I guess I am confused. I thought that the cat experiment was trivial to set up and only needed a quantum trigger mechanism. I thought it wasn't actually set up out of concern for the cat - not that it took a sophisticated technical setup was needed.
I also thought that the whole issue was decided. If I flip a coin and I look at the result and ask you the probability that it is a head you will say 50/50 but if I show you the coin your "wave function" will "collapse" and you will say its 100 or 0. Your "observation" affected the probability. The only difference is that I posited that I looked at the coin or at least that the coin exists. In quantum mechanics no one can look at it and in some cases it can be shown that there is no way that a coin could have gotten there by usual mechanism. But if one tries to decide whether to posit an object that can't be experienced then the answer is no by Ocham's razor. I don't get why there is a need for this experiment nor why its so hard to set up? On Sep 15, 7:32 pm, archytas <[email protected]> wrote: > Towards Quantum Superposition of Living Organisms > > Oriol Romero-Isart, Mathieu L. Juan, Romain Quidant, J. Ignacio Cirac > (Submitted on 8 Sep 2009) > The most striking feature of quantum mechanics is the existence of > superposition states, where an object appears to be in different > situations at the same time. Up to now, the existence of such states > has been tested with small objects, like atoms, ions, electrons and > photons, and even with molecules. Recently, it has been even possible > to create superpositions of collections of photons, atoms, or Cooper > pairs. Current progress in optomechanical systems may soon allow us to > create superpositions of even larger objects, like micro-sized mirrors > or cantilevers, and thus to test quantum mechanical phenomena at > larger scales. Here we propose a method to cool down and create > quantum superpositions of the motion of sub-wavelength, arbitrarily > shaped dielectric objects trapped inside a high--finesse cavity at a > very low pressure. Our method is ideally suited for the smallest > living organisms, such as viruses, which survive under low vacuum > pressures, and optically behave as dielectric objects. This opens up > the possibility of testing the quantum nature of living organisms by > creating quantum superposition states in very much the same spirit as > the original Schr\"odinger's cat "gedanken" paradigm. We anticipate > our essay to be a starting point to experimentally address fundamental > questions, such as the role of life in quantum mechanics, and > differences between many-world and Copenhagen interpretations. > Comments: 8 pages, 4 figures > Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics > (cond-mat.mes-hall) > Cite as: arXiv:0909.1469v1 [quant-ph] > > Apparently, this is about actually putting a flue virus or possibly a > water-bear (tiny - less than 1 mm) in the Schrodinger's Cat super- > position using lasers. Water-bears can actually survive vacuum for a > few days. The old thought experiments get ever closer to being made > into real experiments. This one might answer the question of whether > large objects aren't quantum because of interference from the general > world or whether there is a size or mass for quantum behaviour as > Penrose (Danger Mouse's best pal) suggests. I can't wait for the day > I can approach some old mate blathering on about Schrodinger's Cat and > accuse him of being a mindless philosopher before setting up my lasers > and water-bears on the bar! --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""Minds Eye"" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/minds-eye?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
