Schrödinger's Cat
 

Can someone explain this to me.



Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment, sometimes described as a paradox, devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. It illustrates what he saw as the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics applied to everyday objects. The scenario presents a cat that might be alive or dead, depending on an earlier random event. Although the original "experiment" was imaginary, similar principles have been researched and used in practical applications. The thought experiment is also often featured in theoretical discussions of the interpretation of quantum mechanics. In the course of developing this experiment, Schrödinger coined the term Verschränkung (entanglement).

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...rs_cat.svg.png http://bits.wikimedia.org/static-1.2...gnify-clip.png
Schrödinger's Cat: A cat, a flask of poison and a radioactive source are placed in a sealed box. If an internal Geiger counter detects radiation, the flask is shattered, releasing the poison that kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when we look in the box, we see the cat either alive or dead, not both alive and dead.

What I'm getting is that since we don't know if proper radiation was emitted to shatter the poison flask. We don't know if the cat is dead or alive. Until the box in looked into.

But something can not be both dead and alive.

But something can not be both dead and alive. Actually, not only can the cat in this theory be both dead and alive, there's a third possibility as well - it could be in the course of dying (e.g. the flask is broken the moment the box is opened) when the observation is made. That's the key, ALL possibilities exist simultaneously until the observation is made.

I am going to bring up a word I despise, that is narrative. Everything is nothing until a human puts a narrative to it.

The cat is in an unknown state until it is observed. But even when it is observed, what is it's state? It's state is that which the observer puts on it. Thus the narrative.

How do I know what is in the box if I did not put the items in there? Is there a cat in there? Is there an elephant in there? Does the person who puts the items in the box also perform the observation or does someone else perform the observation? Is their observation affected by the narrative from the person who put the items in the box? Did the person who put the items in the box give a narrative of the box and it's contents?

Scientists wrongly call these things observations. They are not. I don't think observations are possible by humans as they always put a narrative to what they observe. People sometimes call this perspective or framing. Either way the observation is tainted IMO.

Its like the guys with their haldron collider. If anyone watched that cartoon video explanation by the scientist or student dude. They already have their narrative. They will now fit their observations to suit. They are performing millions of "observations" per day or year or whatever the time frame was, but it was millions of observations so they can get a statistical anomally that fits their narrative. Imperfect science but I think it's the best we can do in our current mind set.

Here's one. Is the colour of the leaves of trees the same green for you and me? When I see green I see green but when you see green do you see green green or some other colour which to you is green but to me would be something else. Ignoring colour blind people. The only thing we can be sure of, is that the colour of leaves is consistent for me as it is for you, so we can only assume I see green the same way you see green but we can never be sure. Scientists would state they can be sure by poking around with receptors and such but all they can really test for is consistency.

This is that I was thinking Mr. Sukoi .

Its just sounds like High-Filudent Bullshit to me.

yeah, I'm not gonna know if the cat is dead or alive until I see it. I can not trust to radioactivity to reach the point, and I also can not trust that the poison will kill that cat, so.... WTF?

I guess at this point the cat can be dead or alive, and since IDK it's both dead and alive, or the equivalent there of. What if the neko is neither dead nor alive, to me there is no such plane of existence. You Are, or You Are Not.

Edit: I'm a bit buzzed. I'm ready for tomorrow. This is very interesting to me.

I guess that I am thinking this over too much as the answer is much more simple than I could have imagined.

Edit, End of thread, I got it.

No way, keep thinking about it

I am as I type this.

I remember your old sig, about problems having a simple, obvious, and wrong answer.

I think it has to do with "Time and Space" in a quantum mechanics sense.
In quantum mechanics, events don't occur in a linear fashion because time and space
no longer have 3 dimensional restrictions or limitations. Here is no longer there.

Bugger if I know, though. I spect it wouldn't be a paradox if I did....

..my brain hurts!

...but your brain may or may not be in your head. It cannot be known until a neurosurgeon opens your head and sees it.

Two things:

only works in quantum mechanics i.e. theoretical concept.

outside theoretical construct only works on self-centered people who believe their perception is reality.

http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...ies/smiley.gif

Until that time, his brain exists in all three states... working normally, braindead, and empty skull.
Goes a long way toward explaining his posts here! http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...ilies/grin.gif

If I understad the paradox correctly, it's not that nobody knows if the cat is alive or dead, it's that the cat exists in both states simultaneously until the event of observation solidifies one of the two possible realities. Meaning, at the point of observation, the universe splits, one universe where the cat is alive, and one universe where the cat is dead, both universes existing together prior to the point of observation.

Buddha,
With respect to your OP, here's what I think. The cat is not "half dead", it does not exist simultaneously in more than one state. From the observers viewpoint, the state of the cat is UNKNOWN (unobserved) until the box is opened. In my objective view of the universe, this means that the cat is EITHER dead OR alive in the box, not both, but the actual state will remain UNKNOWN until the box is opened and the observation is made (at which point the TRUE [conforming to reality] state of the cat is observed.)

No real "paradox" involved at all, unless you INSIST as an observer that you CAN know something about the actual state of the cat without making an actual observation... which is (in my opinion) the height of scientific folly.

P.S. I disagree with madfranks explanation above, in my world view there is only ONE universe, and just because the phenomenon hasn't been OBSERVED yet does NOT mean that it is not already in a specific state of observable existence.

In my world view, it is axiomatic that REALITY EXISTS and that IT IS WHAT IT IS, regardless of observation, subjective interpretation, or "feelings" about it. Science, in its PURE form, should be about observation, experimentation, and discovery... NOT the creation of grandiose nonsenses to try and explain something we don't yet understand (so-called "string theory" comes to mind!)

madfranks, it is the Einstein and whole under-educated Theory Of Relativity bunch who came up with this.

They also destroyed classical physics, so for 80 years we are having a bunch of quacks giving each other Nobel prizes, coming up with idiocies like "vacuum is everywhere", "wave-particle duality", "90% of black matter everywhere" , generating bunch of made up particles , spending billions on finding Bosons and other such nonsense.

http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...ies/smiley.gif

probably need to update my last one.

constructs exist where there's no need for off-shoot theories like wave-particle duality of light, because everything can be explained easier within classical physics. Hence that construct is dead. Here's just one example:
http://www.the-phoney-photon.com

It just somehow this Einstein brigade has so much oligarch money behind it... one wonders if it is not because his theories help someone maintain grip on energy...

At least 4 ways to look at the Cat right way from people who understand quantum mechanics:

1. However, one of the main scientists associated with the Copenhagen interpretation, Niels Bohr, never had in mind the observer-induced collapse of the wave function, so that Schrödinger's Cat did not pose any riddle to him. The cat would be either dead or alive long before the box is opened by a conscious observer.[6] Analysis of an actual experiment found that measurement alone (for example by a Geiger counter) is sufficient to collapse a quantum wave function before there is any conscious observation of the measurement.

2. In 1957, Hugh Everett formulated the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which does not single out observation as a special process. In the many-worlds interpretation, both alive and dead states of the cat persist after the box is opened, but are decoherent from each other.

3. Ensemble interpretation

The ensemble interpretation states that superpositions are nothing but subensembles of a larger statistical ensemble. The state vector would not apply to individual cat experiments, but only to the statistics of many similarly prepared cat experiments. Proponents of this interpretation state that this makes the Schrödinger's Cat paradox a trivial non-issue.

This interpretation serves to discard the idea that a single physical system in quantum mechanics has a mathematical description that corresponds to it in any way.

4. Relational interpretation

The relational interpretation makes no fundamental distinction between the human experimenter, the cat, or the apparatus, or between animate and inanimate systems; all are quantum systems governed by the same rules of wavefunction evolution, and all may be considered "observers." But the relational interpretation allows that different observers can give different accounts of the same series of events, depending on the information they have about the system.[11] The cat can be considered an observer of the apparatus; meanwhile, the experimenter can be considered another observer of the system in the box

Wiki Free Energy.

I think it is more of a stochastic argument: the cat has some statistical chance of being in some state, confirmed upon observation. The wave function is a probability function.

Is this kinda like....it's not really a fart unless it stinks?

This is pretty much the conclusion that I came to. It's ridiculous as one could pin point the exact time of death of the cat, a wireless pulse transmitter, or a RFID chip lol. The wiki also talks about the uncertainty principle, but there doesn't need to be anything uncertain about this.