9 Things To Say About Quantum Physics That Will Make You Sound Clever At Parties
9. "Well, Actually, Parallel Universes Could Be Possible"
The subject of parallel universes comes up surprisingly often in conversations with drunk people, but if you really want to put your foot down as the intellectual heavyweight for the group, then steer the conversation away from the wishy-washy ideas of "ooh, maybe there's another group like us in a parallel universe, but we've all got four arms" and bring it into the world of quantum physics.
It'll make you look really smart.
Basically, the idea in quantum physics that particles exist in an infinite amount of states until you observe them (at which point their state becomes known), is just a bit too much for some scientists.
This distilling of potential states into an actual physical reality by simply observing it is what quantum physicists who ascribe to the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics know as a "wave function collapse".
The Many Worlds Interpretation is a rejection of this (as there are a lot of physicists out there who are uncomfortable with the idea of wave function collapse) and suggests that the wave function does not collapse so much as branch off into many different outcomes - parallel worlds, in other words.
Generally speaking, this is used in the context of quantum particles doing quantum things on a quantum level and is used to get around the disturbing fact that all matter can only be described in terms of probability rather than certainty, but there is no reason why you couldn't discuss the possibility that it is working on a more human level.
Basically, every event causes an infinite amount of other events to branch off from it, but you only experience one timeline. So, instead of reading this article, you could be aboard the first manned mission to Mars, or cooking yourself a delicious fillet steak, or rummaging through the bins outside Tesco for your dinner. In the Many Worlds Interpretation, the possibilities are quite literally endless.