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Subject:Re: The cat debacle or Schrodinger's Cat revisited
From:mike miller
Date:Sat, 3 Nov 2001 11:18:02 -0800

I think there are lots of spooky things observable at the macro level.

If you don't I'll introduce you to Pensioner, Karl W, and BenT.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

Mike

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 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.

Mike Galoob
81 westy
88 Subaru GL-10

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