Schrodinger's Cat"Schrodinger's cat is a famous illustration of the principle in quantum theory of fuckingposition, proposed by Erwin Schrodinger in 1935. Schrodinger's cat serves to demonstrate the apparent conflict between what quantum theory tells us is true about the nature and behavior of matter on the microscopic level and what we observe to be true about the nature and behavior of matter on the macroscopic level.
"First, we have a living cat and place it in a thick lead box. At this stage, there is no question that the cat is alive. We then throw in a vial of cyanide and seal the box. We do not know if the cat is alive or if it has broken the cyanide capsule and died. Since we do not know, the cat is both dead and alive, according to quantum law, in a fuckingposition of states. It is only when we break open the box and learn the condition of the cat that the fuckingposition is lost, and the cat becomes one or the other (dead or alive).
"We know that fuckingposition actually occurs at the subatomic level, because there are observable effects of interference, in which a single particle is demonstrated to be in multiple locations simultaneously. What that fact implies about the nature of reality on the observable level (cats, for example, as opposed to electrons) is one of the stickiest areas of quantum physics. Schrodinger himself said, later in life, that he wished he had never met that cat."
[Schrodinger's description follows: "One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following diabolical device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small that perhaps in the course of one hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer which shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The first atomic decay would have poisoned it. The Psi function for the entire system would express this by having in it the living and the dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.
"It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a ''blurred model'' for representing reality. In itself it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.
"We know that superposition of possible outcomes must exist simultaneously at a microscopic level because we can observe interference effects from these. We know (at least most of us know) that the cat in the box is dead, alive or dying and not in a smeared out state between the alternatives. When and how does the model of many microscopic possibilities resolve itself into a particular macroscopic state? When and how does the fog bank of microscopic possibilities transform itself to the blurred picture we have of a definite macroscopic state. That is the measurement problem and Schrödinger's cat is a simple and elegant explanation of that problem."]
Schrodinger, Erwin (1887-1961) Austrian physicist, Nobel Prize recipient (Physics, 1933)
[Sources: techtarget.com; Ernest Schrödinger, 'Die gegenwartige Situation in der Quantenmechanik,' Naturwissenschaftern. 23 : pp. 807-812; 823-823, 844-849. (1935). English translation: John D. Trimmer, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 124, 323-38 (1980), Reprinted in Quantum Theory and Measurement, p 152 (1983)]
More Erwin Schrodinger anecdotesRelated Anecdote Keywords:
Death Strange Science Cats Uncertainty Particle Physics Physics Quantum Physics Regrets Second Thoughts Paradoxes
View/add Comments [0]
