Quantum Superposition

Quantum superposition is the ability of a quantum system to exist in two states simultaneously.

In 1801, Thomas Young demonstrated this concept with his double-slit experiment. Shining light through two small slits would result in two distinct beams of light, were the trajectories of light governed by classical physics. The observation of an interference pattern showed this to be untrue. Photons of light did not go through one slit or the other but took a multitude of possible paths.

Over the years, many people attempted to see how this was possible. But all observatory techniques interrupted the experiment, causing classical physics to take over once more. This led to an understanding that observing superposition couldn't be done - when observed, it collapses into one state or another.

The reason why observation disrupts quantum mechanics was heavily disputed for many years. Human consciousness was speculated to be extraordinarily unique, with the power and influence to collapse a quantum wavefunction just through observation.

In 1935, Erwin Schrodinger devised a thought experiment to refute this idea. Named "Schrodinger’s Cat", the thought experiment involved a cat, in a box with a radioactive atom, and a detector that would poison the cat upon the decay of the atom. Atomic decay is governed by quantum mechanics, so it stood to reason that, for as long as no-one opened the box, if human perception was all powerful, the cat would be both alive and dead. Such a notion was deliberately absurd, and this reasoning went a long way in persuading the public that their perception was not governing the universe. But the problem of why, then, does quantum superposition exist until observed, persisted.

One theory was that nature itself possesses a consciousness. Conscious observers were part of collapsing the wavefunction, but it was not exclusive to humans, or indeed anything alive.

It was never a popular theory - it evoked distaste among ardent atheists, baring certain similarities to an idea of a "God", who makes decisions for us.

While the debate about nature's consciousness could be intense, it had very few practical applications, and as such was a theoretical discussion, only usually partaken in by physicists and the occasional philosopher. All very interesting, but not a field about to cause damage or save people from harm.

5,000 years from Schrodinger’s theoretical experiment, physicist Melissa Harvey sat back in her office chair, staring at a mountain of paperwork. At 45 years old, she was beginning to feel the ever-present back pain resulting from sitting at a desk all day.

She only had the team meeting to go before the end of the workday. Only ten years ago, Melissa was obsessed with her job - always the type to be working longer hours than she was paid for, running it through her head when she got home. Truth be told, it still ran around her head in her downtime, but in a tiresome way, none of the curiosity she used to have persisted.

The team meeting ended with the same discussion they had every year; should they be looking to branch out, and get away from the topic they were dismissed for caring about?

Melissa was an expert in wormholes. She, and her team members, could be making big money by improving them. There was a big drive to make them even easier to access than they were. There were also other areas, though less objective-driven, that were popular, exciting, and made money for the guys at the top.

But Melissa wasn't involved in any of this. In fact, she had to fight for any funding at all. She worked in the opposite way - looking into the potential long-term ramifications of the constant use of wormholes.

The younger ones in the group were always more inclined to keep pushing on with their research. But Melissa didn't know how much more she could take. Her job was wearing her out, she was underpaid, made fun of by most of her colleagues, students and frequently in the news. It was only her moral conscience that stopped her from changing direction completely. There were precious few people willing to investigate any side effects. She felt they had achieved very little. If anything, people were less receptive to their ideas than they had been before.

The following day, Melissa was teaching her favourite class - overview on wormholes for first-year students. At least she was an expert in such a popular topic, she frequently thought. More of her salary came from teaching than her research grant, these days.

"The multiverse theory was mostly accepted among scientists for millennia before we could traverse from one to another." She explained. "The idea was "anything that can happen, will happen.", logically dictating that an infinite number of universes must exist. Wormholes were a theoretical concept, a 'bridge' of sorts between two locations in space-time. It was theorised that these could exist, but no human could go between them. They needed exotic matter to balance them long enough to go through."

"It was only 500 years ago, that we first discovered a natural wormhole. But it didn't take long from there to work out how to build them. Once we could gather the exotic matter, we could harness it, and use it."

"Of course, this wasn't commercially available until quite recently. The first man-made wormhole was developed in 6520. At that point, only select few people used it, and for a lot of money. And it was only to travel backwards in time, to a specific, predetermined point."

"Probably the biggest leap forward, was when it was developed so that an individual could go back on their own timestream, to a chosen point. This allowed people to rectify things in the past."

"There were major ethical dilemmas surrounding this, however. There was a raging public debate about whether this should be considered akin to murder - when you go back and change something, everything changes. A particular incident was one in which a man, whose wife had died due to complications with childbirth, went back to ensure she didn't get pregnant. Many said he as good as murdered the child to save his wife, with others saying the child never existed, so it couldn't constitute murder."

"This was ultimately resolved with the creation of dual wormholes - one to go back on yourself, fix your past mistakes, and then a connector wormhole, where the two universes, one where you made the mistake, and one where you didn't, are connected, and you can travel freely between the two. This allows for to have both the child, and the mother who died in childbirth, both alive and well and in the same universe."

"This is how we got to the situation now - any time we go back to change something, the conjoining wormhole is automatically created, eradicating the possibility of ethical complication."

She wasn't finished talking, but she heard from the middle of the lecture theatre:

"Unless it brings about the apocalypse.", accompanied by a few laughs.

She liked to think her students enjoyed her lectures. But she wasn't foolish enough to believe they didn't, like most people, believe her to be a conspiracy theorist.

Melissa's daily life continued in the same mundane way. She went to work, she created and analysed graphs of the data she'd collected, she saw nothing, she got more and more frustrated.

A break from the monotony came in the form of being invited on a podcast, alongside another researcher. She was naturally weary of these things; often an attempt to make her seem ridiculous, "Bring out the nutters" so to speak. But they were also an opportunity. If she could sound as rational as possible, if she could make people listen...

"So, Professor Melissa Harvey, good evening! Amazing to have you on the show!"

The host was a young, bright-eyed woman. She seemed genuine, and although she had her doubts, she wanted to present both sides of the argument. Then again, Melissa knew journalists were experienced in presenting whatever version of themselves they wanted.

"Hi, thank you for having me."

"So, a little context for our listeners, Melissa is part of a research team looking into potential side-effects of using wormholes. Many say that this is beating a dead horse, that this is just part of the inevitable resistance to new technologies. So, let's get into this debate! First of all, Melissa, please tell us about your specific research."

"So, what I'm currently looking at is a theory of the consciousness of nature. It comes from quantum superposition - when an observation is made, a quantum system must exist in one state or another. This is true on a larger scale too; all of our big decisions are a combination of wavefunction collapses. The role of the observer in quantum mechanics led lots of people to believe that the universe itself has a consciousness of sorts, and indeed a preference for certain combinations of states. Our concern is that manipulating the universes and bridging them is potentially disruptive to nature, and could, in the long term, bring about some problems to the worlds. One theory as to how is that the exotic matter propping up the wormholes could start to decay. So, my current study is trying to find evidence of decay in exotic matter, by simply using a detector, plotting the activity, and looking for an unexpected peak."

"Sounds pretty interesting. But this research has been going on for a while, and never yielded any significant results. What makes you so confident there must be long-term issues?"

"I'm not certain. I'd love nothing more than for someone to prove this is safe. But realistically, this research hasn't been done to the appropriate level. Wormholes came along and they were a solution to many problems, including losing a loved one, a very powerful attraction. People didn't want to think about any potential problems. And that's without mentioning how much money is in the time-travel industry."

"And as for the consciousness theory itself, it’s been disputed by many credible physicists... why should this be getting attention?"

"It's only one possible theory. And it's been disputed, yes, but it's impossible to disprove. We are looking at the decay of exotic matter, whether it comes from consciousness or not. But there are also lots of ways in which long-term effects could manifest. What I want above most things, is for people's minds to be open that not all might be good about wormholes, and for the research to take place so that we can actually understand what's going on."

When her segment was over, Melissa stayed to listen to the next

woman.

"I too work on the consciousness theory, but in a different way. Prior research said that one way this might manifest is through extra volcanic activity. We are looking through the last millennium, attempting to pinpoint if, and by how much, volcanic activity might have changed."

She carried on detailing her research, for a few minutes. Melissa listened, quite intently, but groaned when she tried to justify her prolonged interest.

"For the longest time, the wider public had no idea that the burning of fossil fuels was causing damage to the climate. And when it did become widely known, it was still denied by huge numbers of people. Mostly because the companies prioritised their wallets, and people thrive on convenience. We spent decades creating as much as possible, consuming as much as possible and using coal power every day. We only narrowly missed catastrophe by continuing to pursue the research, even when it was believed to be futile."

It was endlessly frustrating when people said this. It was a common refrain among detractors of wormholes, that this was the new Global Warming - a near catastrophe that happened millennia ago. Melissa didn't even disagree per se, she could see the similarities, but she always thought it made them sound ridiculous. Most people who touted this were not scientists, but moral purists, operating under the same resistance to new technology the reporter had hinted at previously. There were plenty of recent, and actually relevant examples of corporations ignoring science for profit, if that was what people were trying to emphasise. There was no need to keep banging on about a tiny fraction of ancient history.

The interview was set to air a full six months later - on account of being part of series that required many more controversial aspects of science. However, this was never to be.

On the third of June, 6938, was when Melissa's daily routine was turned on its head.

She came into her office, as normal, finished compiling the graphs from one of her detector data collections but what she saw next changed everything.

A small bump, in the middle of the graph, was beginning to appear. Signalling an increase in detector activity. Signalling exotic matter decaying.

The first thing the team did was rerun every bit of the data analysis, then write this up into a paper. The paper was submitted to a journal, whose editor was keen to get this out as soon as possible.

Until she didn't. One day, Melissa received an email:

Dear Professor Harvey,

We regret to inform you that the publication of your paper, Exotic Matter Decay Observed at a Distance of 12mm, is no longer being considered by this paper. This is due to issues with space for all relevant papers. We thank you for your time and apologise for the inconvenience.

Dr Alice Green MSC PREP (She/her)

institute of Physics

Melissa was taken aback, and worried. The claim that there just wasn’t enough space didn’t sit right. Naturally, journals needed to take this into account, but typically it would be postponed, rather than cancelled if the paper had previously been accepted.

She received a text with an article attached.

Have you seen this??

The headline read: Professor Melissa Harvey; Dangerous?

Although this belief in nature’s opinions impacting our day-to-day life has always been unpopular and generally disparaged, recently it’s been coming under more fire – rather than being outdated but harmless, it is now understood to be a direct attack on modern life. The use of wormholes is something that has enabled many to reconnect with lost loved ones, carve out opportunities they might have been denied, and have superior control over their own lives. The likes of Melissa Harvey are looking to wind back the clock, to a time where most people’s lives were controlled by external forces. Denying autonomy is a common tactic of those who would prefer an authoritarian approach.

Melissa looked at the general news. To her horror, it was far from a one-off.

Today, we spoke to activist George Reed, a leader of the ultimately successful campaign 95Now, that pushed for wage increases to make the cost of living.

“Melissa Harvey’s views on new technology are effectively punishing people for having bad things happen. What will happen, if she gets her way, is that the rich get to control even more than they already do. Mark my words, THEY will still have access to wormholes, but the rest of us will just have to go without. This will lead to increased authority of the rich, and even more inequality. Much like denying poor people an education, giving some the right to rectifying parts of their past, but denying it to others, is a direct assault on the working class.”

Papers deleted her old publications, the radio show she had been interviewed on dropped the segment, everyone was scrambling to distance themselves from her.

Her head of department didn’t sack her, but she was moved away from the front lines, to be hopefully unseen in public. Her new reputation for trying to ruin good things for people didn’t bring funding grants. The whole research group moved away from trying to look at these side effects, much like many others across the worlds.

She left her job a couple of months later. She would have wanted to keep going, but the peak in her graph haunted her. She knew it needed further research, that there was a strong chance that the wormholes were causing damage, and hardly anyone knew it. She spent a long time telling anyone who’d listen what she’d found, why they covered it up. She wrote three books and had a regular blog. She became known as one of the most committed conspiracy theorists around.

The next signs didn’t come for 20 years. It was nothing to do with her research – people started noticing side effects of using the wormholes themselves. Rather than gaining credibility, the opposite happened, the people now trying to investigate this tried desperately to distance themselves from her.

Melissa was an old woman when people had to start sitting up to take notice. There had been reports for some time about increased volcanic activity. She briefly remembered her interview across from a woman claiming this could be caused by wormholes. Now new people started looking for exotic matter decay, still careful not to bring her name into it.

All the countries in all the worlds grappled with the question of how to prevent further damage. Most took a laid-back approach, discouraging the use of wormholes. Most people ignored this, continuing to justify their use in their day-to-day lives.

It took 300 years before the use was completely banned. Most people acted in accordance with it, but there was an underground market for a long time following.

Maybe if they had acted quicker, they could have saved themselves. After all, it took a while for the effect to be irreversible. But they didn’t. 1,000 years after Melissa Harvey first noticed a peak in her graph, the world she lived in, and every world created by it was uninhabitable. The human race dropped off first, but so did almost every species of animal. It is said that there still might be certain types of insects surviving the conditions, but no one knows for sure.