Schrödinger's Cat could be visible after all

[cali]

Schrödinger's Cat could be (almost) as easy to observe as the internet's millions of LOLcats, with confirmation that there may be a way round Heisenberg's famous Uncertainty Principle after all.

Researchers at the University of Rochester and the University of Ottawa have used a comparatively new technique to directly measure for the first time the polarization states of light. Their work has implications for the weird Uncertainty Principle, which states that certain properties of a quantum system can be known only poorly if other related properties are known precisely.

The direct measurement technique was first developed in 2011 by scientists at Canada's National Research Council to measure the wavefunction - a way of determining the state of a quantum system. Such direct measurement had long been believed to be impossible on the basis that you could never fully understand a quantum system through direct observation.

Now, the Canadian researchers have come up with a parallel result - that it is possible to measure key related variables, known as 'conjugate' variables, of a quantum particle or state directly. The discovery is applicable to qubits, the building blocks of quantum information theory, as polarization states of light can be used to encode information.

Read more at http://www.tgdaily.com/general-science-brief/69893-schr-dingers-cat-could-be-visible-after-all#wbiK8X3XtDGCSsDh.99

[HERVEPA]

1. Geez, they'll have to remake the Big Bang Theory episode.

[graham4anything]

2. What would Walter White think.

[pinboy3niner]

3. This changes everything...

[RKP5637]

6. LOL!!! My fur ball just took notice too ...

he's busy typing away on his PC investigating this when he's not busy getting cat hairs all over me as I type away.

[Katashi_itto]

4. I think posting pics of cats is stupid.

[pinboy3niner]

5. Ah, Grasshopper, you have much to learn

[Katashi_itto]

7. Heheh :)

[earthside]

11. Ah, Grasshopper, sit here on my sushi plate.

Pass the soy sauce.

[pinboy3niner]

15. And pass me another grenade of sake

[Katashi_itto]

17. :)

[pinboy3niner]

21. Looking good!

Actually, I only know about the expression, "a grenade of sake" from my older brother, who extended in the Marines only so he could have a second tour on Okinawa. He really loved serving there because of his experience with with the local people.

[Katashi_itto]

22. Okinawa is very nice. I've only been there once. I've relatives from

Kirishima, southren Japan. Very pleasent though, Okinawa.

[Are_grits_groceries]

8. I'll wait.

Too much has been discovered before and then undiscovered.
It will have to be written up in a reputable scientific journal, and the findings will have to be replicated.

[SidDithers]

12. Here's the paper in Nature Photonics...

http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphoton.2013.24.html

But it's behind a pay wall.

Sid

[Are_grits_groceries]

14. Thanks. I'll read that.

It still has to be replicated.

[SidDithers]

16. Absolutely...

But at least we're not looking at a case of "science by press release".

Here's the website for the Quantum Photonics group at the University of Ottawa.
http://www.quantumphotonics.uottawa.ca/home.php

Sid

[SidDithers]

18. Found the full paper here...

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1206.2618v2.pdf

Cheers
Sid

[progressoid]

9. ...

[pinboy3niner]

10. ...

[pinboy3niner]

13. Furthermore...

[progressoid]

23. That's what our cats think too!

But they may or may not be cats.

[pinboy3niner]

24. Cats are cats, of course, of course, just like...

[TheMadMonk]

19. And again I reitterate. The CAT IS IT'S OWN OBSERVER.

Even if it were possible to completely decouple the cat from the macrocosmic universe, it remains a macrocosm in it's own right.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

20. If you take out all of the big words, It sounds like something Snow Snookie wrote.

[cthulu2016]

25. Is this just a redefinition of the word "box"?

The box in which (perhaps) sits Schrödinger's Cat represents a block on information about states within the "box." The analogy of a box (blocking visual light) should be presumed to block everything that could tell us whether the poison gas had or had not been released.

(For instance, x-raying the box has never been considered a way around the problem because that functions the same as looking inside the box.)

That said, nobody (except mystics) ever believed the Copenhagen interpretation to be a literal description of reality. It cannot require a conscious observation to collapse a probability wave, even though there are reasons (involving mysteries yet to be uncovered) that that model yields useful results.

In my under informed opinion.