Does Quantum Immortality Save Schrödinger's Cat?

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE↓ More info below ↓Uploaded 03-03-20Check out Antarctic Extremes on PBS Terra: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvRAuy1ZmTcSign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetimeSign up for the mailing list to get episode notifications and hear special announcements!https://tinyurl.com/yx9cusk5Check out the Space Time Merch Storehttps://pbsspacetime.com/To quote eminent scientist Tyler Durden: "On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero." Actually… not necessarily true. If the quantum multiverse is real there may be a version of you that lives forever.Hosted by Matt O'DowdWritten by Matt O'DowdGraphics by Leonardo Scholzer, Yago Ballarini, and Pedro OsinskiDirected by: Andrew KornhaberExecutive Producers: Eric Brown and Andrew KornhaberEnd Credits Music by J.R.S. Schattenberg: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRl6-nb4iOnsij-vnpAjp0QIf we can’t ever peer into these other realities that are used to explain quantum mechanics, how do we know they exist? In order to understand what happens to those different branches, and to understand why we find ourselves in one of them, we need to embrace one of the interpretations of quantum mechanics. For example the Copenhagen interpretation, which says that the wavefunction branches that we don’t observe somehow vanish at the moment of measurement. Or the Many Worlds interpretation, which states that those other branches are just as valid as ours - implying that reality may split and multiply in all possible ways. In that case we only see one branch because we live in that branch, and the others are rendered inaccessible by decoherence. But today I’m going to offer a test. Admittedly NOT a very useful one - but one that’s fun to think about. We’ll call this test quantum immortality. It’s based on the famous Schrodinger’s cat thought experiment. Special Thanks to Our Patreon SponsorsBig Bang SupportersAlexander TamasDavid BarnholdtDavid NicklasFabrice EapJuan BenetMorgan HoughQuasar SupportersChristina OegrenMark HeisingVinnie FalcoHypernova SupporterChuck ZegarDanton SpiveyDonal BotkinDouglas CantrellEdmund FokschanerHank SJohn HofmannJohn PollockJohn R.