Saturday
It is the weekend, lighten up

Quantum entanglement? or maybe trans-mog-ification?
Posted by Molly Millions at November 14, 2009 04:45 PM
Schroedinger always said that the same cat at the same time could be two quantum states. Observation merely suggests that this cat has lost two of its seven lives; this is not important because it now has twelve left
Posted by Diversity at November 14, 2009 04:54 PM
Have your cake and eat it two.
Who said "Dogs look up to us; cats look down on us; but pigs look us straight in the eye, like an equal" ?
Next time a critter gets up on its hind legs, extends its claws and bares its teeth at you, think of how we must look to them, when we stand up, smile and reach out to them.
Posted by cjf at November 14, 2009 05:02 PM
Two live cats instead of half a cat? Thinking out of the box...
Shame Dougas Adams never finished The Salmon of Doubt. We'll never know what happened to the back half of the cat.
Posted by RW at November 14, 2009 05:44 PM
As I am observing the MOT or perhaps the Audit of the cats at a moment in time does this not allow for the fact that the cats, whilst still extant per the irrefutable truth of the photograph may, a quantum moment later, be spread?
The fact that both or the same cat may be displayed within a cardboard box suggests that the original experiment (decreeing as it did a sealed steel box or two) may have been flawed?
I now know why I have always hated LOLcats.
Einstein is thus proven to be the founder of Creationism.
Or did I miss the point of something there?
STB.
Posted by ScotsToryB at November 14, 2009 09:15 PM
Einstein is thus proven to be the founder of Creationism. Or did I miss the point of something there?
Nope, sounds like you understood perfectly... apart from the whole string theory bit that is.
Posted by Perry de Havilland at November 14, 2009 09:28 PM
but... but... but...
Schrodinger posited the cat thought-experiment as an attempt to show how ridiculous the notion was. He did not agree with this interpretation of QM.
Of course it enters the mainstream because it's weird and kindof fun and suddenly everyone thinks Schrodinger was saying "wow, isnt this amazing!". Poor chap. He must be rolling in his grave.
Posted by mdc at November 15, 2009 12:30 AM
He did not agree with this interpretation of QM.
But QM has proved that placing a open box on the floor causes it to change quantum states, i.e. switch from a catless state to encated state in a multiple of 3.2 seconds (a number known as the Katze-Kasten Constant). In the picture we also see an example of two quantum entangled cats (if viewed through slits cut in a piece of cardboard, it is clear the second cat comes from a parallel universe searching for catnip).
Posted by Perry de Havilland at November 15, 2009 12:45 AM
Cats like working with string.
Wonder what Shrodinger's theory would have been if
he tripped over a cat and hit his head on a box ?
Posted by cjf at November 15, 2009 01:03 AM
I'm likely wrong; but, isn't it more of a concept than a full theory?
Posted by cjf at November 15, 2009 01:05 AM
The important question is- does the world need more cats? I haven't seen mice in ages! How will we feed them? Please stop playing around with the universe like this, or we'll have a CATastrophe on our hands!
Posted by Nuke Gray at November 16, 2009 12:08 AM
mdc - you are quite correct.
However, please remember the words at the bottom of the post
"It is the weekend, lighten up".
I suspect that Perry knows that the great Austrian-Irish man of physics was saying that it was silly to say that a cat was neither alive or dead till "observed" (and before one says the cat is the observer the point works just as well with a balloon - if the particle is emitted the balloon is burst, if not then not, hopefully no one is going to claim that the balloon is an observer or that the balloon is neither burst or not burst till observed).
Indeed one might as well say that there are two live cats in the box - both alive as we have "observed".
The denial of objective reality by scholarly Germans (and the dissent by some Austrians) seems to go beyond economics.
No doubt it is all to do with the study of Aristotle and the Aristotelian tradition being down graded in German (but not Austrian) universities.
But the true question is did Aristotle like cats - and did all his walking up and down disturb cats.
Posted by Paul Marks at November 16, 2009 10:35 PM






