Convergence Excerpt 1

This is a quick chapter from a story I'm writing. The point of this chapter is to explain a scientific phenomenon that plays heavily in the rest of the story. These characters will likely not be found anywhere else in the story.

Patrick Quinn was chewing up the classroom. He was absolutely feeling it. He always felt this way while teaching Special Subjects in Science at the Metropolitan Community College of Omaha, Nebraska. This course was a survey of what Patrick liked to call physics’ greatest hits. He loved it, even if he barely grasped certain aspects of physics himself. Tonight was relatively special, am I right folks? he thought. Then, as if someone had actually heard the joke, he explained, special relativity, relatively special. Bada bing!

The topic was the many worlds, many minds interpretations of quantum mechanics. Too bad there were only fourteen students in attendance. Too bad they had all tuned out already. Who was he kidding, they had never tuned in. In fact, all but two of them had failed the last exam, causing him to have to apply a very generous bell curve.

He looked into their glazed-over expressions, am I the only one who gets to hear this? he thought. He walked around the first row of narrow tables, slid one of the chairs over and gently rested his hindquarters on the edge of the table that, in a full class, would have been occupied as the front and center seat. That table—all of the classroom tables at MCC, really—was bowed in the middle. The two inverted T-shaped legs had been attached too far apart, and Patrick knew that if he ever sat in the middle of the table the bowing of the table under his girth, might be dangerous to his reputation. So he sat on the left edge of the table, the left edge of the table would hold him.

“The many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics postulates that there are large numbers of universes, perhaps an infinite number of universes.”

Patrick continued, “Because any type of process that in its basic state is an either/or scenario, somewhere in the universe both outcomes exist.” What he had just said was very difficult, and he had not stated it as clearly as he had wanted to. He waited for questions. There were no questions. So, he continued.

“For example, let’s say you’ve rigged some radio-active material to trigger a pistol to fire when the material decays. The radio-active material decays at the rate of about once every minute or so—causing your pistol to fire about once every minute or so. You stand in front of the pistol for one minute. What are the probable outcomes?” He wanted an answer from someone. “Jenna?” She had earned a 62 percent on the exam, one of the passers.

“Huh?” Jenna’s reply was disappointing.

“Anyone?” Patrick really wanted someone to make the connection without spoon-feeding it to them.

“You either live or you die,” Mark, 34 percent, called out from the back row.

“That’s right. Good.” Patrick paused to give Mark some positive reinforcement, One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, moving on. “According to the many worlds interpretation, both of those outcomes are recorded some how or—perhaps more accurately—somewhere in another universe.”

Jim, 12 percent, likely the dumbest of the lot tentatively raised his hand. Patrick tried to hide his surprise as he called on the lanky, unshaven young man, “Jim?”

“Yeah, um, so if I have, like, a yes or no question, then I can make both decisions?”

“You’re on the right track. What you have just described is, more or less, the many minds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Of course, in our part of the universe, the one that we can observe, you would make only one decision, but somewhere,” Patrick made a big hand gesture to indicate the vastness of multiple universes, “there is a version of you that would choose the opposite.”

Jenna, feeling her dominance of the curve slipping, jumped in, “So, let’s say I had a beautiful birthday cake, and I wanted to both eat it and keep it for display. The many worlds interpretation would allow me to have my cake and eat it too?”

“Funny.” Patrick was enjoying having others talk in the usually silent class, so he avoided punishing Jenna for her flippancy. “Generally, we think of these things more on the molecular level. But, I suppose that is a possibility.”

Jim’s hand again, a new record, Patrick thought.

“So, why can’t the universe record both decisions so we can see them?”

“Good question.” It actually was. “The reason for that is because we can’t observe from outside of our universe, to our observation, a wave function . . .”

Jesse, 39 percent, broke in, “can you define wave function?”

“Sure,” Patrick lied, “the wave function is a term used to describe the limitless possibilities of outcomes before an actual outcome becomes tangible.” Not bad, he thought to himself, for a definition pulled out of thin air. It might be close.

Patrick continued, “Because we can’t observe from outside of our universe, to our observation, the wave function collapses immediately when one of the possibilities actually happens. In other words, once one of the possible outcomes is realized all other outcomes disappear, or collapse, at least in our observable universe.”

“But what happens if the wave particle doesn’t collapse immediately?” Mark was feeling it too.

“The wave function, you mean.”

“Yeah, what happens if the wave function takes a minute or two to collapse? Is that possible?”

“Hmm, interesting idea.” This phrase has been used by many instructors throughout the history of academia to mean one of the following things: no, you are wrong, or you are an idiot.

“Let’s say,” Jim spoke again, “that a person has a way hard decision to make, like, so hard that he can’t eat or sleep or, you know, poop or whatever.” Patrick bit his lip, he wanted to laugh at the idea of a many poops interpretation of quantum mechanics, but Jim seemed quite serious, so he thought better of it. “Maybe, because humans are so, you know, complicated, could the wave particle, I mean, function maybe take some time to collapse? You know, in that case?”

Patrick stood, giving much relief to the bowed table’s left leg. He wanted to be careful in how he approached his answer, because he did not want to squelch the sprouting inquiry of these, what was the word? Oh yes, dumb students. “Um. That is an interesting idea, but I think it takes the interpretation a little too far. I am not saying it is beyond possibility, but I don’t know that it happens. The reason I can say that is because we have never observed it happening. We always, to my knowledge, can have only one outcome in that scenario, at least, in our observable universe.”

“That sucks,” Jim was truly earning his participation points tonight, another record, “’cause, I have a really hard decision to make, and I wouldn’t mind going both ways.”

“Well, ok.” Patrick was going to go there. He felt like he shouldn’t, but he was going to, “let’s imagine, just for the sake of argument, that your description of the many worlds, many minds interpretations actually works that way. How would it manifest itself?”

“He’d be, like, two people,” chimed Stacy, 45 percent.

“Both persons would be him,” Patrick pointed at Jim, “but they would also be completely separate, right?”

“Yep,” three students answered in chorus, 47, 44, and 42 percent, respectively.

“Ok. So, theoretically, these two new people could go about their lives separately and, in effect, would no longer be the same person. They would share DNA, family, name, social security numbers, memories up to the point of separation, and just about everything else, but they would be separate individuals.”

“Sounds like cloning to me. I bet my church is against you not choosing one or the other.” Patrick let himself laugh at Sam’s joke a little too hard probably, considering that Sam had scored a 34 percent on the exam.

“But it’s not not choosing, you know, it’s choosing both,” Jim continued, “and it would be cool to kind of monitor it and see which one worked out best and then after you’ve figured it out the wave function could collapse.”

“What would that wave function collapse look like?”

“I don’t know, just slap back together or something.”

Patrick was slightly veering off topic, but this line of thought was interesting to him, “But what if you can’t tell which decision ends up being the better one, or what if your two halves lose contact with each other?”

“I guess you just let them live their lives then.”

“Interesting, interesting theory, you might just be a physicist yet. Unfortunately, the wave function does collapse immediately.”

“Couldn’t it just give me one year? One year is more or less immediately compared to the age of the universe, right?”

“Yeah, I suppose it is. A hundred and fifty years is more or less immediate. Of course a hundred and fifty years would mean that the ‘slapping back together,’” Patrick used finger quotes to highlight Jim’s terms, “would happen four generations later. How exactly would that work?” No one had an answer for that question. “Good luck with it, Jim. Let me know if it works for you.”
Patrick then segued back into his lecture notes about the interpretation not meeting important requirements of Occam’s razor, and sullenly watched as his students segued back into their glazed-over expressions.

What Patrick, Jim, Jenna, Mark, and the rest would never know is that this class discussion had accurately described an actual and observable phenomenon that had taken place in Scotland, earlier that week. Unfortunately, none of the MCC students or staff knew, or had even ever heard of either of the Richard Murdocks—or is it Richards Murdock—that were now dealing with the unusual, but natural “slapping back together” of a collapsing wave function.

If they had known one of the two Richards, they might have been able to help explain that four generations ago one monumental decision had caused two outcomes that had sent one man on two paths simultaneously.