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Letter: Careful with that lab, Eugene

Published 27 May 2015

From John Marshall

Michael Brooks asks whether we could destroy the fabric of the cosmos (2 May, p 35). Do we have here a solution to Fermi’s paradox concerning the lack of signs of extraterrestrial life?

If measuring and collapsing a fundamental quantum state destroys the measurer, then each civilisation would be the only life form in a universe that should be teeming with life – until they make that fateful measurement.
Southend, Essex, UK

Issue no. 3023 published 30 May 2015

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