From: Mike Galoob <Galoobs@AOL.COM>
Reply-To: Galoobs@AOL.COM
Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2001 08:01:55 EST
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: The cat debacle or Schrodinger's Cat revisited

Schrodinger's Cat is a paradox not because he ex= pects you to believe that a cat can be in a state of being both alive and de= ad (or neither) but rather that the laws of Quantum mechanics (which he devi= sed!) seem to be unable to transcend some boundary between the microscopic a= nd the macroscopic scale. Why doesn't the superposition state of the decayin= g atom carry over to the billions of wave states that combine to form the ca= t? One answer is a concept known as decoherance. It basically employs the no= tion that wave functions have a phase just as an electromagnetic wave such a= s light has phase. Only light waves of similar phase can display interferenc= e, 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 t= o merge wave functions in the manner of superposition. Thus "spooky&quo= t; Quantum effects observed on the atomic scale cannot carry over to the mul= tiphase macroscopic systems of our scale.

Mike Galoob
81 westy
88 Subaru GL-10