Entries tagged with physics

Two things I've been thinking of lately. One was that conversation about RPF and all the ins and outs of writing it, reading it, and what counts as RPF (your average tabloid story, for example). On that topic, I saw news that there's a new mockumentary which will be on in a couple of weeks where the story is "what if Prince Harry was taken prisoner while he served with the army in Afghanistan?". Obviously this didn't happen and is extremely unlikely to happen. Still, this is essentially a mainstream RPF AU. It's not just fanfic and it's not just historical drama (even recent history). This programme was (I think I'm right in saying) made by the same people who made the one with Bush being assassinated. So, same principle. The lines are ever fuzzier. I'm still cogitating on my perspective.

And on a slightly less, er, deep topic... there's this theory that there are an infinite number of alternate realities, not just in fiction but in physics. Combine the idea of infinity with the idea of alternate realities and does that mean every bit of fanfic you've ever read is actually reality somewhere out there in the multiverse, even the anatomically impossible ones? That's a pretty disturbing thought.

So, Schroedinger's cat. There's this thought experiment where there's a cat in a box, and also in the box is a radioactive isotope and a vial of poison. If the isotope decays it will trigger the vial, the poison is released and the cat dies. So far, so... kind of gross, actually, but let's go with it. The experiment addresses the concept of quantum superposition, whereby a sub-atomic particle is in all states until it is measured / observed, whereupon it collapses into one particular state.

With me so far? The thought experiment goes that due to the bizarre nature of the physics the cat is both dead and alive until someone opens the box and observes the experiment, at which point the superposition collapses and you see the cat as either alive or dead.

Which is extremely odd all on its own, and gets even odder when you ask: why are we excluding the cat from the experiment as an observer? Yes, that's what's been bothering me for days now. And also, the cat is not a sub-atomic particle. And also, how does the particle-cat know it's being observed and therefore have to choose a state (and what if it can't make up its mind?). And quite frankly, extending that experiment into the real world brings all kinds of problems for people who live alone, as they would spend their nights floating around at home like some disembodied and indecisive cloud of particles unless someone else happened to look in the window and see them. Yes, fine, so I'm possibly exaggerating and in reality the single person could become multiple single people in different universes, some of whom watch Torchwood and some don't. Or not.

I think the point of the experiment (this was back in the 1930s) was to remind people that quantum physics was (and still is) incomplete and that people should start thinking a little more intelligently about the problems and how they'd work in reality and not get blinded by pretty maths. But then I've never actually been taught nor studied any quantum physics and am apparently out of my depth on this one. Where's Rodney McKay when you need him?

Fiction ponderings

I have a quantum physics quandary (it could be multiple quandaries depending on current theory)