shroedinger's famous cat question?

Question

anybody know? it was refered to in answer to energy/time previous question

Answer 1

It's in quantum physics. Place a cat into a closed space, and release a poison gas into the space. Using the mathmatics of quantum physics, at any given time the cat is both dead and alive seemingly at the same time. I don't know the math myself, but this was the answer given by Robert Anton Wilson in his Schroediger's Cat Trilogy.

Answer 2

Shroedinger's "famous cat question" is not really question at all but an theoretical experiment showing the error in modern quantum theory. Here's Schrödinger'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 of acid and kill the cat. The observer cannot know whether or not an atom of the radioactive 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.

Answer 3

Here's Schrödinger'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.

We know that superposition actually occurs at the subatomic level, because there are observable effects of interference, in which a single particle is demonstrated to be in multiple locations simultaneously. What that fact implies about the nature of reality on the observable level (cats, for example, as opposed to electrons) is one of the stickiest areas of quantum physics. Schrödinger himself is rumored to have said, later in life, that he wished he had never met that cat.

Answer 4

It's a "thought problem" designed to show just how different quantum theory and everyday life are....

If you put a cat in a box with some mechanism which will kill the cat (gas pellet e.g.) that is tied to the result of some quantum event, say the emission of a photon by an electron or something like that... even after the event has (or hasn't) taken place, until you actually look inside the box to see if its still alive or not, you can only describe the 'state' of the cat as both alive AND dead (at the same time) because of the Heisenberg uncertainty principal...

Now we all know that the cat can't really be alive and dead at the same time... the whole exercise is just a way to demonstrate the uncertain or 'probabilistic' nature of quantum theory. There are no absolutes in quantum mechanics, only probabilities.... in short, in the world of elementary particles there are some fundamental things which just can't be known with certainty.

Answer 5

Like Eggman said, Schroedinger's Cat is a "thought experiment" to illustrate the uncertainty involved in quantum events. There is no error in Quantum Theory. This is exactly how the sub-atomic world works. Before an observation is made, the quantum state of any system is a superposition of all possible states. The wave function of the system has to collapse (i.e. an observation is made forcing one of the states to achieve probability of ONE) before the system would be in a definitive state.