The Cat is Dead

What if you just drilled a hole in the box?

Drilling a hole in the box would not, of itself, determine the state of the cat.

It could however create an outside influence on the result, if the drill pierces the furry little thing's head.

Kris, tell Del not to read this.

Drill the hole before putting the cat in it.

Actually I understand the whole concept that Dr Schrodinger was trying to show with his cat in a box experiment. It amazes me how many intelligent intellectual people don't get what he was really trying to point out.

Yeah, me too.

Dead cats stink.

Put each end of the box on sensitive balance scales. Then scratch the outside of the box. If the cat is alive it will react to the sound of the scratching and the scales will fluctuate as the cat moves.

You don't get it.

That's an outside stimulus.

You have to think your way inside the box.

And "thinking outside the box" is such a catchphrase these days. Tutty-tut.

The scratching on the outside of the box will create a mechanical disturbance.

Beter to just bring in a barking German Shepherd Dog into the room.

Even that is an external influence, but entertaining.

Nope. The acoustically induced vibrations of the dog's barking will cause the box to have its own mechanical disturbance, entertaining as it might be, if the box is jerking around due to the internal impact of a cat's nose on the walls of the box.

As a cat owner I have found that the state of the cat can very easily be determined by the fact that it constantly makes noise until it is removed from the box.

Looks like your radioactive source is a dud. Like sawn-in-two cats they have a half life.

Okay, 4.5.

The box is potentially full of poison gas. Drilling a hole is inadvisable.

Instead, simpy wait 5 days. The cat's liver has now failed, and it is dead.

OK, so, from the article:

"slightly disturbs the system and does not cause the wavefunction to collapse."

Is that not unlike "slightly" pregnant?

Only if you think outside the box.

But the cat is supposedly inside the box.

It seems there is scope for confusion here...

"Is that not unlike "slightly" pregnant?"

Welcome to the weird world of Quantum Physics.

If I were interested in knowing the physiological state of a cat in a box I would use low power induction and the Law of Conservation of Energy to measure heart rate.

____________________________________________________________________

I find it quite intuitive that any signal intercept, regardless of frequency, would result in an exchange of energy between the intercepted signal and the monitoring device. The conservation of energy is a reality at all frequencies and all scales.

Even if the minute energy exchange of a signal intercept could be measured by knowing the send and receive state, would it not be possible for the intercept technology to add the same amount of energy back into the signal?

Intuition tells me that in hard wire secure communications the signal transfer time as well as energy exchange would be of interest in determining if there has been a signal intercept.

In free wave communications I believe the variables inherent to attenuation and refraction would preclude a high level of confidence in using timing and energy measurement to determine whether there has been signal interception.

Confidence in communications security can only be obtained by investing in the evolution of encryption knowledge and technology at a higher and more competent level than ones adversary.

Why not lift the lid and look inside? How you ascertain the cat's 'state' is immaterial. The fact that you have or have not is what determines the fate of the wavefunction. Any information sufficient to make this determination constitutes an 'observation, a measurement, sufficient to collapse the wavefunction, so you might as well just open the lid and look.

Looking at it a different way: the cat cannot be in a superposition of states if it is known to be in a specific state.

I think this whole thread is 'catist'
Del
(Exit left with haughty flimp of tail)

Excellent point. There are just some things that cats will not do.

:)

I used to have to kick the box to get 'em to shut up, but then found that they're much more cooperative if I throw money in the box first.

Cats have ethical limits?

Indeed they do. Cats won't answer "No" when you ask them if they're still alive.

That's nothing. Lawyers won't answer anything, if billable hours aren't being accumulated.

Cut the cat in half, and put each half in a different box. Now you have two half dead cats!

Brilliant. This is why I became an engineer. :-)

It's not why I became an engineer, but my participation here is voluntary and thus might be considered by some as a purely masochistic act.

:)

Don't let the sadists here that!

Whoops, too late. :-)

Lyn,

I don't think you intended this discussion to go in this way. Perhaps no one cares for Quantum Physics here.

Perhaps the language used in Physics at times was that of poetry. Particle in a well, particle in a box, ghost image, cat and its ghost etc.

If you intended to make some sense here then why not put some real useful information. I read the link and it talks about position an momentum of photon. There also it looks that article was written by some amateur person. If you do not want to discuss Physics then simply don't do it here.

I have wasted my time looking at this discussion even though link was not all that bad.

Shyam

If that is the way you wish to find things Quantum mechanically then you will find some amount of cat everywhere. Wave functions never end and cat's tail may extend into another Galaxy.

Anonymous Hero:

Each container has two shapes and not just one.

This was used in Monte Carlo calculations. If you want a Lion in a cage then put a cage around you which may look like a smaller cage but then outside this cage also there is a cage in which Lion gets trapped. In one cage you exit and in another cage Lion exists. If Lion is not in your cage then certainly it is in the other cage.

I am not using the word Cat here as there are too many of them around already and some cut into half and some are already dead also in GA conspiracy.

Shyam,

That's a great perspective to the problem. To use a pun, thinking outside the box a little bit…

The lateral thinking is what appears to be making some of the more significant breakthroughs in this field. I am anxious to see the same with String Theory and some of the latest developments hint at ways to test or more precisely disprove the theory.

You wrote, "I am not using the word Cat here as there are too many of them around already and some cut into half and some are already dead also in GA conspiracy."

Ah, you are getting the humor part down very well and you will fit right in here. Welcome aboard!

Anonymous Hero:

String theory is thought to be a one way out to understand why weak forces are actually weak.

Yes, kind of familiar with the premise.

There are competing theories such as Loop Quantum Gravity, etc.

We live in a Golden Age of discoveries in the world of physics. Each time something new is discovered my girlfriend ribs me that mystics already knew that! :-)

Now the latest theory that time is an emergent property of quantum entanglement is poking a hole in my assumptions that time is nothing more than a giant loaf of bread.

You can read my timeless and mad post HERE on that one.

Very nice post, that 'loaf of bread.'

GA

Thank you. But like Wonder Bread it may still be full of holes. :-)

Anonymous Hero:
If you take two flights from one point and fly the opposite side and take pictures of the same side of the universe at far distance then on your return when you compare them, then shots need to differ as they were projections of past and future images magnified for distant object.It must be interesting one to film one such quick event at far place if you can enter the past and future of that event as you have both the options on hand at a time.Try it out. This is rather a simple experiment and you may be of great luck to get hooked to some distant firework.

This part is not Physics:For my real life my past and future are a point of observation - that can be my house or place of work. I enter into my future each day but end up in my past to some extent. As my body is never the same even though other part of the picture frame may look intact. If everything is restored and nothing changes at that particular point then also do you think in my future I enter in my past as they are same in the multiple pictures of the same object location? We have idea of time only related to some changes. Perhaps time is oscillating and space is frozen.

I am heading to bed now, but I have some questions as I am not clear about what your thought experiment is.

However, you have captured my interest and I do want to understand what you are proposing here.

Anonymous Hero:

I am only giving out what you have said.

Two observers blue and green at distance apart looking at same red block of the universe. If they fly in the opposite directions and arrive at one black point then they will see the red universe differently. It is not possible.

Here is where I am confused...

It looks like the starting conditions have blue closer to the observed portion of the universe and green further away.

Your illustration seems to show blue and green moving toward each other (not opposite) and arriving at a common point (black).

At that moment both observers see different things when observing the red region? How is that true?

Do they arrive at the black point at the same time?

What principle are you demonstrating?

They will, at least, see the red block either blue shifted or red shifted from what a third observer, who is at rest in the black spot's reference frame, would see.

passingtongreen:

You are right. The starting assumption itself was wrong as all observers initially will see the universal time and space identically. All observers come from different world till they enter a single location then they see things alike.
Concept of future is slightly different. What if two observers have different velocities while they happen to be at the same point at any given time. Do they see the universe alike? I am afraid, no. They will not see the universe alike.

Yes, but when the two observers approach the black point, there collision avoidance system had best be working.

The only thing that remains the same over time is change. Everything changes over time whether or not we can observe maybe the most infinitesimal change. Nature also seems to have this built in statistical randomness that we must perform all sorts of inventive tasks to overcome, in order to make any reasonably useful measurements.

When "your" universe bumps into "my" universe then perhaps apparent time is no longer unidirectional.

James Stewart:

If nothing changes then you will never know and that does not mean there is no state of no change just because you have no way to know.

In fact that you try to know you change things as well for yourself and also for others.

Sometime changing state itself can be called called stable like sine wave. When you do something to it then it is a real change else it is like a standing wave. Crystals can be called stable lattice or unstable riddled with phonons. It is how you look at things.

So how much change is a real change will remain of great question. Perhaps one has to put some threshold value.

Good Answer to a thread which seems to have 9 lives!

"Never end" doesn't stop with one Galaxy, even when you capitalise the first letter.

"Good answer votes can be bestowed for... a good lick in the pants to someone who needs it."

What a fabulous typographical error. I hope.

Spell check doesn't for proper grammar or context. I saw it too late to correct it.

Well, we appreciate your consistency! :-) :-) :-)

Never use more words than necessary to convey the thought. ;>)

Brevity good. :)

Quantun tomography is above my pay grade, but does seem interesting that a highly dimensional problem as this can be resolved. It sounds a little more like making the box momentarily transparent for about 1 ns of every second. But if you do this enough times you get a picture of the cat.

As far as peeking inside Schrodinger's box, I would much rather just find out more about Pandora's box.

"The Ancients, your Highness, spoke in legend of a container into which were placed all the world's ills. All they got wrong was the name. They called it 'Pandora's Box' when of course they meant 'Baldrick's trowsers.'"

- Edmund Blackadder

All I can do is repeat what Mark Twain said, "...the report of my death was an exaggeration."

But never try to kill a cat in a closed room.

Cat mostly will live to tell the story...

Gajanan Phadte