In a variation of Schroedingers cat expt, what happens if the odds of the cat living are say 100 to 1?

Question

In the many worlds interpretation does this mean the world would diverge into 99 indentical copies each with a live cat and 1 with a dead cat

Answer 1

No. There is actually a continuum of worlds in MWI with different parts being more or less correlated, not a discrete integer number as you imply. The idea of us being in a discrete world is illusory since the correlations (areas of overlap) are difficult to perceive at the macroscopic scale of our senses . What your modification means is that the dead cat wave function has a higher amplitude, so you're more likely to perceive it so.

Answer 2

I think Schrodinger's cat is supposed to argue against the many worlds theory. In the fictional experiment, the trigger was going to be driven by the decay of an atom. The probability of the atom having decayed at any point in time changes so when you give actual "odds", all you are doing is indicating the time at which the measurement is made.

The many worlds interpretation is almost impossible to imagine... at any given moment, the world is not branching to just 100 worlds because that's just the probability of DECAY of this ONE atom. The cat itself is made of a looot more atoms, and so is the box, and the room, the human... you do the math. The number of worlds branching out at any given moment in time would be an infinity even bigger than the infinite sum of all matter and energy in the universe.

Answer 3

I never liked Schroeder's cat. It is too much like the asking if a tree falling in a forest with nobody around to hear it makes a sound. Sound has independent existence and does not depend on being heard to actually exist. And the cat knows if it is dead even if we don't.

I think the whole idea was to demonstrate how observation must change the thing being observed, at least in quantum mechanics. But the cat explanation is bad IMO.

Answer 4

The point "Schroedinger's cat" illustrates is the 'collapse of the wave function', or moving from "half-alive/half-dead" to definitely one or the other.

There's no reason to think "other" universes in a multiverse would be any different...

Answer 5

That's one way of looking at it.