According to quantum theory, when a radioactive atom emits a photon is random, so no physical history can explain it, and the evidence agrees. And it adds every physical event is the same, so when and where it occurs can’t be predicted absolutely. Quantum waves define the possibilities, but which one actually happens isn’t decided by its physical past.
Clearly this contradicts Newton’s view of the universe as a great machine driven by physical laws where each event causes the next. Randomness was seen to undermine physics, so in 1957 Everett proposed the many-worlds interpretation, that every quantum possibility actually occurs in another physical universe. It follows that if any photon in the universe is measured say spin up, another universe spawns in which it is spin down, so there is no randomness. The choices of quantum theory then aren’t really choices, as every event that quantum theory says could happen actually does happen physically, somewhere in what is now called the multiverse.
Everett’s idea was initially seen as absurd, as indeed it is, but physicists now prefer it 3:1 over the Copenhagen view (Tegmark & Wheeler, 2001, p6) because it avoids quantum randomness. They would rather let every photon event generate a new universe than tolerate a non-physical cause. Since our universe is estimated to have produced 4×1084 photons in its lifetime, it isn’t hard to see that the:
“… universe of universes would be piling up at rates that transcend all concepts of infinitude.” (Walker, 2000), p107.
For a scientist, this doesn’t just offend Occam’s razor, it outrages it. Do you believe that in the time it took to read this sentence, a billion, billion universes arose from the light that hit your eyes? Current physics does because it avoids randomness, but why? The goal isn’t to advance a new theory based on evidence but to sustain an old one despite it. To be clear, no facts at all support the multiverse, so it only exists to sustain the materialistic view that physical events cause everything.
Many-worlds theory tries to replace the clockwork universe quantum theory demolished a century ago with a clockwork multiverse, but it is a backward step. Attempts to rescue this zombie theory (Note 1) by letting a finite number of universes repartition after each choice (Deutsch, 1997) just recover the original problem, as what chooses which worlds are dropped? But why would nature, like a doting parent with a quantum camera, want to store everything that might happen? The multiverse sustains the belief that everything is physical, so it is really just a fairy tale for physicists (Baggot, 2013).
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Note 1. Zombie theories make no new predictions and can’t be falsified. Like zombies, they have no progeny nor can they be killed by falsification, as they are already scientifically “dead”.