Diksha Sundriyal
Apple TV+’s ‘Dark Matter’ bases its premise on a complicated scientific concept that leads to a fascinating story of a man caught up in a world that is not his. The protagonist is a physicist named Jason Dessen, who decided to give up his research to build a family with the woman he loves. Now, his life is mostly fulfilling. Whatever qualms he has about the path not taken are not as strong to push him out of his happy life. Until one day, he is forced out of it by another version of him.
Jason discovers that his second version created a box that allows a person to leave their reality and enter an alternate one. He had been trying to create a version of this thing at a much smaller scale and understood the basic concept of how it should work. But what Jason 2 created is on a much bigger scale, and even Jason 1 has to rack his brain to figure out how it really works.
The Concept of Superposition in Context With the Box
The idea of alternate realities stems from Schrodinger’s thought experiment. If you place a cat in a box with a radioactive substance, there is a chance that the substance will decay at some point within the hour. When that happens, the Geiger counter in the box will record a reading, as a result of which the poison placed inside the box will be released, killing the cat. For one hour, if the box is not touched, the cat could either be dead or alive. Rather, she would be both things until the box is opened and an observation is made.
This means that unless a thing is observed, it stays in a state of superposition where all of its possible states exist at the same time. It is when someone starts to observe the thing that the state of superposition collapses and one result is produced. But what happens to the other result? Because both things exist at the same time, one cannot simply be destroyed because the other has happened. If the cat lives when the box is opened, what happens to the possibility that the cat dies? It turns up for the same observer in a different reality.
From the thought experiment of the cat, we can say that the reality branches into two. One where you find the cat alive and one where you don’t. The same thing can be said about everything else. Before you make a decision, you are in a state of superposition. When Daniela told Jason she was pregnant, there was one decision to be made of two. Either they could have the child and be together, or they could decide not to and go their separate ways. While Jason 1 made the first decision, it didn’t erase the second possibility. Rather, the second decision played out for Jason 2 in a different world. In the same vein, all the decisions that Jason had ever made in any reality branched into an infinite number of realities, creating worlds beyond the imagination of Jason 1 and 2.
A Person’s Brain Drives the Box
Jason 2 figured out that the box is the key to the experiment, and to stay in the state of superposition, it must remain warded from any state of observation and interference. If you enter the box and are observed by someone else on the outside, the superposition will collapse, and nothing will happen. For this, he warded the box from every possible outside interference, including any outward radiation. The box is a fortress that must not be breached by anything at all. But there is still one problem that needs to be tackled.
While Jason 2 got rid of all the outside interference, he still had to handle the observation that would take place due to the person inside the box. Just because the traveler is inside the box doesn’t mean they are one with it. As long as any observation of any kind is taking place, the box will not work. This means that the traveler themselves has to relinquish their power of observation for the box to work and for them to be able to enter into a different reality. This is where Ryan’s drug, Lavender Fairy, comes into the picture.
The observation thing in a person’s brain, among other things, happens via the prefrontal cortex. What if, Jason 2 thought, one could suppress that part of the brain for a while? That would stop the observation factor from the traveler, and the box could then stay in a continued state of superposition. For this, he reached out to his friend Ryan, and without giving away too much, he succeeded in having Ryan create the exact thing he wanted. But the effects of the drug wear off after a while, which means there is a limited time window for the person to have the box exist in the state of superposition and offer the doors to unlimited realities. This means that every time you need to take a trip, you will have to take the drug. As long as the drug is in your system, the box should give you what you want. But once the drug wears off, the superposition will collapse, and you will be stuck in whatever world you are in at the time.
But there is another thing with the set of unlimited realities. How would you know which one you want to go to? You don’t have unlimited drugs and unlimited time to explore the unlimited realities at your disposal. And to think that billions of people in the world have their own realities. What happens inside the box is that it tones down the realities to the point where only yours, not anyone else’s, appear to you. This means that the box opens different doors for different travelers, confirming, once again, that the brain plays a significant role in deciding the outcome.
Because the brain has such a strong hold on the box and how it reacts to the person, it is the brain that will eventually help you find the right reality. A person is limited only by their imagination. All the worlds you can think of and even more that you wouldn’t even dream about exist. All it takes to find those worlds is to focus your brain on that one possibility, that one reality you want to be in, and the box will eventually get you to that door. As simple as it might sound, it’s not, and Jason 1 will find that out soon enough.
Read More: Dark Matter: Is Lakemont a Real College in Chicago?
