Is Schrödinger’s Cat Alive or Dead?

Is Schrödinger’s Cat Alive or Dead?

Are those waves or particles through those slits?  And is Schrödinger’s cat alive or dead?



Newtonian Physics had pretty much defined our physical world, and provided the basis for building our bridges, railroads, trains, planes and automobiles, and explaining the basic laws of motion affecting them.



Einstein developed relativistic principles extending Newtonian physics, including gravity, laws of motion and astrophysical effects.



The world was deterministic, observable, measurable.  Larger and larger particle accelerators measured smaller and smaller sub atomic pieces, including the Higgs Boson in 2012.  The Standard Model of Particle Physics which resulted from these efforts, explains virtually all of the phenomena of this deterministic existence.



Starting in the late nineteenth century, Max Planck, Ludwig Boltzmann, Albert Einstein (again), Niels Bohr, Louis de Broglie, Max Born, Paul Dirac, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, Erwin Schrödinger, Richard Feynman, turned deterministic physics on its ear.



Light was shown to be both wave and particle.  It was proven impossible to measure position and momentum of a particle.  Superposition and entanglement of particles is a fact.   Schrödinger’s cat was both alive and dead.  All of the above is impossible in a deterministic world, but altogether possible, in the nano quantum world, and quantum theory forms the basis for many of our electronics and other inventions,



A conundrum, though.  Particle physics and quantum theory are not compatible.  Gravity from our deterministic world doesn’t fit the quantum world.  It can’t be quantized without going to exotic string or “m” theories which incorporate upwards of 12 unseen dimensions, alternate universes and other esoterica, or else, loop quantum gravity which pixilates space-time.



So we are stuck in an untestable, theoretical mathematical vacuum where our theories are limited to increasing complexity and mathematical cleverness as substitutes for measurable experimentation.





References: 



Short history of quantum mechanics:

https://www.livescience.com/33816-quantum-mechanics-explanation.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_quantum_mechanics



Easily understood dissertation on Quantum Computing from Canada:

https://uwaterloo.ca/institute-for-quantum-computing/quantum-computing-101#What-is-quantum-computing



A bit more technical:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing



Gravity and Quantum Mechanics

https://www.space.com/32147-why-is-gravity-so-hard-to-understand.html





Ray Gruszecki

October 30, 2019