Recently, two physicists from the Baltic Federal University Immanuel Kant (IKBFU) in Russia have proposed a whole new view of the cosmos. Their research catches the crazy idea that we are living a simulation in computer and mixing it with the astonishing “many worlds” theory to say that essentially our entire universe is part of an immensely large quantum system encompassing “countless” Multiverses.
When you think of quantum systems, such as the quantum computers of IBM and Google, we usually imagine a device designed to work with subatomic particles – qubits – to perform quantum calculations.
These computers may one day perform advanced calculations that classical computers today cannot, but for the time being they are useful as a way of researching the gap between classical and quantum reality.
Artyam Yurov and Valerian Yurov, the IKBFU researchers behind the study mentioned above, postulate that everything in the universe, including the universe itself, should be viewed as a quantum object. This means that to experience ‘quantum reality’, we don’t have to look at subatomic particles or qubits: we are already there. Everything is quantum!
Yurov and Yurov begin your job claiming that they turned upside down currently popular theoretical views of physics:
We present a new view on cosmology, based on the quantum model proposed by Michael and Hall. Following the idea of this model, we consider finite many homogeneous and isotropic classical universes whose evolutions are determined by the standard Einstein-Friedmann equations, but which also interact with each other in quantum form.
The article goes on to describe mathematically how our entire universe is itself a quantum object. This means that, as a tiny subatomic particle, it exhibits quantum properties that must include overlap. Theoretically, our universe should be in more than one place or state at a time, and that means there must simply be something out there for it to interact with – even if it means that it uses non-intuitive quantum mechanics to interact with itself in multiple states simultaneously. .
The problem with expanding quantum mechanics to large objects – such as a single cell – is that other theoretical quantum characteristics stop making so much sense. In this case, decoherence, or how quantum objects collapse from various states to the physical state we see in our classical observations, does not appear to occur on the cosmic scale.
Yurov and Yurov have a simple solution to this: they state unequivocally in their work that ‘there is no’ decoherence ”.
According to an article by Sci-Tech Daily, the lead author of the article Artyom Yurov said:
At that time I was skeptical of the idea. Because it is known that the larger the object, the faster it collapses. Even a bacterium collapses extremely fast, and here we are talking about the universe. But here (Pedro Gonzales Diaz, a deceased theoretical physician whose work partially inspired this study) asked me, “What does the universe interact with?” And I answered nothing. There is nothing but the universe and there is nothing with which it can interact.
But the more Yurov and Yurov explored the “many interacting worlds” theory (MIW), which says that all quantum functions physically manifest themselves in alternate realities (the cat is dead in one world, alive in another and dancing Cha Cha in another, etc.), but they realized that not only does this make sense, but math and science seem to work better if you assume that everything, including the universe, has quantum characteristics.
According to study:
This implies that the reason why quantum phenomena are so fragile has nothing to do with a ‘collapse of a wave function’ (whatever that means) – indeed, an object such as a wave function is essential and can be completely avoided in MIW formalism. No, the existence of quantum phenomena depends solely on the mutual positions of neighboring “worlds” – when they are close enough, quantum potential is alive and kicking; when they depart, the quantum potential diminishes and the particles become effectively classic again.
The researchers then used their assumptions to come up with calculations that expand the “many worlds” theory to encompass multiple universes or multiverses. The great idea here is that if the universe is a quantum object, it must interact with something and that they are probably other universes.
But what research does not explain is why our universe and everything in it would exist as analogous to a single qubit on a gigantic quantum computer spanning multiple universes simultaneously. If humans are not the magical observers who cause the quantum universe to collapse into classical reality, by measuring it, we could be gears in the machine – perhaps the universe is a qubit, maybe we are the qubits. Perhaps we are just noises that the universes ignore as they perform their calculations.
Maybe we live in a computer simulation after all. But instead of being the “non-playable characters – NPCs”Favorites of an advanced creature, we are just a few pieces of math that help the operating system work.
You can read Yurov’s article, “The day the universes interacted: quantum cosmology without a wave function” here at Springer.
