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Hugh Everett III

American physicist

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Hugh Everett III was an American physicist best known for his "many-worlds interpretation" of quantum mechanics. This interpretation, proposed in 1957, suggests that when a measurement is made on a quantum system that exists in a superposition of states, the universe branches into multiple non-interacting universes. In each of these universes, one of the possible outcomes of the measurement occurs.12

This idea was a novel approach to the "measurement problem" in quantum mechanics, which deals with how the act of measurement causes a quantum system's wave function to collapse into a single state. Everett's theory posits that instead of collapsing, all possible outcomes are realized in separate realities. While it offers a solution to some measurement paradoxes, the many-worlds interpretation has not gained widespread acceptance among physicists due to its speculative nature.12

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