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J. Delaney
J. Delaney
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In principle, the answer to the question is yes. What you are describing is a version of the so called Wigner's friend experiment, which was used to argue a similar point. See in particular this paragraph from Wikipedia:

Several authors, including Everett, John Archibald Wheeler and David Deutsch, call many-worlds a theory or metatheory, rather than just an interpretation.Everett argued that it was the "only completely coherent approach to explaining both the contents of quantum mechanics and the appearance of the world." Deutsch dismissed the idea that many-worlds is an "interpretation", saying that to call it an interpretation "is like talking about dinosaurs as an 'interpretation' of fossil records."

Note however that observing interference between macroscopical systemmacroscopic systems is extremely unpractical. For example, one will have first to calculate the full wave function of the macroscopic system with all of its degrees of freedom. For comparison, representing on a computer the full wave function of a single iron atom with its 26 electrons, will require something like $10^{78}$ bits (3 spatial degrees of freedom per electron), which is only slightly less then the total number of protons in the universe.

Another caveat is that the possibility of interference between macroscopic systems might not be unique to MWI. There are probably as many different versions of each interpretation of QM as the number of physicists practicing the theory!

In principle, the answer to the question is yes. What you are describing is a version of the so called Wigner's friend experiment, which was used to argue a similar point. See in particular this paragraph from Wikipedia:

Several authors, including Everett, John Archibald Wheeler and David Deutsch, call many-worlds a theory or metatheory, rather than just an interpretation.Everett argued that it was the "only completely coherent approach to explaining both the contents of quantum mechanics and the appearance of the world." Deutsch dismissed the idea that many-worlds is an "interpretation", saying that to call it an interpretation "is like talking about dinosaurs as an 'interpretation' of fossil records."

Note however that observing interference between macroscopical system is extremely unpractical. For example, one will have first to calculate the full wave function of the macroscopic system with all of its degrees of freedom. For comparison, representing on a computer the full wave function of single iron atom with its 26 electrons, will require something like $10^{78}$ bits (3 spatial degrees of freedom per electron), which is only slightly less then the total number of protons in the universe.

In principle, the answer to the question is yes. What you are describing is a version of the so called Wigner's friend experiment, which was used to argue a similar point. See in particular this paragraph from Wikipedia:

Several authors, including Everett, John Archibald Wheeler and David Deutsch, call many-worlds a theory or metatheory, rather than just an interpretation.Everett argued that it was the "only completely coherent approach to explaining both the contents of quantum mechanics and the appearance of the world." Deutsch dismissed the idea that many-worlds is an "interpretation", saying that to call it an interpretation "is like talking about dinosaurs as an 'interpretation' of fossil records."

Note however that observing interference between macroscopic systems is extremely unpractical. For example, one will have first to calculate the full wave function of the macroscopic system with all of its degrees of freedom. For comparison, representing on a computer the full wave function of a single iron atom with its 26 electrons, will require something like $10^{78}$ bits (3 spatial degrees of freedom per electron), which is only slightly less then the total number of protons in the universe.

Another caveat is that the possibility of interference between macroscopic systems might not be unique to MWI. There are probably as many different versions of each interpretation of QM as the number of physicists practicing the theory!

Source Link
J. Delaney
J. Delaney
  • 3.5k
  • 1
  • 7
  • 17

In principle, the answer to the question is yes. What you are describing is a version of the so called Wigner's friend experiment, which was used to argue a similar point. See in particular this paragraph from Wikipedia:

Several authors, including Everett, John Archibald Wheeler and David Deutsch, call many-worlds a theory or metatheory, rather than just an interpretation.Everett argued that it was the "only completely coherent approach to explaining both the contents of quantum mechanics and the appearance of the world." Deutsch dismissed the idea that many-worlds is an "interpretation", saying that to call it an interpretation "is like talking about dinosaurs as an 'interpretation' of fossil records."

Note however that observing interference between macroscopical system is extremely unpractical. For example, one will have first to calculate the full wave function of the macroscopic system with all of its degrees of freedom. For comparison, representing on a computer the full wave function of single iron atom with its 26 electrons, will require something like $10^{78}$ bits (3 spatial degrees of freedom per electron), which is only slightly less then the total number of protons in the universe.