Moscow Institute Ordered to Locate a Branch of Reality in Which the Statement Is True

Figure disputed; current value remains in force. The figure 4.1 x 10⁻¹⁷ is the Institute’s, not this paper’s. We asked how it was derived and were told that the derivation is itself a measurement. We have reproduced the number without reproducing the confidence.

The Kremlin has directed the Institute of Theoretical Physics to identify a branch of the universal wavefunction in which last week’s official account of events is correct. The directive runs to two pages, specifies a deadline of Friday, and does not ask whether such a branch exists. It asks where it is.

The Institute has confirmed receipt. Its response, filed the same afternoon, states that the probability of the account being correct is not zero. This is true and is the strongest claim available. Under the many-worlds reading, any outcome with a non-zero amplitude occurs on some branch, and the account’s amplitude was calculated at 4.1 x 10⁻¹⁷, a figure the Institute describes as small and the press office describes as confirmed.

The methodological difficulty is not the search. It is the observation. A superposition resolves when it is measured, and a measurement returns one outcome rather than the preferred one. The Institute therefore cannot look for the branch without risking landing on a different branch, and has advised that the account is most secure while it remains unexamined. The press office has adopted this position in full and now declines all questions on the grounds that answering them would constitute a measurement.

Three physicists have been assigned. None is permitted to publish, which the Institute notes is consistent with the physics: a result that has not been read out has not collapsed anything. Their work is described in the directive as a search, and in the Institute’s own internal notes as an inventory.

A fourth was reassigned after submitting a memorandum observing that the same reasoning locates a branch in which any statement whatsoever is correct, including every statement the Kremlin has denied, and that the method therefore proves too much to prove anything. The memorandum was returned marked accurate.

The Institute delivered its finding on Thursday, a day early. The branch exists. It was specified by coordinates the Institute has not released and characterised in a single paragraph, which reports that in the branch where the account is correct, the events it describes required no explanation, no directive was issued, and the Institute of Theoretical Physics was never funded.

The press office has published the first clause.

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The paper has previously reported the Kremlin’s position on odour attribution, in which an incident was assigned to a substitute. That explanation remains in force and does not require a branch.