ive been trying to understand the thought expeirement of Schrödingers cat and i have failed.

can someone explain to me what it means for a system to be a superposition of states and why doesnt it become a single state?
and why a subatomic particle is only defined after being measured

GOD FUCKING DAM PEOPLE TO HELL!!!!


Sorry, Schrodinger's Cat always does that to me.

The point of Schrodinger's cat it that it doesn't make sense. A cat cannot be both alive and dead at the same time. That's stupid. So phenomenally stupid that Schrodinger considered it the "resolution" of the actual thought experiment. He probably never expected so many people to grab it and go, Oh! the cat is both alive and dead! How nifty of quantum mechanics. That so, so , so many people actually go Oh! he cat is both alive and dead! is the most powerful evidence to me that somewhere, somehow, something has gone horribly wrong.

The point of it really is that while superposition occur on a microscopic scale, it doesn't occur on the macroscopic. Thusly there must be some point in between the microscopic and macroscopic scales where the principles of quantum mechanics break down or become negligible.


====

Now back to the real point. There really is no way to explain "how" or "why." The problem with thinking about superposition as strange or abnormal, is that we have nothing in everyday experience to compare it to. For example, think of this. Why are bodies with lots of mass hard to move? After all one can concieve of an object that exerts a large gravitational force, but is also very easy to push around (i.e. has little inertia.) There's really no reason to explain how or why, only models based on experimentation that we create to predict how things are expected to occur. In fact very few physical models are based on how we expect things "should" work. Relativity is one of the few exceptions here when someone went "Ah, wouldn't it be nifty if laws of physics and the speed of light were the same everywhere?"


===

Ok, another relevant thought. One can think of the state of superposition not so much as an "undefined" or "not real" particle. The superposition i.e. collection of possible states is effectively the particle. When we take a measurement, by either hitting the particle with a photon, or seeing a photon emitted by the particle it gives us information about the particle. Such as where it is, and how fast its going. This effectively limits the area where the particle can be found, thus making the superposition much much smaller. That's really the best I can do on the explaining stuff front.

===

Just keep in mind one point. Most of the stuff you hear about quantum mechanics and such in popular science is dumbed down so that people who aren't physicists can "understand" it. I sure as hell don't understand it, though and half the stuff I just said is probably wrong.

===
Woo!

Ugh this is a problem worth not exploring. However I will attempt to go a bit deeper with Schrodinger's cat in my explanation.

The main body of the hypothetical problem. You have a cat in a box, the box is sealed and the cat is alive inside. There is a gas bomb set with a timer meant to be triggered based on the position of a single electron. Because the electron is of a quantum state its position cannot be measured while its field is measured thus its position is possibly every where at once. Because of this, assuming the Trigger was capable of acting in sequence to a quantized state and was sensitive enough, it would and would not trigger the gas to release.


However this is hypothetical, keep in mind that no current electronics are sensitive enough to react to a quantize state as the situation suggests. If the experiment were to be actually performed, as soon as the electron entered the detection area of the trigger, it would go, because the electron would exist everywehre in the trigger zone as a potential virtual particle.

Quantum mechanics do not break down at any level, if they did we wouldn't have anything that we do today. The laws that make up the quantum state are also the vary same structures that generate the forces of physics that we abide by currently. That of course assumes that quantum mechanics is correct. I personally don't think so. Through the use of Null math, I surmise that below the state of strings and the quantum (Planck) barrier there is yet a smaller state that governs the quantum level, just as the quantum level dictates the systems of the atomic level and thus forward into the various degrees of matter size.

We can maintain a superposition by the way. I know this because its been done. Look into the storage of quantum bits. The problem is that said superpositions are very very unstable. Interaction and processing using quantum bits is done via entanglement which maintains superposition.

You also seem to have misunderstood how the sensor works. In the original experiment it works off radiation emission. The detection is of a photon that may or may not be there. The problem here is where you're "measuring" the quantum state. The problem here is that the measuring device, and the cat are all theoretically in the quantum system. To "measure" the system is to look in the box. What you've done is already implicitly assumed that the measurement device is outside of the superposition, instinctively adding a boundary layer where quantum effects break down.

Also you seem to misunderstand electron clouds work. The electron has a probability of being detected. this is represented by the electron cloud. The cloud is not a solid thing, it is a measurement of probability. Just because the cloud intersects with a detector doesn't mean that it is going to be detected. It just means that whatever part of the field intersects with the detector is how likely it is the electron is going to be detected there instead of somewhere else.

I would also like to note that no one actually believes quantum mechanics is "correct." No one. If it were theoretical physicist would be out of jobs.

Furthermore, I must also note that quantum mechanics is a theory, not an absolute description of reality. It therefore does indeed break down. Because the theory is either incomplete and or wrong, and was developed from observing quantum scale phenomena. Break down doesn't mean that in real life the rules suddenly up and go away, it means that the theory itself is being extrapolated to beyond what it can accurately model.

No, I didn't implicitly seperate the two structures, I was, as you said "dumbing it down." Secondly, I'd appriciate it if you'd stop attacking me, or I will run rings around you (that's a promise.)

We can maintain a superposition (poor choice of words but I'll use your terminology) but the state in which the superposition is chaotic at best. If we look at the experiment that actually halted light inside of a magnetic field generated through quadrastate induction the magnetic field could only hold the photons for a small amount of time. Relatively long for the light but still short for us to study.

In the experiment of Schrodinger's cat, you are correct we are talking about an emitted photon that would or would not be there based on the injunction of the electron as it was pulled away from the emitter towards it stationary or centered atom (or in other versions argued about an electron field like that found in a magnet.) However, the problem here is that the reader depending on the variation of the experiment is either acting upon the quantized state of the electron its self, or the release photon during the electrons retreat to its center (emitter). Since photonic energy and electron energy are interchangeable for all intensive purposes the reader would still be reading the state of the electron its self. (Regardless of a discharge of the photon or not.) The timer sequence then would be based solely on the position of the electron. Yes we could argue over the existential state of the cat in the quantized system its self, but we are refering nigh restictly to the action of the release of the gas.

If we consider the state of the cat in this quantized system the cat could be dead before the trigger is even released. The whole of the system is affected by all aspects. But give the guy a break he is having a hard enough time understanding how a quantized state that is invariable and exponent can affect a hypotherized cat in a quantized system.

ive been trying to understand the thought expeirement of Schrödingers cat and i have failed.



What I've always thought good 'ol Schrödinger was trying to elucidate, is how fucking absurd the Copenhagen Doctrine really is.

you guys have kind of helped but you kind of missed what i was asking. what im saying is that i dont understand what it means for something to be a superposition of states. i already understand what Schrödinger was trying to say

you guys have kind of helped but you kind of missed what i was asking. what im saying is that i dont understand what it means for something to be a superposition of states. i already understand what Schrödinger was trying to say

Oh, in that case superposition basically means that when we can't tell where a particle is, it exists as a measurement of where it's likely to show up. It's existence is the sum of all it's probable locations, thus the superposition. This allows funky things to happen, like the particle interfereing with itself.

On a very small scale, a particle's position is indeterminate. It effectively exists as a probability distribution over all possible states. As xXPhoenixFireXx mentioned, this can lead to it interacting with itself. For example, the electric field produced by an electron is not what would be predicted from a point charge, because the charge acts as though it is delocalized. The probability distribution for the electron will be affected by its field, and so on. This interaction is described by the Schrödinger equation, or more generally the Dirac equation.

No, I didn't implicitly seperate the two structures, I was, as you said "dumbing it down." Secondly, I'd appriciate it if you'd stop attacking me, or I will run rings around you (that's a promise.)


Please stop being wrong then ^^. Also, while we will run rings around each other, in addition to being exceptionally good at bullshitting, I'm also usually right. Or at least more right :P

We can maintain a superposition (poor choice of words but I'll use your terminology) but the state in which the superposition is chaotic at best. If we look at the experiment that actually halted light inside of a magnetic field generated through quadrastate induction the magnetic field could only hold the photons for a small amount of time. Relatively long for the light but still short for us to study.

Proper terms then. Silicon-29. Nuclear spin. Decoherence time of 25 seconds. At room temperature.

As for your experiment, the time was 1/1000th of a second. Considering the clock speed of modern computers that's still plenty useful.

In the experiment of Schrodinger's cat, you are correct we are talking about an emitted photon that would or would not be there based on the injunction of the electron as it was pulled away from the emitter towards it stationary or centered atom (or in other versions argued about an electron field like that found in a magnet.)


The word injunction doesn't mean what you want it to mean.

However, the problem here is that the reader depending on the variation of the experiment is either acting upon the quantized state of the electron its self, or the release photon during the electrons retreat to its center (emitter). Since photonic energy and electron energy are interchangeable for all intensive purposes the reader would still be reading the state of the electron its self.

Intensive also doesn't mean what you want it to. I think you're looking for intents here. Actually intents and purposes is the colloquialism.


Lastly a few notes since your post didn't really have a point.

-Radioactive decay doesn't have anything to do with electron levels, and half life of most atoms can be picked to correlate to the trip length. Electron relaxation happens on a far to shor scale to be measure by the experiment. Regardless, not important really. All it changes are timescales. Albeit by several orders of magnitude.

-A photon for all intents and purposes cannot be representative of a single electron there's charge neutrality to consider. A photon is representative of an electron, positron pair.

-Exchange of virtual photons does not lead to decoherence. i.e. the Coulomb force between differently charged particles mediated between virtual photons leaves the charged particles in a state of uncertainty.

-A pox be on 9 generations of thine progenies!

wow this forum is much more intelligent than bltc and bi, i love it!and to the OP: the whole point was to think outside the box

Just in time for this question, Sean Carroll and David Albert discuss quantum mechanics at a popular science level: http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/13487

There's a bit about Schrodinger and superpositions, of course.

We can maintain a superposition by the way. I know this because its been done. Look into the storage of quantum bits. The problem is that said superpositions are very very unstable. Interaction and processing using quantum bits is done via entanglement which maintains superposition.

You also seem to have misunderstood how the sensor works. In the original experiment it works off radiation emission. The detection is of a photon that may or may not be there. The problem here is where you're "measuring" the quantum state. The problem here is that the measuring device, and the cat are all theoretically in the quantum system. To "measure" the system is to look in the box. What you've done is already implicitly assumed that the measurement device is outside of the superposition, instinctively adding a boundary layer where quantum effects break down.

Also you seem to misunderstand electron clouds work. The electron has a probability of being detected. this is represented by the electron cloud. The cloud is not a solid thing, it is a measurement of probability. Just because the cloud intersects with a detector doesn't mean that it is going to be detected. It just means that whatever part of the field intersects with the detector is how likely it is the electron is going to be detected there instead of somewhere else.

I would also like to note that no one actually believes quantum mechanics is "correct." No one. If it were theoretical physicist would be out of jobs.

Furthermore, I must also note that quantum mechanics is a theory, not an absolute description of reality. It therefore does indeed break down. Because the theory is either incomplete and or wrong, and was developed from observing quantum scale phenomena. Break down doesn't mean that in real life the rules suddenly up and go away, it means that the theory itself is being extrapolated to beyond what it can accurately model.

Yep you are a dumbfuck.

Furthermore, I must also note that quantum mechanics is a theory, not an absolute description of reality.

Evolution is a theory. The germ theory of disease, is a theory. Gravity is a theory. This, among other things, is why I have to agree with Xerxes.

Evolution is a theory. The germ theory of disease, is a theory. Gravity is a theory. This, among other things, is why I have to agree with Xerxes.

xXPhoenixFireXx was, I believe, simply pointing out that quantum mechanics is an incomplete description, rather than an "absolute" description. Similarly, evolution and gravity are incomplete. Saying so is in no way saying the theories are wrong, just that the theories are theories, not laws. Thus, at some point the theory reaches a roadblock, for which new discoveries and ideas are needed.

I assume this is what he means by calling quantum mechanics "incorrect" also. Everything it says may be right (maybe), but it doesn't say everything.

Of course, I am giving xXPhoenixFireXx the benefit of the doubt here, but for good reason. He has proven and proven again already that he is nowhere near a dumbfuck.

Removed at xenosss's request

But to summarize, Xtom is a bullshit spewing idiot.

This is to Quageschi: I unapproved your post for its personal information. From the rules: # Do not post messages with...other user's real names and personal info (including pictures)..."

Besides, we don't need this thread or any Mad Scientist thread degrading into a bitch fest. So everyone: argue the science, not the person.

This is to Quageschi: I unapproved your post for its personal information. From the rules: # Do not post messages with...other user's real names and personal info (including pictures)..."

Besides, we don't need this thread or any Mad Scientist thread degrading into a bitch fest. So everyone: argue the science, not the person.

Ahhhh, truth be told, I wouldn't of done it with a soberer(?) mind.

Either way, I would advise people to take what he says with a grain of salt. He reminds me of a cross between L. Ron Hubbard, a sci-fi writer who believed he knew the secret to everything, and Garrett Lisi, the surfer guy from Hawaii who drew up a bunch of pretty patterns and exquisite equations that where hailed as the foundations of reality until well respected physicists found it ridden holes and assumptions.

Xtom I think you should make Science of the Damned your new home.

As physicists are so popular of saying, if you think you understand quantum mechanics, you dont.

You don't understand maths. You just get used to it.