My love of the work of musician Mark Oliver Everett (known to his friends as ‘E’) has recently opened me up to the work of his father, the physicist Hugh Everett III.
Hugh, it seems, proposed the ‘many worlds’ theory that divided Schrodinger’s Cat into two, rendering him both alive and dead at the same time.
As I understand it, electrons and photons are capable of being in several places at once until they ‘decide’ where they are going to be. Each of those decisions exists somewhere, in its own time line and its own universe. All possibilities are created and realised, splitting from one another and going their separate ways towards the next set of possibilities. There must be billions and billions of these universes.
If this is all true, then I’m in the powerful position of creating a universe every time I make a decision – a series of universes probably, but I’m simplifying it for the sake of my own sanity. Right now I’m creating a universe in which this article is being written. Somewhere, there’s another universe in which I’m getting on with some work and somewhere else there’s yet another universe in which I’ve taken off my trousers and climbed out of the window.
In fact, every time I decide to do something, I create a universe in which to do it. Therefore every time I decide not to do something, another version of me creates a universe in which to go ahead and do it anyway. There must be some fun universes out there, where versions of me are getting up to some crazy antics that, in this universe, were left behind. Neglected decisions. Risks taken, girls kissed, windows climbed out of… if I stop to think about it, I could become really jealous of myselves.
So, what’s next for me then? I can’t stop these universes from being created and yet it often feels like I’m in the boring, safe one, in which I haven’t – for example – climbed out of the window. An interesting question now arises each time I make a choice about something: which universe do I want to inhabit next? When put like that, the possibilities really do seem endless. I’m going to resolve to create a really interesting and surprising universe today – that’s a day well spent, if ever there was one. Yes, I’ll create the best universe there ever was.
How fitting that at this point I should notice the sign saying ‘PLEASE DO NOT OPEN THIS WINDOW. THANK YOU’.
