big bang

[David Casseres]

The story makes more sense if we know that Schrödinger was in fact
complaining about the view that the cat is neither dead nor alive
until we look.  But this is a consequence of the orthodox
interpretation of quantum theory.  The cat's state of health is a
"waveform" represented by Schrödinger's Equation, which is insoluble. 
Only when something else, such as human observation, becomes
contingent on the cat does the waveform "collapse" and yield a
distinct outcome.  To Schrödinger this seemed to be a flaw in the
interpretation.

Of course, quantum theory doesn't customarily talk about cats. 
Schrödinger extended it from electrons to his cat to illustrate the
absurdity.

On 9/27/05, Rcfchess at aol.com <Rcfchess at aol.com> wrote:
>
>
>     Another cat-astrophic experiment (sorry, couldn't resist...)
>
> RF
>
> In a message dated 09/27/2005 11:05:03 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
> bjohnson02 at insightbb.com writes:
>
>
> Two very famous scientists who couldn't agree on the answer were Einstein
> and Schroedinger. One day Schroedinger explained his opinion to Einstein by
> talking about his cat. He suggested that you put a cat in a box with a
> bottle of poison, and the bottle will open and kill the cat at some time
> that you don't know. Then at some later time is the cat dead or alive?
> Einstein says that it is one or the other, but we can't know which until we
> open the box. Shroedinger says that it is neither - the cat is a mixture of
> dead and alive, and only becomes one or the other when we open the box.
>
>