Many-worlds interpretation: Difference between revisions

Content deleted Content added
Many-worlds and alternate histories in literature: Actual quote from Deutsch includes "highly".
Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit Advanced mobile edit
Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit Advanced mobile edit
Line 35:
Everett had referred to the combined observer–object system as split by an observation, each split corresponding to the different or multiple possible outcomes of an observation. These splits generate a branching tree, where each branch is a set of all the states relative to each other. [[Bryce DeWitt]] popularized Everett's work with a series of publications calling it the Many Worlds Interpretation. Focusing on the splitting process, DeWitt introduced the term "world" to describe a single branch of that tree, which is a consistent history. All observations or measurements within any branch are consistent with each other.<ref name=everett56/><ref name=dewitt73/>
 
Since many observation-like events have happened and are constantly happening, there are an enormous and growing number of simultaneously existing states or "worlds".{{efn|"every quantum transition taking place on every star, in every galaxy, in every remote corner of the universe is splitting our local world on earth into myriads of copies of itself."<ref name=dewitt71/> DeWitt later softened this extreme view, viewing splitting as decoherence driven and local, in line with most other modern commentators.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781400842742/html |title=The Everett Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: Collected Works 1955-1980 with Commentary |date=2012-05-20 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-1-4008-4274-2 |editor-last=Barrett |editor-first=Jeffrey A. |doi=10.1515/9781400842742 |quote=DeWitt eventually softened his view on the necessity of a splitting universe occurring with every atomic interaction when he broadly embraced the decoherence approaches proposed by Dieter Zeh, Wojciech Zurek, James B. Hartle, Murray Gell-Mann, and others beginning around 1970. |editor-last2=Byrne |editor-first2=Peter}} </ref>}}
 
===Properties===