Philosophy

I think the most accurate position is to say we know nothing with certainty. All science is just conjecture based upon repeated experience. While to some there seems to be absolute "laws" that characterize the material world, the experieced scientist knows this isn't the case.

All scientific progress is a groping in the dark, trial and error based on assumptions that seem to be true, and to us they are true until they aren't anymore.

D.H. Lawrence's position on this obsession to "know" something, to think we have fully understood something or some property, is the most accurate: The obsessive quest for knowledge only results in the awareness that we can never know anything, not in any absolute sense. Our quest should be to experience as fully as humanly possible the world we are in, because that is our condition---human being amongst infinitly complex phenomena (which, to me, really is a miraculous occurrence).

And really that is all true science strives to do, to somehow organize some of this phenomena so that we can at least think about it and talk about it and use it for practical purposes; true science never strives to state absolutely what the nature of reality is.

Thank you.

Have you ever seen a cat that is dead and alive at the same time?

Here's the argument for QMech and it's two-state theory: Read D. Griffith's Introduction to QMech, chapter 12. It's all there. Go talk to a physicist at a university, ask him how it works. You'll find out that silly world you believe in is nothing but a facade of what we 'learned' while we were young.

Again, I don't even care if a cat a dog or a dodo bird can be alive and dead at the same time, to be honest I don't care ans as Stionebeard I don't believe it (Even some Scientists doubt of this theory), I was only answering a first grade physics question that we learned at school.

Schrödinger's Cat

Remember a while ago I said there was a problem with the Copenhagen interpretation? Well, you now know enough of what quantum physics is to be able to discuss what it isn't, and by far the biggest thing it isn't is complete. Sure, the math seems to be complete, but the theory includes absolutely nothing that would tie the math to any physical reality we could imagine. Furthermore, quantum physics leaves us with a rather large open question: what is reality? The Copenhagen interpretation attempts to solve this problem by saying that reality is what is measured. (The dont know reality, because they can't meassure it, that's the whole problem, a problem of measurement and nothing else)However, the measuring device itself is then not real until it is measured. The problem, which is known as the measurement problem, is when does the cycle stop?

Remember that when we last left Schrödinger he was muttering about the "damned quantum jumping." He never did get used to quantum physics, but, unlike Einstein, he was able to come up with a very real demonstration of just how incomplete the physical view of our world given by quantum physics really is. (He was not saying the cat is in fact dead and alive, only that quantum physics are incomplete) Imagine a box in which there is a radioactive source, a Geiger counter (or anything that records the presence of radioactive particles), a bottle of cyanide, and a cat. The detector is turned on for just long enough that there is a fifty-fifty chance that the radioactive material will decay. If the material does decay, the Geiger counter detects the particle and crushes the bottle of cyanide, killing the cat. If the material does not decay, the cat lives. To us outside the box, the time of detection is when the box is open. At that point, the wave function collapses and the cat either dies or lives. (That's the reality, the cat lives or dies, there's no other chance) However, until the box is opened, the cat is both dead and alive ⁴⁵. (According to the viewers perspective, not according to reality as I undestand, (and excuse me if I'm too ignorant) Of course we will see that this theory is just a theory, because a large number of different possible explanations is given.

On one hand, the cat itself could be considered the detector; it's presence is enough to collapse the wave function ⁴⁶. But in that case, would the presence of a rat be enough? Or an ameba? Where is the line drawn ⁴⁷? (Or do an angel's dancing in the tip of a needle presence is enough?) On the other hand, what if you replace the cat with a human (named "Wigner's friend" after Eugene Wigner, the physicist who developed many derivations of the Schrödinger's cat experiment). The human is certainly able to collapse the wave function, yet to us outside the box the measurement is not taken until the box is opened ^{48 (So untlil you open the box YOU DON'T KNOW IF THE CAT IS DEAD OR ALIVE, THAT's ALL THE PROBLEM!!!!)} . If we try to develop some sort of "quantum relativity" where each individual has his own view of the world, then what is to prevent the world from getting "out of sync" between observers?

While there are many different interpretations that solve the problem of Schrödinger’s Cat,(so, there's not only  one possible interpretation') one of which we will discuss shortly, none of them are satisfactory enough to have convinced a majority of physicists that the consequences of these interpretation s are better then the half dead cat. (Not een them are convinced if the cat is alive, dead or half dead or if the other theories are correct, in fact they know nothing as we do?) Furthermore, while these interpretations do prevent a half dead cat, (In other words there's not a half dead cat) they do not solve the underlying measurement problem. (The ONLY problem is not if the cat is dead or alive, the problem is the meassurement) Until a better intrepretation surfaces, we are left with the Copenhagen interpretation and it's half dead cat.(In other words we must believe the cat is half dead because we are not able to measure) We can certainly understand how Schrödinger feels when he says, "I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it."⁴⁹ Yet the problem doesn't go away; it is just left for the great thinkers of tomorrow. (Not even Schrodingen believes the cat is dead and alives, he just doesn't  knows the answer, he only leaves the problem to others, sounds different to the absolute statements you made that the cat is dead and alive).

The Infinity Problem

There is one last problem that we will discuss before moving on to the alternative interpretation. Unlike the others, this problem lies primarily in the mathematics of a certain part of quantum physics called quantum electrodynamics, or QED. This branch of quantum physics explains the electromagnetic interaction in quantum terms. The problem is, when you add the interaction particles and try to solve Schrödinger's wave equation, you get an electron with infinite mass, infinite energy, and infinite charge⁵⁰. There is no way to get rid of the infinities using valid mathematics, so, the theorists simply divide infinity by infinity and get whatever result the guys in the lab say the mass, energy, and charge should be⁵¹. (They simply don't know if it's correct) Even fudging the math, the other results of QED are so powerful that most physicists ignore the infinities and use the theory anyway ⁵². (So they don't know the infinities but still use the theory??) As Paul Dirac, who was one of the physicists who published quantum equations before Schrödinger, said, "Sensible mathematics involves neglecting a quantity when it turns out to be small - not neglecting it just because it is infinitely great and you do not want it!". ⁵³

Many Worlds

One other interpretation, presented first by Hugh Everett III in 1957, (Other interpretation? I thought you said the cat was in fact dead and alive) is the many worlds or branching universe interpretation⁵⁴. In this theory, whenever a measurement takes place, the entire universe divides as many times as there are possible outcomes of the measurement. All universes are identical except for the outcome of that measurement ⁵⁵. Unlike the science fiction view of "parallel universes", it is not possible for any of these worlds to interact with each other ⁵⁶. (So in our universe, that can't interact with any other parallel universe, the cat is either dead or  alive, but not both at the same time)

While this creates an unthinkable number of different worlds, it does solve the problem of Schrödinger's cat. Instead of one cat, we now have two; one is dead, the other alive. (One is in our universe and the other is i a different universe that can't interact with ours)However, it has still not solved the measurement problem (So the problem was and still is the measurement, not the fact ⁵⁷! If the universe split every time there was more then one possibility, then we would not see the interference pattern in the electron experiment. So when does it split? No alternative interpretation has yet answered this question in a satisfactory way. And so the search continues… (As I believed any interpretation is valid because no iterpretation is satisfactory):

http://library.thinkquest.org/3487/qp.html (Except the red coilorful notes that are mine)

So...The real problem is the measurement, not if the cat is both dead and alive,

1. Schrodingen doesn't know if the cat is dad or alive, because the measurement instrument is the cat and he's unable to see it inside the cage.
2. Because he can't meassure it, he assumes that FROM OUR PERSPECTIVE THE CAT IS DEAD AND ALIVE UNTIL THE BOX IS OPENED.
3. Other Scientists assune there are two cats
4. Others assume different things

some scientists believe one thing, others contradict it and an infinite group of different scientists come with an infinite number of possible explanations (Of course I use the word infinite only as a metaphore, because even I know that there's not an infinite number of scientists).

But the cat is never dead and alie, only because the observer doesn't know he assumes it coube alive, dead or alive and dead at the same time.

Maybe I'm an ignorant in Quantum Physics, but I'm not stupid.

I just discovered they ignore the answer as much as I do, but they have fancier (Bad word, more elaborate is better) explanations to describe why they ignore the answer.

I agree, but we're not talking about gravity in a planetary or even universal scale, we're talking about gravity in a controlled environment as earth's atmosphere.

Earlier:

Bluetailfly:

My response to this is: There's no such thing as a controlled environment. The testing and subsequent theoretical conclusion will still only be an approximation, and furthermore the reason behind the test results will only be further conjecture. If one scrutinizes the testing behind the law of gravity, one will see that it is based on many presumptions that in turn required testing. And if one follows these chains of presumptions back to the fundamental assumptions made, one then begins to see that the law of gravity is more of an internal logical construct than anything real. It's as real as a Greek myth is real.

The phenomena that the law of gravity describes is real, but the theory behind the law will always be trying to catch up with it.

For example, after a storm you notice that a tree has fallen. Based on the evidence of the storm and the fallen tree, a reasonable hypothesis would be that the storm blew down the tree — a hypothesis that requires you to suspend your disbelief very little, as there exist strong logical connections binding what you already know to this solution (seeing and hearing storms does indeed tend to indicate the existence of storms; storms are more than capable of felling trees). A rival hypothesis claiming that the tree was knocked over by marauding 200-metre tall space aliens requires several additional assumptions, with various logical weaknesses resulting from inconsistencies with what is already known (concerning the very existence of aliens, their ability and desire to travel interstellar distances, their ability and desire to (un-)intentionally knock down trees and the alien biology that allows them to be 200 metres tall in terrestrial gravity), and is therefore less preferred".

Well, JrKASperov nicely paraphrased what I had tried to explain: A law of physics is a law only until a counter-example is found.

For God's sake, that's was I said during all the conversation!!!

You clearly stated and I quote:

The Schrödinger's cat paradoxon is so very disturbing because the equations REALLY say the cat is alive and dead AT THE SAME TIME.

And we seen with a clear explanation that this is not true at all, the cat is never alive and dead, the cat is alive or dead, but from the perspective of the orserver it can't be proved  until the box is opened.

So  FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE OBSERVER, the cat COULD BE alive and dead BECAUSE HE IGNORES IF THE ANIMAL HAS IN FACT DIED OR NOT.

This is nonsense, even other scientists disagree with this.

So from what we know, it is a pretty safe assumption that the tree will indeed make a sound. But that does by no means mean it has to.

The Copenhagen interpretation attempts to solve this problem by saying that reality is what is measured. However, the measuring device itself is then not real until it is measured. The problem, which is known as the measurement problem, is when does the cycle stop?

The fact that falling objects create vibration and vibration creates sound has been measured millions of times, so IT'S REAL. (I'm using the fundament given for the cat experiment)

We just never experienced anything else. It was the same with the experiment of Michelson and Morley; everyone expected we would be able to measure the speed of the earth when measuring the speed of light in two directions, because all we had experienced so far is that if we measure the speed of two objects relative to a certain point in space, the speed of the objects relative to each other should be the difference of their speeds. Nobody expected it to be different with the speed of light. So to make my point clear again: What we call "laws of nature" is only what we know of them; we certainly can't "punish" nature for acting against the law.

Because due to experiments, we have measured and proved some things that area law (Not in the ounituive sense as you try to imply ) It's a law becausee it always works, as simple as that.

 In "Is God a Taoist?", an amusing and insightful fictitious dialogue of a mortal with God by logician Raymond P. Smullyan, the mortal at one point says:
MORTAL:   What do you mean that I cannot conflict with nature? Suppose I were to become very stubborn, and I determined not to obey the laws of nature. What could stop me? If I became sufficiently stubborn, even you could not stop me!
To which God simply replies:
GOD:   You are absolutely right! I certainly could not stop you. Nothing could stop you. But there is no need to stop you, because you could not even start! As Goethe very beautifully expressed it, “In trying to oppose Nature, we are, in the very process of doing so, acting according to the laws of nature!” Don't you see, that the so-called “laws of nature” are nothing more than a description of how in fact you and other beings do act. They are merely a description of how you act, not a prescription of how you should act, not a power or force which compels or determines your acts. To be valid a law of nature must take into account how in fact you do act, or, if you like, how you choose to act.
The whole dialogue can be found here: http://www.newbanner.com/SecHumSCM/IsGodTaoist.html
It is higly recommended reading; very funny and insightful. (I presented this dialogue to two others so far, my wife and one person in the net. Sadly only my wife understood it at all; the other thought the dialogue was absolute crap and claimed it was trying to prove God exists, which couldn't be further from the point; the dialogue is about free will and whether it exists or not).

God is beyond any scientific prove, it's a matter of faith and only faith, so don't mix science with religion, and this is only a fiction work.

Ivan, you make the same mistake as the other user. This dialogue is not about the existence of God or not. Read the whole dialogue, and you will hopefully understand.

As to Ivan's objection "The cat can't be dead and alive at the same time": But this is what the equations suggest, and they work pretty well!

No Friedre, the experiment can be over simplified oin this terms:

1. An experiment is real only when measured.
2. The cat is alive or maybe is dead
3. But the cat is the instrument used to measure
4. So, from the perspective of the observer, the cat is alive and dead until he opens the box.

Tha's all. But as you have seen different scientists have different perspectives and all disagree with the fact that the cat is alive and dead, if we bring 100 more scientists, probably they will giv on hundreed more solutions.

There's no equation that can prove that the cat is really alive and dead, because the cat is the measure instrument, without him you have nothing.

And you won't know what in hell happened or even if the cat was not affected by the acid until you open the box and find what happened before you opened the box.

The Kopenhagen interpretation does not really solve the problem, it only tries to avoid it. This intepretation assumes that the wavefunction collapses when a measurement is made. This collapse cannot be discribed by the Schoedinger equation that governs the time evolution of the wavefunction at all times other than at a measurement. The Kopenhagen interpretation is by no means the only explanation, by the way, it is only the most accepted one, because it puts the problem into a "we don't care" drawer. Yet there is something very disturbing about this interpretation, which is the reason Einstein never believed in it. Hence his famous dictum "God doesn't play dice", Can be understood as God (or nature if you don't believe in God) creates laws and leaves nothing to luck, which is exactly my point.. which originally is from a letter to fellow physicist Max Born in 1926: "Die Theory liefert viel, aber dem Geheimnis des Alten bringt sie uns doch nicht näher. Jedenfalls bin ich überzeugt davon, dass der nicht würfelt" ("The theory provides a lot, but it does not bring us closer to the secret of the Old One (Einstein's nickname for God). In any case I am convinced he does not play dice"). The problem with the interpretation is that until we observe a certain quantum incidence, like in the Schrödinger's Cat paradoxon, all possible outcomes are true with a certain percentage, AND AT THE SAME TIME. The observing itself causes the state vector to collapse. This means, the cat was NOT dead before we opened the box (provided we find it dead after opening), nor was it alive.

Please, read again the explanation I copied, the observer doesn't know if the cat was REALLY dead or alive.

 Observation has shown us that particles really behave like that, which is the reason why physicists today say a particle is "smeared" in space.

No Friedre read it again:

To us outside the box, the time of detection is when the box is open.

 

He clearly states to us outside the box, he never says the time of death is when the box is opened.

The cat died or klived despite our perception, but we can only find the truth when we open the box.

On one hand, the cat itself could be considered the detector; it's presence is enough to collapse the wave function 46. But in that case, would the presence of a rat be enough? Or an ameba? Where is the line drawn 47?  On the other hand, what if you replace the cat with a human (named "Wigner's friend" after Eugene Wigner, the physicist who developed many derivations of the Schrödinger's cat experiment).

If, IF, IF, IF ????????? For God's sake, they don't give facts, only questions that are beyond any prove even for them!!!!!!!!!

The famous uncertainty principle of Werner Heisenberg tells us we can never measure location and imomentum of a particle at the same time, and this is not a problem of measuring, it is a principal problem. His inequation dp x dx > h / (2 x pi) (dp being the change of momentum, dx the change of location, h Planck's constant (h=6.626 0693 x 10 to the power of -34 Joule x second or, to use another unit which is quite common in quantum mechanics, h= 4.135 667 43 x 10 to the power of -15 electronvolt, a unit which is quite common in quantum mechanics) shows that there is a principal uncertainty in our measurements: The better we know the momentum, the less we know the location, and vice versa.

Sorry, quote all Heisenberg discoveries:

There is a passage (Heisenberg, 1927, p. 197), where he discusses the idea that, behind our observational data, there might still exist a hidden reality in which quantum systems have definite values for position and momentum, unaffected by the uncertainty relations. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-uncertainty/

In other and clear words, he doesn't know if behind what we see, there is a reality that have definitive values (LAWS).

Again in clear words, he doesn't know if his experiments are only valid from our perspective.

BTW: Heisenberg experiment  "are onsidered to be a cornerstone of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics"  http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-uncertainty/

Exactly the contrary to what you state lines above and I quote: "The Kopenhagen interpretation is by no means the only explanation, by the way, it is only the most accepted one, because it puts the problem into a "we don't care" drawer."

So Heisenberg's experiment is the cornerstone ofwhat you try to deny lines above.

But I assure you , I'm sick of all this "if", and I won't worry to even investigate Heisenberg experiments which are obviously beyond my knowledge and prove nothing at all, because even he has doubts.

And of course have no relation with the fact that a tree makes a sound when falling.

Iván