Artist’s Uranium-Glass Kits Let You Play God, Create New Universes
The “many worlds interpretation”, parallel universes, the Trousers of Time: call it what you will, but quantum theory has some surprising ideas about what happens after a quantum event, which artist Jonathan Keats is exploring in this new “toy”. It’s a ball of uranium-doped glass (no, really—it’s uranium!) next to a scintillation detector crystal inside a jar. The idea is that as the uranium decays and emits particles, the detector “observes” this event, and splits off new universes as it goes. It’s all quantum. And it’s pretty crazy. But if the god-like novelty of having a universe creation kit on your desk tickles your fancy, you can buy one for $US20. [OhGizmo]
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
Ummm… Unless you adopt the Copenhagen interpretation of QM – which, granted, still has issues with observer vs. event.
If you’re going to adopt the many-worlds hypothesis and claim you’re generating universes in the jar, then you should be just as happy knowing that every single event to ever occur will also `generate’ new universes. Save some money by not buying this ridiculous piece of art trying to be science.
PLUS: The jar is made of glass! WTF? The whole point of the `Schroedinger’s cat’ style thought experiment (which this is trying to be, sans cat) is that the event is completely isolated from any form of observation… e.g. if the scintillation detector gives any information to the outside world that it’s detected a particle, the superposition of states collapses as soon as the information is observed. If it’s the case that the detector doesn’t give such information, it’s not really a detector then, is it? Just what are you paying for (besides a slightly increased risk of paper-weight induced cancer)?
Either way, the coherence of the experiment would be utterly destroyed by the horribly clunky (and, I suppose, intentional) can and jar setup.
Epic art-meets-science fail.