from the Niels-Bohr-walks-among-us-unobserved-and-immortal dept.
According to this New Scientist article "Wave function gets real in quantum experiment":
For nearly a century physicists have argued about whether the wave function is a real part of the world or just a mathematical tool. Now, the first experiment in years to draw a line in the quantum sand suggests we should take it seriously.
The wave function helps predict the results of quantum experiments with incredible accuracy. But it describes a world where particles have fuzzy properties – for example, existing in two places at the same time. Erwin Schrödinger argued in 1935 that treating the wave function as a real thing leads to the perplexing situation where a cat in a box can be both dead and alive, until someone opens the box and observes it.
[...] In a complicated setup that involved pairs of photons and hundreds of very accurate measurements, the team showed that the wave function must be real: not enough information could be gained about the polarisation of the photons to imply they were in particular states before measurement.
There are a few ways to save the epistemic view, the team says, but they invite other exotic interpretations. Killing the wave function could mean leaving open the door to many interacting worlds and retrocausality – the idea that things that happen in the future can influence the past.
The results leave some wiggle room, though, because they didn't completely rule out the possibility of some underlying non-fuzzy reality. There may still be a way to distinguish quantum states from each other that their experiment didn't capture. But Howard Wiseman from Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, says that shouldn't weaken the results. "It's saying there's definitely some reality to the wave function," he says. "You have to admit that to some extent there's some reality to the wave function, so if you've gone that far, why don't you just go the whole way?"
Additional (and quite readable) coverage at The Register: "They've finally solved it: Schrödinger's cat is both ALIVE AND DEAD".
Abstract at arxiv.org: http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.6213 with a link to the full report (pdf).
(Score: 4, Funny) by GlennC on Tuesday February 10 2015, @06:14PM
I already have enough pets to look after. Schrödinger is old enough to take care of his own cat!
Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday February 10 2015, @06:18PM
Now if I could just manage to use this to be working on slashcode and moving at the same time...
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Funny) by maxwell demon on Tuesday February 10 2015, @06:31PM
It wouldn't help you. As soon as anyone looked at the code, or looked where you are, the whole thing would collapse, and you'd either find yourself in the old location with updated code, or in the new location but with the code unchanged. It's just that there would be no way to tell in advance which one it would be.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday February 10 2015, @06:43PM
So, I could be fishing and coding at the same time but if someone came over to bother me at either I could totally blame it on them if it collapsed into I'd been fishing? I love this idea!
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday February 10 2015, @06:46PM
No, Slashcode has ALWAYS existed. It can't Collapse, it didn't start with the Big Bang, it was always waiting for mankind to devise computers capable of running it.
In fact, the news has been re-circulating lately [koaa.com] that this is also true of the universe in general. (Theory pops up every two years it seems).
And Oddly, since TMB started looking too closely at Slashcode, Slashdot has been down, and non-functional for hours. TMB's next call will be from Dice, with the gasped plea: Look Away Buzzard, Look away....click).
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Geezer on Tuesday February 10 2015, @06:26PM
It could be said that there are in fact two cats: one dead and one that should be.
(Score: 1) by chewbacon on Tuesday February 10 2015, @07:31PM
There could even by a naked lady in there, a dead Schrodinger, or another universe until you open it and look and the waves collapse into what is most likely to be in the box.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 11 2015, @09:50AM
Only if the box is large enough.
Only if the box is too small for Schrödinger's umlaut dots ;-)
I see, you're experimenting with very large boxes. :-)
It's not always what is most likely. Otherwise we could use that box to make an event that has a probability of slightly over 50% into a certain event.
(Score: 5, Funny) by maxwell demon on Tuesday February 10 2015, @06:37PM
Actually, the outcome of Schrödinger's cat experiment is clear: The cat would be alive. What would not be clear is if the cat has still all seven lives, or only six.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday February 10 2015, @06:56PM
I'm going to take a stab at... Italian?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Wednesday February 11 2015, @06:36AM
Where I come from cats allegedly start with nine lives. Do you breed your cats in an airship above the ocean so it costs them a couple of lives to get onto dry land?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday February 11 2015, @06:39AM
Well, after they die twice at your place, they decide it's to dangerous there and come over here. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 10 2015, @06:44PM
A fun analogy to talk about would be wave particle duality. If the function isn't real, then talking about some pretty trivial century or so old electron diffraction results is going to get weird. An electron that boils off a cathode doesn't know its supposed to register as a particle or wave until it hits a particle or wave detector, and all that.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 10 2015, @07:44PM
Schrödinger's Cat Lives!
R.I.P.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 11 2015, @08:54AM
"the equation was in the box"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 11 2015, @11:37AM
If the cat does the observing wtf, the equation may never solve ( is it there?), already solved (old news), or both.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 11 2015, @07:36PM
There are actually 2 cats in 2 future parallel universes. The act of opening the box is the step forward in time into one of the universes (which excludes the other.)