Yesterday, my form had a test about a practical investigation that involved radiation and a geiger-müller counter and this reminded me of the Schrӧdingers cat paradox. Since then i've been reading a book that I conveniently happen to own called "In search of Schrӧdingers cat" by John Gribbin, which of course explains what the thing is all about along with alot of other theories and facts.
According to Gribbin, the paradox first appeared in print in a German text called Naturwissenschaften, volume 23, page 812 in 1935, that same year as a paper about the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR) paradox (which is more of a question than a paradox).
The Schrӧdingers cat paradox ponders 'There is a sealed box, containing a radioactive source, a geiger-müller counter to record the presence of radiation, a glass vial containing gaseous poison and a live cat. The apparatus is arranged so that the geiger-müller counter will be switched on for just long enough for there to be a 50% chance that it records any radiation. If it does, it will release the gaseous poison and kill the cat. If it doesn't, no further action occurs and the cat lives.
According to the Copenhagen interpretation, there is an equal chance that the cat will live or die and so, until the outcome is observed, we must assume that the cat is both alive and dead, that the vial is both full and empty and that there wasn't any but there was some radiation recorded by the geiger-müller counter!
Because of this, Einstein agrees with Schrӧdinger that wave representation of matter is an incomplete representation of reality because both of these scenarios cannot be true at the same time; they are inversely proportional to one another.
Maybe they can, however, in alternate realities, where every single possibility for the universal 'storyboard' is lived out. This seems quite a mathematical way to think about space-time and so, personaly, it looks like one of the most likely theories about reality. However, this last paragraph is just me and doesn't have anything to do with Schrӧdingers cat. Good night.
According to Gribbin, the paradox first appeared in print in a German text called Naturwissenschaften, volume 23, page 812 in 1935, that same year as a paper about the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR) paradox (which is more of a question than a paradox).
The Schrӧdingers cat paradox ponders 'There is a sealed box, containing a radioactive source, a geiger-müller counter to record the presence of radiation, a glass vial containing gaseous poison and a live cat. The apparatus is arranged so that the geiger-müller counter will be switched on for just long enough for there to be a 50% chance that it records any radiation. If it does, it will release the gaseous poison and kill the cat. If it doesn't, no further action occurs and the cat lives.
According to the Copenhagen interpretation, there is an equal chance that the cat will live or die and so, until the outcome is observed, we must assume that the cat is both alive and dead, that the vial is both full and empty and that there wasn't any but there was some radiation recorded by the geiger-müller counter!
Because of this, Einstein agrees with Schrӧdinger that wave representation of matter is an incomplete representation of reality because both of these scenarios cannot be true at the same time; they are inversely proportional to one another.
Maybe they can, however, in alternate realities, where every single possibility for the universal 'storyboard' is lived out. This seems quite a mathematical way to think about space-time and so, personaly, it looks like one of the most likely theories about reality. However, this last paragraph is just me and doesn't have anything to do with Schrӧdingers cat. Good night.
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