OT: Quantum [was: Re: Authorities]

"Pete Dashwood" <dashwood@enternet.co.nz> wrote in message
news:3m0v5kF14ua6bU1@individual.net...
>
>
> <docdwarf@panix.com> wrote in message
> news:dde9s2$hgp$1@panix5.panix.com... 
>
> No Doc, it is one cat in two states simultaneously. More correctly, it is
> in an infinite number of states (Feynman's sum over histories), some of
> which are more probable than others. When the box is opened the
> probability wave "collapses" into the most likely possibility, and the cat
> is found to be alive or dead.

It doesn't *always* collapse into the most likely possibility; that's
just what happens most of the time (by definition of "most likely
possibility"). It's conceivable (though highly improbable) that all of the
mass (or matter) in the cat had spontaneously converted into energy. The law
of "conservation of mass" was eventually replaced with the law of
"conservation of energy and mass", which was later shortened to the law of
"conservation of energy" when the equivalence of mass and energy (e=mc^2)
was shown.

But it turns out that the conservation of energy isn't nescessarily true
for extremely short time scales (10^-43 seconds).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_energy
http://www.physlink.com/Education/AskExperts/ae281.cfm

- Oliver