4 ms·
Imagine you set up Schrodinger's cat experiment where you have a photon pass through a double slit and if it goes through the left slit then it electrocutes the
by changoplatanero 4y ago
Imagine you set up Schrodinger's cat experiment where you have a photon pass through a double slit and if it goes through the left slit then it electrocutes the cat in the box and if it goes through the right slit then the cat is spared. You set up the experiment and leave the box for two days and then come open it to "measure" if the cat is alive or dead. The mystery is that its hard to understand how performing the measurement of opening the box can change the outcome of seeing a healthy cat or one that's been dead for two days.
- SAI_Peregrinus 4y agoSchrodinger's cat thought experiment was meant to argue against the collapse-based interpretations of QM.
- DontchaKnowit 4y agoIt very obviously does not change yhe outcome here right? This is an odd example
- changoplatanero 4y agoThe fact that checking on the cat is obviously unrelated to the path of the photon is what makes it an interesting example of how quantum mechanics is different from ordinary intuition.
- DontchaKnowit 4y agoI see. Makes sense. I still refuse to believe the unintuitive interpretations of QM. I am a show me stater, after all. (Only kind if joking)
- awb 4y agoEinstein would have agreed with you
- mongol 4y agoI don't get it. At what point in this hypothetical experiment did the photon pass one of the slits? Two days before you open the box?
- changoplatanero 4y agoYes
- zeroonetwothree 4y agoThis example isn’t very compelling because we might as well say the cat died two days ago you just found out later.
- Nomentatus 4y agoExcept that that's precisely what some Copenhagen Interpretation guys actually wanted to say; that the collapse of superposition didn't happen two days ago. Hence S's large-living-object example. You want to be sensible, they (according S) didn't. Their "lack of sense" tends to force them to many-worlds views. But Einstein and S's being sensible pushed them towards thinking entanglement couldn't be a real thing. Although their best default position is to toss up their hands and say that there's gotta be a non-local hidden variable we just haven't found yet. But there are no candidates, as yet. (Unless you like Bohm, I suppose.)
- djmips 4y agoThe cat thing isn't really used anymore. The cat isn't going to be in superposition. All the things that could have been in superposition will have already collapsed including the cascade of things that lead to a dead cat or an alive cat. A tree falls it makes sound. It doesn't need an conscious observer. They universe has plenty of 'observers' that are just plain matter.