Critics to Shrodinger
05

Critics to Shrödinger´ Cat
Before proceeding with the disclosures of controversial ideas of physics, let us recall one of the major mysteries of quantum mechanics, which deals with the paradox of the cat. This thought experiment was proposed by the great physicist Erwin Shrödinger that was one of the architects of revolutionary theory which along with the Theory of Relativity of Albert Einstein, led to a philosophical revolution in scientific thinking this century.
The reader may have become estranged physicists dealing with a subject that seems like a joke. Trap a cat in a box in which has a radioactive source, a radiation detector and a poisonous gas that is released when a particle is detected, killing the cat, is not only a joke, is the height of wickedness. But it’s just a thought experiment, and say the biographers, Shrödinger was a beautiful soul. Another version is due to David Bohm that consist in a light source, a half-silvered mirror and a light detector (a photocell, for example) that is coupled to a weapon that kills the cat when a photon is detected. In this version the half-silvered mirror splits the quantum state of the incident photon in a superposition of two different states, one reflected and one that is transmitted by the mirror. The fact is that in both cases, the cat lives in a superposition of life and death. Let us now address the original version.
In the case of the cat trapped in the box, the particle detector is only triggered once per minute. Suppose the probability of emission of a particle by the radiation source is 0.5 during that time. Quantum theory does not predict the detection of radioactive event. Just says that the probability of that happening is 50%. If the particle is detected, the poisonous gas is released and the cat dies.










