260: Garfield - Schrödinger's Cat
| Garfield - Schrödinger's Cat |
 Made by: Quaternion |
Explanation[edit | edit source]
In the original, Garfield had fallen asleep in Jon's lap, clinging to Jon's shirt with his claws. Here, Garfield's "Z Z Z"s are gone, and Jon throws in his two cents about Schrödinger's Cat.
Schrödinger's Cat is a famous thought experiment in which there is a cat in a box with a flask of poison which becomes shattered if an internal monitor detects the decay of a single atom. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics seems to imply that, given time, the cat is both alive and dead at the same time. Any event of this type is known as a quantum superposition, which is believed to collapse into a single reality upon observation. While Schrödinger intended to use the experiment to highlight the absurdity of this view, it is still referenced even among physicists who hold to other interpretations that include the dead-and-alive-cat scenario, and many people mistakenly believe that the experiment was a belief he held, as seen here.
The author writes:[edit | edit source]
I can't believe no one has shot down Schrödinger's cat yet. (excuse the pun) So here it is.
Original: 1979-11-17.
Transcript[edit | edit source]
{Garfield is asleep in Jon's lap}
Jon: When unobserved, the cat is both alive and dead.
Jon: Schrödinger was wrong.
{Jon stands. Garfield is still attached to his front.}
Jon: Observation makes no difference at all.
Later references[edit | edit source]
- #274 gives us a different take on the theme.
