Weird Science

This is NOT the announcement of Death’s Handmaiden‘s release. Soon. This IS technically a spoiler for Bitter Wind, but it’s not much of a spoiler, so I’m doing it anyway.

I have just had the surreal experience of discovering that one of my outlandish ideas is a real, scientific theory.

Last week, I dropped an idea into a character’s exposition regarding the science of magic. Basically, it went like this:

In quantum mechanics, the ‘observer’ is all important. Quantum superpositions only collapse when observed.
There is a problem – the fine-tuning or Goldilocks paradox – which questions why the laws of physics seem to be so finely tuned for the existence of life.
The solution is that the universe did not really exist until the first observer made their first observation. At that point, reality ‘collapsed’ into a state which allowed that observer to exist and the possible variations which did not allow for the observer ceased to exist.

I thought this was a cute but probably wrong solution to fine tuning. I don’t really believe that conscious minds are needed to make a superposition collapse, but it was a nice solution.

Today, I bought a copy of New Scientist because they were doing a special report on the nature of reality. That stuff is always good for ideas. Then I got to a bit called ‘Do We Make Reality?’ and what do I find there but pretty much the exact same hypothesis I wrote in Bitter Wind last week. It’s a real interpretation of quantum mechanics!

Of course, it’s just a hypothesis and there are other ways to interpret the physics. The idea that a conscious observer is needed to make measurements is by no means a certainty and some inanimate objects may possess a form of consciousness (at least for this purpose). Still, my mind was a bit blown. Apparently, I can still have clever ideas. I’m pretty sure my old physics lecturers would never have believed I’d grasped enough of the subject to come up with that one.

 

PS. As I write this, Amazon have shifted Death’s Handmaiden back into ‘In Review.’ I may have been premature about when it’ll be ready.