2 ms·
> In the cat thought experiment, the "box" needs to be conceived of as something that totally isolates you from the cat. No "quantum influences" travel across i
by awb 4y ago
> In the cat thought experiment, the "box" needs to be conceived of as something that totally isolates you from the cat. No "quantum influences" travel across it.
Is that true? I’ve seen references to observed macro superpositions without such a box:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_superposition https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_superposition
> A double slit experiment has been performed with molecules as large as buckyballs and functionalized oligoporphyrins with up to 2000 atoms.
> An experiment involving a superconducting quantum interference device ("SQUID") has been linked to the theme of the "cat state" thought experiment.
> A piezoelectric "tuning fork" has been constructed, which can be placed into a superposition of vibrating and non-vibrating states. The resonator comprises about 10 trillion atoms.
- jerf 4y agoYou're right about the experiments, but you underestimate how many orders of magnitude you are away from a cat. Not only is there the orders of magnitude in terms of atomic size, you also have to consider the orders of magnitude of time as well, since the thought experiment implicitly takes place at human time scales, where we are presumably waiting at least a couple of seconds to open the box. Adding them both together probably puts us a good 15-20 orders of magnitude away from a cat. It is difficult to imagine what box could isolate something that large that thoroughly for that period of time; it gets multiplicatively harder as you add those constraints, if not exponentially (depending on the circumstances), not merely additively.