As
he comes away, he remembers the famous thought experiment he learned
about long ago on a physics course. A cat, Schrödinger’s Cat,
hidden from view in a covered box, is either still alive, or has just
been killed by a randomly activated hammer hitting a vial of poison.
Until the observer lifts the cover from the box, both possibilities,
alive cat and dead cat, exist side by side, in parallel universes,
equally real. At the point at which the lid is lifted from the box
and the cat is examined, a quantum wave of probability collapses.
None of this has ever made any sense to him at all. No human sense.
Surely another example of a problem of reference. He’s heard that
even the physicists are abandoning it. To Henry it seems beyond the
requirements of proof: a result, a consequence, exists separately in
the world, independent of himself, known to others, awaiting his
discovery. What then collapses will be his own ignorance. Whatever
the score, it is already chalked up. And whatever the passengers’
destination, whether they are frightened and safe, or dead, they will
have arrived by now.
Something
which I am very proud of is the fact that, over 4 years, I have
avoided some unpleasant aspects in the 86 posts of this blog.
Searching for mistakes has not beeen then main aim of this blog,
mainly to get away from my job. I also avoided the scientific
clichés; you can´t picture how many times Schrödinger´s Cat
appears in novels, it´s almost one more character.
It´s
been difficult, but this is only the second time we speak about the
damn cat. The first one was just to devote some words to a good movie
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