Reimagining of Schrodinger's Cat Breaks Quantum Mechanics -- and Stumps Physicists (nature.com) 273
In a multi-'cat' experiment, the textbook interpretation of quantum theory seems to lead to contradictory pictures of reality, physicists claim. New submitter Lanodonal shares a report: In the world's most famous thought experiment, physicist Erwin Schrodinger described how a cat in a box could be in an uncertain predicament. The peculiar rules of quantum theory meant that it could be both dead and alive, until the box was opened and the cat's state measured. Now, two physicists have devised a modern version of the paradox by replacing the cat with a physicist doing experiments -- with shocking implications.
Quantum theory has a long history of thought experiments, and in most cases these are used to point to weaknesses in various interpretations of quantum mechanics. But the latest version, which involves multiple players, is unusual: it shows that if the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct, then different experimenters can reach opposite conclusions about what the physicist in the box has measured. This means that quantum theory contradicts itself.
The conceptual experiment has been debated with gusto in physics circles for more than two years -- and has left most researchers stumped, even in a field accustomed to weird concepts. "I think this is a whole new level of weirdness," says Matthew Leifer, a theoretical physicist at Chapman University in Orange, California. The authors, Daniela Frauchiger and Renato Renner of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, posted their first version of the argument online in April 2016. The final paper [PDF] appears in Nature Communications on 18 September.
Quantum theory has a long history of thought experiments, and in most cases these are used to point to weaknesses in various interpretations of quantum mechanics. But the latest version, which involves multiple players, is unusual: it shows that if the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct, then different experimenters can reach opposite conclusions about what the physicist in the box has measured. This means that quantum theory contradicts itself.
The conceptual experiment has been debated with gusto in physics circles for more than two years -- and has left most researchers stumped, even in a field accustomed to weird concepts. "I think this is a whole new level of weirdness," says Matthew Leifer, a theoretical physicist at Chapman University in Orange, California. The authors, Daniela Frauchiger and Renato Renner of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, posted their first version of the argument online in April 2016. The final paper [PDF] appears in Nature Communications on 18 September.
Number 7 will shock you! (Score:5, Funny)
Is this just another way of saying "Number 7 will shock you!"
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Just as long as it does not blow your mind! .
Let me get it straight (Score:3)
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Yeah, this isn’t so much a quantum mechanics problem as an illustration of how journalists, bloggers, and the like can fall into the trap of thinking understanding some extremely simplified model of something means they also understand the complex underlying system.*
In the end it’s a nonsensical self-contradiction by definition; sort of like when you were an 8-year-old kid and became fascinated with the conundrum “Can an omnipotent God make a stone too big for him to lift?”
* Like put
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In this experiment... (Score:5, Funny)
We replaced the cat with Folgers Crystals. Let’s see if anyone notices.
Re:In this experiment... (Score:5, Funny)
Brewed cat water would still taste better than Folgers.
Piece of cake (Score:5, Funny)
In the world's most famous thought experiment, physicist Erwin Schrodinger described how a cat in a box could be in an uncertain predicament.
Compared to the second most famous, but ironically similar: "Does this dress make me look fat?"
Where your relationship is also in an "uncertain predicament" -- being both dead and alive -- until the question is answered.
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In the world's most famous thought experiment, physicist Erwin Schrodinger described how a cat in a box could be in an uncertain predicament.
Compared to the second most famous, but ironically similar: "Does this dress make me look fat?"
Where your relationship is also in an "uncertain predicament" -- being both dead and alive -- until the question is answered.
Even though the right answer is diametrically opposite, this is equivalent to the question: "Would you take a bullet for me?"
Interestingly, it's not enough to just answer the question correctly. The person answering the question also needs to do so within milliseconds of it being asked. So even the timing of the answer leads to it's own uncertainty.
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>>> "Does this dress make me look fat?"
There's only one valid answer to this question:
"You look marvelous, darling. Would you like to go to dinner?"
You get reassurance, followed by a quick change of subject before she realizes that you haven't answered the question. But it only works once...
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"Does this dress make me look fat?"
If you are fat: yes!
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> "Does this dress make me look fat?"
The *correct* answer is:
I love you regardless of how you look.
One of the many counter-examples that truth is NOT binary.
The other classic is:
Have you stopped beating your wife?
Again the correct answer is:
Mu. The question is invalid -- you are presupposing existing conditions that never existed. How do you stop something when you never started it in the first place???
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"Does this dress make me look fat?"
The *correct* answer is: I love you regardless of how you look.
You realize that means "yes" - right? :-)
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It's fine, as long as she doesn't.
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The other classic is:
Have you stopped beating your wife?
Actually the answer is no. "Stopped beating" described a transition from "beating" to "not beating". Since "beating" never occurred, the transition never occurred either.
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The *correct* answer is:
I love you regardless of how you look.
You are not married, are you?
The correct answer is "no". This is the least bad answer. Do not elaborate. There is no good answer.
A possible alternative is to pretend not to hear, mumble an excuse, and run away.
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The least bad answer is to avoid the question altogether and answer something along the lines of "I like $her_favorite_dress better".
Or, if you're horny, "I'd prefer you to not wear anything right now..."
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The correct answer is, "Why the fuck would you ask me a question the answer to which is guaranteed to piss you off? Just fucking yell at me already."
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No... in this case your relationship is alive until the question is answered, when it certainly dies no matter what you answer.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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What we do know is that quantum mechanics works. It is one of the most successful theories of the physical universe that humanity has ever devised.
In the end Quantum stuff will be amazing... (Score:2)
...but only if you believe in it, like Tinkerbell.
Finally the ultimate class separation, into those who can believe in magic and those who cannot.
Is the cat conscious? (Score:2)
I never understood how it should work when the cat is a conscious observer anyway.
Re:Is the cat conscious? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Conscious observer" has nothing to do with it. The Geiger counter rigged to the poison is the observer that collapses the wave state.
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Observation / interaction have NOTHING to do with being conscious. It could be a rock and a can of spray paint.
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But seriously, as I understand "observation" in the measurement and quantum-mechanics sense, something doesn't have to be conscious, or even complex, to be an observer.
Anything which can received and encode information through transfer of energy, that is, anything that can be entangled, can be an observer.
Many things/points/particles/locations/events in the universe observe/measure/are entangled with many other things.
And conversely there are many boundaries across which the t
If scientists can't agree on this... (Score:2)
If scientists can't agree on this will it be a cat fight.
Collapsing wave functions? (Score:3, Informative)
Most physicists don't give much credence to the Copenhagen Interpretation. There are better ways to think about quantum mechanics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Still has credence (Score:4, Informative)
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Exactly. Every interpretation is just a way for dumb monkeys to try to visualize something that inherently can't be conceptualized in terms of our experience. All of them are consistent with the maths, therefore all of them are as 'correct' as each other.
Schrodinger's cat was just an illustration, using the Copenhagen interpretation, that quantum maths can't be extended to the macro world, and that somewhere in the transition from quantum to macro, there must be an increasing level of certainty embedded
Re:Collapsing wave functions? (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you not know how to read? Read the actual link you linked to; there is basically one person who claims this orthodox interpretation is "now widely felt to be unacceptable." Given how wrong Einstein turned out to be about quantum mechanics, it wouldn't be surprising at all if this one Nobel laureate also turned out to be wrong.
The farthest you can go (and not be laughably wrong) is that there is broad consensus that there is something to be fixed in Copenhagen interpretation—but there is no other interpretation that is more broadly accepted than Copenhagen interpretation.
The cat is both in the box and not (Score:2)
It is a cat.
When the cat wants to be in the box, it is in the box.
When it wants to be out of the box, it is out of the box.
Death of cats is expressly prohibited under the Rules of War.
Now, parrots or songbirds, those are ok.
Missing the point. (Score:4, Interesting)
Schrödinger's point about the cat thought experiment is that that cat is NOT in two separate states at the same time. That was his expressing his aggravation about the contradiction of the results of his work and reality.
The question remains, "How does potential get resolved?"
Many world interpretation? (Score:2)
This just seems like a reiteration of the Many world interpretation?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
So is this... (Score:2)
You know the one where 2 linear filters at 90 block a photon 100% of the time but if you add a third filter in between the two at 45 they all block the photon ~47% of the time?
Like is this a Local Realism thing?
Or is this more of a "what constitutes an observer" question?
Why is this shocking? (Score:2)
... different experimenters can reach opposite conclusions about what the physicist in the box has measured.
Einstein introduced us to the fact that the universe can appear very different from different points of view. For example, if explosions of supernova "A" and supernova "B" occur, it may be observed that "A" occurred before "B", or that "B" occurred before "A", depending on where the observation was made. Either observation is equally valid, even though the conclusions are logically opposite.
Once one accepts the notion that physical observations are "relative", why is it so shocking that quantum mechanical
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The difference is that events A and B *did* actually have an objective ordering, it was simply that the observer's measurements (which relied on photons reflected off the event) has distortion.
No, they don't. That's almost the entire point behind relativity, that two events that cannot be causally linked (i.e. a photon from one event could not have reached the other before it happened) cannot have a definite ordering assigned to them. The order actually depends on the frame of reference. In fact, the question "what is the objective ordering of A and B" literally makes no sense, because there is no such thing as an objective ordering. It's like asking what the color purple tastes like.
There's no objective different between saying "I can't know what's in the box until I look" and "All infinite possibilities are in the box, and when I open it, I will find 1 of those realities."
But there i
My head hurts (Score:2)
A dumber question. (Score:2)
It seems to me that much of the 'weirdness' of quantum physics comes from the complexity of mathematics that are meant to allow for a possible range of unknown values (aka probability fields).
So, what I've never been able to understand is this. Just because we are unable to know both the position and speed of a particle, why is there an assumption made that the particle doesn't have both a position and speed?
I guess the point is it seems like most of the 'weirdness' stems from the assumption that the model
Re:A dumber question. (Score:4, Informative)
Nonscience (Score:2)
Quantum mechanics (and thermodynamics for that matter) are useful mathematical models rooted in statistics. They are extremely useful tools but ultimately not exactly how our universe works. A true model that infallibly predicts all actions would need to take into consideration the state of all matter and energy in the entire universe. Obviously this is utterly impractical for we mortal beings, so sta
Original paper (Score:5, Informative)
QM is weird! (Score:2)
As a lay person with an engineering background, I find QM to be exceedingly weird. All our intuition stems from interaction with the classical (macroscopic) stuff around us. Trying to extend it to the quantum world is rather frustrating.
I recently took up an opportunity to attend a few lectures on introductory quantum mechanics, just to see if I can develop some intuitive understanding of quantum mechanics. My key takeaway (please correct me if I am wrong) was that in the quantum world, measuring a quantum
Godel's chuckling (Score:2)
Interesting. Reminds me of Gödel's incompleteness theorems: any consistent system of axioms contains statements that are unprovable within the system. Equally mindblowing in a way: the Gödel metric [wikipedia.org]
What about De Broglie-Bohm? (Score:2)
Is this unique to the Copenhagen interpretation? Does the same problem exist in Bohmian mechanics?
Re:Well, this is dumb (Score:5, Informative)
The whole point of the Schrodinger's cat thought experiment was that quantum physics can apply to large scale things like cats and people, indirectly, if you design a mechanism to make it so. It's not about the whole cat decaying. The experiment is that if a geiger counter detects a single atom decaying it triggers the release of a poison to kill the cat. Thus the quantum state of the single atom determines the life or death of the cat.
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The whole point of Schrodinger's cat experiment [phys.org] was to show that trying to apply certain quantum physics theories to reality resulted in absurd results.
To him (and Einstein), it was obvious that the cat could not be both alive and dead, and therefore the people pushing the superposition theory were obviously wrong.
It's a shame that his thought experiment has been taken to mean the exact opposite of what he was originally talking about.
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Let's see if I have this straight. Quantum physics is in an undefined state between valid and invalid and we must wait for a cat to resolve the state? Is that roughly right?
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Of course it's right. Clearly we can't rely on a physicist is resolve it, and cats are well known for having a definite opinion on everything.
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I think it w
Re:Well, this is dumb (Score:5, Interesting)
The whole point of Schrodinger's cat experiment [phys.org] was to show that trying to apply certain quantum physics theories to reality resulted in absurd results.
No, it is more subtle than that. It was designed to show that one interpretation of the results of QM was wrong by showing that it leads to an absurd explanation for every-day scale objects like cats. Nobody ever believed that the cat was in some weird superposition: that was indeed the entire point. The interpretation of QM, called the Copenhagen interpretation, was clearly wrong which is why nobody believes it today. However, everyone believes in quantum mechanics itself and that it works when describing reality (it's the second most precisely tested scientific theory that has ever existed). The problem is trying to get brains that are used to a world that works in the large-scale limit of QM to really grasp the rather different underlying reality.
Re:Well, this is dumb (Score:5, Informative)
If you believe that, you haven't taken a single course in quantum mechanics. Copenhagen interpretation is still taught as the orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics—maybe everyone has an issue with the whole idea of non-local collapse of wavefunction (or what makes up a "measurement"), but it's more widely believed than any of the other cooky theories, including some that Einstein proposed.
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Orthodox. When a physicist uses that word he is pointing up the element of faith involved, and probably implying that he doesn't believe it.
There is around a dozen interpretations (what does it mean, really?) of quantum mechanics.
I remember reading a while back about a convention where they took an anonymous poll of which interpretations the attendees favoured. To everyone's surprise Many Worlds was the most popular.
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I would have used the word "mainline", but that's the word that David J. Griffiths uses in his Introduction to Quantum Mechanics.
I'll grant that interpretations of quantum mechanics still remains controversial, with the Bell's Theorem being the last meaningful progress on this topic (yes, this is counting the paper that was just published). Who knows why Many Worlds interpretation is as popular as it is; it's probably more a symptom of the problem that is the difficulty of giving an interpretation to quantu
Re: Well, this is dumb (Score:5, Interesting)
Many worlds makes quick work of this whole thing. Referencing original explanation, 3 subsets of multiverse: AA,AB & B. In subsets starting with A, Alice in her box sets up spin sideways, in B, spin down. In AA, Bob measures spin up, in AB & B, spin down.
The contradiction is supposed to be in AB Alice is in superposition to Bob, but not to herself. But in many worlds, everyone was always in AB, but they couldn't know that until diverging from copies of themselves in parallel worlds, which they only do when information about choices occurs. It's all beautifully consistent.
Re:Well, this is dumb (Score:4, Funny)
Copenhagen interpretation is still taught as the orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics
Perhaps in some of the more backward, remote realities, but it has long been abandoned in the more sophisticated worlds.
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Copenhagen interpretation is still taught as the orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics
Perhaps in some of the more backward, remote realities, but it has long been abandoned in the more sophisticated worlds, Marty!
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If by that you mean physicists, you may be right. If however, you mean intelligent (that may caveat this) people, bullshit. I've argued with that interpretation right here.
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The whole point of the Schrodinger's cat thought experiment was that quantum physics can apply to large scale things like cats and people, indirectly, if you design a mechanism to make it so.
No, the whole point was to point out the absurdity of the Copenhagen interpretation. Unfortunately, most people tend to miss this part and think that Schrödinger espoused the point of view that he was actually arguing against.
Re:Well, this is dumb (Score:4, Interesting)
No, the whole point was to point out the absurdity of the Copenhagen interpretation. Unfortunately, most people tend to miss this part and think that SchrÃdinger espoused the point of view that he was actually arguing against.
And the Copenhagen interpretation is the new "Bohr atom model" - almost no one believes it this century, but it's still widely discussed and often taught in intro-level classes, out of simple tradition.
Anyhow, measurement devices collapse the wave state, removing this sort of uncertainty at the point of measurement.* It was never a very good thought experiment in the first place. The fact that you can't scale up quantum uncertainty to the macro scale in any straightforward way is the answer to SchrÃdinger's question.
* That's usually explained very early on even in describing "quantum weirdness" in lay terms. The two slit experiment stops giving a diffraction pattern as soon as you measure which slit the photons/electrons/whatever go through.
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And the Copenhagen interpretation is the new "Bohr atom model" - almost no one believes it this century
A 2011 survey [arxiv.org] of attendees of a conference on quantum physics would disagree with you, with 42% of the respondents (a plurality) listing the Copenhagen interpretation as their favorite interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Anyhow, measurement devices collapse the wave state, removing this sort of uncertainty at the point of measurement.
Sorry -- what's your definition of the Copenhagen interpretation? Because, to my understanding, wave function collapse on measurement *is* the Copenhagen interpretation [wikipedia.org]: "Here's the quantum regime. Here's the classic regime. The result of a 'measurement' is always classical. -- How do you g
Re:Well, this is dumb (Score:4, Insightful)
You are correct.
And, by "measurement," we don't mean "humans looking at it."
The "measurement problem" was settled long ago in that there are a shit load of "measuring devices."
When a quantum interacts with anything , that's a measurement.
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Telling, is that you provide no citation of a poll.
I'm in this field (see what I did there) and science is not not a democracy wherein a 51% majority settles matters.
The wave collapse is instantaneous across any distance because the quantum measured is a single object (a wave).
There is no "information," transmitted during collapse, and therefore, no violation of the speed limit of light in a vacuum.
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Seriously? I hope that means you are at best a first-year graduate student. Because if that meant anything else (like, heavens forbid, if you are a PI or something), NSF has seriously failed us.
Wavefunction collapse is believed to be non-local despite all the problems it causes, because to be otherwise is to allow for possibility of non-conservation of conserved quantities (most notably angular momentum, which is the most popular way to entangle quantum states). It's not because "the quantu
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I'd agree with him: the entangled pair of states is a "single object". Can't think of a better way to say it in English. |Up Down > is a "single object" as is " |Down Up>. That's how you get cos^2.
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You're confused.
General relativity addressed how space-time behaves in a gravitational field.
Special relativity describes the effects of velocity in differing frames of reference.
You are also mixing classical physics with quantum physics.
You have some of the vocabulary in your toolbox, but I'm afraid that's the extent of your understanding.
I suggest you read more.
That's what it takes.
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Bell's inequality is basically there's an experiment you can run before checking which shoe is in there, and you get one range of results based on superposition of both, but if you open the box and see the left shoe, now you get a different answer, which suggests there is neither a definite left or right shoe in there before you look.
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If you disconnect the counter output (leaving it in place) the pattern changes
Is this actually true?
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Anyhow, measurement devices collapse the wave state, removing this sort of uncertainty at the point of measurement
Yeees. And it only requires probability wave states that "collapse" at literally infinite speeds... nothing can possibly go wrong with this final, slayer-of-all-others, supreme, holy "interpretation", no-seree-bob, nothing, I tell ya!
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Einstein didn't want to give up on locality (speed of light as a limit) nor reality, which is to say definite objects out there with real, measurable properties.
If you move to "we're a simulation" or quantum mechanics itself is built atop a lower "reality" of the above type, then Einstein gets sad.
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Didn't get your point, sorry.
Re:Well, this is dumb (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well, this is dumb (Score:5, Funny)
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FTFY
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The whole point of the Schrodinger's cat thought experiment was that quantum physics can apply to large scale things like cats and people, indirectly, if you design a mechanism to make it so. It's not about the whole cat decaying. The experiment is that if a geiger counter detects a single atom decaying it triggers the release of a poison to kill the cat. Thus the quantum state of the single atom determines the life or death of the cat.
Except if there was a cat in a box with a valve and pipe and container of gas and a relay to a geiger counter and some isotope...
Everything would be interacting with everything, and there's no physical uncertainty. Just you not knowing until you look.
Much of quantum physics crap today is fundamentally the "If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" question. If the tree falls it's already interacting with shit. If you can even KNOW that the tree is there, then it
Re:Well, this is dumb (Score:4, Interesting)
No matter how complex the thing inside a boundary is, you could in principle (t least in a thought experiment) have the whole thing not entangled in any way with the observer and their entangled environment. So can that complex but isolated thing be in a quantum state/superposition, FROM THE PERSPECTIVE of the outside observer?
I suspect that was the idea of the box concept.
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Yeah, but I thought the point of the thought experiment was to point out the problematic nature of quantum mechanics-- because the cat isn't actually be both alive and dead at the same time.
Whether the cat is alive or dead is a problem of incomplete knowledge, not of an uncertain quantum state. The box is sealed so we don't know whether the cat is alive or dead, but it is either alive or dead. If the geiger counter is measuring the decay of an atom, that counts as a measurement. We can put other equipme
Re:Well, this is dumb (Score:4, Informative)
I believe you are mistaken.
Schrödinger’s point was that the Copenhagen Interpretation led to absurd conclusions. See below.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat#Origin_and_motivation
Schrödinger did not wish to promote the idea of dead-and-alive cats as a serious possibility; on the contrary, he intended the example to illustrate the absurdity of the existing view of quantum mechanics. However, since Schrödinger's time, other interpretations of the mathematics of quantum mechanics have been advanced by physicists, some of which regard the "alive and dead" cat superposition as quite real. Intended as a critique of the Copenhagen interpretation, the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment remains a defining touchstone for modern interpretations of quantum mechanics.[citation needed] Physicists often use the way each interpretation deals with Schrödinger's cat as a way of illustrating and comparing the particular features, strengths, and weaknesses of each interpretation.[citation needed]
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The simplest solution is many world theory, an unfortunately named theory ... there are no worlds, just an infinity of myopic interpretations of the wave function by some deluded parts of it.
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Schrödinger got his initial idea from a correspondence with Einstein.
Albert said that if the Copenhagen Interpretation presented by Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg were correct, a barrel of gunpowder is, at the same time, exploded and not exploded.
In agreement with that derisive point of view, Schrödinger came up with the cat paradox.
Both paradoxes have long been resolved by pointing out that objects as complex as barrels and cats are macroscopic.
Quantum mechanics applies on the microscopic scal
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When you calculate the probability for a particle to go to a new state you multiply the probability amplitudes unless the new state can happen in multiple ways and in that case you add the probability amplitudes. The case where you add
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Sorry.
You're mashing up the wave theory of the double-slit experiment that includes interference with wave collapse.
Superposition is another thing outside all that.
We are working hard on superposition and the jury's still out.
It's speculation and hard to prove because measurement causes decoherence.
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The whole point of the Schrodinger's cat thought experiment was that quantum physics can apply to large scale things like cats and people, indirectly, if you design a mechanism to make it so. It's not about the whole cat decaying. The experiment is that if a geiger counter detects a single atom decaying it triggers the release of a poison to kill the cat. Thus the quantum state of the single atom determines the life or death of the cat.
This sort of explanation is exactly why people are better off without these "thought experiments" that purport to simply the matter.
In the experiment, the cat either died or didn't, and if it died is besides the point. Certainly there was no mystery in a random data source being tied to a switch that had consequences. That's not even close to the point! The real point is that if it was a cat, the waveform collapsed or didn't right away, because the probability of each atom in the cat being in the same posit
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Without being able to crack the math and physics of the new thought experiment (I'm not at that level), I feel that the new paper is poking around that question.
How does it come to be (or why does it have to be, or DOES it have to be) that when quan
Thanks (Score:2)
But still, could there be two inconsistent versions of all that, held by so-far-not-entangled observers? When those observers finally compare notes, by convolvi
Re: Thanks (Score:2)
Besides... (Score:2)
If the cat were dead, you'd be sure to smell it.
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If the cat were dead, you'd be sure to smell it.
Assuming a physicist is dumb enough to put a cat in a box without providing it any litter. While you can't know if the cat is alive or dead until it's observed, the one thing that's guaranteed is you're going to have a mess.
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It would be interesting to see how many physicists have cats and how many have dogs and what the disciplines for each were.
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Also, if there is a mime trapped in a box, does anybody care?
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Please stop with the mime memes.
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You need something like "he who measured it, treasured it."
Maybe even something more clever, but rhyming with collapsed wave function isn't really any easier.
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Schrodinger's Cat is just a thought experiment. The rules of quantum mechanics don't apply to large scale things like cats.
Applying Schrodinger's Cat to physics itself does not actually change physics.
Even if quantum mechanics didn't average away into nothing at that scale, the thought experiment still requires to pretend you don't know what an "observer" is, and that you don't know that every atom of the Cat is an observer already. The "observer" isn't the physicist after all, but rather it is the photon detector; and the cat is large enough to be interacting with everything else in the box just by its presence. And even if that was not so, as soon as you press the button the waveform has to either coll
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Every macroscale object is a bit fuzzy. For humans and cats that's just the radius of one electron orbital on the outermost atoms. But for an individual atom or electron, that's a relatively large radius.
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Does your computer work?
If it does, electrons are tunneling.
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