|
|
Schrodingers Cat
|
|
Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
|
|
(backlinks off)
|
(map off)
|
(search off)
|
|
last edited
by BillSeitz
on
Aug 12, 2008 2:17 pm |
see Robert Anton Wilson's Schrodingers Cat Trilogy
Schrodinger's cat is a thought experiment devised by [Erwin Schrodinger] that attempts to illustrate the incompleteness of the theory of [Quantum Mechanics] (Quantum Physics) when going from subatomic to macroscopic systems. A cat is placed in a sealed box. Attached to the box is an apparatus containing a radioactive nucleus and a canister of poison gas. When the nucleus decays, it emits a particle that triggers the apparatus, which opens the canister and kills the cat. According to quantum mechanics, the nucleus is described as a superposition (mixture) of "decayed nucleus" and "undecayed nucleus". However, when the box is opened the experimenter sees only a "decayed nucleus/dead cat" or a "undecayed nucleus/living cat." The question is: when does the system stop existing as a mixture of states and become one or the other? The purpose of the experiment is to illustrate that quantum mechanics is incomplete without some rules to describe when the wavefunction collapses and the cat becomes dead or alive instead of a mixture of both. Contrary to popular belief, Schrodinger did not intend this thought experiment to indicate that he believed that the dead-alive cat would actually exist; rather he considered the quantum mechanical theory to be incomplete and not representative of reality in this case. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%F6dinger%27s_cat
Bill Seitz, fluxent at gmail dot com, Weblog