To see why, consider this. In ordinary quantum mechanics, an experimental apparatus has to exist before physicists can determine the wave function that describes the probable behavior of the photon within that apparatus. It follows, from the same analogy that justifies quantum cosmology in the first place, that a universe must first exist with possible properties before quantum cosmologists can construct the universal wave function that describes those properties in superposition. Indeed, the mathematics of quantum cosmology begins by describing a universe (or universes) already presupposed to
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