Shrodingers cat is a thought exercise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger's_cat

In your mind, put yor cat in a box with a Geiger counter and a teeny tiny piece of very weak radioactive element.

After awhile, you open the box.

What do you see?

PS Thanks Tiggs.

Schrodinger's cat is possibly one of the most puzzling Quantum thought experiments.

Logically, it would seem impossible that the cat can be in a transition of states, both dead and alive at the same time, yet this is what Quantum Physics is asserting.

Einstein summed it up best, I think, in his response to Schrodinger:


Schrodinger's cat (and the EPR paradox) are the reasons that I define myself as a Quantum Skeptic. Like Einstein, I can't reconcile any of the quantum interpretations with what I perceive reality to be.

I think that is the best experiment to teach you of the possibilities that can exist in any situation. If you learn from the quantum level, the quark and the gluon. And it is amazing what combinations you can come up with.

And the possibilities . . .

Funny, everytime I think about Schrodinger's cat...I just get a headache...wonder what that's indicating?

In any case, no matter how relevant (and I really consider it irrelevant), it is an interesting thought.

It is like thinking: if a tree falls in a forest and nobody is there did it really fall? Well if nobody is there who cares if it did?

The only relevance is, that it teaches us to think in all directions when in an equation we have an element with multiple possible states, leading to multiple solutions.

My say is that once you open the box, the states are alowwed to be chosen, and the logical progression is seen, the cat is dead, but say if we put a video camera in their, we see both happen, at the same time.

So you have a sample of a radioactive isotope and you say that once a single particular nucleus decays, it will trigger the release of cyanide which will kill the cat. Now as time passes the psi-function eventually describes our chosen nucleus as being in a decayed/non-decayed state simultaneously, so the cyanide is both released and not released at the same time?

Well doesn't the psi-function just describe the probability of our single chosen nucleus having decayed or not? In reality it's never in a state of actual superposition?

It does spell out the probabilities of observing different results, that's true. So you might wonder if there's a definite state there all the time and quantum mechanics is just an incomplete theory that can't tell us for certain what outcome we'll see or if somehow the superposition is physically real. These two conceptions don't lead to the exact same physical predictions so it's possible to probe experimentally which one appears to be correct. The answer is that the superposition appears to be real (this is related to Bell's inequalities; if you feel like wading through this older thread there's more information there).

That's what Einstein and I believe. The overwhelmingly vast majority of Quantum physicists who adhere to the Copenhagen interpretation believe otherwise. It's part of the whole strangeness of quantum mechanics that I'm in denial about.

* Grins * - welcome to the thread, StarTraveler - I thought you'd be in here, at some point.

As you'll see from the other thread - I have absolutely no proof for my position. Neither did Einstein. Just gut feel.

I will never be a physicist...I know that for sure. I understand the the concept of the thought experiment and why he created it to outline the wackiness of the idea, but I guess my mind is just a bit too dense to understand the reason why the assumption has to be made that both states are occuring at the same time. In my mind it seems like a forced acceptance of a conclusion where there need not be one, but really I dont have a strong enough grasp of physics at that level to argue the point too much...

A funny thing about that is that I took a 100 level (Intro) physics course the same semester and I took comparative religion. This experiment came up in physics class shortly after studying Zen and Buddhism. Talk about a conflict. I made the mistake of asking the professor why we couldnt just be in a state of "not knowing" while the boxed was closed rather than some forced wacky dual dead and alive cat that makes no sense...

I figured out then that Zen philosophies dont hash well with quantum physics, or the professors... Damn you general education!

Oh well...I will leave the physics to the physicists....

I've been working on more pressing problems recently - about the closest I've come to unravelling it so far is:

cos[a+B] = [cos a * cos B] - [sin a * sin B]

I'm tempted to call that the answer, but I'm sure StarTraveler will soon tell me otherwise, as according to Bell's inequalities, what I've just done is impossible.

which sometimes also leads to the solution.... BTW how did that math problem of a few months back come along?

* Grins * - that was the more pressing problem.

So far, not so great. I think all I've managed to do is to convince myself that it's a very, very hard problem indeed.

I'm currently taking some time off work - a few months or so to relax and recuperate - I have a couple more ideas of some potential approaches that could be used to calculate an answer, which I'll be working on between the whole lazing on beaches thing I intend to do. To be honest, I'm not holding out any great hopes. I have a feeling that that particular problem may indeed be intractable (for me, at least).

Unfortunately, I seem to be drawn towards wanting to solve impossible things. I expect I'll be beating my head against the brick wall for a while yet.

Wasn't this paradox put to rest by the whole 'Observation Causes Reality'? In this theory, Schroedinger's cat would be allowed to be in both states while inside the box. It wouldn't be until the box is opened and the cat observed that the cat would enter a state of reality. This theory would also answer the question of the tree falling in the forest.