(no subject)
I've been reading about Schroedinger's Cat this morning (and related to this, Quantum Suicide), because whilst I knew about the whole cat in a sealed box can't be both alive and dead at the same time scenario, that's about all I knew. Turns out that the death of the cat (in the thought experiment, no cats were harmed in real life ;-) ) is triggered by a flask of poison being released (or not being released) by the radioactive decay of a single atom. This is statistically equally likely to happen/not happen within a given time frame, e.g. an hour, after which the box is opened. The question that arises from this is when does the cat become dead? Is it at the moment that an external observer opens the box to find out?
Quantum physics suggests that in order for a waveform to collapse, the particles must be observed, as this sends them into one state or another instead of a combination of every possible state. What's fascinating me today is the notion of observation. Does observation require consciousness? It strikes me as incredibly arrogant to assume that observation depends solely on a human consciousness.
Obviously from our singular point of view, the cat indeed only becomes dead when we observe it, because before that we have no way of knowing whether it's alive or not, and therefore would have to suppose that either was possible. Sort of like when you flip a coin (and it lands either face up or down, not on its side), before you look at which way it's landed, either heads or tails up is possible until you've checked to see which it is, but in reality only one of them can possibly be true at a time. The coin doesn't flicker between states (or so I'd like to believe). So the human consciousness not knowing which state something is in obviously doesn't preclude the object having one singular state.
What about looking at it from the cat's point of view? The cat can be said to be a conscious animal, therefore surely its observations should ultimately be able to collapse the wave function of quantum particles too. So the cat observes the flask of poison remaining whole and it lives, or observes the flask shattering and it dies (since its death is not instantaneous). I know this is actually the wrong point of observation, the cat is dead as soon as one particle decays. However this way of looking at it seems as arbitrary as saying the cat is not dead until you look at it and see it is so.
Looking at things from the cat's point of view also lead to the thought experiment about Quantum Suicide, in which the firing of a gun depends on the spin of a quantum particle - if clockwise, the gun fires, if anticlockwise, it doesn't. So, in one scenario it is possible that the gun, although fully functional and loaded, never fires no matter how many times the trigger is pulled. Any experimenter living this scenario would therefore have the illusion of immortality (at least where immortality has a finite definition...). But this also brings up the notion that there are possibly many parallel universes out there, each one created for each of the possible outcomes of an event. So if the two possible outcomes are life or death, then two universes exist from that moment onwards, one of which contains the living experimenter and one of which contains his body. I dislike the many-worlds theory, mostly because I do have a scientist's heart when it comes down to it, and I have never observed a parallel universe (despite the fact that should I do so, it would be paradoxical to say the least), therefore cannot state with any certainty that it exists. Also, however, because when you look at it from a wider perspective, it seems silly to have an infinitely exponential number of universes being created for every movement of every particle.
So that leaves me with the point of observation being the moment the particle hits the detector in the box. This seems to be enough of an 'observation' to collapse the wave function into being one or the other (decayed or undecayed), and so this triggers the shattering of the flask (or doesn't). It seems to me that the moment of 'observation' must be that at which the state of the particle actually triggers another event, and must be either one state or the other to do so. So once a microscopic wave-form has collapsed, it forces others around it to collapse as well, in a sort of domino effect.
I'm heading rapidly towards the deterministic point of view, which suggests that everything was predetermined from the moment the universe was created (which in itself is a topic for another day...), and so given complete knowledge about every other event that has so far occurred, you can predict with complete accuracy what is going to happen next.
However, all of this suggests that at the very start of the universe, there must have been an initial observer to begin the collapse of probabilities into realities. There must have been a point at which the first particles both were and weren't at the same time, and there must therefore have been an event that forced them into being one state or the other. Is this God?
I totally didn't start writing this with the intention of becoming all religious, but there you go. I still haven't solved my problem with the start of the universe itself, but I'm one step closer to knowing what I believe. Gotta love the physics (even if my understanding isn't 100% right...).
Quantum physics suggests that in order for a waveform to collapse, the particles must be observed, as this sends them into one state or another instead of a combination of every possible state. What's fascinating me today is the notion of observation. Does observation require consciousness? It strikes me as incredibly arrogant to assume that observation depends solely on a human consciousness.
Obviously from our singular point of view, the cat indeed only becomes dead when we observe it, because before that we have no way of knowing whether it's alive or not, and therefore would have to suppose that either was possible. Sort of like when you flip a coin (and it lands either face up or down, not on its side), before you look at which way it's landed, either heads or tails up is possible until you've checked to see which it is, but in reality only one of them can possibly be true at a time. The coin doesn't flicker between states (or so I'd like to believe). So the human consciousness not knowing which state something is in obviously doesn't preclude the object having one singular state.
What about looking at it from the cat's point of view? The cat can be said to be a conscious animal, therefore surely its observations should ultimately be able to collapse the wave function of quantum particles too. So the cat observes the flask of poison remaining whole and it lives, or observes the flask shattering and it dies (since its death is not instantaneous). I know this is actually the wrong point of observation, the cat is dead as soon as one particle decays. However this way of looking at it seems as arbitrary as saying the cat is not dead until you look at it and see it is so.
Looking at things from the cat's point of view also lead to the thought experiment about Quantum Suicide, in which the firing of a gun depends on the spin of a quantum particle - if clockwise, the gun fires, if anticlockwise, it doesn't. So, in one scenario it is possible that the gun, although fully functional and loaded, never fires no matter how many times the trigger is pulled. Any experimenter living this scenario would therefore have the illusion of immortality (at least where immortality has a finite definition...). But this also brings up the notion that there are possibly many parallel universes out there, each one created for each of the possible outcomes of an event. So if the two possible outcomes are life or death, then two universes exist from that moment onwards, one of which contains the living experimenter and one of which contains his body. I dislike the many-worlds theory, mostly because I do have a scientist's heart when it comes down to it, and I have never observed a parallel universe (despite the fact that should I do so, it would be paradoxical to say the least), therefore cannot state with any certainty that it exists. Also, however, because when you look at it from a wider perspective, it seems silly to have an infinitely exponential number of universes being created for every movement of every particle.
So that leaves me with the point of observation being the moment the particle hits the detector in the box. This seems to be enough of an 'observation' to collapse the wave function into being one or the other (decayed or undecayed), and so this triggers the shattering of the flask (or doesn't). It seems to me that the moment of 'observation' must be that at which the state of the particle actually triggers another event, and must be either one state or the other to do so. So once a microscopic wave-form has collapsed, it forces others around it to collapse as well, in a sort of domino effect.
I'm heading rapidly towards the deterministic point of view, which suggests that everything was predetermined from the moment the universe was created (which in itself is a topic for another day...), and so given complete knowledge about every other event that has so far occurred, you can predict with complete accuracy what is going to happen next.
However, all of this suggests that at the very start of the universe, there must have been an initial observer to begin the collapse of probabilities into realities. There must have been a point at which the first particles both were and weren't at the same time, and there must therefore have been an event that forced them into being one state or the other. Is this God?
I totally didn't start writing this with the intention of becoming all religious, but there you go. I still haven't solved my problem with the start of the universe itself, but I'm one step closer to knowing what I believe. Gotta love the physics (even if my understanding isn't 100% right...).