[tsimionescu]

But this doesn't answer the question. If you claim that all of these possible observers 'exist', how does this have a physical meaning?

This is what I never understood about MWI, in what physical sense can the many worlds be said to exist? Where are they in our universe? What direction would we have to travel to find them? Do they exert gravity on us? If not, then how can we claim that they exist in a physical sense?

[Enginerrrd]

No you're thinking of MWI all wrong. Your conception of the universe you exist in as being non-quantum is fundamentally flawed. The universe with the superposition of all the possible observers exists more purely in hilbert space. Sean Carroll has even started to put together a model for how spacetime could emerge from that hilbert space.

So the universes all exist in the same place, since they are the same universe. Your idea of what an observation is, is just an eigenvalue of that corresponding operator.

[AgentME]

An object that moves far enough away from us is said to leave the observable universe, because with the continual expansion of space, it or anything it interacts with would have to travel faster than light back toward us in order to have any effect on us. Should we say that objects that leave the observable universe continue to exist? Should we amend our theories to include a new fall-off effect separate from gravity that says things stop existing when they exit our observable universe?

[akvadrako]

Existence isn't based on something affecting our world, obviously - that's just absurdly self-centered.

But anyway, the other worlds do effect our world - that's why we get interference patterns in double slit experiments.

[ClumsyPilot]

> "Existence isn't based on something affecting our world, obviously - that's just absurdly self-centered."

This is very unfair. This is a niche field with contested interpretations, don't make people feel stupid for asking fair questions.

It's obvious what the other person meant: what does 'our world' and 'other worlds' mean, and how do you know it's not just a figment of your imagination, as a scientific theory must be falsifiable -> i.e. measurable and provable / disprovable somehow.

You should at least point people to reading material before making fun of them.

[akvadrako]

I wasn’t making fun of anyone but your “obvious“ reading seems wrong.

I’m pretty sure he suggested that something only exists physically if it has some measurable effect on us.

[tsimionescu]

In physical terms, we do generally define existence that way - for example, we say that time and space didn't exist 'before' the big bang, because there was nothing that could have a position or change. I was thinking of the same notion of existence and how it can be applied to MWI - essentially existence in the physical sense must mean that something is measurable, that it has some effect on the world (perhaps in the past or in the future).

[akvadrako]

I don't think we do define existence that way. Say you and your friend both go to opposite ends of the visible universe; due to inflation you'll never be able to communicate again.

I suspect most people would say their friend continues to exist. This is very analogous to the many worlds situation.

[tsimionescu]

Thinking about the extreme distances and time spans that entails makes it difficult, and of course relativity has its own "unreasonable" results. Still, they do exist in your past, and they also can assign coordinates in space-time to your current position, even though they are outside your light-cone. On the other hand, you can't meaningfully speak of them existing "now" in relativity, as there is no consistent definition of what "now" means for observers that are space-like separated.

I guess the best answers about MWI is that the other versions of these particles continue to exist at different coordinates in Hilbert space, and that they do interact with each other in observable ways, such as the interference patterns in double-slit experiments.

[ben_w]

Speaking as a barely informed enthusiast, we can say they exist in the Occam’s Razor sense that the maths is much less complicated when we assume they do.

I think there’s also an experimental setup, whose name I forget, but which is essentially nested Schrödinger's cat setups: Alice is in a box, Bob is in a box which contains Alice’s box, Carol is outside; Alice goes into superposition of |Alice+> and |Alice->, Bob opens the box and Carol can now demonstrate that Bob is in a superposition of |observing Alice+> and |observing Alice-> instead of the combination of 100%|observing> and a superposition of |Alice+> and |Alice->.

[tsimionescu]

The maths is the same whether we interpret it as many worlds, wave function collapse, and others.

[ben_w]

Well of course. It they were different — or at least if they gave different conclusions — we could rule some of them out.

[nabla9]

Different worlds don't exist in extra space or dimension. They are orthogonal quantum states of the whole universe.