Mr. Sammi

AFTER hearing that Schrodinger put his cat in the box, being human, I became curious and wanted to know what the cat was doing. My best bet was to peep inside the box, and watch the cat and its movements so to speak.

SO when Schrodinger left the room, I bored a tiny hole, in the box, placed an optical fibre connected to my digital cam, so I could watch on, unknown to Schrodinger! I thought mabye I might even enjoy watching the CAT evaporate.

AS A RESULT, is it possible that my observing the cat in the box inherently modifies the quality of the experiment, and in doing so, modifies the quality of the results, by the mere fact of introducing an observation post.

IF this were true then all QM experiments suffer because of the introduction of an OBSERVATION POST.

Does anyone have any qualifiable opinions?

Sammi Na Boodie ()

I am

Well I'm not sure I could call my opinion "qualifiable" or not, but here goes.

What you are proposing is the equivalent of removing the box. There will be no superposition of states, the cat will either be alive or dead at any given time.

I favor the idea that the cat will always be either alive or dead regardless of wether a human has "looked at" the cat. I don't believe any device could be constructed which could both exist in a superposition of states and activate the killing mechanism in the box.

tronvillain

I too favour the idea that the cat is either alive or dead regardless of whether a human has looked in the box. Anyway, doing anything analagous to what you propose in an actual experiment (I suspect setting up such macroscopic superposition is impossible) would ruin it, simply because of the interaction required for such observation, which is why such interaction is avoided.

Liquidrage

You seem to be describing the Copenhagen Interpretation. You're act of observation would collapse the probility waves and the results would be known.

Thankfully, this isn't the invouge interpretation of QM anymore and it is now mostly mentioned as an old curiosity. Unless of course you're reading some propaganda for the anthropic principle.

My personal opinion is that whether you look or not the quantum system was never in a superposition of states. So you're observation doesn't effect it unless you believe the exchanges of photons via your little tube physically change the outcome.

beausoleil

So do you think, for instance, that a particle has a well defined spin whether or not it has been measured?

AdamWho

When Bohr used the word observer in QM he did not mean a conscience as is romanticized by New-Agers. He only ment; if you want to measure something then you are going to have to interact with it. You can do this by bouncing a photon or particle off the object or by constraining the object so that it releases a photon or particle. But no matter what you do, you are not being passive and you will affect the system.
It doesn't even require an experiment; particles "observe" each other when they collide.

Kenny

But, superposistion states can be transfered from particle to particle, involve pairs of particles, or multitudes of particles. So, where does it end? When does the wavefunction actually collapse? That's the essence of the measurement problem in QM.

God Bless,
Kenny

Liquidrage

That is kind of a loaded question.
There's two separate aspects here.

A. Well defined spin
B. The act of measuring

"A" might or might not exist all together.
Regardless, QM has shown us that there is no way for us to obtain this information.

What I believe is that "B" has no effect on "A".

The process relationships required to collapse a quantum system exist inside the box with no need of an obvserver.

It is not that I am not saying there is no duality. But as Adamwho noted that the conditions needed to collapse quantum system is meerly particle interactions.

Liquidrage

But what you say isn't really a problem.

Only if one presupposes free will (true free will, not "choice" or soft free will) would one come to your conclusion through experimental evidence.

beausoleil

I was getting at how you account for results in line with Bell's theorem.