/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.4995661]

Heya /sci/, I had a question about the Schrodinger's Box thought experiment and was hoping one of you quantum guys could help me out.

What prevents the cat from acting as an observer in the experiment? Isn't it self-aware enough to "observe" that it is alive and a cat, and therefore wouldn't achieve superposition? If this isn't so, why?

Also, have physicists come up with a reason why once something achieves superposition it resolves back to its original form instead of something else? (say, you place a rock in a box and shut it, walk away, and someone wholly unaware of what's in the box opens it; what prevents the rock's waveform from collapsing to become Gwen Paltrow's head?)

[Anonymous No.4995662]

The cats possibility to act as an observer is Schrodinger's argument for why the thought experiment shows how much the wave function collapse interpretation is utter bullshit in his opinion.

[Anonymous No.4995664]

>>4995662
Oh, and all this time I thought it was an argument FOR superposition. So, what about the second part? What governs inanimate objects, or is it just assumed they never change?

[Anonymous No.4995665]

You see, the cat shouldn't be a normal cat, it should be a quantum cat who only exist in Bolivia and it should interact with the higgs boson's field for the Shrödinger's experiment to work.

[Anonymous No.4995667]

>>4995664
The second part is even bigger nonsense. You can't apply principles of quantum physics on the scale of macroscopic objects.

[Anonymous No.4995670]

The cat in the box thought experiment outlines why quantum mechanics doesn't work on a macro scale.

[Anonymous No.4995671]

>>4995667
>You can't apply principles of quantum physics on the scale of macroscopic objects.

Superfluids do not exist, and neither do superconductors.

Ok.

[Anonymous No.4995676]

>>4995671
Quantum mechanics reapplies when macroscopic objects are very very simple.

[Anonymous No.4995680]

>>4995676
>superconductors
>very simple

Stop making this hard on yourself, just admit you are wrong.

[Anonymous No.4995685]

>>4995683
Continuing

Imagine you had some six-sided dice, and on every one of them, 5 sides were painted red and one side was painted blue

Put a million billion of these dice in a giant transparent ball and shake it. What color is the resulting ball?

Well its red of course, because all those dice probabilities average out to overwhelmingly red, to the point that, its all you can see. Even though the particles that make up the ball are in a probablistic mishmash, the more likely probabilities add up so much over so many particles that its all that shows up anymore

Can you shake the ball enough times to make it appear blue? It'll happen eventually, but you'll never see it no matter how many times you shake it in your lifetime, because the odds are just too small

That's why a rock will never turn into gwen paltrow's head, even though there is a chance that it could.

[Anonymous No.4995683]

>what prevents the rock's waveform from collapsing to become Gwen Paltrow's head?

The odds. There is a chance that a rock could spontaneously turn into gwen palrow's head, yes. But the odds are so low that you'll never see it happen in the lifetime of the universe.

very small things exist as waves of probability, rather than discreet objects. You've heard of the double slit experiment, well in that experiment, the particle shot at the slits does go through both at once and interfere with itself, but thats not all it does. It also goes backwards, around the room, to the destination, it goes up through the celing and loops around jupiter before returning to its destination, it actually and for truly takes every possible path to its destination at the same time

But, not in equal measure. Some paths it takes "more" than other paths. You can think of the tiny particles as smears, with dark spots and light spots, representing how likely they are to be in that spot, according to natural laws. And think of possible paths the same way. The most likely paths a particle can take are dark, and easy to see, while the less likely ones are faint

[Anonymous No.4995688]

"It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a "blurred model" for representing reality. In itself it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks."

Erwin Schrödinger, The present situation in quantum mechanics

[Anonymous No.4995693]

Thanks guys, you've pretty much knocked this one out. Science rules.

[Anonymous No.4995719]

>2012
>Not trying to create a hidden-variables interpretation

Enjoy your lame "hurr durr schrodinger's cat the cake is a lie" jokes.

[None !!BJiYgff8zf2 No.4995808]

>>4995671
>>4995676
>>4995680

FUCKING SAMEFAG

Superconductors work because they rely on QUANTUM phenomena. What part of this is hard to understand?

There is nothing macroscopic about superconductors or superfluids. They are simply a bunch of electrons and atoms. What's so fucking difficult to understand?