Quantum Suicide and Immortality
And the question which led to the many worlds of quantum mechanics
It was likely a flowery, temperate day in June when Hugh Everett’s daughter attempted suicide. Her brother found her on the bathroom floor, limp and loose and almost lifeless. She made it to the hospital on time to survive though the event barely made an impression on her father. Everett, who would be revered for his work in physics and top secret military developments at the Pentagon, merely gave an upward glance from his newspaper and uttered something dismissive about the whole event. He didn’t know his daughter was so sad, he remarked. He died in bed just a month later, amongst the heavy heat of the 1980’s July.
But though that is the reality of what happened in our world, in another world things might have unfolded very differently. Everett would have been a warmer man, or his daughter a happier girl. The house would not have borne the signs of chain-smoking and alcoholism. It would have been a different life. And it was Everett’s work in the field of quantum mechanics that enables us to even fantasize about this — that he could have led billions and billions of different realities just as right now there are copies of us leading realities we’ve never even daydreamed about. In some of them our choices are decidedly better; in others they may be much…
