I don’t understand..
When we observe it, we can define it’s state right? But it was never in both states. It was only in one, we just didn’t know which one it is. It’s not like if I go back in time and open the box at a different time, that the outcome will be different. It is one of the 2 outcomes, we just don’t know which one until we look. And when we look we discover which one it was, it was never the 2 at the same time. This is what’s been bugging me. Can anyone help explain it? Or am I thinking about it wrong?
In: Physics
>It’s not like if I go back in time and open the box at a different time, that the outcome will be different.
It could be though, that’s the whole point.
The thought experiment involves a quantum process that is indeterminate, typically, the radioactive decay of a single atom. With such quantum processes, we can make estimations of the average time that it takes for them to happen, but we can’t actually predict when it will happen for any given atom. In a large number of atoms undergoing radioactive decay, we can use statistical averages and tell when half the sample will have decayed, but it is impossible to predict when any given atom will decay. It’s completely random. If you go back in time, you very much could get a different outcome – we think, at least.
There’s lots of other quantum phenomena at the particle level that is uncertain in a similar way, and making observations of these things change the outcomes. This is very annoying to scientists! Physicists using mathematical models said well, okay, there’s lots of stuff we can’t know about the quantum states of these individual particles until we have observed them, so let’s just model it mathematically as if the particle is in multiple states at once up until we observe it. And the math works, so fine.
Schrodinger thought that this was kind of stupid. That’s the whole point of the thought experiment: if we apply the logic that these mathematical models use to larger objects, like cats, we come up with a nonsensical conclusion that the cat is both alive and dead. You’re right to think that this seems nonsensical because that’s the whole point; the whole thing is a joke, basically.
In reality, in practice, quantum uncertainty can’t be extended to large objects like cats. In the real world, the cat is being “observed” constantly, whether we look in the box or not, and the quantum state isn’t uncertain and the cat is always actually alive or actually dead, and never both. When the cat dies is a random process that we can’t predict, but it certainly will happen at one point in time.
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