More on the Schrodinger's Cat

 

World's Heaviest Schrödinger's Cat: Quantum Crystal Visible To The Naked Eye
from New SciTech 新科技

World Heaviest Schrodinger's Cat: Quantum Crystal

Michael mentioned about this experiment in last Wednesday's class (5/6/24).  The YouTube video above and the article in Scientific America below give brief explanations of the experiment involving putting a sapphire crystal into superposition.

Scientific America - Physicists Create Biggest-Ever Schrödinger’s Cat

Extend the time of the experiment?

Ken asked an interesting question in class last Wednesday (5/6/24).  "What if we extend the time for the cat to be in the box to one month?" Ken asked.

The following answers are my speculation of how physicists might respond:

1.  Schrodinger designed the thought experiment so that in the course of an hour one of the atoms will perhaps decay, but also, with equal probability, that none of them will.  Thus in the course of an hour, the cat will with equal probability either be dead or be alive.  There is genuine uncertainty in the minds of the researchers about whether the cat is alive or dead.  If the time were to be extended to one month, this would void the experiment. 

2. We need to assume that the cat can happily stay in the box for one month, since starving the cat to death in the box is not the point of this thought experiment.  Then whether the cat is dead or alive still depends entirely on the possible decay of the tiny amount of radioactive material in the box  (refer Wikipedia page on Schrodinger's Cat for details of the thought experiment.).  It is possible then that the cat could still be alive after one month in the box if for some reasons the tiny amount of radioactive material did not decay as expected, or the equipment did not work as expected.  Therefore, even if the time is extended to one month, one can still argue that the cat is both dead and alive in the box until the box is opened by the researchers.

3. The thought experiment, as intended by Schrodinger, was to last for only one hour. If the experiment were to be extended to one month, the probability of the cat being dead can be represented by a graph that approaches one after certain time.  Physicists might interpret the meaning of this probability graph as follows:

• The cat, being a relatively large physical object, cannot be in superposition of being both dead and alive; or
• the cat is actually in superposition of being both dead and alive and remains so until the box is opened (as discussed in (2) above); or
• the cat is actually in superposition during the initial stage of the experiment when there is genuine uncertainty, but the superposition disappears when it becomes certain that the cat is dead.