Shrödinger’s Americas
Quantum physics allows for multiple simultaneous realities. In the United States, very different quantum futures could yet come to pass. Here are some of them, informed by history, science and literature.
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Erwin Schrödinger was riffing with fellow Austrian Nobel laureate Albert Einstein in 1935, poking holes at Niels Bohr’s theories (he’s the guy who invented quantum physics — yet another Nobel winner). This was equivalent to watching Olympian nerd-gods fight. Anyhow, Schrödinger came up with this idea about superimposition. In the simplest terms, a cat is placed in a sealed box with something that can kill it (radioactive atoms: woohoo!); and until someone opens the box to see whether or not the cat is alive, it remains, for the time being, both dead and alive.
That is, we need to hold both possibilities in our heads at the same time — in which case, they simultaneously exist — because we don’t know which it is; and from each potential reality, an entire different set — a universe — of interrelationships (and outcomes) arises.
Some of these outcomes impact the observers greatly, because their actions will flow as a result of one perceived ‘reality’ — a potentiality that may or may not be…
