This Is Your Mind, This Is Your Mind on Cat Nip

I have no background in physics and only a passing familiarity with philosophy, so perhaps wiser Neatoramanauts might be able to answer this question:

Does Schrödinger's Cat conflict with the Law of Non-Contradiction?

As I understand it, Schrödinger’s thought experiement was intended to demonstrate that quantum-scale events don't scale up to the macro world without absurdities. Surely actually trying it rather defeats the point of a thought experiment?

The question in the comments sums up my thoughts: How do you measure whether the virus was in a superposition or not? Isn't the point of the experiment that you can't know?

I don't understand why no one is complaining here yet about too many cats on Neatorama.

This experiment has always bothered me. Just how it is so generic in that it can really be apply to a whole bunch of situations. Ex: My flatmate is in the other room, I haven't heard or talked to him for hours. I know he's out there, I'm just in here. So in this mans thinking, my flatmate must be both dead AND alive. Well thats not how physics works. Something can't be BOTH dead AND alive. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Not an equal or opposite reaction to an action that may or may not have happened in the first place. I'm sorry, but there is no such thing as a superposition. You can't be in two living states at once any more than my flatmate is both dead and alive. This whole "paradox" really bothers me, and almost even more than the whole "not making sense" part, is the fact that he's talking about radioactively poisoning a cat. What a DUMB JERK!

As I understand it, quantum theory is that a particle doesn't exist at a single location until it has to interact with another, not specifically until it is measured by a person. It just happens to be true that the only way to detect an object's presence is to bounce something off it.

Since the particles within a solid mass like a cat (or indeed a virus) are always interacting with each other, they would either never enter a superposition, or if they did, would do so individually and not stay that way for long.

But hey, maybe I've got it all wrong. The experimenters seem to think so.

Having taken (and actually passed) Physical Chemistry, I can assure everyone that all of the above comments are correct. An, of course, they all all incorrect to some degree. (Joke intended)

The great public debates of Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Einstein et al. about the applicability of subatomic theory to superatomic objects ranged from absurdity to theology. They did, however, lead to things such as semiconductors, nanotechnology and superconductivity. All of which prove that it is possible to build large objects that demonstrate subatomic properties.

While I agree that thinking outside of the box, I disagree with thinking which involves people believing in a box which doesn't actually exist, and keeps attempting to persuade others that said box exists.

@nickolas_warner

Your flatmate is a zombie!?! That's so cool!

@5:

The system containing the cat is in a well-defined state at all times. However, the definition of a quantum state doesn't always map well onto our classical intuitions. A single particle may be in a well defined quantum state, but that state may not tell you much about what answer you'd get if you measure the particle's position.

Physicists often define a subset of allowed quantum states in a system (often energy eigenstates) as a basis of "pure states", and then call other allowed states superpositions of these states. They express the superposition as a weighted sum of pure states.

@6:

It sounds like you're talking about decoherence. Yes, eventually interactions between particles will disrupt a superposition that one of them might be in. Here, though, it sounds like they are putting the whole organism into a superposition of states, not an individual particle within it. Also, the lasers are cooling the organism to a very low temperature, which would slow decoherence and extend the life of the superposition.

My flatmate may as well be a zombie. He sits in front of the TV all day long.

Is being a zombie cool enough to halt decomposition?

I always thought that the experiment proved only that Schrödinger had never owned a cat.

Isn't the idea that we can never actually know the condition of the object, be it cat or not, until we actually open the box?

Seems trying to measure this would be self-defeating.

"Once the virus is fixed, the team will use a single photon to put the virus into a quantum superposition of two states, where it is either moving or not."

That's where this whole thing stopped making sense to me.

Can't we just reconfigure the deflector array, replace a skeleton with adamantium, and steer clear of the ion storm?

Y'know...like that.

seefish3, don't forget to reverse the polarity when you do so.

There's a lot of really smart people on Neatorama. I feel stupid now.

@NatashaLynn

Nah, some of us just have gotten really good at faking it.

So, wait, if I don't read Neatorama there is no cat on it?

@Christophe

No, actually there are cats on it, and there are no cats on it. If you are reading Neatorama, all the cats are dead.