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[Ampersand]

Forty two? How about this. If you drill a hole from any point on the earth, through to any other point on the earth, and disregard friction, only use acceleration and decceleration due to gravity, the amount of time it takes to get from any arbitrary point to any other arbitrary point is almost exactly 42 minutes.

Back on topic, while what LordZorinthrhox said is entirely true, there is one glaring omission. While in his explanation he deals entirely with fundamental particles, the line between Einsteinian physics and Quantum physics isn't as clearly cut. In the quantum processor, for example, the quantum objects that hold multiple states aren't individual fundamental particles, but a small clump of aluminium atoms. Still frighteningly small, but far larger than a fundamental particle. Hundreds of times larger, even. But they behave in the same way.

Ever hear of the two-slit experiment? Where they fire electrons or photons through a (figurative) wall with two slits in it, one at a time at a sheet of photograph paper. The resulting pattern isn't the expected two lines of light next to each other, but an interference pattern that would be expected only if the individual particles, photons or electrons, were waves of energy, rather than individual point particles. In reality, they move as waves of probable positions. The particle moves through both slits at once, and interacts with itself, interferes with itself.

However, if you put up a sensor in front of the slits to determine which slit it actually goes through, then the interference pattern vanishes, and you get two straight parallel lines... This gets even creepier, however. If you put the sensor behind the slits, even very close to the photograph paper, after the probability wave would have interacted with itself and caused the pattern, the particle retroactively chooses which slit it went through, and two parallel lines show up.

Now to make it even worse: It works with objects as large as a Fullerene, or more solidly, the small balls of aluminium in the quantum processor.

[Keiseth]

It's like Schrödinger's cat spinning violently around your head vomiting multicolored flickering 1s and 0s on your eyeballs just trying to contemplate that on any meaningful level.

New signature a-hey!

...The say it was Yale responsible for this. I, for one, welcome our new Singularity sentient AI overlord. Pretty soon we'll all be finding traces of Its space-time bubble processing centers.

[LordZorintrhox]

Oh, of course.  I omitted the Einsteinian vs. Quantum stuff because, you know, it is the fundamental argument in Physics, and gets rather complicated extremely quickly.  The core of the reasoning is there, it just so happens that the threshold for quantum effects is (last I read) somewhere around the size of a large Fullerene (Bucky Ball).  One planned test of Quantum Mechanics involves using Fullerenes to see what happens on the threshold, as as accurate as Quantum Mechanics is (the most accurate theory of all time) it has not been tested in the classical sense.  The whole thing is much easier to digest if we leave the argument out of it.

For those who are interested, the primary problem is Einsteinian physics relies on the geometry of the universe itself, whereas quantum mechanics relies on the content of the universe...the two don't really get along, especially when the math literally explodes into an absolute mess when you bring either framework to the other's scale.  Like, mixing the two results in the the very fabric of existence boiling into a femto-scopic soup of infinite curvatures and rips, a backdrop for the universe that is not only hard to deal with, but revolting from a mathematical standpoint ( a big faux pas in theoretical Physics ).  String theory seeks to rectify this by basically putting a lower limit on the size of things in the universe, the 'string,' so anything at the scale at which shit goes down doesn't ever matter because nothing could interact with it anyway; no way to look at it, so it doesn't matter.

On the number forty-two: last I read anything actually relevant in relation to the iconic number was in an issue of Seed magazine.  The more you read about theoretical physics, the more you find that great things happen when Mathematicians and Physicists talk to one another (not as frequent as it should be).  Basically, the team up in this article produced a fucking strange coincidence: the Riemann Zeta Function Hypothesis (the one that could, if proved, predict the pattern and structure of ALL the prime numbers; bye-bye RSA encryption) and Quantum Mechanics appear to be related.  As in the Zeta function seems to describe things about electron orbitals and their structure...and part of this craziness is that the number forty-two is actually important in the math...somehow.  The math is above all of our heads (maybe not Toady's), so I have no specifics and the article didn't really either.  Unfortunately, haven't seen a thing about it since then.

[Puck]

I probably demask myself as the ape I am, but I never understood Schrödinger's Cat.

Doesn't the cat itself count as observer and thus manipulate the whole experiment? If there's just some sort of metaphor I'm not getting, I don't understand why a living being is chosen as part of the experiment's set up. Somebody assplain?

[Ohaeri]

I probably demask myself as the ape I am, but I never understood Schrödinger's Cat.

Doesn't the cat itself count as observer and thus manipulate the whole experiment? If there's just some sort of metaphor I'm not getting, I don't understand why a living being is chosen as part of the experiment's set up. Somebody assplain?

Well, it's a cat because its state of being alive or not alive is important to the experiment at the end.

You could just say that it's a cat with no capacity for thought and go from there. Or an XBOX360. Will it or will it not have a red ring?!

EDIT: Here, this link might help. http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci341236,00.html

[Puck]

Well, that's what I thought, but then I furthermore I have to think the whole setup is flawed in itself.

Because, as I mentioned, I think he cat counts as observer. It should be formulated differently. Or we both didnt get it properly 

[Ohaeri]

Well, that's what I thought, but then I furthermore I have to think the whole setup is flawed in itself.

Because, as I mentioned, I think he cat counts as observer. It should be formulated differently. Or we both didnt get it properly 

How about this setup:

In a box, there's a Geiger counter and a radioactive substance that decays at random intervals--meaning it has no fixed half-life, and so we don't know how long it will take for a certain amount of radiation to be observed. (I know, not likely, but make-believe with me here.) After a certain amount of radiation is observed by the counter, instead of a cat being poisoned, a light turns on. For purposes of the experiment, this light has a power source that never runs out. Now, before opening the box, according to Schrödinger's theory, the light is both on and off. It's only when we open the box and see the light for ourselves that it takes on a definite state.

Does that make sense?

[Puck]

That's what I was getting at, yes, that makes sense.

I just dont understand how a cat in there helps with the whole setup not having a definite state.

[Ohaeri]

Well, the only thing that I don't get about quantum mechanics is how something can not have a definite state. In the experiment there is a definite state, it just hasn't been observed. So I get quantum theory, but when it comes to actual quantum mechanics I get very stumped very fast.

EDIT: This probably proves how stupid I am to everybody who actually gets it

To clarify: I know that the light either has to be on or off. Or the cat has to be either living or dead. I can't accept that it happens or solidifies its state just because I observe it . . . is I guess what I'm getting at.

EDIT2:

I just dont understand how a cat in there helps with the whole setup not having a definite state.

I think it's just because life and death are two mutually exclusive states that are easy to understand. You're either alive or dead, there is no in-between. So it's an easy example to put to people, because they don't go "but what about this case?" (For example . . . with the light, it could be that there's an equipment malfunction and it only half-lights. Or it could be an analog system that varies its "on" state depending on several factors, much like those lights you can get that work on a dial and go less or more bright the more you turn the dial. Sigh . . . there, I went and broke the experiment.)

Of course, that doesn't exactly work with dorks sometimes, because then they say "but what if the cat is a ZOMBIE!" and then you're back to square one.

[Ampersand]

Schrödinger Cat was presented at first, not to be a layman's explanation, but an attack on the theory meant to demonstrate an apparently ridiculous feature of it.

When we say 'Observe' in Quantum Mechanics, what is really meant is 'Interact'. Suppose you fire an electron into a vacuum, you have no way of determining where it is inside of that vacuum. In fact, given enough time, it might as well be in any point inside the vacuum.

But the point is that when I say 'might as well be', I mean, actually is. It's hard to think of a proper analogy, but I think this will do. For it to work, you must think of a liquid as a single object, not a collection of atoms.

Imagine you have an aquarium of pure water. The electron is represented as a single drop of dye that you drop into the aquarium. At first, it  appears to be a single solid object, but as time goes on, the dye spreads out, until it's consentration in any point of the water is equal to it's consentration in any other point.

Then, you slip a detector into the water to find where the dye has gone. The consentration of dye is so low, most of the time, the sensor reads negative. Eventually, though, it catches a whiff of the dye, and something strange happens. The dye is no longer spread evenly throughout the aquarium, but instantly recombines into a single drop suspended in the water, at the point at which it was detected. Immediately afterward, it begins to spread out again.

[Puck]

However, if you put up a sensor in front of the slits to determine which slit it actually goes through, then the interference pattern vanishes, and you get two straight parallel lines... This gets even creepier, however. If you put the sensor behind the slits, even very close to the photograph paper, after the probability wave would have interacted with itself and caused the pattern, the particle retroactively chooses which slit it went through, and two parallel lines show up.

Alright, lemme try to put it this way... this example I quoted (read this post if you want the whole experiment. Not you, ampersand, obviously  ) is basically the same thing as the schrödingers cat setup.

The problem for me always was... I think the cat acts as a sensor, hence I never understood what would be so special about it. There simply wouldnt be any undefined state, and that's what it's all about. No quantum mechanics, just a little bit of russian roulette for cats.

Schrödingers Lightbulb, as described a few posts ago, however, makes perfect sense to me.

But maybe I'm just an apeman, clinging to oldschool logics 

[Ampersand]

You have to pretend the Cat is a fundamental particle.

[Puck]

That is all fine and dandy, I'm just saying, the original version is a bad figure of speech then, and it saddens me a bit it has reached such popularity then. To me it just looks so fundamentally flawed it's not even funny anymore.

Or am I still not getting it?

[Ampersand]

You're getting it. Like I said, the example is intentionally flawed, as it was presented first as an attack on the consequences of Quantum physics.

[Mr Tk]

The cat has three states: Dead, Alive or Bloody Furious.