alt Hacker NewsWhat a timely article and comment. I've been watching a lecture series over the last few days about quantum mechanics and the many worlds interpretation. And I have questions.
I may have missed it or didn't understand it when I heard it explained. What underpins the notion that when a particle transitions from a superposed to defined state, the other basis states continue to exist? If they have to continue to exist, then okay many worlds, but why do we think (or know?) they must continue to exist?
Because quantum mechanics describes the universe with a wave function, which evolves according to the schroedinger equation.
In it, there is no notion of collapse. The only thing that makes sense is saying the observer becomes entangled with the measurement.
So if you only look at the Schrödinger equation, this is the only conclusion.
Wave function collapse is something which is simply added ad-hoc to describe our observation, not something which is actually defined in QM