I guess I’ve always been confused by the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics and the fact that it’s taken seriously. Like is there any proof at all that universes outside of our own exist?
I admit that I might be dumb, but, how does one look at atoms and say “My God! There must be many worlds than just our one?”
I just never understood how Many Worlds Interpretation was valid, with my, admittedly limited understanding, it just seemed to be a wild guess no more strange than a lot things we consider too outlandish to humor.
If you want to go into depth on this, I recommend you look up Sean Carrol talking about the subject - or read his book Something Deeply Hidden, if you’re up for it - he’s one of the best science communicators I’ve heard and a strong proponent of many worlds.
But to try to summarize it in very short: the “multiversal” behavior is already baked into quantum mechanics - a particle can be in two places at once, as in the double slit experiment - just at a very small scale. Traditional quantum physics postulates that there’s some mechanism by which this behavior is cut off before it reaches the macroscopic scale (wave function collapse). Many Worlds just asks “Do we actually need this postulate? What would it look like if we didn’t have it?” And the answer is, it would look like the universe we experience, just with a multiverse along side it.
Doesn’t Carrol have a reputation for being rather crass or am I thinking of someone else?
You’re thinking of someone else. Watch all the Carrol you can: he’s an expert on interpreting Physics and specifically on Many Worlds.
Not that I know of.