The most disconcerting thing is that, if there really is another version of us, it is 100% impossible for us to know about it. Otherwise, says Maria Violaris’ “many worlds” theory, everything would fall apart.
New theoretical work in quantum physics suggests a disconcerting scenario to say the least: under extremely artificial conditions, information produced in a “parallel” branch of reality could appear in another, as if it came “from nowhere”.
The hypothesis appears in an article that has not yet been peer-reviewed and was posted to the repository in January. This doesn’t prove that there are actual “rifts” between the universes, but it does raise a curious question: if the universe is “split” into multiple outcomes, are these branches really impervious to any exchange of information?
The proposal is authored by quantum physics Maria Violaris and is based on a set of highly idealized mental experiences. The basic idea comes from the interpretation of “many worlds”a reading of quantum mechanics according to which when a quantum event occurs with different possible outcomes, all results occur, each in a different branch of reality.
One of the pillars of this vision is the total separation between branches: after the “split”, the parallel versions of the world do not communicate or exchange information. Now, the new article calls into question this limit, at least in theory,
He proposes that we imagine the following: someone wakes up and finds an equation on the table solved (correctly) without remembering whether they did it or not; He also didn’t lose anything, he didn’t forget anything, but there is no local explanation for the origin of the result.
In a universe governed by everyday intuition, this would be impossible. In a quantum scenario controlled to the limit, the author of the new study argues, there could be a mechanism that causes a “result” written in one branch to emerge in another, as long as certain highly restrictive requirements are met.
The “superobserver” and “Wigner’s Friend”
The core of the argument uses a variant of classical thinking known as Wigner’s friend. Basically, this type of scenario imagines an observer inside a laboratory measuring a quantum system, while a second observer, “outside”, treats the entire laboratory (including the first observer) as a quantum system subject to the rules of superposition.
Superposition is the characteristic of quantum mechanics in which a system can exist, mathematically, as a combination of several possible states until a measurement fixes a result.
In the model presented, there are two “branch-level” copies of the same observer (Agent A and Agent B) that correspond to two possible outcomes within the same frame. A third element, sometimes described as an external “Wigner”, has complete quantum control over the internal state of the system. This figure would be capable of globally manipulating the laboratory’s wave function and, therefore, orchestrating a kind of “passing” of information between branches.
But, For the information to “get through”, the observer who generated it would have to completely lose memory of the act. From the point of view of the recipient, the information appears without a traceable origin, a “bonanza” without local authorship.
But, according to the proposal itself, this is not a trick to obtain free knowledge without consequences: it is an essential condition so that the scenario does not directly clash with the standard rules of the theory.
Three giant obstacles
Furthermore, there are other limitations considered decisive. Three giant obstacles: power of control, human scale and identity.
First, the scenario requires a “superobserver” with capabilities that are far beyond what current technology can achieve and perhaps even beyond what will ever be possible in human-sized systems. To control the “interior”, reminds Popular Mechanics, it would be necessary to isolate an observer from the environment and manipulate his entire quantum state, remembering the famous logic: a closed system, carefully isolated, in which quantum effects do not dissipate through interaction with the outside world.
Second, the starting condition itself (a human observer existing in superposition of states) does not occur naturally in macroscopic systems. The environment continually “measures” large objects through inevitable interactions (heat, light, particle collisions), which makes it extremely difficult to preserve delicate quantum states on a large scale. In practice, the proposal lives in an idealized laboratory territory.
And, third, there is a conceptual problem: what does it mean, after all, to “communicate” between branches if, to do so, it is necessary to rewrite or erase an observer’s internal states? The author herself admits that, at this level of abstraction, the border between sending information and transforming one observer into another becomes blurred.
Thus, the question stops being just physical and starts to touch personal identity: is the “me” that receives the message the same “me” that wrote it, or is it another instance whose history has been replaced?
This point is precisely what leads some experts to interpret the mechanism not as communication between universes, but as a exchange of identities.
Observer replaced?
Theoretical computer scientist Scott Aaronson, director of the Quantum Information Center at the University of Texas, suggests a different reading: instead of there being “transfer” of a message between branches, what happens is that the observer who wrote the message is removed from his branch and replaced by another observer, which would make the “arrival” of information a consequence of manipulation of the global state, not a violation of the isolation between worlds. On this interpretation, the result may be philosophically provocative, but it would have limited practical utility.
“Multiverse arbitration” and the temptation to use the hypothesis to make money
The author also admits that, if it were possible to send clues from one branch to another, it would open the door to advantages that are impossible in the real world. One of the good advantages was, for example, anticipating accidents; or… explore financial markets.
It is in this context that the idea of “multiverse arbitration”associated with the futuristic Alexey Turchin. The notion places the recent proposal alongside other previous speculations, including work attributed to physicist Rainer Plaga, who had already discussed, in theoretical terms, extremely isolated quantum systems (such as trapped ions) as possible “portal states” between outcomes.
The main message, however, is not that this is feasible to “enrich”, but that the issue is difficult to test directly: if the branches are in fact completely isolated, there is no obvious experimental channel to show otherwise. And if someone proposes a mechanism that appears to bypass the barrier, requirements almost always arise so extreme that the phenomenon is confined to the theoretical level.
The author herself rejects the idea that local observers can use the mechanism as a tool. In the scenario, everything is mediated by the superobserver: whoever is “inside” does not control the transport of the message; Whoever controls the system, in turn, does not necessarily own the content of what is transmitted.
A real path? Quantum computing and AI agents
Where, then, could there be anything even remotely close to this control? Quantum computing advanced enough to represent an “observer” within a quantum system — not a real human, but a artificial agent capable of forming memories, generating hypotheses and seeing these memories erased in a controlled way.
The proposal discusses the hypothesis of using a quantum computer with general purpose artificial intelligence (AGI) agentsoperating in slightly different branches and feeding a unified decision-making process.
But for parallelism to have “observational” meaning, these agents would need to be something more than calculation routines: they would have to simulate aspects of cognition and memory in a way that comes close to what we would intuitively call conscience. And this, as we know, is a frontier that science still does not fully understand, even in human beings.
A offers mathematical descriptions with multiple interpretations, and a interpretation of the many worldswith branches that do not communicate, continues to be debated precisely because, in many cases, it produces the same observational predictions as other readings.
The conceptual possibility of a “message without an author”, as long as a very expensive price is accepted: the erasure of memory and an almost “divine” level of external control.
