"Burstein, Michael A - Broken Symmetry" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burstein Michael A)

program once. One model of rocket kept failing on the launchpad until someone
from Washington told the chief engineer that it simply had to work the next time
they launched it. The engineer went out to the rocket and ordered it to work.
And it did." Ray leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes for a moment. "You
had something you wanted to talk to me about?" he finally asked.
"Oh! As a matter of fact, I do." She smiled. "And come to think of it, I do need
another run of the accelerator to test my idea."
"Which is?" Ray prompted.
"Ah, yes. My idea. Ray, I know what I'm about to propose will sound even more
far-fetched than the idea of the beams just disappearing, but I think I know
where they're going. And, more than that, I think I can predict when they'll
vanish." She looked around for a moment, flustered. "I left my calculations in
my office."
"We'll get them later. What's the idea?"
Kristin took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Do you recall Hugh Everett's
many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics?"
Ray looked surprised. "Yes, I do. Whenever a decision has to be made, the
universe splits into two separate universes. Avoids the thorny problem of the
observer's role, even if it's not as elegant. Although I tend to feel that
Everett's interpretation was rendered moot by John Cramer and Shu-Yuan Chu, in
their transactional interpretation."
"Moot doesn't mean invalid. Everett's interpretation could still be considered a
valid one."
"Oh, sure," Ray said, smiling, "assuming you could prove it over all others.
People have been trying to assert one view of quantum mechanics over all others
since the Copenhagen interpretation. But that's the one people seem to accept
the most."
"Yeah. Well. The thing is, I've always been uncomfortable with that one. I mean,
it's one thing to say that, for a subatomic particle we can't see with the naked
eye anyway, its spin is undetermined until an observer looks at it and it
chooses to be either spin up or spin down."
Ray nodded. "Wavefunction collapse."
"Yes. But it's quite another thing on a macroscopic scale. Look at SchrЪdinger's
cat. Does it really make sense to say that cat isn't alive or dead until you
open the box? I think Everett's interpretation works a lot better. SchrЪdinger's
cat ends up alive in one universe and dead in another."
"So what does Hugh Everett's thesis have to do with the SSC?"
Kristin laughed. "Sounds like a riddle. Well, it's like this. I've always been
into studying the different interpretations of quantum mechanics, ever since
that first course I took with Doug Strauss. And I must admit that I've always
been fond of Everett's idea -- can't you imagine what it would be like if every
possible universe that ever could have been was really out there, somewhere?"
She waved her hands in the air as if to demonstrate.
Ray shook his head. "I've tried to stay firmly planted in this universe."
"Your loss. Anyway, it always bothered me that Everett's interpretation allowed
for parallel universes, but ones that were inaccessible from ours. I mean,
what's the point of saying an alternate universe exists if you can't get to it?
It might as well not exist."
"My point exactly."
"Then something occured to me. I read Everett's original Princeton thesis, and