Quantum mechanics.. and subatomic particles, and universes, and parallel worlds, and dimensions, and relativity..
And we begin the conversation with the cat.. that strange animal that some people love and some people hate, but it is impossible for anyone to ignore..
The lord of the pharaonic lords, "Ra".. had a spoiled daughter named "Bast".. she was a human female with the head and the powers of a cat.. and she used to help him in fighting the devil "Apophis".. the lord of the forces of evil and the prince of darkness.. the enormous serpent that tries to drink the Nile every night and wipe life off the face of the earth.. and "Bast" was the only one who had the right to enter the sun boat of "Ra" at any time without permission, after "Seth" was driven out and exiled in the desert...
And Bast was the goddess of tenderness, gentleness, docility and coquetry, and the guardian of homes and the stores of grain and crops and fields and bazaars.. but "Ra" imprisoned inside her the spirit of "Sekhmet" the lioness after she disobeyed him and went against his command.. so when Bast got angry she would turn into "Sekhmet", the lioness, the goddess of war and fighting and the mistress of the Egyptian and Libyan land..
She was mentioned in our biblical commentaries in the Book of Genesis, chapter 7:2, as being "among the clean animals".. that the Lord commanded Noah, peace be upon him, to carry "seven by seven" of into his ark...
She was also mentioned in the noble prophetic tradition in several places, as a clean animal, "among the goods of the house".. and that Lady Aisha, may God be pleased with her, ate from where the cat had eaten, and that our Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, performed ablution with water that the cat had drunk from.. and that there was a devout, ascetic woman, diligent in obeying God, who entered the Fire because of a cat she imprisoned until it died of hunger..
There are many legends about her.. among them that Imam al-Rifai, the grandson of Imam Ali, may God be pleased with them both, had a cat fall asleep on the sleeve of his wide cloak, and the time for prayer came, so he brought a sharp knife and cut the sleeve and left the cat sleeping.. and when he came back the cat had walked away, so he took the rest of the sleeve and "sewed it up and said: nothing changed"...
She hunts and kills about a thousand species of living creatures, from insects and birds.. to even rodents and snakes...
Cats are accused of transmitting the parasite "Toxoplasma gondii".. to the point that it has come to be called "cat disease".. but the truth is that the parasite is transmitted by any warm-blooded creature.. even sheep and rabbits.. cats get the infection when they hunt and eat a mouse or a sick animal.. but there is a vaccine against this parasite for cats that people keep at home, available at any vet..
The cat caused an eternal struggle between "Einstein" and "Niels Bohr", who developed the foundations and theories of "quantum mechanics"...
In short, the story begins with a physicist named "Erwin Schrödinger", who put forward a theory called "Schrödinger's cat".. in 1935...
Our brother "Schrödinger" set out a "thought experiment".. and this differs from a laboratory experiment in that it may never be carried out at all.. a mental experiment on paper.. like the "Maxwell's demon" experiment.. with which "James Clerk Maxwell" breached the second law of thermodynamics...
Anyway.. Professor Schrödinger told us that "until the particle is observed and measured, it simply exists in all possible states at the same time".. and in quantum mechanics this is called the "superposition principle".. when you measure and observe and watch the particle, the superposition principle collapses.. and the particle's position is determined precisely..
And he gave his cat as the example for this theory.. he supposed that he had locked a live cat in a box with a radioactive sample, with a 50% probability that it would decay and kill the cat...
As long as the box is closed, we have not the slightest idea whether the cat is alive or dead.. but when we open the box, we know.. is it alive or did it die..
Ordinary logic says that the cat is in only one state.. either dead or alive.. but ordinary logic is not one of the things you can lean on while you are studying quantum mechanics..
"Carl D. Anderson's" experiments on "subatomic particles", for example.. tell us that they behave in a strange, unusual way, contrary to the ordinary logic we know and have grown accustomed to with larger particles..
Now the box is closed..
So.. is "Schrödinger's cat" alive or dead?
Solving the puzzle is hard and explaining it takes long, and there will be more of this talk.. and tomorrow we open the box...
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References
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1 - Abraham Pais, "Subtle is the Lord...", The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein, Oxford University Press, p.447-8, 1982...
2 - Hund, Friedrich (1985). "Bohr, Göttingen, and Quantum Mechanics"...
3 - Niels Bohr in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist (P.Schilpp, Editor), p.199. Tudor, New York, 1949...
4 - Gribbin, John (2011). In Search of Schrodinger's Cat: Quantum Physics And Reality. Random House Publishing Group. p. 234...
5 - Rovelli, Carlo (1996). "Relational Quantum Mechanics". International Journal of Theoretical Physics...
6 - Quantum Mechanics, Kramers, H.A. publisher Dover, 1957, p. 62...
7 - Klemperer, Otto (1959). Electron Physics: The Physics of the Free Electron. Academic Press...
8 - The sorting demon Of Maxwell". Proceedings of the Royal Institution. ix: 113. 1879...
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