Schrodinger has provided us with a bit of humor.
Here Jerry; add this to your collection:
Schrodinger was driving home from the physics lab when he encountered a roadblock. A cop walks up to him and explains, "A prisoner escaped from a local jail and we're searching all the cars."
After looking in the rear seat the cop asks, "What's in the trunk?"
"Nothing" Schrodinger replies, "Just my cat."
"Well open it up" the cop says, "I have to look."
Schrodinger pops the trunk lid. The cop walks around to the back of the car and looks inside.
"Hey!" yells the cop, "Do you know your cat's dead?"
"Well sure..." responds Schrodinger, "...now"
If the cat were stored in a box without a litter box for a period of time and you then opened the box it might smell like a dead cat.
Current thought is that decoherence doesn’t apply. The cat is both alive and dead. If you find the cat dead, in some alternate universe it was found alive, and vice versa.
Today, the multiverse theories are considered more likely than a single universe theory.
But I love the cartoons.
For a·muse·ment sake, smoke and mirrors?
revhen
Loc: By the beautiful Hudson
Shakespeare must have had one of those cats: "To be or no to be, that is the question."
In the “Autobiography of a Yogi” the author says a man or holy person could be in two places at one time (just like the Bread song). Is this one of those multiverse theories evolving?
It all depends on how your interpret it, especially in Copenhagen.
I've always had a problem with Schrödinger's cat as having a relationship with reality. In the real world, in the cat scenario, the cat will really either be dead or alive, regardless of whether or not it is observed. The observer only determines the actual state of that which already exists. As an expression of probabilities, the scenario works and only applies to probability, not reality.
For me, the telling question is this: If a collapse of the wave function requires an observer in order to "make real" the quantum states, who was the observer that collapsed the universe so it could become real?
Or the corollary question - would the universe exist if there were no humans to observe it?
If you want to reply, then
register here. Registration is free and your account is created instantly, so you can post right away.