6: Schrodinger's Cat.

Schrodinger's Cat:

The Quantum Measurement Problem, a thought experiment.

Schrodinger's thought experiment places a cat in an architecture (similar in structure to this site). Also enclosed within the box is a radio active source, a Geiger counter, a hammer and a sealed glass container containing a deadly gas. When the Geiger counter measures a radioactive decay, it releases a hammer, which smashes the glass container. The poisonous gas kills the cat.

Quantum theory predicts that the radioactive source has a 50% probability of one decay particle per hour. After an hour has passed there is therefore an equal probability of either state existing, i.e. the 'Live Cat' state or the 'Dead Cat' state.

Quantum theory predicts that exactly one hour after the experiment began, the box would contain a cat that is neither wholly alive nor wholly dead, but a mixture of the two states, the superposition of the two wave functions (a particle and a wave).

As soon as the box is opened our act of observation collapses the superposition of the two wave functions to a single one, making the cat definitely alive, or dead.

 

From Appearance to Apparition:

Dark fibre, Boxed Cats and Biocontrollers
Roy Ascott

From Mediaspace 1.

Download Mediaspace1.pdf [1.1mb]