On 6/11/2018 6:26 PM, [email protected] wrote:
On Monday, June 11, 2018 at 10:57:59 PM UTC, Brent wrote:
On 6/11/2018 3:22 PM, [email protected] <javascript:> wrote:
I am not sure this make sense (with the SWE). The cat is
always isolated, in some sense.
*
IMO totally wrong. In fact now you're contradicting what you
wrote in a recent post. The cat is NEVER ISOLATED, VIRTUALLY
BY DEFINITION OF WHAT MACRO MEANS. NEVER ISOLATED IMPLIES
NEVER IN A SUPERPOSITION. AG
*
*
In the real world the cat is never isolated, nor can it be
isolated insofar as it consists of a huge number of particles
already entangled with its environment. This is the meaning of
"macro" ! If you insist on imagining it as isolated for your
thought experiment, you will generate a paradox, as Schroedinger
did. AG*
Schroedinger obviously chose a cat to emphasize the absurdity, but
it also makes the analysis hard to think about. Not only is the
cat macroscopic, the atomic decay is distributed over a continuum.
I think it helps to think of a simpler experiment in which the
atom is just in a box which is lined with photographic plates. So
the atom is in a superposition of undecayed and decayed and
interacted with a silver halide atom. It is clear that it is the
interaction with the silver halide atom that gets amplified to a
macroscopic dot of silver which decoheres the system in orthogonal
"worlds" in which the spot is in different places and happens at
different times.
Brent
*I don't see how a single silver halide atom is amplified to a
macroscopic dot of silver. *
That's because you don't bother to look up anything. You expect other
people to look it up for you and then explain it to you. Here's
Wikipedia, but I'm not explaining it.
/Silver halides are used in photographic film and photographic paper,
including graphic art film and paper, where silver halide crystals in
gelatin are coated on to a film base, glass or paper substrate. The
gelatin is a vital part of the emulsion as the protective colloid of
appropriate physical and chemical properties. Gelatin may also contain
trace elements (such as sulfur) which increase the light sensitivity of
the emulsion, although modern practice uses gelatin without such
components. When absorbed by an AgX crystal, photons cause electrons to
be promoted to a conduction band (de-localized electron orbital with
higher energy than a valence band) which can be attracted by a
sensitivity speck, which is a shallow electron trap, which may be a
crystalline defect or a cluster of silver sulfide, gold, other trace
elements (dopant), or combination thereof, and then combined with an
interstitial silver ion to form silver metal speck.[1]//
//
//When a silver halide crystal is exposed to light, a sensitivity speck
on the surface of the crystal is turned into a small speck of metallic
silver (these comprise the invisible or latent image). If the speck of
silver contains approximately four or more atoms, it is rendered
developable - meaning that it can undergo development which turns the
entire crystal into metallic silver.
/Brent/
/
*Going back to my analysis, I think I have shown the fallacy of using
a macro entities in a superposition (since they can never be
isolated). But this is the starting point of decoherence theory, as
exemplified by the wf Bruce recently presented for a spin 1/2
measurement (where the apparatus, observer and remaining environment
appear in the superposition). AG*
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