What happened to Schrödinger's cat?

Question

What experiments were used to investingate this theory? did they use an actual cat?

Answer 1

Good question. I was amused when an old friend asked me this many moons ago. I reassured them as I now reassure you that it was a gedanken or thought experiment and so no cats were actually killed by the cyanide inside the box. My friend cynically said 'I bet they did' but actually doing the experiment for real wouldn't help as part of it is not knowing what's going on.

Schrödinger used it to show the absurdity of quantum mechanics because if the release of the poison is tied to the release of a radioactive particle when the possibility of it is being released, well before a measurement takes place a particle grows in to a cloud of probability or if you like the many worlds explanation - interferes with corresponding photons on parallel universes. Schrödinger then said the probability cloud would have to then include a dead cat killed by poison and one which was alive because the poison was not released. There werent too cats though - its just that it contained both a cat that was alive and not dead and a cat that was dead and NOT alive and it is the same cat - its not just that we dont know if its alive until we open the box - quantum mechanics says the cat isnt forced in to one of the states until we open the box to look! As I said Schrödinger used it to show how absurd quantum mechanics are but after the best part of a century of measurements and study we can't help but agree the 'paradox' such as it is, is real.

No cats were harmed. Promise.

Answer 2

There was no experiment done on a cat.

I take it you know the setup by now. A cat is left in a closed box with a radioactive substance and a vial that releases a poisonous gas when it registers radioactivity. The radioactive decay is described by quantum mechanics.

This was a description of a possible experimental setup. In quantum theory, the possible states of a system are represented by a linear combination of wave functions...

description = |a> + |b> + |c> + ...

for the cat, the description would be |alive> + |dead>

and each value could be used to give some percentage chance of finding the cat in that state. The issue here is to take the fact that the cat is not alive and dead at the same time and apply it to wave functions. From here you get that the wave functions should be interpreted as types of probibily density functions.

Although the cat's state is described by a linear combination of wave functions, the cat is not alive and dead at the same time. It's kind of spooky and fun to say, but it's not true. That is a misinterpretation of the theory.

Answer 3

The Schrodingers Cat experiment in Quantum Physics:
Take one ordinary cat, one large box, a particle detector, a radiation source, a bottle of cyanide gas. Hook up the detector so that if it detects
a particle from the radiation source, it will open the cyanide gas. Set it up inside the box in such a way that there will be a 50% probability of a particle being detected from the radiation source within a five minute period. Add the cat to the box.

Theory says that the cat will enter a quantum state where it is 50% alive and 50% dead until the experimenter looks inside the box. However, reality teaches us that the severly pissed off cat cat WILL escape the box well before the 5 minutes are up, attack the experimenter and depart just in time for the severly lacerated experimenter to watch the hammer decend on the cyanide bottle one inch from his nose.

Answer 4

Schrödinger's cat was a thought experiment designed to show quantum uncertainty could have effects on a macroscopic level as well. One early objection to quantum theory by the realists or positivists was that all this alleged uncertainty took place on scales so small it was not directly visible. (Einstein was a realist). Schrödinger's cat was intended to show seemingly abstract ideas like indeterminate states could be observed in large objects as well as small.

Schrödinger's original paper, in translation, is available at http://www.tu-harburg.de/rzt/rzt/it/QM/cat.html . It is an interesting read.

Answer 5

"Schrödinger's cat" is used to explain uncertainty.
A cat inside a closed box can be dead or alive for a observer. One cannot be sure about the cat until he opens the box and looks inside. So, the cat can be dead, alive or both. That's uncertainty & Quantum physics.

Answer 6

checkmate? you're making stupid pretentions to an guidance and end your little mumble fest with the time era checkmate? i will wager you have not have been given a clue what the origins of the time era examine mate are...yet hi...there is often Google ( as used to discover Pascal's wager and Schroedinger's Cat )

Answer 7

Schrodinger's cat is alive and well, and now lives with me after it was rehomed by the RSPCA owing to being the subject of potentially radioactive experiments. The cat is now about 64 years old, and doing well.

Answer 8

Re: Franco
"Just because you do not know if the cat is dead or alive it does not mean it is neither."

Maybe you should go back to quantum mechanics 101, because *yes*, that's what it means. Uncertainty in quantum mechanics is not about being uncertain, about not knowing if the cat is dead or alive until you find out. It is about the cat being dead with some probability and alive with some probability, until you actually do something to it to find out.

Of course, such phenomena actually don't happen with large objects such as cats.

Answer 9

RE: J Boehme

I am not a physicist but I think "action at a distance" is still a problem for other non-"local realists"! [Global surrealists?] Getting into some zen state, and saying "what is there to explain, it just happens, that's reality" sounds to the somewhat objective outsider like "I haven't a clue, and I am in denial"

Answer 10

The modern name for it is entanglement (http://www.joot.com/dave/writings/articles/entanglement/). It does not experiment with cats but with photons. Yet the "spooky action at a distance" is still a challenge for the so called local realism of Einstein.