Friday, June 5, 2009

Schrodinger's Cat or Why I'm Such a Fan of Kitty

Schrodinger's Cat is an illustration of quantum superpositions. It is a theoretical experiment that goes something like this:

You place in a sealed box a live cat along with a device that releases poison. The trigger to release that poison is a decaying atom. Now, the atom has an equal probability to decay or not. Which means the trigger and poison may or may not have been set off.

Without looking inside the box, is our Kitty alive or dead?

cute kitty Pictures, Images and Photos

The moment of observation defines the result. In other words, you gotta look, to see what you got. Before the observation our Kitty exists in a Quantum Superposition. He's both alive and dead.

Kind of like flipping a coin. You wont know how it landed, till you lift your hand and take a look. But its not that the coin under your hand has a heads or a tails face up, but rather that the coin is in a nebulous cloud like state. The outcome is now tied to the moment you take a look. You are the deciding factor. you are the decider.

This is the unique position in which our learned men of science found themselves after delving deeper and deeper into the nature of existence and its building blocks. We can only imagine what an awkward moment it must have been for all our lab coated scientist out there when it began to dawn on them that they were actually affecting the very results they were trying to "objectively" unravel. So much for the aloof detachment of Science.

"Boy is my face Red!" said Dr. Schrodinger "What am I? a peeping Tom?!"

The crux of the matter is there are no sidelines for us. This is not a spectator sport. The myth that there exists objectivity in observation has been debunked. The key player is the Eye that opens the box. Lifts the hand. Sees.

eye in hand

If we continue with this premise, the part that becomes striking is not so much that we've stumbled upon the interconnectedness of the self to the universe (ask any Mystic), but rather, that the "moment of observation" is a way of describing a process that is ongoing. In other words: We are always looking, thereby creating and recreating the results of our world.

This is not a singularity, a one time event. The illusory feeling that we are at the whims of the winds of change that are greater than ourselves has been replaced by the knowledge of our unique participation in this drama. The co-creation of the universe occurs continually, incessantly, in a process of observation, gauging, and appreciation.

This is not a singularity.

This is an ongoing and eternal dance.




See also my other posts:

http://thepassionateheart.blogspot.com/2009/03/im-going-to-tell-you-some-stories.html

http://thepassionateheart.blogspot.com/2009/05/on-subject-of-contending-realities.html