Shrodinger's cat and your opinion....

Here's the experiment, as writen by shrodinger himself :
One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter, there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small that perhaps in the course of the hour, one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges, and through a relay releases a hammer that shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts. It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a "blurred model" for representing reality. In itself, it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks


The question is, what do you think we can interpret by this thought experiment???
Do you think that the person who observe the experiment is the one whomakes the world diverge??? or is the world diverge by it self?? etc. etc.

PS : I don't want wikipedia answers, i just want to know what you think.

Schrodinger's Cat is just a fun thought experiment, reflecting the absence of absolute knowledge in the universe. The cat could be alive, but the cat could also be dead, theoretically, the chances are EXACTLY 50/50, and until you open the box, there's absolutely no way to know which it is. Of course ,as more time passes, the probability that the cat is dead increases.

Logic is simply a reflection of the way the universe operates, however: the universe isn't consistent. It plays by one set of rules on the relativistic scale, one set on the mesoscale, and a 3rd set on the quantum scale. This sort of represents how things work on the quantum scale, on a relativistic level.

Yay a science-y thread. What happens in Schrodinger's cat can be applied to the 2nd law of thermodynamics and the statement of Clausius.

In any closed process the 2nd law looks like:



We assume that Schrodinger's cat is an isolated system that is doing something so we can then say.



This means that the entropy of the box that the cat is in will be either increasing or remaining constant. All of this is just what Clausius did. To make this simple we are going to assume the cat doesn't move, breathe, shed, blink or do anything to change the entropy of the box and nothing comes along to interferes with it either and the box only contains the cat and the atom (and stuff to kill the cat). There will be a vacuum everywhere else inside the box. This is so that the only way the entropy of what's inside the box can change is by the atom decaying and eventually killing the cat.

The 2nd law isn't very black and white when applied to single atoms or at any time where things from quantum mechanics are significant compared to macroscopic things like gravity. Simply put, when there are very few atoms the chances that the 2nd law will not be accurate becomes high.

Now then, the instant we close the box we don't really know whats going on in there. At any instant after the box has closed the atom could have decayed and we have a dead cat OR we have a alive cat wondering why the hell its next to some poison but not both.

Gibbs' paradox is similar to this. I won't write it out but the idea is the same. The end result is that the fact that we opened the box and took a look inside at some instant will increase the entropy of the contents of the box.

Also in Gibbs' paradox no macroscopic changes occur when the gases are allowed to mix. Relating that to the cat, once we close the box we can't notice when the cat dies if it dies. So until we re-open the box (Gibbs': re-insert the divider) the particles inside the box are essentially indistinguishable.

On the scale of the universe things get really messy. Since we are in the view of the cat, we know whether the "atom" has decayed or not, that is we are able to distinguish macroscopic things but if we say our universe is the like the box and our entropy is constantly increasing something has to be "opening our box" to make that increase, meaning to the "observer" we are completely indistinguishable when they are not looking.

Random Thought:

Our universe has so many atoms that we standing here cannot possibly tell the difference between two atoms next to each other at the other end of the universe. We already know that by looking as far away as we can in the universe we are looking into the past of that region. I think that for this very very far away region we can call that region another box with a cat inside and we are not looking at this instant but looking at some time very very very long ago. That is by us looking very far away we are distinguishing that region as being either "dead" or "alive" but not both. At any instant in the future we are unable to tell the difference because light has not made it from there to here, so essentially we are not looking.

This idea applies to us as well. There are distant "observers" that are seeing us as either "dead" or "alive". That alone is causing our entropy to continuously increase. So in general, for any isolated system (or universe) with more atoms than anyone cares to count something like this happens, where the universe "observes" its own states. Mathematically I have no idea how to describe this.

Enjoyed writing this. We need more science threads.

I'm going with the quantum wave function collapsing when the decayed nucleus hits the geiger counter because to me that's a measurement.

Wow. I just learned a lot. Honestly!
I found the experiment interesting, but will read more before I make a cohesive, informed answer.

One of the very interesting results of the quantum world is that imaginary numbers like sqrt(-1) are real. How can you have the sqrt(-1) of anything? Apparently you can!

It's not just in the quantum world. Complex numbers are used to model generally any kind of potential energy. Specifically in electrostatics (very important in quantum mechanics), heat transfer and fluid flow. Anytime something is vibrating you can represent the vibrating using complex numbers as well. There's a whole math class on just the math involved in that, as well as whole science/engineering classes on the physical aspects.

Yes, they are used to model things and make the math easier but they aren't necessary to describe it. In the quantum world it's necessary and makes us realize that imaginary numbers play a role in the reality of the universe.

This.
I really am glad for the science thread, all those religions and atheisms and whatnot thread tires me out.

Yeah, me too, and thanks by the way for giving the info!

According to certain factions of the internet, Schrodinger's Cat was thought of to criticize theoretical physics thinkers for being complete idiots about things with simple solutions.

I think there is a solution to Schrodinger's Cat, and it's obvious via logic; the cat dies, you dolts. It's how the world works.
"If I drop a wrench on a planet with a positive gravity field, I need not see it fall, nor hear it hit the ground, to know that it has in fact fallen."

Er... thanks!

XD

...and conspiracy theory threads, too...

The only proven fact is that placing the cat in the box yourself caused it to dematerialize from existance. Also when you looked in the now empty box, closed it and opened it again, there was a cat.




Also more food for thought:

I have a good anology for Shrodinger's cat. I am immortal because the only way you can tell if a person is mortal is for them to die. So since I have not died yet I can claim to be immortal

They actually did a recreation of this experment in the science wing at my school, but only with rats, not cats. The experment is meant to prove that the partical wave beharior of photons can be recreated on a macrotic level. This experment only works however if you assume that the cat is not sentient, and has no concept of self, life or death, becasue that would influance the results.

Light photons have the behaviors of both particals and waves, and this behavior causes light particals to be, in theory, in two places simultaniously. This is possible in part becasue of the Higensbur uncertenty principal and is supposed to prove that the cat can simutaniosly be in a state of death and being alive as long as there is no outside imput inside the box.

The reason this does not actually work is because if it did, on the macrotic level you would most likly see spatial dialation when the cat "Died" its a very interesting theory, but it is almost impossibel to actually comprehend for me because i got a C in Phys and Chem.

Well the experiment even though it can lead to 2 different results just goes to show that you never know what might happen. In about an hour in theory the cat would most likely still be alive however obviously if left for too long the cat will die. But what if the system malfunction and it never triggers? The world is a strange place filled with many variables from the logical ones: (Human error) to the more religious-esque unlikely ones (Divine intervention) we never know what may happen until we take the initiative for ourselves and open the box