Natural Science Forum / Physics / Research / September 2007

"New Scientist" = sensationalist tripe

http://arxiv.org/multi?group=grp_physics&%2Ffind=Search
Author: David Deutsch
Nothing submitted to arxiv.org since January 2004.

http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0104033
The Structure of the Multiverse
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0401024
Qubit Field Theory

http://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/al/david_deutsch.htm
"David is a non-stipendiary Visiting Professor in the Department of
Atomic and Laser Physics, where he is a member of the Centre for
Quantum Computation at the Clarendon Laboratory."

http://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/al/index.htm
http://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/al/people/academicstaff.htm

One doesn't know quite what to make of David Deutsch's current
"relationship" with Oxford.

As far as I can tell it's a reference to this talk:

http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=50&It
emid=83&lecture_id=6167

If there's an accompanying paper I haven't found it yet. It's unclear to
me that there's been any breakthrough here. The upshot seems to be that
they think they can make sense of probability by relating the principle
of indifference to a symmetry of the wave function, but I don't see what
good that's going to do. Deutsch's views on parallel universes have
always been strange. He generally claims that quantum computers do their
calculations in parallel Everett worlds, which is wrong under the usual
definition of Everett world. So a proof of the existence of what he
calls parallel worlds would not have any consequences for what everyone
else calls parallel worlds. He's good at getting himself covered in the
popular press, though. I suspect this is like those perennial breathless
reports of faster-than-light tunneling.

-- Ben

Typical journalistic hype. You can only show that something exists
through
experiment, not through a mathematical construction. So you cannot say
"parallel universes exist".

David Deutsch is a serious scientist. I suggest you avoid the
journalists
and read him directly at:

http://www.qubit.org/people/david/David.html

I would like to know how Dr Andy Albrecht can justify his statement,
looks like
hype and spin to me. Newton's laws only became an important
development
because they were backed by experiment. Parallel universe ideas will
only
evolve from being interesting science fiction to "important
development" if
experiment backs them up.