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7:30 pm, Wednesday, April 09, 2014
Fairmont Lounge, St. John's College
2111 Lower Mall, UBC
Quantum measurements and the Many-Worlds Theory
David Wallace
University of Oxford
Quantum mechanics is the most successful scientific theory in
history: it underpins practically all of modern physics, from elementary
particles, through the transistors in our phones and computers, right up
to the structures in the early Universe, and it has passed every test ever
set it. But it seems to fail the most basic requirement of a scientific
theory: that it give a plausible story about what the physical world is
actually like. Indeed, it seems to give us a story that is plain crazy:
atoms in two places at once, and cats alive and dead at the same time.
This 'quantum measurement' problem still has no accepted solution, more
than eighty years after quantum theory's creation. I will explain what the
measurement problem is (and why we should care about it), and argue that
its solution requires something equally crazy: the idea that the world is
constantly branching into parallel copies. I will suggest that this
Many-Worlds theory of quantum mechanics is actually a deeply conservative
approach to quantum theory, and is the most natural way to make sense of
its paradoxes.
To learn more please visit his
webpage.
Additional resources for this talk:
slides(not available yet) and
video.
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