Schrödinger's Cat?

Question

the cat was dead and not dead at the same time??? how???
how did they do that???

they say it feels being dead and being alive at the same time

Answer 1

The cat can either be dead, or not dead, agreed?

You won't know until you look. Therefore, both possibilities are equally true, and therefore, the cat is both alive and dead, until you observe it.

Your observation collapses the probability of one or the other to zero, and hence live or dead kitty.

I think this is a metaphor for the involvement of the observer on the observed, which is to say something about how difficult (or impossible) it is to observe something without affecting it.

And then we get into a whole chaos theory thing and Aston Kucher ends up with an acting role where he's pretty decent and lands Demi Moore, so let's not have any more of that.

-R

Answer 2

I'm assuming that you already know the setup.

In the real world, we would say that after the time t, the particle source has either released a particle or not. So the cat is either alive or dead, and we just don't know which.

In quantum mechanics, however, we can't make such statements. Instead we say that the cat exists in an eigenstate in which it is neither alive nor dead, but 50% of each (based on the particle source having a 50% possibility of releasing a detectable particle during the time t).

When we open the box, we are not merely observing the state of the universe, as we would think, but actually deciding the fate of the universe. When we open the box and observe, we collapse the probability wave, and actually cause the cat to be either alive or dead in its final state.

Now, all of this sounds like complete bosh, and in the macroscopic world, it is. But at the quantum level things like this do happen, and the point is that the universe at that level is just weird, and there is nothing you can do but accept it. And if you can't, well, smarter people than you and I have failed to accept it. Einstein couldn't. His famous "God does not play dice with the universe," quote comes from his refusal to believe Schroedinger on this point.

But imagine this. You know that electricity cannot flow through an open circuit, but can flow through a closed one. So what happens if you send an electron through a circuit and then open a gate in the circuit after the electron has passed the gate? Answer: the electron acts as if it couldn't go past the gate.

Or read about the Huygens double-slit experiment, which is so darned weird that some people have used it to support the Copenhagen multi-worlds interpretation, saying that when a single electron is sent through the system with both gates open, the interference is happening with single electrons in other space-times.

Meanwhile, go read Cecil on the subject. Sometimes it helps:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_122.html

Answer 3

This, of course, is just a "thought experiment" intended to help in the developing of a fully adequate interpretation of quantum theory, including the very mysterious aspects involved in "making a measurement" (specifically the so-called "collapse of the wave function").
The fact of the matter is that we do not yet have a fully adequate interpretation of quantum theory, as the Schrodinger cat example clearly demonstrates. The problem being illustrated by this famous example is that we do not know how to consistently make the "transition" from quantum behavior to macroscopic behavior.
No one denies that a cat CANNOT be in a quantum superposition of the two states "Live Cat" and "Dead Cat". (Although electrons, say, do in fact exist in such superpositions, which are at the very heart of quantum theory, after all). The problem is that we believe quantum theory to be a fundamental theory of nature which should, therefore, be able to explain the behavior of cats as well as electrons. That is, if we did have a full quantum theory, presumably we would be able to see, from the theory, how it comes about that the behavior of macroscopic objects like cats is the behavior that we are familiar with, and not weird quantum behavior. But we just don't yet know how to make that transition.

p.s. There is no clear consensus yet on what actually constitutes a "measurement" in quantum theory. Some would say that it isn't a "measurement" until it enters the consciousness of the "observer". This is the view that underlies the (clearly wrong) notion of a superposition of two cat states collapsing into either "dead cat" or "live cat" at the moment when a person lifts the lid in this example. But there's a logical difficulty with this view. After all, the cat itself has a consciousness, and thus should equally well qualify as an "observer" as the person lifting the lid. This would imply that the "measurement" already occurred and thus the wave function already collapsed BEFORE the person lifted the lid.

Answer 4

Schrodinger came up with that example to show that Quantum was not intuitive, and that the statistical approach caused logical inconsistencies. Scientists of the day jumped on the example and explained it by saying that reality is composed of Probabilty Waves.

There is a 50% probability of life and 50% prob of death for the cat. The prob. wave does not collapse into reality until someone looks at the cat.

No, I don't like it either ... but that is how the example goes.
(Thats doesn't make it correct, but someone has to come up with a better explanation with lots of math to back it up, before people will change...)

Answer 5

Stop watchin Stargate SG-1

Answer 6

Until you look, you don't know if it's alive or dead.

Edit: you don't know what it's feeling until you look. And then you will know that it feels quite alive or quite dead.