Date:         Sat, 3 Nov 2001 06:47:13 -0700
Reply-To:     Gnarlodious <Gnarlodious@EARTHLINK.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Gnarlodious <Gnarlodious@EARTHLINK.NET>
Subject:      Re: The cat debacle or Schrodinger's Cat revisited
Comments: To: Galoobs@AOL.COM
In-Reply-To:  <ae.1d2e8b8b.291544c3@aol.com>
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What a relief to know I will never be simultaneously dead and alive!

Rachel http://www.gnarlodious.com

Entity Mike Galoob spoke thus:

Schrodinger's Cat is a paradox not because he expects you to believe that a
cat can be in a state of being both alive and dead (or neither) but rather
that the laws of Quantum mechanics (which he devised!) seem to be unable to
transcend some boundary between the microscopic and the macroscopic scale.
Why doesn't the superposition state of the decaying atom carry over to the
billions of wave states that combine to form the cat? One answer is a
concept known as decoherance. It basically employs the notion that wave
functions have a phase just as an electromagnetic wave such as light has
phase. Only light waves of similar phase can display interference, evidence
of a superposition state. Due to the multitude of wavestates in the cat,
they statistically cannot be in phase to the extent as to be able to merge
wave functions in the manner of superposition. Thus "spooky" Quantum effects
observed on the atomic scale cannot carry over to the multiphase macroscopic
systems of our scale.