The Eels Multiverse
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From the "Guardian":http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/nov/26/usnews.sciencenews
Everett (second from right) with Niels Bohr (center)
The only known recordings of a brilliant physicist who predicted the existence of parallel universes have been found in the basement of his rock star son's flat.The tapes document how Hugh Everett, a quantum physicist, developed his idea at the age of 24, while a graduate student at Princeton University in 1957. Everett's theory gave rise to the concept of a multitude of universes, or a "multiverse", where all life's possibilities play out. ...The recordings are believed to have been made in 1977, after a physics conference at which Everett's parallel worlds theory was resurrected after being shunned for two decades. The tapes were thought lost after his death at the age of 51 in 1982.They were found during the making of a TV documentary in which Mark Everett, the physicist's son and lead singer of the US band Eels, attempts to understand the work that consumed his father. The programme, Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives, airs on BBC4 this evening.The tapes record a conversation between Everett and Charles Misner, a physics professor at the University of Maryland. In the background, Mark can be heard playing the drums....In the 50s, the prevailing view, and one championed by Bohr, was that weird quantum behaviour vanishes as soon as the object is measured.But Everett thought differently. His calculations showed that whenever quantum mechanics said a particle was in two places at once, the universe divides. In one universe the particle appears in one place, while in a second it appears in the other. The implications were apparently so alarmingly counter-intuitive that Everett's ideas were largely ignored, notably by Bohr.Watching the movieThe world's gonna endAnd there aint no place forA boy and his friends to goQuantum physics and a tune. Good way to start the morning, I think.
Everett (second from right) with Niels Bohr (center)
The only known recordings of a brilliant physicist who predicted the existence of parallel universes have been found in the basement of his rock star son's flat.The tapes document how Hugh Everett, a quantum physicist, developed his idea at the age of 24, while a graduate student at Princeton University in 1957. Everett's theory gave rise to the concept of a multitude of universes, or a "multiverse", where all life's possibilities play out. ...The recordings are believed to have been made in 1977, after a physics conference at which Everett's parallel worlds theory was resurrected after being shunned for two decades. The tapes were thought lost after his death at the age of 51 in 1982.They were found during the making of a TV documentary in which Mark Everett, the physicist's son and lead singer of the US band Eels, attempts to understand the work that consumed his father. The programme, Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives, airs on BBC4 this evening.The tapes record a conversation between Everett and Charles Misner, a physics professor at the University of Maryland. In the background, Mark can be heard playing the drums....In the 50s, the prevailing view, and one championed by Bohr, was that weird quantum behaviour vanishes as soon as the object is measured.But Everett thought differently. His calculations showed that whenever quantum mechanics said a particle was in two places at once, the universe divides. In one universe the particle appears in one place, while in a second it appears in the other. The implications were apparently so alarmingly counter-intuitive that Everett's ideas were largely ignored, notably by Bohr.Watching the movieThe world's gonna endAnd there aint no place forA boy and his friends to goQuantum physics and a tune. Good way to start the morning, I think.
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