The Gray Area with Sean Illing

While you read these words, the universe is splitting into countless copies. New realities, all with a version of you, exactly like you are now, but journeying off into their own branch of the multiverse.

Maybe.

Sean Carroll is a theoretical physicist at CalTech, the host of the Mindscape podcast, and author of, among other books, Something Deeply Hidden, which blew my mind a bit. He is also a believer in, and defender of, the “many-worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics, which has to be one of the five most fun things in the world to think about. Science!

This is a conversation where I get to do something I’ve always wanted to do: Ask a real quantum physicist all of my questions about quantum physics. And then ask again, when I don’t understand the answer, which I usually don’t. And then again, when I sort of understand, but there’s still a part tripping me up. Carroll is wonderfully patient and beautifully clear, and the result is a conversation I haven’t stopped telling friends about since I had it. This world sucks right now. Let’s think about some other ones.

References:

The Biggest Ideas in the Universe! YouTube series

Book recommendations:

How Physics Makes Us Free by J. T. Ismael

How the Universe Got Its Spots by Janna Levin

The Calculus Diaries by Jennifer Ouellette

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Credits:

Producer/Editor - Jeff Geld

Researcher - Roge Karma

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