Can a cat be dead and alive at the same time? If it helps explain quantum physics, then why not!
Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger is considered as one of the founders of quantum mechanics. However, he got repute for something that he never envisioned he would – a thought experiment involving a cat.
In this thought experiment, he imagined taking a cat and placing it in a sealed box with a device that had a 50% chance of killing the cat in the next hour. Hence, after an hour the cat will be either alive or dead. Interestingly enough, Schrödinger pointed out that according to quantum physics, at the instant just before opening the box, the cat is in equal parts and at the same time, both alive and dead.
There will be single definite state of the cat when the box is opened. Until then, the cat is a blur of equal probability of dead and alive. This seems absurd, which was Schrödinger’s original point. As a result, quantum physics so philosophically disturbing to Schrödinger’s that he abandoned it (the theories he created) and turned to writing about biology. As absurd as it may seem, Schrödinger’s cat is very much real. More than that, it is essential. If it was not possible for the quantum object to be in two states at once, the quantum computer the enable us to observe this could not exist. The quantum phenomenon of superposition is a consequence of coexistence of particle and wave duality of “every” object. In order for an object to possess a wavelength, it must extend over some region of space. It is only possible when the object occupies many positions at the same time. Having said that, the wavelength of an object limited to a small region of space cannot be perfectly defined.
Therefore, it exists in many different wavelengths at the same time. The wave properties for “everyday” objects is not manifested because the wavelength decreases as the momentum increases. Additionally, a cat is relatively big and heavy. If we took a single atom and blew it up to the size of the Solar System, the wavelength of a cat running from a physicist would be as small as an atom within that Solar System. That is extremely minuscule to detect, so we can never perceive wave behavior from a cat.
A tiny particle, such as an electron, can show dramatic evidence of its duality principle. If an electron beam is shot (one at a time) at a set of two narrow slits (Double slit experiment wiki link) cut in a barrier, each electron on the far side is detected at a single place at a specific instant, like how a particle would. However, if on repeating this experiment multiple times while keeping track of all the individual detection, a trace out a pattern emerges. It is characteristic of wave behavior, a set of stripes – regions with many electrons separated by regions where there is none at all. Block one of the slits and the stripes go away. This shows that the pattern is a result of each electron going through both slits at the same time. A single electron is not choosing to go either left or right, but left and right simultaneously.
This superposition of states also leads to modern and advanced technology. An electron near the nucleus of an atom exists in a spread out, wave-like orbit. Bring two atoms close together, and the electrons do not choose a single atom, but are shared between them resulting in chemical bonds. An electron in a molecule is not a part of either atom A or atom B, but part of A+ B. The number of atoms increases the number of spread out electrons shared between vast numbers of atoms at the same time. The electrons in a solid are not bound to a particular atom but shared among all of them and extends over a large range of space.
This gigantic superposition of states determines the method by which electrons traverse through different material, be a conductor or an insulator or a semiconductor. Understanding electrons sharing among atoms allows precise control of the properties of semiconductor materials such as silicon. Combining different semiconductors in a proper technique produces transistors on a tiny scale. Millions of transistors build a single computer chip.
Those chips and their spread out electrons power the computer to read this article. An old joke says that the internet exists to allow the sharing of cat videos (Read more). Deep down, the Internet owes a part of its existence to an Austrian physicist and his imaginary cat.
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