Hugh Everett III (November 11, 1930 – July 19, 1982) was an American physicist who first proposed the 'Many World Theory' of quantum physics, which he termed his "relative state" formulation.
The idea that infinite worlds existed is to be found in the philosophy of Ancient Greek Atomism, which proposed that infinite parallel worlds arose from the collision of atoms.
In the third century B.C. the philosopher Chrysippus suggested that the world eternally expired and regenerated, effectively suggesting the existence of multiple universes across time.
Fakhr al-Din al-Razi - an Arab philosopher of the Islamic Golden Age, explored the probable existence of the 'multiverse', based on general principles of the Quran which stated that Allah was 'Lord of the Worlds'.
Born in 1930, Everett was born and raised in the Washington, D.C. area.
Everett's parents separated when he was young.
Hugh lived in Washington until he was 8 years old, when his family moved to the Washington suburb of Bethesda, Maryland, then still a relatively small city.
Except for three years as a graduate student at Princeton University, he spent all of his life in and around Washington, DC. (Washington and its Virginia and Maryland suburbs have by now merged into a single urban complex, its parts linked by the Metro system.)
Initially raised by his mother (Katherine Lucille Everett née Kennedy), he was raised by his father (Hugh Everett Jr.), and stepmother (Sarah Everett née Thrift) from the age of seven.
Everett won a half scholarship to St John's College, a private military high school in Washington DC.
From there he moved to the nearby Catholic University of America to study chemical engineering as an undergraduate.
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| L Ron Hubbard |
While there he read about 'Dianetics' (by Ron Hubbard) in 'Astounding Science Fiction'.
Although he never exhibited any interest in 'Scientology' (as 'Dianetics' became), he did retain a distrust of conventional medicine throughout his life.
Although he never exhibited any interest in 'Scientology' (as 'Dianetics' became), he did retain a distrust of conventional medicine throughout his life.
Lafayette Ronald Hubbard - March 13, 1911 – January 24, 1986), often referred to by his initials LRH, was an American author, and the founder of Scientology. After establishing a career as a writer of science fiction and fantasy stories, in 1950 he published a 'branch of self-help psychology' called 'Dianetics'. Hubbard subsequently developed his ideas into a new movement that he called Scientology. Hubbard was cited by Smithsonian magazine as one of the 100 most significant Americans of all time.
During World War II his father was away fighting in Europe as a lieutenant colonel on the general staff.
After World War II, Everett's father was stationed in West Germany, and Hugh joined him, during 1949, taking a year out from his undergraduate studies.
Father and son were both keen photographers, and took hundreds of pictures of West Germany being rebuilt.
Reflecting their technical interests, the pictures were 'almost devoid of people'.
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| Catholic University of America |
Everett then received a National Science Foundation fellowship that allowed him to attend Princeton University for graduate studies.
He started his studies at Princeton in the Mathematics Department working on the then-new field of 'game theory' under Albert W. Tucker, but slowly drifted into physics.
In 1953 he started taking his first physics courses, notably 'Introductory Quantum Mechanics' with Robert Dicke.
During 1954, he attended 'Methods of Mathematical Physics' with Eugene Wigner, although he remained active with mathematics, and presented a paper on military game theory in December.
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| John Archibald Wheeler |
He passed his general examinations in the spring of 1955, thereby gaining his Master's degree, and then started work on his dissertation that would (much) later make him famous.
He switched thesis adviser to John Archibald Wheeler some time in 1955, wrote a couple of short papers on quantum theory, and completed his long paper, 'Wave Mechanics Without Probability' in April 1956.
It was during this time that he met Nancy Gore, who typed up his 'Wave Mechanics Without Probability' paper.
Everett married Nancy Gore, the next year.
The long paper was later re-titled as 'The Theory of the Universal Wave Function'.
Upon graduation in September 1956, Everett was invited to join the Pentagon's newly-forming 'Weapons Systems Evaluation Group' (WSEG), managed by the 'Institute for Defense Analyses'.
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| The Pentagon - Washington DC - USA |
There he acquired a familiarity with, and a life-long love for, computer modelling.
When he directed the department of physical and mathematical sciences of WSEG, beginning in 1957, he gained a reputation as an advocate of ever more powerful computers, which took up ever more space.
IDA had offices in Alexandria, in the so-called "Paperclip" building.
Until August 1957, Everett and his new wife lived in nearby Arlington, where the Pentagon is located.
For a little while in the spring of 1957 Everett had to tear himself away from problems of national security in order to complete his academic career.
In 1957, he became director of the WSEG's 'Department of Physical and Mathematical Sciences'.
After a brief intermission to defend his thesis on quantum theory at Princeton, Everett returned to WSEG and recommenced his research, much of which, but by no means all, remains classified.
He worked on various studies of the 'Minuteman' missile project, which was then starting, as well as the influential study 'The Distribution and Effects of Fallout in Large Nuclear Weapon Campaigns'.
Around this time Everett wrote arguably the first ever serious report on just how devastating a nuclear war would be for the US.
It helped devise the concept of 'Mutually Assured Destruction' (MAD).
This is the concept appropriately summed up by its acronym - in that it would be insane to start a nuclear war - but MAD might actually have just prevented the cold war from overheating.
'MAD' might have, in a major, way contributed to the extra caution that might explain why we’re still here, and that Everett’s work helped drive home the full horror of war, and this reduced the fraction of the multiverse that saw global nuclear war.
Max Tegmark, of the 'Massachusetts Institute of Technology', has said that Everett’s work is as important as Einstein’s work on relativity.
The leading physicists of the Everett’s day, however, and in particular Niels Bohr, one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, couldn't accept his work.
They couldn't cope with the idea that every decision that we make creates new universes, one for all possible outcomes.
Subsequently, Everett had to publish a watered-down version of his idea.
Thoroughly disgruntled, he left physics.
In 1973 Everett left Lambda to establish 'DBS Corporation' in Arlington, Virginia, a computer consulting company.
Much of their work seems to have concerned statistical analysis.
He seems to have enjoyed programming, and spent the rest of his life working at DBS.
He also established the 'Monowave Corporation' with several DBS colleagues, and family friends.
Fifty years ago Hugh Everett devised the 'many-world's interpretation of quantum mechanics, in which quantum effects spawn countless branches of the universe with different events occurring in each.
Nevertheless, most physicists of the time dismissed it, and he had to abridge his Ph.D. thesis on the topic to make it seem less controversial.
Hugh Everett III was a brilliant mathematician, and an iconoclastic quantum theorist who introduced a new conception of reality to physics.
To science-fiction aficionados, he remains a folk hero: the man who invented a quantum theory of multiple universes.
At least that is how his history played out in your universe.
Everett’s revolutionary analysis broke apart a theoretical logjam in interpreting the 'how' of quantum mechanics.
Although the 'Many World Theory' is by no means universally accepted even today, his methods in devising the theory presaged the concept of 'quantum de-coherence' - a modern explanation of why the probabilistic weirdness of quantum mechanics resolves itself into the concrete world of our experience.
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| Charles Misner |
Everett’s scientific journey began one night in 1954, he recounted two decades later.
He, and his Princeton classmate Charles Misner, and a visitor named Aage Petersen (then an assistant to Niels Bohr) were thinking up 'ridiculous things about the implications of quantum mechanics.'
During this session Everett had the basic idea behind the 'Many World Theory', and in the weeks that followed he began developing it into a dissertation.
The core of the idea was to interpret what the equations of quantum mechanics represent in the real world by having the mathematics of the theory itself show the way instead of by appending interpretational hypotheses to the maths.
In this way, the young man challenged the physics establishment of the day to reconsider its foundational notion of what constitutes physical reality.
In pursuing this endeavour, Everett boldly tackled the notorious measurement problem in quantum mechanics, which had bedevilled physicists since the 1920s.
In a nutshell, the problem arises from a contradiction between how elementary particles (such as electrons and photons) interact at the 'microscopic', quantum level of reality, and what happens when the particles are measured from the 'macroscopic', classical level.
In the quantum world, an elementary particle, or a collection of such particles, can exist in a superposition of two or more possible states of being.
An electron, for example, can be in a 'superposition' of different locations, velocities and orientations of its spin.
Yet any time scientists measure one of these properties with precision, they see a definite result - just one of the elements of the superposition, not a combination of them.
Nor do we ever see 'macroscopic' objects in 'superpositions'.
The measurement problem boils down to this question: 'How and why does the unique world of our experience emerge from the multiplicities of alternatives available in the superposed quantum world ?'
The existence of multiple universes emerged as a consequence of his theory, not a predicate.
In a footnote in his thesis, Everett wrote: “From the viewpoint of the theory, all elements of a superposition (all ‘branches’) are ‘actual,’ none any more ‘real’ than the rest.”
Quantum physicists have used the 'Many World Theory' to reconcile an uncomfortable shortcoming of the 'Copenhagen Interpretation', namely the assertion that unobserved phenomenon can exist in dual states.
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| 'Schrodingers Kitten' - Peter Crawford reproduced with permission |
So.... instead of saying that Schrödinger's cat (kitten) is both alive and dead, it could be said would that the kitten has simply 'branched' off into two different worlds: one in which it is alive and one in which it is dead.
Some 60 years after its introduction, the 'Many World Theory' remains a controversial subject.
That said, the list of thinkers who describe themselves as supporters of the 'Many World Theory' is an impressive one, and includes such eminent thinkers as quantum physicist David Deutsch, theoretical computer scientist Scott Aaronson, and physicist Sean Carroll.
The 'Many World Theory' necessarily leads to some very bizarre possibilities.
Again, all branching off points are possible so long as they are 'probable', and do not violate the laws of physics.
It's important to note, however, that given the number of possible worlds, it's vastly more likely that you'll find yourself in the most probable and seemingly rational of worlds, because they appear with the highest degrees of frequency (and by several orders of magnitude).
But there will be some worlds in which highly improbable things must happen.
For example, if a person were to flip a die (singular for dice) with a six 1,000 times, there has to be a world in which that person flips a six 1,000 times in a row.
One significant aspect of the 'Many World Theory' is the concept of 'quantum immortality', which asserts that a version of us must always be around to observe the universe.
One significant fact is that in the 'Many World Theory' there are no 'time travel paradoxes'.
Put very simply - the presence of alternate worlds means there isn't a single time-line to screw up.
So... if a person were to go back in time, they would merely set off an entirely new web of time-lines. Subsequently, the 'Many World Theory' suggests that paradoxes - like going back in time to kill your grandfather - are nothing to worry about.
Not only that, everything that has already been done will happen again an infinite number of times (Nietzsche - Eternal Recurrence ?).
So like Bill Murray in 'Groundhog Day', the current day will be experienced by yourself over and over and over and over...
At the age of 51, Everett, who believed in quantum immortality, died suddenly of a heart attack at home
'THE STORY OF GRACCHUS' & 'CLUB JAGUAR'
The 'Story of Gracchus', while inevitably, (according to Everett), being one of his 'may worlds', is probably close to the 'world' that most of the readers inhabit - and it should be noted that according to Everett's theory the overwhelming majority of 'worlds' are almost identical to one another, differing only in the most insignificant, and in many case, unnoticeable micro-details.
So the story of Gracchus takes place in a recognizable Roman Empire, with the Emperors Nero, Vespasian and Titus - the 'Year of the Four Emperors', and the earthquakes and the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD.
The only aspect of that world that may in any way be unusual is the obvious reality of the ancient Greek and Roman Gods, and mythical beings, such as Faunus and Glaux.
In 'Club Jaguar', 'Las Vegas' is very similar to 'Las Vegas' as it is generally recognized, but there are various chronological anomalies relating to certain physical sites, fashions in clothes, popular music, auto-mobiles and architecture.
In addition the actual date of the events taking place seem somewhat fluid and ill-defined.
The appearance of Faunus and Glaux also indicates that the 'world of Club Jaguar', and that of the Story of Gracchus' are in some way (a quantum way ?) linked.
See also: 'An Idiots Guide to the Multiverse'
for further considerations and explanations
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All text - © Copyright Peter Crawford 2021
All Images - © Copyright Vittorio Carvelli 2021
Graphic Design - © Copyright Zac Sawyer 2021
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