According to the theory of quantum mechanics, there are an infinite amount of universes. For every left that you have taken, there is a universe where you took a right. Well, maybe infinite is too much but I’m sure it’s up there. So that means that right now in some alternate universe there’s an alternate me writing an alternate blog about an alternate universe where he’s writing an alternate blog too.
There’s a famous thought experiment, Schrödinger's Cat, where a scientist places a cat into a closed box where he can’t observe the cat. Inside the box is a gun pointed at the cat, the gun is set to go off if a radioactive isotope decays. So when the gun goes off, there are only two possibilities; either the cat is dead or the cat is alive. Right? Well, that’s the world according to ‘normal’ physics, but according to quantum mechanics the cat is both alive and dead. How can that be? You can’t be half dead or half pregnant, either you are or you aren’t so which is it?
Well, quantum physicists like to explain this by saying that everything maintains all possibilities until observed. So the cat isn’t dead or alive until you open the box to see if it is alive. This example is the best explanation of light. Is it a particle or a wave? Both? But how? Until next time.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
this reminds me of the time in 8th grade when a classmate tried to explain to me that the existence of anything depends on our consciousness. i tried to answer that if a person in siberia ate a hamburger at two o clock while ice fishing for his dinner but i did not know about this till two days later, it still happened when it happened.
we were like ships in the night.
???
Crashing into each other and sinking to the bottom of the ocean with all hands lost? How's that like eating a hamburger?
Post a Comment