On Fri, Aug 8, 2025 at 10:23 PM Brent Meeker <[email protected]> wrote:
*>> Suppose an atom has a half-life of one second and I'm watching it, the >> universe splits and so do I after one second. In one universe the atom >> decays and I observed that the atom has decayed, in the other universe the >> atom has not decayed and I observed that it has not decayed. * >> *In the universe where the atom didn't decay after another second the >> universe splits again, and again in one universe it decays but in the other >> it has not, it survived for 2 full seconds. So there will be a version of >> me that observes this atom, which has a one second half-life, surviving for >> 3 seconds, and 4 seconds, and 5 years, and 6 centuries, and you name it. * > > > *> And in fact for every value of t>0 in R.* > *Yep.* * >**Another fanciful result of MWI. * > *What I have described in the above that was, as you say, obtained as a result of MWI, is called the "Quantum Zeno Effect" and it is NOT fanciful, in 1990 it was CONFIRMED EXPERIMENTALLY to exist. * *Quantum Zeno effect* <https://web.archive.org/web/20040720153510/http://www.boulder.nist.gov/timefreq/general/pdf/858.pdf> *Some people claim that Many Worlds is not scientific because it is not falsifiable, but if the above lab experiment had turned out differently and it had found no evidence of the Quantum Zeno Effect then that would have proven that Many Worlds was wrong. But when I say it's not fanciful that it's possible to delay the decay of a radioactive atom arbitrarily longer than its half-life, that doesn't mean it's practical as I made clear in my original post: * *"By utilizing a series of increasingly complex and difficult procedures it is possible for the lab (and you) to be in the universe that contains labs and versions of you that see the atom surviving for an arbitrarily long length of time. But the longer the time past its half-life the more splits are involved, and the more difficult the experiment becomes. **Soon it becomes ridiculously impractical to go further, but it's not impossible." * *> And all just to avoid dealing with a definite result.* > *Definite result? All radioactive atoms seem to have a definite half-life that you can look up in any physics textbook, however that textbook is making the implicit assumption that you are not observing those atoms very very carefully; and normally that would be a reasonable assumption to make, but not if you are a very skilled experimenter trying to find out more about the nature of quantum reality. * *John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>* 5d5 > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3En%2BUVfpQGuDa9rmiZSLfLFOqfULtVSoEo7ooNL2R%2BPQ%40mail.gmail.com.
