Date: Thu, 9 May 2002 12:58:52 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Jennifer Giles" <arcology2@yahoo.com>  
Subject: Re: If you want to know write me w/ your ideas!!!!!!!!!!!
To:

For once I'm stumped - what is it? (can you smell my baited breath? As a cat lover I do have extra lives but I've used up many of them doing the Scroedinger experiment [ask only if you really want to know], so don't get me so curious that I lose some in non-scientific pursuits...) 

To: arcology2@yahoo.com
Date: Sun, 12 May 2002 22:29:42 -0500
Subject: Re: If you want to know write me w/ your ideas!!!!!!!!!!!
From:

My my my I have Jennifer stumped this could be BIG NEWS!!!! So what is
this experiment that you were refuring 2???? What it is the entire
sentence is completly able to spell it the same forwards and backwards so if you start and take it backward and it spell the exact same both ways. Something like Hebrew I don't remember a friend explained it and I forgot it.

Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 21:07:56 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Jennifer Giles" <arcology2@yahoo.com>  
Subject: Re: If you want to know write me w/ your ideas!!!!!!!!!!!
To:

Sorry I took so long to respond. Here is a further explanation of the
Schroedinger's Cat experiment (if this is boring, remember that I warned you not to ask) :

There is a really weird phenomena in quantum physics that proposes the
non-existance of causality. Causality is the idea that events are caused by previous events in a predictable fashion. Causality lies at the root of logical reasoning - we know one thing beCAUSE we know some other thing. 

I don't remember who the physicists were (I'm thinking this is the Young double-slit experiment), but some physicists set-up an experiment that brought causality into question. Imagine a sheet of bullet-proof glass w/2 holes drilled in it. Stand this thing in the middle of a room and shoot a bunch of bullets at it and you make two regions of bullet marks on the wall behind the bullet-proof glass, each region corresponding to one of the holes you drilled. Now set this thing in a trough of water, the water level even with the holes. If you make a wave on one side you will notice that when the wave hits the holes a two new waves are begun on the other side of the glass, one corresponding to each hole. After a certain distance these waves will meet and interact with each other. Some of the peaks of one wave will add to the peaks of the other wave, creating a larger wave, and some will cancel with the troughs of the other wave, creating a flat zone. Some of the troughs will also add to the troughs of the second wave, creating a trough twice as low. This is call a wave interference pattern. 

Electrons, most sub-atomic particles in fact, are know to have a property called wave-particle duality. This means that an electron behaves as both matter and energy simultaneously - though in reality it may be neither. So, we redesign the above experiment as a sheet of some material with two slits in it. The slits are very small, ideally they will be slightly larger than the diameter of one electron. Electrons are shot at this thing, and some eletron-sensitive device on the other side will record the pattern produced. The funny thing is this: if we observe to see which hole the electrons are passing though, we'll get a pattern as if we were shooting bullets. If we don't make any such observations, we'll get a wave-interference pattern. Even if we shoot the electrons one at a time we will still get a wave pattern when we don't observe which slit the electron goes through (How does one electron interact with itself to produce a wave pattern?). After repeating this experiment many times in many forms, most physicists have concluded that sub-atomic particle behavior is governed by statitical rather than absolute laws, and the wave-interference pattern is often considered to be a statistical wave. The peaks represent areas where ther is a high probanbility of finding the lectron, the troughs represent an area where ther is a low probability of finding the electron. But where is the electron really? 

This is the question that Schroedinger wanted to answer. He decided that thinking about this whole business at the particle level was rather confusing, because after all, nobody really knows just what particles are, and everyday experience does not lend us intuitive expectations for their behavior. So, he devised a thought experiment that brought the puzzling question into more familiar terms. We imagine a box that is completely sealed, and is not transparent or anything like that. There is no way for us to know what is going on inside the box once we close it. The box contains a cat, and a glass globe containing a lethal amount of cyanide gas. There is a hammer poised to break this globe. The hammer is connected to a device that is sensitive to radiation. If a certain amount of radiation is detected within a certain time limit, the hammer will fall and the cat will die. Otherwise the cat lives. 

Radiation is actually particles being ejected from an atom. The rate of
radioactive decay for any given sample is fixed, but it is a statistical rate. Whether or not the radiation is actually emitted is a matter of probability. Therefore, when the cat is locked up in this box and the sensor is exposed to a radioacctive sample, the question becomes is the cat dead or alive? The most plausible answer given (I believe it is called the Copenhagen interpretation) is that until we look, the cat is simultaneously dead and alive. Really it is the same question as "If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to here it, does it make a sound?", only Schroedinger wanted to use a cat, and he connected it with a known physical dichotomy. 

This idea could have very far reaching consequences because the entire
universe is made up of particles. If they all behave in this statistical manner (and if one of any given type does, then all particles of that type should be the same throughout the universe), then it is very possible that there are zillions of worlds in "existence," and "reality" is created by an observer, who in effect forces the statistical universe to exist in a single, absolute state. 

At the philosophical level, this can be interpreted many ways. Some people would say that this means that truth and all values are relative, that people are master of their own fate and of values themselves. However, there are other questions entirely about what happens when more than one obsever is at work. Perhaps only one observer can "force" a statistical universe to choose its course, and then things are set from there on. This argument is sometimes used to "prove" the existence of one, omnicient, creator God. I like to believe that this physical dichotomy holds part of the answer to the dichotomy of predestination (which follows from God's existence), and free will (which follows from our being created in His image, and especially of individual responsibility for sin). Then again, perhaps the physical world is too different from the spiritual for such analogies to be really meaningful. Anyway, that is Schroedinger's Cat, where it came from, and what it might mean. 

Hope I didn't kill your eyes.

~Jennifer

PS - I'll have to go back and look at the sentence. That is really amazing that someone constructed a coherent sentence that long which is also symmetrical. Cool!

To: arcology2@yahoo.com
Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 00:14:58 -0500
Subject: Re: If you want to know write me w/ your ideas!!!!!!!!!!!
From:

You're right that is magor boring and very into math of which I'm not.