18 April 2008

Quantum Conworlds

My approach to fiction is one inspired by (I am not arrogant enough to say 'based upon') the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Many people misinterpret the M.W.I. to mean that every imaginable universe must exist, while what it truly suggests is that every possible universe must exist -- and it is especially important to remember that this only applies at the quantum level. Of course, larger scales are ultimately determined by the smaller scales, but due to the degree of quantum difference necessary to produce mundane macro-world difference, most universes would differ from each other from our perspective almost not at all.

However, there are circumstances in which the quantum can have a very immediate effect on the macro world, and it is these differences that would immediately stand out to us. For instance, our thoughts depend on mechanisms at or very close to the quantum level, to such an extent that actions such as lifting your arm, which is a very macro action indeed, are very rapidly expanded from almost ridiculously smaller neurological events at the quantum level. That is, a single neuron firing rather few ions and electrons produces quite a large effect very quickly, and the level of observational indeterminacy here suggests that for every thought a brain produces, there is a universe in which the thought is different. Just as there is a universe in which one of the photons currently entering your left eye takes a slightly different course, so, too, is there a universe in which you have already stopped reading this.

How this relates to my fiction is that I try my best to not write anything impossible. I try to derive it all from imagining quantum differences, which includes thought (thus choice) as well as natural law.

Natural law, of course, is where this all becomes very difficult. We cannot, for instance, with much confidence, suggest that a universe must exist in which the Milky Way has already collided with Andromeda, as there may not have ever been a point in time at which the event determining the speed of this process was indeterminate -- or it may be dependant upon one or many event(s) which, if different in any way, would have destroyed the possibility of the two galaxies existing at all. On a smaller scale, it is difficult to suggest that there is a universe in which the Titanic struck the iceberg yet failed to sink (because, say, metals are harder in this other universe), only that there is a universe in which someone made a choice which made it possible for the ship to change its course early enough to avoid the iceberg, or that a very early quantum-level difference in the universe (perhaps necessarily in the Big Bang) allowed the climate to be warm enough that the iceberg was not there.

Needless to say, thought/choice is the easiest to justify, so most of the fiction is derived from that, as it is immediate in comparison to something that has to be traced back billions of years, which I also have a little bit of.

I recognise that most readers will/do/can not distinguish between what quantum mechanics allows to be possible and what it does not -- neither do I, in comparison to even a first-year student in the subject -- but this method keeps me interested and motivated.

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