Update 10/13/09: corrected for ice cream flavor and location, thus merging two related universes.
There is a story about Richard Feynman that while he was at Princeton MIT he had a hard time with dessert. Apparently they always served either chocolate or vanilla ice cream and Feynman would agonize over which he wanted that night. Then one day he decided that he was wasting his time making this decision and so he would solve this by only choosing vanilla chocolate and from that point on in life that is what he did. He no longer wasted time choosing, and, apparently, ate a lot of vanilla chocolate ice cream. Of course there is an equally valid and equally elegant solution to this problem which is in fact the exact opposite of Feynman’s deterministic solution: choose randomly! Chocolate or vanilla? Choose randomly. Stop at the stop sign or not? Choose randomly (okay maybe not!) Of course there is the question of exactly how you choose randomly. For some, dice may suffice, but isn’t there a better way than carrying around a bag of dice which makes you look like your heading out for a night of RPGing?
Well today I’m happy to report to you that there is a solution to this problem: use your iPhone! As many of you know, when I’m stuck on a plane I like to write iPhone apps (thus leading to my app for accesing the arXiv: arXiview.) So on a few of these flights recently I kludged together a new iPhone app: MakeRandom. This app gives you access to custom random lists, dice, random numbers, and random words. To get the randomness you just set up the list you want to randomly select from and shake! Exciting, no? But today I got an email about an even more exciting use of randomness in the iPhone: Universe Splitter¬©:
Scientists say that every quantum event plays out simultaneously in every possible way, with each possibility becoming real in a separate universe. You can now harness this powerful and mysterious effect right from your iPhone or iPod Touch!
How? Whenever you’re faced with a choice — for example, whether to accept a job offer or to turn it down — just type both of these actions into Universe Splitter¬©, and press the button.
Universe Splitter¬© will immediately contact a laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, and connect to a Quantis brand quantum device, which releases single photons into a partially-silvered mirror. Each photon will simultaneously bounce off the mirror and pass through it — but in separate universes.
Within seconds, Universe Splitter¬© will receive the experiment’s result and tell you which of the two universes you’re in, and therefore which action to take. Think of it — two entire universes, complete with every last planet and galaxy, and in one, a version of you who took the new job, and in the other, a version of you who didn’t!
Classic! Watch as this quantum physicist who wrote an app for randomness slaps himself on the forehead for not thinking of this. Check out Universe Splitter’s website for a great quote by Garrett Lisi.
Universe Splitter© is available from the iTunes store for $1.99 here
MakeRandom is also available from the iTunes store for $0.99here.
Below the fold: screenshots and a philosophical discussion of the difference between the applications.
Continue reading “Apps to Randomize Your World (Some Using Quantum Physics!)”