Phat writes:
mtnmath.com writes:
Here's Schrdinger's (theoretical) experiment: We place a living cat into a steel chamber, along with a device containing a vial of hydrocyanic acid. There is, in the chamber, a very small amount of a radioactive substance. If even a single atom of the substance decays during the test period, a relay mechanism will trip a hammer, which will, in turn, break the vial and kill the cat. The observer cannot know whether or not an atom of the substance has decayed, and consequently, cannot know whether the vial has been broken, the hydrocyanic acid released, and the cat killed. Since we cannot know, the cat is both dead and alive according to quantum law, in a superposition of states. It is only when we break open the box and learn the condition of the cat that the superposition is lost, and the cat becomes one or the other (dead or alive). This situation is sometimes called
quantum indeterminacy or
the observer's paradox:
the observation or measurement itself affects an outcome, so that it can never be known what the outcome would have been if it were not observed.
Okay... The book I read, called...
Decoding the Universe by Charles Seife talks about the cat. It talks about these small little things that pop in and out of existance collecting information from their surroundings. These things cannot be stopped, and so would be in the cat's box.
In a world where only the gathering of information by humans would count, yes, you'd have a dead and alive cat. But because of these little things, no--you cannot have this. They will collect information immediately... and the superpositioned cat will have to "choose" one way or the other. Remember our chat about Universes splitting off? Well, that's one theory about it (not one I like). Anyway, so you cannot have a dead and alive cat.
Besides, such states of superposition only apply at a quantum level, right? I mean, we can't get this sort of stuff to work at a "real-world" level... can we?
J0N
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