Google recently announced that it created a new computer chip, Willow, that can perform “mindboggling” computations – so mindboggling that Google Quantum AI founder Hartmut Neven said it might indicate we live in a multiverse.
The multiverse theory is popular in science fiction, but scientists don’t agree that if it exists in reality. Does Google’s new chip bring us a step closer to proving it?
Not necessarily, according to George Musser, a contributing editor at Scientific American, contributing writer at Quanta as well as the author of Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation (2023) and Spooky Action at a Distance (2015). He joined “Something Offbeat” to help us get a better understanding of the multiverse and what it has to do with computers.
“The one Hartmut is talking about… is quantum mechanics and specifically quantum computers. But you also get this multiverse concept in cosmology and other domains as well,” said Musser. “So the basic idea is that the universe is... not one universe, it’s parallel universes. It’s maybe an infinity of parallel universes.”
Each week, “Something Offbeat” takes a deeper look at an unusual headline. If you have suggestions for stories the podcast should cover, send them to us at somethingoffbeat@audacy.com.