Have You Ever Been Molested?

A strange cat

Credits: lolcats.com

Despite the title of this new post, I will not speak or cat with boots, or the Shrek's cat, Garfield or that, even strangers, the cat that I am presenting today is far, far more exotic than the previous. As some of you and you will have of course, I'll talk about the Schrodinger's cat , A hypothetical experiment that gave a lot of headaches. But why would a cat? I guess because Erwin Schrödinger liked these pets, and that this paradox is equally valid for a cat to the pulperro Sheldon Cooper.

Schrödinger's experiment is as follows: a cat locked in an opaque box, within which there is one and only one radioactive particle a 50% chance of breaking down, and if it does, a mechanism opens a bottle with a lethal gas cat dying instantly.

This "simple" experiment attempts to explain various concepts of quantum mechanics as the lethal gas bottle, and by extension the cat's life, depend on the probability of decay of an atom, obeying it directly to the laws of quantum mechanics, so therefore, the cat's life is subject to the principles of this branch of physics.

And what is the conclusion of this experiment? Well, while not making a measurement on the system, ie, while the case remains closed, for someone outside the box, the cat has exactly the same chance of being alive than dead, which effects Mechanic Quantum, the cat is alive and dead at the time.

Although it may seem strange to imagine a cat alive and dead at the same time, to move into the realm of subatomic particles are nothing crazy this type of assumptions are explained by the superposition , which provides a solution to what occurs when the subject simultaneously acquires two or more states or values, going to speak because of physical probabilities, all true at a time except when we make a measurement, since it would disrupt the system, in the case of the experiment, make a move would equivalent to opening the box to see if the cat is alive or not. Even Stephen Hawking himself said "every time I hear about that cat, I begin to get my gun."

This paradox has given rise to many interpretations theoretically valid but not provable on a practical level. For example, if a subatomic particle can sample two states, the particle will become part of two worlds: in each of them will have a different state, but that will not do as long as a measure of the system, because if we all return to our universe. If the cat is behaving like a subatomic particle in a universe would be dead and alive in the other, but to open the box, we disturb the system and returns to our universe, may be alive or dead. It is a way of saying "if the box is closed, not open can you ensure that the cat is inside?".

-

Interested? Also follow me on Twitter .