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  • Improved Schrodinger's Cat Experiment

    From Mike Fontenot@21:1/5 to All on Tue Apr 26 11:56:53 2016
    Schrodinger clearly believed that human consciousness was required to
    collapse the wave function into either the "live cat" state or "dead
    cat" state. Penrose doesn't (see "Shadows of the Mind"). He suspects
    that as the "measuring device" is made more complicated than a
    "quantum-sized" object, at some degree of complexity, it would cause an
    actual physical collapse of the wave function of the combined
    "radioactive atom plus measuring device system". I suspect Penrose, not Schrodinger, is correct.

    It seems to me that this issue COULD have been easily resolved by
    experiment in Schrodinger's time. First, allow for the radioactive atom
    to be removed from the box after the one-hour time interval that should
    produce a 50/50 chance of a decay. In addition, instead of putting a
    cat in the box (which might have sufficient consciousness to itself
    cause the collapse), just include a classical-sized "measurement device"
    that would, upon a decay, turn off refrigeration of a bottle of milk in
    the box. After the one-hour interval, the experimenter removes and
    discards the radioactive atom from the box (without examining it to
    determine if it has decayed), and the leaves the box undisturbed for a
    week or so (without determining in any way whether the refrigeration had
    been turned off or not). After a week or so, the experimenter opens the
    box. If the milk is observed to be spoiled, then clearly the collapse
    happened days ago, not just now by the conscious observation.

    -- Mike Fontenot

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Mike Fontenot@21:1/5 to Mike Fontenot on Wed Apr 27 12:46:05 2016
    On 4/26/16 11:56 AM, Mike Fontenot wrote:

    It seems to me that this issue COULD have been easily resolved by
    experiment in Schrodinger's time.
    [...]
    After a week or so, the experimenter opens the
    box. If the milk is observed to be spoiled, then clearly the collapse happened days ago, not just now by the conscious observation.


    I've just realized that my modified experiment DOESN'T allow the
    observer to determine the time of collapse. Regardless of whether the
    collapse occurs immediately after the decay, or a week later when the
    observer opens the box, the process of milk spoilage begins (if it ever
    happens at all) when the atom decays and causes the refrigeration to be
    turned off. When the undecayed atom is placed in the box, the state of
    the atom is "undecayed". But immediately the state becomes a
    superposition of "decayed" and "undecayed", with the complex weighing
    factor for the "decayed" component starting out small, but growing as
    time passes. And for the "decayed" component, the spoiling process
    begins its progression immediately. Whenever the collapse occurs, if
    the resulting state is "decayed", the progression of the spoilage of the
    milk will smoothly continue on, uninterrupted by the collapse. If the
    state after the collapse is "undecayed", the decayed component of the superposition ceases to exist at the collapse, and the spoilage of milk
    in that component ceases to progress because it no longer exists.

    -- Mike Fontenot

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Hans Van Leunen@21:1/5 to All on Wed Apr 27 12:45:25 2016
    The squared modulus of the wave function can be interpreted as the (continuous) description of a location density distribution that describes a coherent swarm of locations that represent the landing locations in a hopping path of a point-like object. If
    the object stops hopping or decides to do something else, then the location density distribution looses its sense and collapses. This is what probably happens to the owner of the wave function.

    Op dinsdag 26 april 2016 19:00:02 UTC+2 schreef Mike_Fontenot:
    Schrodinger clearly believed that human consciousness was required to collapse the wave function into either the "live cat" state or "dead
    cat" state. Penrose doesn't (see "Shadows of the Mind"). He suspects
    that as the "measuring device" is made more complicated than a "quantum-sized" object, at some degree of complexity, it would cause an actual physical collapse of the wave function of the combined
    "radioactive atom plus measuring device system". I suspect Penrose, not Schrodinger, is correct.

    It seems to me that this issue COULD have been easily resolved by
    experiment in Schrodinger's time. First, allow for the radioactive atom
    to be removed from the box after the one-hour time interval that should produce a 50/50 chance of a decay. In addition, instead of putting a
    cat in the box (which might have sufficient consciousness to itself
    cause the collapse), just include a classical-sized "measurement device"
    that would, upon a decay, turn off refrigeration of a bottle of milk in
    the box. After the one-hour interval, the experimenter removes and
    discards the radioactive atom from the box (without examining it to
    determine if it has decayed), and the leaves the box undisturbed for a
    week or so (without determining in any way whether the refrigeration had
    been turned off or not). After a week or so, the experimenter opens the
    box. If the milk is observed to be spoiled, then clearly the collapse happened days ago, not just now by the conscious observation.

    -- Mike Fontenot

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)