Where a Bubble Goes When It Pops

Journal started Jul 30, 2004


I think I may have an explanation for where goes a bubble when it pops. (AN explanation, not necessarily THE explanation.) Consider a bubble: it is a shape, a simple shape caused by the properties of soap wrapped around air. The soap itself is a state: the sum of all quantum states of each particle of the soap. There are many quantum states that qualify as a bubble, many arrangements of molecules, thin and thickness of film, swirls of color. There are even more quantum states that qualify as not a bubble though, which is why it inevitably pops. But what happens to the bubble itself?

First one has to question how a bubble /stays/ a bubble before it pops. The state of a bubble from moment to moment is not identical, yet still counts as a bubble. We don't count the popped bubble as a bubble since its quantum state no longer is close enough to the original bubble to be compared. It would be like me claiming you are the moon, simply in an unusual state at the moment, to compare a bubble to a popped one. So a bubble stays a bubble by maintaining a similar set of quantum states, collectively referred to as a "macrostate" (or a bubble, if you're a layperson). Each individual state the bubble is in is known as a "microstate" and the class of states that count as a bubble known as a "macrostate."

Alright, so what happens when it pops? Effectively it's like you being replaced by the moon: the more common macrostate of being popped replaces the old macrostate of being a bubble. One might note at this point that the state of the bubble in the past remains fixed and eternal: time must progress before one state can pass on to the next, so each microstate of the bubble is a frozen moment in time, when lined up temporally they describe the entire life of a bubble.

Here's my solution then: when a bubble pops, the bubble itself isn't popping, rather the universe is replacing the bubble with the state popped bubble due to its own entropic laws. The bubble itself continues to exist, but is shunted off to the side, to a universe that never existed, a path through time that defies entropy by having an eternal bubble. This may seem like a long shot, and that's exactly why we don't see eternal bubbles--because the chance of a bubble surviving forever is so small it would never occur.

If you support the "many worlds" explanation of quantum uncertainty (that is, a particle can interfere with its members in alternate verses when in quantum uncertainty) then that's your explanation for where a bubble goes when it pops. It goes to the nearest universe where it has not popped, since that is the only path through time in which it remains a bubble. It's an improbable path, well out of the normal progression of time as defined by entropy, but it still exists somewhere out there beyond our fingertips.

This may also be an explanation of the existence of an afterlife.


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