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Our entire world turned into an infinite possibility for change and growth, and it is only natural that we had to adapt and become a different version of ourselves. We were in a different country, having a completely different routine, and we were surrounding ourselves with new faces and strange places. We don’t know if those changes are fundamental or superficial, but they exist. We leave our countries as one person, and we come back as a completely different one. Most of you would probably identify with it when it comes to Erasmus. I bet I am not the only one who has been wondering about this. But if you put them all together, they would create a valid person, just like superposition can create a valid quantum state. Every single person in our lives has an idea of who we are, and none of those ideas come in complete agreement with each other. Do we exist? Or are we just an idea made of circumstances? Either way, you’ve got something out of this.īy using Schrödinger’s thought experiment, I aim to explain a thought that has been nagging me for the past 20 years. Or, if you weren’t familiar with the above, you’ve suddenly come to understand all those memes about that infamous cat. This phenomenon is called superposition, which is a fundamental principle of quantum mechanics that says that any two (or more) quantum states can be added together, and the result will be another valid quantum state.īy now, you must be wondering why I am telling you all this, and how could that be connected to any life stories. But here is the paradox, what happens in the moments before you unseal the box? In Schrödinger’s mind, the cat exists in a state between life and death. The story goes like this: Schrödinger imagined that if you could put a cat inside a box with a radioactive atom that had a 50% chance of killing the cat and sealed the box, then there were two possible outcomes, the cat would either live or die. It isn’t so much a theory as it is a thought experiment that resulted in a paradox. Schrodinger’s cat is one of the most famous quantum theories out there. Either way, understanding human nature could lead us to understand ourselves. While it is true that modern experiments have revealed that while quantum superposition does work for tiny things like electrons, larger objects must be regarded differently.Written by: Nefeli Maria Charalampous Perdiki Sunday, 8 November, 2020 - 20:33 How Can Schrödinger's Cat Explain Our Existential Origins?Īt some point in our lives, we all wonder whether there is a foundation in our existence or if we are just a set of circumstances. His entire point was that it was impossible. While many people incorrectly assume Schrödinger supported the premise behind the thought experiment, he really didn’t. Thus, he reasoned that the Copenhagen Interpretation must be inherently flawed. Quantum superposition could not work with large objects such as cats, because it is impossible for an organism to be simultaneously alive and dead. Of course, Schrödinger claimed, that was ridiculous.
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Thus, until the system collapsed into one configuration, the cat would exist in some superposition zombie state of being both alive and dead. Until someone opened the container and observed the system, it was impossible to predict if the cat’s outcome. If the geiger counter detected radiation, the hammer would smash the poison, killing the cat. The amount of radioactive material was minuscule enough that it only had a 50/50 shot of being detected over the course of an hour. So what does this have to do with cats? Schrödinger wanted people to imagine that a cat, poison, a geiger counter, radioactive material, and a hammer were inside of a sealed container. Schrödinger disagreed with this interpretation. The Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics essentially states that an object in a physical system can simultaneously exist in all possible configurations, but observing the system forces the system to collapse and forces the object into just one of those possible states. He is best known for his work regarding quantum theory, particularly about his thought experiment involving a cat in order to explain the flawed interpretation of quantum superposition. Erwin Schrödinger was born in Vienna on Augand was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933.