Can Schrodinger's cat apply to things other than alive/dead?

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    Apply Schrodinger's cat
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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the applicability of Schrödinger's cat analogy beyond the specific case of a cat being both alive and dead. Participants explore whether this concept of superposition can be extended to other states or conditions, such as size, color, or distance, and how it relates to quantum mechanics.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Debate/contested
  • Conceptual clarification
  • Technical explanation

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants propose that the Schrödinger's cat analogy illustrates quantum superposition and can apply to various states beyond life and death, such as size or color.
  • Others argue that the analogy does not hold for macroscopic objects like cats due to decoherence, which requires isolation from the environment and is more applicable to smaller systems like atoms.
  • A participant suggests that the analogy is often misinterpreted and oversimplified, emphasizing that the original scenario starts with a binary condition that is subject to observation.
  • There is a discussion about what constitutes "observation," with some suggesting that any interaction with the environment, such as a camera, could lead to decoherence and thus affect the state of the system.
  • Some participants mention the historical debate between different interpretations of quantum mechanics, including the Copenhagen interpretation and the Bohm-DeBroglie or Many-Worlds interpretations, as relevant to understanding the implications of the analogy.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express differing views on the applicability of the Schrödinger's cat analogy to other scenarios, with no consensus reached on whether it can be generalized beyond the original context. The discussion remains unresolved regarding the nature of observation and its implications for superposition.

Contextual Notes

Limitations include the dependence on definitions of observation and the challenges of achieving true isolation in macroscopic systems. The discussion highlights the complexities and nuances of applying quantum concepts to everyday objects.

  • #31
mfb said:
Decoherence is irreversible by definition.

Right, thanks for noting that.
 
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  • #32
mfb said:
It does not work with a cat. You can make that analogy with whatever you want, of course, but you cannot make that experiment with an actual cat. Decoherence prevents that. You need something as isolated from the environment as possible, and without too many relevant internal degrees of freedom. In general this is easier with smaller objects such as individual atoms.
Oh now the Schrödinger's cat story/analogy/experiment/thought experiment is a quantum interference experiment, although Schrödinger does not say anything about interference. :rolleyes:Let's put a radioactive atom in a box made of steel, and the box we put in such place where there is a few light minutes of empty space around the box. After a minute the box will be in these states:

many states where the box knows that the atom decayed at time one second
.
.
.
many states where the box knows that the atom decayed at time two seconds
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many states where the box knows that the atom has not decayed yet
 

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