Philotic Web

Schrödinger's Cat: Dead or Alive?

All I know is if they don't open that box eventually to feed the cat, they'll just have two different kinds of dead cat.

My question is, doesn't the cat perceive what's going on, thus removing it from the suppostion of states?

That's why I like the idea of the multiple universe theory.

Well, let's pretend the cat is asleep. An enchanted everlasting sleep unless it's true love comes and kisses it.

All I know is if they don't open that box eventually to feed the cat, they'll just have two different kinds of dead cat.

Even this is strictly not necessarily true. The mechanism of death has a random element in it as well, and unless one takes a look, the cat is in essence both dead and alive, with differing probability levels.

For example, what causes death in this poor kitty's situation? Lack of food and water, lack of air? Using Heisenberg's uncertainty, the possibility exists (however infinitesimally small) that these things can pop into existence for short periods of time. I'm mostly in fantasy land, here, but the fact remains... you have to destroy the isolation of the kitty and actually observe it before it is either dead or alive.

oh boy, enchanted sleeping cats with differing probabilties of being dead or alive! sounds like something out of well.... quantum physics!

Well, you can look at it this way. If the box is airtight, you can estimate how long it will take for the cat to run out of oxygen, and if you want to be certain (and the box is not too large), you can come back in three days and be fairly certain it will be dead. If the box is not airtight, eventually the smell will probably tip you off.

you can come back in three days and be fairly certain it will be dead.

But not completely sure.

Neither.

you can come back in three days and be fairly certain it will be dead.

But not completely sure.

True, it could be an unknown species of cat that does not, in fact, breathe, yet is still alive.

All I know is if they don't open that box eventually to feed the cat, they'll just have two different kinds of dead cat.

Even this is strictly not necessarily true. The mechanism of death has a random element in it as well, and unless one takes a look, the cat is in essence both dead and alive, with differing probability levels.

For example, what causes death in this poor kitty's situation? Lack of food and water, lack of air? Using Heisenberg's uncertainty, the possibility exists (however infinitesimally small) that these things can pop into existence for short periods of time. I'm mostly in fantasy land, here, but the fact remains... you have to destroy the isolation of the kitty and actually observe it before it is either dead or alive.

Fine, fine, dissect my joke...

(actually, it's Neil Gaiman's joke...)

I think we're going to have to compromise and assume that it is an undead zombie cat.

Has anyone read 'Schrödinger Plague'? Same basic concept, except instead of the cyanide being released to the cat, an undetectable virus is (or isn't) released into the population at large and hence the entire world was both dead and alive at the same time. Creepy.

But doesn't the observer law still stay intact? The people of the community can observe that they are actually not all dead, thus negating the supposition of being both alive and dead?

Well, if everybody was in an enchanted sleep....

jk

If the disease didn't kill, but rather just undetectably infect, everybody would be both infected and infected, but yes, the observer principle should stay intact.

SCHRODINGER'S CAT IS DEAD!!!

LONG LIVE SCHRODINER'S CAT!!!

What about all the possibilities in a Multiverse? or that there might be a dimension of time/space in which the cat is neither dead nor alive, but both at the same time.

For the airtight question: yes, the box has to be airtight. Actually, this thought experiment requires the box to be completely and perfectly isolated from the rest of the universe (otherwise, the external observer could deduce kitty's condition from the interaction of the stuff inside the box with the rest of the universe, hence "collapsing" the cat's wavefunction, that is, making it definitely alive or dead).

SCHRODINGER'S CAT IS DEAD!!!

LONG LIVE SCHRODINER'S CAT!!!

nice, i want a license plate frame that says that.

peterlocke is back!!

Yay!

WB, Lewis!

halloooo!

it seemed i was missing all the fun...something about zoo sex...?

ZOO SEX!!!

No, eriador, no. *whacks with rolled up newspaper*

*whimpers*

I still don't get this cat thing.

Why is that if the cat is either dead or alive then it is both dead and alive?

What kind of box is being used? If it is a microwave, The cat will be dead in about, oh 27 seconds.

not that I've tested it or anything.

that's too bad. i'll give you five bucks to run the test.

I actually ran the Schroedinger's Cat experiment when I was in High School (back before there were quanta, actually...)

I built a cardboard box, added the decaying-atomic trigger (surplus...don't ask) and the cynadide release mechanism. I put the cat in the box, and sealed the thing up.

The only problem was: during the night the cat chewed its way out of the box without anybody knowing. So, for three days, we had this very, very pissed off cat wandering around the house in a rather indeterminate state. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Eventually, my overweight brother-in-law sat in the wooden chair the cat was hiding under, and it collapsed around him.

... it collapsed ...

A.

At least somebody noticed!

dude the cat is either dead or alive not both this is like that saying "if a falls in the forest and no one is there to here it does it make any noise" of course it does it being in a forest implies that there is an atmosphere the tree makes sound waves weather you are there or not

Ah, what a quaint, Newtonian viewpoint. Sort of like stumbling across an old roll-top desk in an IM Pei building...

The point of the cat, well, at least the point Schroedinger was trying to make, was that thinking about state probabilities was absurd.
Wavefunction indetermination, and eventual collapse didn't make sense to him (the same it didn't make sense to Einstein).

To make his point, he tried to bring those concepts from the nanoscale, where the stuff that happens is quite fuzzy, to the macroscopic world. So he stablished a link between an indeterminate state that most people didn't have problems accepting (well, most of the people who understood quantum mechanics, anyway), that is, the radiactive decay of a single atomic nucleus, to an indeterminate state that people would reject immediately, due to our macroscopic world experience, that is, the cat being in an indeterminate state dead/alive.

The problem is that Schroedinger was wrong.

Btw, let's remember that the dead/alive state of the cat doesn't include only the cat: it includes all the particles that can interact with the cat, and all the particles that can interact with said particles... etc, because these interactions will cause the cat wavefunction to collapse "for them".

That's why, for us, external observers, it's essential that the box is perfectly (impossibly) isolated. Otherwise the cat wavefunction for us will collapse almost instantly.

Excellent!

Except if it was a quantum Josephson Junction, you would be able to bounce back and forth between both lanes without expending any additional energy...