Page 32 (1/2)

It’s an ingenious way of linking an outcome in the cla.s.sical world, our world, to a quantum-level event.

The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics suggests a crazy thing: before the box is opened, before observation occurs, the atom exists in superposition—an undetermined state of both decaying and not decaying. Which means, in turn, that the cat is both alive and dead.

And only when the box is opened, and an observation made, does the wave function collapse into one of two states.

In other words, we only see one of the possible outcomes.

For instance, a dead cat.

And that becomes our reality.

But then things get really weird.

Is there another world, just as real as the one we know, where we opened the box and found a purring, living cat instead?

The Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics says yes.

That when we open the box, there’s a branch.

One universe where we discover a dead cat.

One where we discover a live one.

And it’s the act of our observing the cat that kills it—or lets it live.

And then it gets mind-f.u.c.kingly weird.

Because those kinds of observations happen all the time.

So if the world really splits whenever something is observed, that means there’s an unimaginably ma.s.sive, infinite number of universes—a multiverse—where everything that can happen will happen.

My concept for my tiny cube was to create an environment protected from observation and external stimuli so my macroscopic object—an aluminum nitride disc measuring 40 µm in length and consisting of around a trillion atoms—could be free to exist in that undetermined cat state and not decohere due to interactions with its environment.

I never cracked that problem before my funding evaporated, but apparently some other version of me did. And then scaled the entire concept up to an inconceivable level. Because if what Leighton is saying is true, this box does something that, according to everything I know about physics, is impossible.

I feel shamed, like I lost a race to a better opponent. A man of epic vision built this box.

A smarter, better me.

I look at Leighton.

“Does it work?”

He says, “The fact that you’re standing here beside me would appear to suggest that it does.”

“I don’t get it. If you wanted to put a particle in a quantum state in a lab, you’d create a deprivation chamber. Remove all light, suck out the air, turn down the temperature to a fraction of a degree above absolute zero. It would kill a human being. And the larger you go, the more fragile it all becomes. Even though we’re underground, there are all sorts of particles—neutrinos, cosmic rays—pa.s.sing through that cube that could disturb a quantum state. The challenge seems insurmountable.”

“I don’t know what to tell you….You surmounted it.”

“How?”

Leighton smiles. “Look, it made sense when you explained it to me, but I can’t exactly explain it back. You should read your notes. What I can tell you is that box creates and sustains an environment where everyday objects can exist in a quantum superposition.”

“Including us?”

“Including us.”

Okay.

Though everything I know tells me it’s impossible, I apparently figured out a way to create a fertile quantum environment at the macro scale, perhaps utilizing the magnetic field to couple objects on the inside to the atomic-scale quantum system.

But what about the occupant inside the box?

Occupants are observers too.

We live in a state of decoherence, in one reality, because we’re constantly observing our environment and collapsing our own wave function.