Schrödinger’s cat, bless it’s little white paws, had a pretty tough time of it; what with being locked in an imaginary box, and having to share that space with only a decaying radioactive isotope. At the end of the experiment, when the box is opened and the cat is observed, it’s probability wave collapses into either a live cat or a dead cat. It’s not exactly an easy life (or death).
I was therefore especially pleased today to read of Kirsher’s Hall of Mirrors for cats.
Schrödinger never saw fit to describe the interior decoration of the box, so it struck me that if the box were a hall of mirrors, such as Kirsher’s, then the cat could observe itself; thus collapsing it’s own probability wave and therefore, either
- instaneously ceasing to exist, the moment the isoptope decays, or
- continuing to exist, and spending an hour in a private preening booth (surely this is cat heaven?).
Ok, so there’s unlikely to be a Nobel prize for this one, but if I keep coming up with ideas then the probabilty has to increase, and if I sit in a room full of mirrors whilst I think…
Strangely enough, I’ve been thinking about this problem from a different viewpoint – if the box with the dead/live cat in is opened by an observer inside a locked room who then dies before being able to pass on the information does the waveform collapse when he sees it and stay collapsed, or does it not collapse from the point of view of an observer outside the room?
I was wondering if it collapsed and then uncollapsed, but I suspect from a QM point of view it’s likely to be one of the two former cases..
So again it begs the question of who/what exactly constitutes an observer ? There is the participatory anthropic principle that says that conscious life is necessary to the universe in order for the collapse of QM waveforms to occur, but I think that’s a particularly long straw to grasp..
Hmm – this would make a good blog post in its own right – I’ll go chuck it on my site too..
Hey! This could help us in re-homing rescued cats & dogs at the Llys Nini Animal Centre in Swansea. People coming to view prospective pets could see contented animals from every view point simultaneously.
As an RSPCA associated outfit though, we could only consider this on the understanding that no animals would be adversly affected in the process. (Herr Schrödinger, please note).
If you’d like a furry friend to come and sit in your mirror lined think-tank, rehoming is a good solution.