cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Schroedinger's cat. After all, to what conclusion have we reached?

Dear readers,

You must know that old famous paradox.

Please feel free to vote for either conclusion shown below, if possible with your comment.  I myself am standing on neutral side.

Conclusion 1:     The cat is either dead or alive before and regardless of our action of opening the lid of the box, as Herr Schroedinger already suggested in 1935.

Conclusion 2:     Before we open the lid, the cat is in  a superposed state.  That is, her wave function is purely the sum of alive state vector and dead state  vector until we open the lid.  Just when we open the lid, her wave function suddenly collapse into one state vector of the two.  Therefore, whether the cat is alive or dead is only determined at the instance of our action of opening the lid.

Thank you for reading

Sincerely,

A Pithecantropus Japonicus who is planning to travel to the Moon in order to build his resort villa there

May 29, 2013

0 Kudos
2 Replies
cjkelton
New Contributor

Re: Schroedinger's cat. After all, to what conclusion have we reached?

     Ah, that troublesome cat. I do enjoy thinking about him. On one hand, experience tells me that a cat has to be either dead or alive; however, until I have a way of telling which state this particular cat is in, I would behave as if he could be either one with an equal probability (meaning that any influence this cat would have over my behavior would exhibit 50% alive character and 50% dead character). For example, as I prepare to open the box, I may set out some water and food for him, but I may also have a trash bag ready, just in case. Whereas if I knew he were going to be alive I wouldn't have expended the energy to find a trash bag, but perhaps would have made him up a nice little bed.


     I suppose things are ultimately defined by how they interact with and influence their environment. Since the cat's influence cannot be defined as being specifically that of a dead state or that of an alive state, the cat can only be defined as a function of probabilities. It's not that he couldn't be one state or the other at any given moment, it's just that without exerting influence on the observer either way, his specific state is irrelevant. It is entirely possible that an alien spaceship landed in my backyard last night, leaving no trace - did it happen? does it matter to me if it never influences my known reality?  And to those who would claim that the cat has to be either dead or alive before the box is opened, simply because it has to be one or the other, you never know, perhaps the doomed cat has discovered how to reach a higher dimensional state of being while we've all been debating his fate.

However, If I had to make a guess prior to opening the box, I would say he was dead, as that would likely be a lower energy state with higher entropy.

Christopher Kelton

0 Kudos

Re: Schroedinger's cat. After all, to what conclusion have we reached?

Dear Mr. Kelton,

Thanks for your participation in this discussion.

You said things are ultimately defined by how they interact with or influence the environment.

If  you mean the word "thing" as the fate of the cat, then I would like to ask.

The very root key that determines the fate of the cat is only one single radioactive atom.

Whether the radio active decay will happen or not is irrevent of our observation, I believe so.

I thought the radioactive decay ia happening and will happen irrespective of our consciousness from the external position with regard to the box.

So that, all of physical phenomena, I think, will proceed spontaneously by and due to its own probabilistic fate to which fate we external observer cannot touch or influence any effect if we are isolated with it.

Am I right?   I think perhaps I am for your probalistitic explanation on the Schroedinger's cat.

Sincerely

Mitsuru Yamada

P.S. Reading a book "The Quantum Divide" written by Gerry and Bruno, I am now confusing the terms "decoherence", "microscopic" and "macroscopic".  The book does not give me any mathematecal definition of decoherence.

P.S.2. "Is there the Moon, when nobody is looking?" from a quotation of A. Einstein.

0 Kudos