Schrödinger's Cat: An Episode of Paralleled Realities
The idea of parallel realities has existed within the literary circle of science fiction for many years. One of the key concepts behind alternate dimensions is that with every action and decision - whether it is consciously made or not - another alternate dimension has the opposite action or decision made, and that there are subsequent realities created in which every other option exists uniquely. Ursula LeGuin's short story "Schrödinger's Cat" is a direct manifestation of the idea of paralleled realities in that the story deals with an experiment that spawns countless paralleled realities. Merely one of the skewed realities is overseen during the course of the narration. The Schrödinger "Gedankenexperiment" ("thinking experiment" in German) is a hypothetical situation in which a cat is placed in a sealed box with a gun and a photon emitter that has a fifty percent chance of firing the gun and killing the cat, and a fifty percent chance of not firing the gun and not killing the cat(2230). The possibility for other outcomes remains ever present, although infinitesimally slim with the percentage of anything else occurring. "We cannot predict the behavior of the photon, and thus, once it has behaved, we cannot predict the state of the system it has determined. We cannot predict it! God plays dice with the world!" (2230) The three characters who appear within "Schrödinger's Cat" act as the different variables within an experiment: the control; the dependent variable; and the independent variable. Each of these characters exists and does not exist within any reality and their existence (or lack of) is dependent upon time and which timeline they are involved i...
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... the event beyond what seems logically feasible. Disorder will grow from order, and more disorder from that. What is a cat other than energy arranged in a specific order? Should that order not be able to rearrange itself into some other form? Objectively observing is a paradox in itself because by observing something, it is already changed from its natural state. Paralleled realities may or may not exist, but it really makes you think about how much it really matters whether you take a deep breath or a shallow one. And, maybe, someday the Cheshire Cat of Wonderland will be more than a mere fantasy.
Works Cited
Holtzman, Jack M. "A note on Schrodinger's cat and the unexpected hanging paradox." The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science v39. 1988. 397-401.
Brooks, Michael. "Curiouser and curiouser." New Scientist 5/10/2003, Vol. 178 Issue 2394, p28.
Who would have ever thought the way a radioactive particle decays would relate to whether or not we have bad attitudes towards life? Who would have ever suspected that the structure of space-time would be so closely linked to whether or not we would marry rich wives? And who indeed would have ever expected that the properties of light might affect whether or not we go on homicidal rampages? Perhaps Kurt Vonnegut did. Could it be possible that a writer known more for his pictures of assholes than his knowledge of advanced physics actually centered some of the deepest concepts in his works on the philosophical implications of general relativity and quantum mechanics? Two of his greatest novels, Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions, both seem to hint at the relationship between modern physics and an idea philosophers call determinism. Vonnegut readers might well scratch their heads and flip through their copies of these books, searching the stories of the fragmented life of a war veteran and the deranged antics of a mad car salesman for a chapter on the Schrödinger wave equation they may have skipped. I freely admit that their search will be in vain, and that no truly concrete proof exists that Vonnegut based the ideas in these books on the latest discoveries of science. But I also contend that the parallels between Vonnegut’s work and advanced physics are a little too perfect to be a series of very lucky accidents. From this perspective, it seems likely that Vonnegut used ideas based on physics to support the idea of determinism in Slaughterhouse-Five and destroy it in Breakfast of Champions.
Quantum Holism as Consequence of the Relativistic Approach to the Problem of Quantum Theory Interpretation
Russell, Paul. “Hume on Free Will.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, CSLI, Stanford University, 14 December 2007.
In contrast to The Many Worlds Interpretation is John Wheelers Anthropic principle, which states that an observer is needed to cause the collapse of a wavefuntion, and not just branes bouncing into each other. A good example of this idea is the experiment of Schrodinger’s cat. In this trial, a cat is put in a sealed box with a flask of poison and radioactive matter. If an internal monitor detects radioactivity (just one atom decaying) the flask will shatter and the poison will kill the cat. This makes the cat simultaneously alive AND dead until you open the box and make an observation.
The author tells of how waves are effected by quantum mechanic. He also discusses the fact that electromagnetic radiation, or photons, are actually particles and waves. He continues to discuss how matter particles are also matter, but because of their h bar, is so small, the effects are not seen. Green concludes the quantum mechanics discussion by talking about the uncertainty principle.Chapter 5: The need for a New Theory: General Relativity vs.
Over a 1950 summer lunch at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the great physicist Enrico Fermi asked his colleagues an unexpected question – “Don’t you ever wonder where everybody is?” Laughter went around the table as everyone immediately knew that he was talking about extraterrestrial intelligence [1]. If life arises fairly commonly, as Fermi believed, it follows that there should be advanced civilizations with the desire to visit and colonize Earth close enough to do so. However, there is no incontrovertible evidence of aliens on Earth, either now or in the past. This is called the Fermi Paradox. The lack of observational evidence for extraterrestrial intelligence is known as the ‘Great Silence.’[13]
Wittgenstein, Ludwig; G. E. M. Anscombe, P.M.S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte (eds. and trans.). Philosophical Investigations. 4th edition, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Print.
ABSTRACT: Indeterminacy, uncertainty, disorder, randomness, vagueness, fuzziness, ambiguity, crisis, undecideability, chaos, are all different terms. Yet, they are also semantically related to the idea of something opposed to order or structure and organization. Such terms denote prima facie insuperable obstacles to the attainment of true, certain, or precise knowledge about things and events. After analysing the ontological, logical, and axiological status of indeterminary, I outline the aoristic logic which allows adequate descriptions of phenomena pertaining to an area of indeterminary. Aoristic logic provides a propositional calculus that makes possible the compatibility of order with indeterminacy.
Every Time there is another possibilities, that chance changes in two more chances, and so on. there is no exact probability to the cat, only dead and alive. Scientist also explain that it could shown such as a superposition. A superposition is one of the few rules of quantum mechanics. It shows how the Quantum mechanics will react to the experiment, what it will do to the atom. Will it help the atom from decaying or with it stop it. The superposition forces it to a certain level which will change the data of the experiment. The superposition explain that there is no specific state the cat will go in, but it explains that it will happen simultaneously. The changing will stop until the box is open. Then all possibilities end and only the possibilities that had happened in the other states are stops. The superposition uses used a force which makes wave functions, which scientist use and look for when studying this experiment. At the University of Santa Barbara, some scientist built a program that would show how to be out and get into the superposition level. The program nearly shows it moving around and not moving around to another state. However on the computer really shows what kinds of states in it placed it. The computed found nearly five hundred different state it was possibly placed in. ("Bizarre 'Schrodinger's Cat' Comes Alive in New Experiments."
Conversely, one can hold a deterministic view that is incompatible with free will. This approach holds that only one of the alternative futures that may exist
...s made a mistake and "this sudden illumination (or epiphany) assures us that order and purpose do exist in the universe, even if we cannot fathom the exact nature of that order and purpose"(Markos 39).
There are many different versions of this theory, such as the idea of infinite universes. This theory illustrates how space-time stretches out forever and is infinite, giving you the possibility of seeing an infinite amount of versions of yourself if you were to look far enough ahead. Some versions of you may be doing what you are doing right now, but in a different outfit while other versions could be the polar opposite of who you are as a person. Another popular concept is bubble universes. This involves the Big Bang Theory causing universes to expand rapidly, known as eternal inflation. Some parts of space would stop inflating, such as our universe, while others kept growing giving us bubble universes. Stars and galaxies formed in our universe because of our finish in growth while other universes that kept expanding could have completely different laws of physics from our own. An additional speculation is the theory of daughter universes. This is the simple idea that multiple universes exist for every outcome of a situation. Such as being given the option to open door A or door B. One universe exists of you choosing door A while another universe exists of you choosing door B. Referring to the theory of quantum mechanics, a science of probability rather than definite results, the mathematics behind it can support this idea (Moskowitz). While many more theories
Andrea had finished her sandwich and she packed up the ham, cheese and bread in her
Further research showed that what we have traditionally envisioned as particles are able to communicate with each other instantaneously, even over great distances. Under a local-reality perspective, such communication would be impossible unless we were to accept the unsupportable hypothesis that particles could somehow communicate faster than the speed of light. However, if we accept an non-local order to the world, this phenomena is not difficult to explain. The distinction between implicate and explicate views of the world, advanced by David Bohm, can provide a context for explaining non-local reality. In an implicate order, as opposed to an explicate order, the world is perceived as being one inwardly related and coherent piece, whereas in the explicate order the world is composed of multiple pieces. Instantaneous communication between particles is perfectly reasonable if the two communicating particles are bond in a divine unity with the rest of the universe, instead of being separate and unrelated from each
“What I thought was unreal, now for me... seems in some ways to be more real than what I think to be real... which seems now more to be unreal.” What the Bleep Do We Know, Fred Alan Wolf, Theoretical Physicist