Paradox Kitty is in your box.. maybe

[bojengles77]

Simple Question:
This Cat, say it belongs to some fellow named Schrodinger, Is in a closed, opaque box with a radioactive source with a 50% chance to radioactively decay. If the atom decays, the cat dies, if it doesn't, the cat remains alive. is it dead or alive?

Card Idea inc....

[Arondight]

I say both while closed.  This is definitely not for the general discussion of Elements, I think. It's more off-topic.

[Chemist]

Yep, wrong section.

Anyway the answer depends on which interpretation of quantum mechanics is used. The whole thought experiment was originally Schrödinger's way of criticising the Copenhagen interpretation.

But you really should describe it correctly:

One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter, there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small that perhaps in the course of the hour, one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges, and through a relay releases a hammer that shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.

It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a "blurred model" for representing reality. In itself, it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.

[bojengles77]

I realized I put this in the wrong topic as i posted it. If you could move it, SG that would be awesome

[Azumi]

Both and Neither.....Since you have no way of knowing it can be thought of as both alive and dead.

[Glitch]

Please put an option of "either".

While we may not know if the cat is dead or alive, we do know being dead and being alive are mutually exclusive.  You are either dead or you are alive.  So the cat is either dead or a live.  Not both.  There's just no way of knowing which.

[bojengles77]

Please put an option of "either".

While we may not know if the cat is dead or alive, we do know being dead and being alive are mutually exclusive.  You are either dead or you are alive.  So the cat is either dead or a live.  Not both.  There's just no way of knowing which.

And therein lies the paradox
I love schrodinger's cat

[Demagog]

I voted both. In one universe the atom decayed, in another, it didn't.

[smuglapse]

Dead.  I was browsing adult material earlier and, as you know, "Every time you..."

[Ant-n-ero]

i know it's both/either
but come on - after 1 hour he'll be dead from oxygen starvation 

[Xinef]

If the cat is both alive and dead, I'd say it's a desync

[bojengles77]

If you want to talk about quantum physics, the world where anything is possible, I'd definitely go with "both" on this one. Schrodinger's observations go to show that we can only say that something is true by directly observing it. The options are clearly that the cat can either be dead or alive. However, due to the inability to observe the cat, no one can say for sure which one it is. As Demagog said, there is one situation where it happened and one where it didn't. As long as we don't know which one occured, they both occurred.