So, this is my first theory. Here goes....
I read the theory regarding Schrodinger's Cat and thought it was an interesting addition to the canon of LOST theories. I think he/she may be on to the right track. But, who really knows when it comes to LOST right?
So, it basically goes like this. Much in the same way as the Cat experiment (being locked in a box with a loaded gun, poison or whatever that will be triggered to kill the person/cat in the box). HOwever, it differs in that we now take the point of view of the cat (or person, whatever).
This theory deals with quantum entanglement, but more specifically comes from the "many worlds interpretation" of quantum mechanics.
In the many-worlds interpretation, the theory denies the objective reality of wavefunction collapse. Many-worlds then explains the subjective appearance of wavefunction collapse with the mechanism of quantum decoherence. Consequently, many-worlds claims this resolves all the "paradoxes" of quantum theory since every possible outcome to every event defines or exists in its own "history" or "world". In layman's terms, this means that, in some sense, there are an infinite number of universes and that everything that could possibly happen in our universe (but doesn't) does happen in another.Proponents argue that MWI reconciles how we can perceive non-deterministic events (such as the random decay of a radioactive atom) with the deterministic equations of quantum physics. Prior to many worlds this had been viewed as a single "world-line". Many-worlds rather views it as a many-branched tree where every possible branch of history is realised.
Okay, now back to the thought experiment. An experimenter sits in front of a loaded gun which is triggered or not triggered depending on the decay of some radioactive atom. With each run of the experiment there is a 50-50 chance that the gun will be triggered and the physicist will die. According to the Copenhagen interpretation, the gun will eventually be triggered and the physicist will die. If the many-worlds interpretation is correct then at each run of the experiment the physicist will be split into one world in which he lives and another world in which he dies. After many runs of the experiment, there will be many worlds. In the worlds where the physicist dies, he will cease to exist.
However, from the point of view of the non-dead copies of the physicist, the experiment will continue running without his ceasing to exist, because at each branch, he will only be able to observe the result in the world in which he survives, and if many-worlds is correct, the surviving copies of the physicist will notice that he never seems to die, therefore "proving" himself to be invulnerable to the gun mechanism in question, at least from his own point of view.
This then raises the question of quantum immortality. The idea behind quantum immortality is that the physicist will remain alive in, and thus remain able to experience, at least one of the universes in this set, even though these universes form a tiny subset of all possible universes. Over time the physicist would therefore never perceive his or her own death.
Now, could this way of thinking/experimenting be something the creators/writers of Lost are going towards. Could be, as it could potentially explain how some people are alive (or at least seem to be) on the island. Perhaps these scenarios have been going on-and-on on the island countless times. Perhaps everyone on the plane is dead in one universe and in another, they all survived. Perhaps Christian, Boone, Yemi, Claire, etc are all dead in one universe, alive in another, and a mixture in other universes. Could there be a mechanism for universes to communicate? allowing travel of "alive" characters to interact with others? or is it that we are only observing one particular universe? Who knows? I just think it's a neat little idea and although it's probably totally wrong, it would be cool for someone in TV/Movie Land to incorporate these ideas into a show/film.
Theory by Mark
I read the theory regarding Schrodinger's Cat and thought it was an interesting addition to the canon of LOST theories. I think he/she may be on to the right track. But, who really knows when it comes to LOST right?
So, it basically goes like this. Much in the same way as the Cat experiment (being locked in a box with a loaded gun, poison or whatever that will be triggered to kill the person/cat in the box). HOwever, it differs in that we now take the point of view of the cat (or person, whatever).
This theory deals with quantum entanglement, but more specifically comes from the "many worlds interpretation" of quantum mechanics.
In the many-worlds interpretation, the theory denies the objective reality of wavefunction collapse. Many-worlds then explains the subjective appearance of wavefunction collapse with the mechanism of quantum decoherence. Consequently, many-worlds claims this resolves all the "paradoxes" of quantum theory since every possible outcome to every event defines or exists in its own "history" or "world". In layman's terms, this means that, in some sense, there are an infinite number of universes and that everything that could possibly happen in our universe (but doesn't) does happen in another.Proponents argue that MWI reconciles how we can perceive non-deterministic events (such as the random decay of a radioactive atom) with the deterministic equations of quantum physics. Prior to many worlds this had been viewed as a single "world-line". Many-worlds rather views it as a many-branched tree where every possible branch of history is realised.
Okay, now back to the thought experiment. An experimenter sits in front of a loaded gun which is triggered or not triggered depending on the decay of some radioactive atom. With each run of the experiment there is a 50-50 chance that the gun will be triggered and the physicist will die. According to the Copenhagen interpretation, the gun will eventually be triggered and the physicist will die. If the many-worlds interpretation is correct then at each run of the experiment the physicist will be split into one world in which he lives and another world in which he dies. After many runs of the experiment, there will be many worlds. In the worlds where the physicist dies, he will cease to exist.
However, from the point of view of the non-dead copies of the physicist, the experiment will continue running without his ceasing to exist, because at each branch, he will only be able to observe the result in the world in which he survives, and if many-worlds is correct, the surviving copies of the physicist will notice that he never seems to die, therefore "proving" himself to be invulnerable to the gun mechanism in question, at least from his own point of view.
This then raises the question of quantum immortality. The idea behind quantum immortality is that the physicist will remain alive in, and thus remain able to experience, at least one of the universes in this set, even though these universes form a tiny subset of all possible universes. Over time the physicist would therefore never perceive his or her own death.
Now, could this way of thinking/experimenting be something the creators/writers of Lost are going towards. Could be, as it could potentially explain how some people are alive (or at least seem to be) on the island. Perhaps these scenarios have been going on-and-on on the island countless times. Perhaps everyone on the plane is dead in one universe and in another, they all survived. Perhaps Christian, Boone, Yemi, Claire, etc are all dead in one universe, alive in another, and a mixture in other universes. Could there be a mechanism for universes to communicate? allowing travel of "alive" characters to interact with others? or is it that we are only observing one particular universe? Who knows? I just think it's a neat little idea and although it's probably totally wrong, it would be cool for someone in TV/Movie Land to incorporate these ideas into a show/film.
Theory by Mark
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5 Comments:
This kind of thinking is the likely cause of schizophrenia, so I gave you 5 stars.
Crap I have a headache from reading that!
hahaha thanks! (I'm Mark btw, in case of confusion). I know, luckily for me though, I've been reading up on this "nonsense" for quite a while now. Just don't show me any of hte math, because I could understand chinese better probably!
This theory is pretty sound! I guess mostly because I am a big science geek. It might be a bit much for the average viewer though.
i like this theory but found easier to digest under the mirror matter moon theory.
it all reverts back to the backgammon game locke was 'teaching' walt.
So why can't we go out and buy a Schroedinger cat at the pet store? Half dead and half alive... does that make it a zombie? LOL
One interesting thing to throw in the mix is the quantum Zeno paradox, which could be a "driving force" behind your quantum immortality idea. Zeno's original arrow paradox basically says that if you look at the motion of an arrow flying through the air with the "fastest possible movie camera", then the arrow would have to "teleport" between the position in one frame and the position in the next, which is impossible and therefore nothing moves... Of course this is total crap.
BUT it does have a parallel in quantum mechanics. If you have a system (like an excited atom) that is going to decay after some time (say, 100 ns) and you perform many many tests to see whether or not it actually has decayed at short intervals (say 1ns), then the system will tend to last forever. It is kind of like the statement "a watched pot never boils." This is not "just a theory", either. It has been demonstrated many times.
In the Schroedinger's cat (or Schroedinger's scientist) argument, the scientist is constantly observing the decay of the radioactive particle and so should make the quantum "radioactive gun" never really get around to firing. Of course this is a bit of a problem, since you certainly can make a macroscopic device that depends on radioactive decays to do something (i.e. a smoke detector).
In the end, the real answer is that a wave function is not a good way to describe a system that is not *completely isolated* from other objects. This generally could not happen in reality, even if you went into deep space, because there would be all of these thermal photons from distant sources floating around that would spoil your experiment. In that case, you need to use something like a "density matrix" approach or something. There are many studies which show that quantum decoherence shows up so fast in any environment that a human could live in that we can't ever observe human-sized quantum paradoxes.... unless you want to freeze them down near absolute zero... A quantum frozen donkey wheel, anyone?