the possibilities of sci-fi, and anything else you can think of beyond Planet Earth with our astrophysicist host: Matthew O’Dowd. Episodes released every Wednesday afternoon! ...