Would Schrödinger's bomb be as uncertain as his cat?

[pBrane]

if you were standing next to Schrödinger's bomb, triggered by a random event. Would you say "The bomb is both exploded and unexploded?".

 

[phinds]

if you were standing next to Schrödinger's bomb, triggered by a random event. Would you say "The bomb is both exploded and unexploded?".

No, and neither would you say (accurately anyway) that the cat is both dead and alive.

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of threads on this forum about it all. I suggest a forum search and a good place to start is the set of links at the bottom of this page

 

[pBrane]

No, and neither would you say (accurately anyway) that the cat is both dead and alive.

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of threads on this forum about it all. I suggest a forum search and a good place to start is the set of links at the bottom of this page

Thx phinds

 

[bhobba]

if you were standing next to Schrödinger's bomb, triggered by a random event. Would you say "The bomb is both exploded and unexploded?".

Of course not.

There are a number off slightly different ways of resolving Schrödinger's Cat but here is my way.

Due to decoherence objects here in the macro world have definite position. The constituent parts of an exploded and un-exploded bomb have different positions. This means you can't have a superposition of an exploded and un-exploded bomb.

Thanks
Bill

 

[Strilanc]

Related: the Elitzur-Vaidman bomb tester.

If you have a bomb that's triggered by a single qubit being on at a particular time (e.g. a single photon passing by), you can experimentally separate dud bombs from live bombs without setting off all of the live bombs by performing superposed queries.

If I recall correctly, you can make this effect arbitrarily strong (i.e. lose arbitrarily few bombs due to the classification process blowing them up by passing a photon through) via Grover's search algorithm.

 

[Swamp Thing]

So I guess the answer to the title question would be, "Yes, Schroedinger's bomb is as uncertain as his cat - but that isn't saying much".

 

[Demystifier]

Speaking of quantum bombs, much more interesting is the Elitzur-Vaidman-Penrose bomb:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elitzur–Vaidman_bomb_tester
http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9610033.pdf

 

[Strilanc]

Speaking of quantum bombs, much more interesting is the Elitzur-Vaidman-Penrose bomb:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elitzur–Vaidman_bomb_tester
http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9610033.pdf

Beat you to mentioning it by 3 hours .

 

[Demystifier]

Beat you to mentioning it by 3 hours .

Sorry, I haven't noticed your post before.

 

[pBrane]

I want to upload a small diagram from my hard drive, must I upload it somewhere else first? (anti-malware?)
[/PLAIN]

 

[Strilanc]

I want to upload a small diagram from my hard drive, must I upload it somewhere else first? (anti-malware?)

The image uploading UX is kind of awful on this site. You probably clicked on the 'insert an image' button in the toolbar, but that only takes URLs.

You upload diagrams by hitting the 'upload' button near the 'Post Reply' button to the bottom right of the reply box. Then the file you picked will appear in a list below the reply box, and you can click either 'THUMBNAIL' or 'FULL IMAGE' within that list to insert it inline in the post.

 

[StevieTNZ]

The image uploading UX is kind of awful on this site. You probably clicked on the 'insert an image' button in the toolbar, but that only takes URLs.

You upload diagrams by hitting the 'upload' button near the 'Post Reply' button to the bottom right of the reply box. Then the file you picked will appear in a list below the reply box, and you can click either 'THUMBNAIL' or 'FULL IMAGE' within that list to insert it inline in the post.

Try uploading it to photobucket or similar website, then use the URL pointing to the image for the input when you click 'Image'

 

[OCR]

Or, you can take a screen grab of a picture, from "My Pictures", with the Snipping Tool and copy it... then paste it here.

That's what I just did.... I also centered it buy placing it between these tags... [ center][/center].

But, don't leave a space between the bracket and the c... I had to, so it would show here...

 

[David Lewis]

if you were standing next to Schrödinger's bomb, triggered by a random event. Would you say "The bomb is both exploded and unexploded?".

To qualify as Schrödinger's Bomb, the bomb would need to be in an armored, soundproof box so that you don't know whether the bomb went off until you open the box.

 

[phinds]

To qualify as Schrödinger's Bomb, the bomb would need to be in an armored, soundproof box so that you don't know whether the bomb went off until you open the box.

Which would be irrelevant regarding whether or not the bomb was ever in a state of both exploded and unexploded, which it is not and which was the OP's question.

 

[pBrane]

To qualify as Schrödinger's Bomb, the bomb would need to be in an armored, soundproof box so that you don't know whether the bomb went off until you open the box.

To qualify as Schrödinger's Bomb, the bomb would need to be in an armored, soundproof box so that you don't know whether the bomb went off until you open the box.

Which would be irrelevant regarding whether or not the bomb was ever in a state of both exploded and unexploded, which it is not and which was the OP's question.

Too true phinds. But optimism overrules logic when it makes you smile.

I like your your avatar's coat mate and I hope that is a smile on your face!