PBS Spacetime

jkxx said:
Ahhh that is an awesome show - haven't seen these latest ones though.
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Yeah, it's a fun show and interesting host/way of delivering the topic. And there's normally also a question following up the video which prompts the viewer to reason
on the topic and where you can win a t-shirt. Good methodology.

Also bump for new video :grin:.

 

Zurek’s way into this problem is to think about the role of the environment in quantum mechanics. For other quantum physicists, the environment has never been anything more than a nuisance. Consider a quantum object in isolation and the quantum information it contains can survive forever. But place it in the real world and this quantum information leaks into the environment, destroying the system under study.

Zurek takes different view. He thinks of the environment as an information channel and the properties of this channel are the key to understanding quantum darwinism.

All macroscopic measuring machines get their information through this channel. For example, at this very moment you are intercepting a fraction of the photons emitted by a screen. But we can never observe all of the environment, only a small fraction of it which reveal systems of interest.

This is the essence of quantum darwinism, says Zurek. Only quantum states that can be transmitted through the environment in the right kind of way and with multiple copies, can be observed on the macroscopic scale. That rules out various kinds of quantum information. What’s left are what Zurek calls “pointer states”. These are what we observe classically.

So the classical view of the universe is determined by the states that survive transmission through the environmental information channel. Hence the darwinism: it is only possible to observe the states that are fit enough to survive this process of transmission.
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https://www.technologyreview.com/s/417039/quantum-darwinism-and-the-nature-of-reality/

https://scipost.org/SciPostPhys.2.2.010/pdf
 
Pin said:
Well, that solves it; I'm going to be on public television.
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AMA with Pin

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https://www.youtube.com/post/UgzKW56v8NIF-trGh9B4AaABCQ

PBS Space Time
Hey Space Timers. Tomorrow's first ever Space Time Livestream will be at taking place at 5pm EDT and will me a Matt O'Dowd Ask Me (Almost) Anything. Since we know not everyone can make it, we'll also be taking some questions from this community tab post! Give us your best astrophysics, astronomy, cosmology, physics, & sci-fi questions below.
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