Science In Rhyme

Black Hole Limerick

2012-02-01T10:29:00.003-08:00

Black Hole Limerick by keendesigns
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Astronomy for some years now has been abuzz with speculation, information, and discoveries of Black Holes.

Black holes you say? What is a black hole?

Black hole is a term now commonly used to describe an object whose size and mass leads to the situation where the gravity of the object is so great that light cannot escape from it. The concept has been around for a long time, dating back at least to 1784, when John Mitchell published a work on the effect of gravity on light. In that work, Mitchell postulated that if a star had enough gravity, the escape velocity would be so great that light could not escape. He termed such an object a Dark Star.

So what is escape velocity?

Escape velocity is the velocity a projectile must have in order to avoid being pulled back to the planet or star of origin. Think of a bullet fired into the air. It's given an initial velocity by the blast, and gravity provides a deceleration that acts to slow that velocity, eventually stopping the projectile altogether, and reversing its direction. But if the velocity of a projectile was great enough, it would escape into space and never return. The answer is a bit different for a rocket that keeps being propelled as it departs, as the escape velocity diminishes the further a projectile gets from the star or planet.

For our humble planet, the escape velocity for a projectile fired from the surface is about 25,000 mph. Considerably faster than projectiles fired from guns, but we've managed a technology that can get rockets to reach escape velocity.

The concept of escape velocity was known clear back in John Mitchell's time. Remarkably, so was a reasonable value for the speed of light. A Danish astronomer by the name of Ole Romer made the speed of light determination in the late 1600's. He did so by meticulously observing and noting the time variation of Jupiter's moon transits. He correctly concluded that these variations were the result of a constant speed of light and the variation of distance from the Earth to Jupiter. Since the distance variation between Earth and Jupiter is so large due to their orbits, Romer was able to make accurate enough measurements to calculate a velocity of light good to 2 or 3 digits.

So Mitchell applied the velocity of light to the escape velocity calculations and concluded that stars with enough mass and small enough radius would be Dark Stars, allowing no light to escape. Not much was made of it, however, until the 20th century and Albert Einstein's formulation of General Relativity.

Radius and mass must both be considered in escape velocity calculations. The Sun, for example, obviously has a strong gravitational pull, enough to hold an entire system of planets, asteroids, and comets together. Yet clearly light escapes from the Sun, as it lights up our day. But if the mass of the Sun were compressed down to diameter of a small city, about 3.75 miles, then light would no longer be able to escape its pull. That seems a remarkably small size, given that the Sun's diameter is currently about 865,000 miles. From 865,000 miles to 3.75 miles -- is that crazy or what?

For our sun, it probably is crazy. Our sun will eventually run out of fuel and reach the end of its life, but it doesn't have enough mass to likely end up as a black hole. Our sun will end its life as a white dwarf. Don't sell your beach front property just yet, however, as that ultimate fate is billions of years away.

How Does A Star Become A Black Hole?

Stars bigger than our sun, perhaps 20 times its mass, may retain enough mass after collapsing (which blows off a lot of mass) to end up as a black hole. Here's a quick, layman description of what goes on as a star becomes a black hole.

Stars shine so brightly because of Nuclear Fusion. The pressure near the center of stars is so great that atoms cannot maintain their integrity. That is -- the nuclei orbiting electrons are so agitated by the compression energy that they cannot remain bound to the nuclei. The stripped electrons become more of an electron fluid. Without the buffering of the orbiting electron clouds, atomic nuclei (mostly hydrogen at first) are more likely to be pushed together, fusing to become helium nuclei (and more massive nuclei in later processes). This nuclear fusion gives off enormous energy, creating the light we see as stars.

A star mostly produces photons from this fusion deep in its interior, and the outward moving photons interact with the electrons of the atoms making up the remainder of the star -- many many times on their journey to the star's surface and ultimately into space. This photon interaction causes an expansive pressure, helping to keep the star from collapsing from the contracting force of gravity. Additional outward pressure is created by the rapid vibrations of the excited, high-temperature electrons in all the atoms.

A star also produces neutrinos in the nuclear furnace. Neutrinos are neutrally charged, nearly massless particles that move near the speed of light. The issue with neutrinos is that unlike the photons that interact with electrons of atoms, neutrinos are virtually inert. They move from the nuclear furnace into space with little or no interaction with the atoms making up the star. So neutrinos do not add to the necessary outward pressure needed to sustain a star against the unrelenting squeeze of gravity. Neutrinos amount to kind of an energy leak, letting some of the energy of fusion escape without helping sustain the star.

As a star ages, it uses up much of its hydrogen, then even helium fuel, causing the fusion of heavier nuclei. At this point the star's furnace becomes less stable. In addition, as the heavier nuclei are consumed during the fusion process, a higher ratio of neutrinos to photons is produced, allowing more of the energy to escape to space without helping sustain the star. So the star begins to collapse against the pressure. If the star has little enough mass, the collapse will stop at the point of producing a neutron star, where electrons are essentially squashed into atomic nuclei to combine with protons, creating a big ball that's nothing but neutrons. A neutron star is essentially a big atomic nuclei.

The neutrons of the big stellar nuclei will be vibrating wildly from the heat of gravitational contraction, creating an expansive pressure to sustain the integrity of the neutrons, and thus the neutron star -- if they can. But if the necessary vibrations of the excited neutrons should exceed the speed of light (and nothing can go faster than light), then the neutron vibrations will not produce enough outward pressure to sustain the star, and it further collapses into a singularity -- a point with infinite gravitational density. Thus, a black hole is formed.

Will all of its mass now contained in a singularity, the star's radius is well within that required to have an escape velocity greater than the speed of light. So you have a black hole, or as Mitchell described it -- a dark star.

All rather fanciful you say?

Many thought so, until the discovery of x-rays in 1964 emanating from Cygnus X-1. Try as they might, scientists could think of no source of energy other than a black hole that could provide such an intense source of radiation. Theory suggests that black holes will pull in any material that gets too close, and the absorption of the material is violent. The atoms of any such unfortunate material becomes disassociated, emanating x-rays in the process.

Since that time, many observations and measurements have been made of Cygnus X-1, and the conclusion is even more convincing that Cygnus X-1 is a black hole. But that's only the beginning. The center of our own Milky Galaxy has been found to contain a super-massive black hole. The same is true of many other galaxies. Perhaps nearly all galaxies have super-massive black holes in their centers. Black holes long predicted and now discovered are the most enigmatic objects in our universe.

Black Hole Limerick by keendesigns
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I find the subject of black holes fascinating, having read about the evolving evidence during and since college, some decades ago. I created a little science limerick about a poor, unfortunate star that happened to become a black hole, putting the concept into a compact limerick. You can see and purchase the design on a wide variety of shirts as well as posters, at Keen Designs, my online store in affiliation with Zazzle.

Dark Energy Limerick

2012-01-20T07:46:00.000-08:00

Dark Energy Surprise by keendesigns
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Up until the early 20th century, our home galaxy the Milky Way was assumed to be the extent of the entire universe. This limited view led scientists to believe that the universe had existed forever in a perpetual state, never changing its appearance. In fact, that view gave Albert Einstein reason for considerable head scratching, since his newly discovered Theory Of Relativity suggested that a perpetual state universe was not possible. The universe, according to General Relativity, must be either expanding or contracting.

Beyond The Milky Way

It wasn't until the discovery of galaxies of stars beyond the boundary of the Milky Way that the view of the universe began to drastically change. It was Edwin Hubble who made the discovery that the Milky Way was not the extent of the universe. He used the newly completed 100 inch Wilson observatory telescope to make his discovery.

But he then discovered something even more damaging to the old view of a perpetual state universe. He found that the external galaxies were all moving away from one another. This discovery suggested that in fact the universe was expanding, bringing into harmony the observed characteristics of the universe and the theory of General Relativity.

The Expanding Universe

However, that brought up another great problem. If the galaxies are all moving away from one another now, they must have been closer together at some time in the past. And the more the clock was ran backward, the closer together the galaxies would have been. It was the consideration of this inescapable conclusion that lead to the Big Bang theory.

Most cosmologists now agree that the beginning of the universe was created in a colossal Big Bang. Many observations and theoretical considerations have combined to cement this conclusion. Since the Big Bang, the scattered galaxies have all been receding from one another as the universe expands. What will happen as the universe ages has been another open question.

It was long assumed that the pull of gravity from the masses of all the stars and planets in the receding galaxies would act as a brake, slowing down the expansion. The question that remained to be answered was whether the universe expansion would win out over the mass attraction, or if the amount of mass in the universe would succeed in halting and reversing the expansion.

If the initial Big Bang explosion was big enough, theory suggested that while always slowing down because of the gravity of the mass contained in the universe, the universe would none-the-less expand forever, at an every decreasing rate. This would suggest that the Big Bang was the one and only creation event for our universe.

But if the contained mass of the universe won out, it would mean that at some point in time the expansion would cease, and then according to General Relativity, begin contracting. That led to speculation about what a contracting universe would mean. Some theorized that it would mean another Big Bang at some point, and that perhaps the universe was like a big oscillator, going through successive cycles of a creation explosion and an eventual contraction.

The problem then to solve was to determine how much mass was contained so the calculation could be made as to the ultimate fate of the universe. At first, it seemed that the amount of mass necessary to stop the expansion was tantalizingly close to the amount of mass contained in the universe. Clearly, better measurements needed to be made to determine the ultimate fate.

Enter -- Dark Matter

As the search for any hidden mass gathered momentum, the dark matter mystery arose. You can read more about the evidence for dark matter in the Does Dark Matter -- Matter? entry of this blog. The dark matter discovery indicated that there is much more dark matter in the universe than normal matter.

That suggested that if the necessary mass needed to halt and reverse the expansion of the universe was nearly provided by the amount of observed normal matter, surely adding in the mass of dark matter would tip the result. The universe seemed clearly to have enough mass within it to cause a halt to the expansion and an eventual contraction.

The Revolution -- A Speeding Up Expansion

But then, a revolutionary and unexpected discovery was made. Using the newly discovered distance-measuring candle of a certain type of nova, called a Type Ia Supernova, astronomers were able to determine with precision the distances of galaxies very far away. This precision, combined with the measurement of the distant galaxies' recession velocities, indicated that instead of slowing down, the expansion rate of the universe was actually increasing.

It was a difficult fact to absorb. For decades it had been assumed that the universe was slowing down, with the only question being if it would slow enough to reverse the expansion, or just continue slowing indefinitely but never quite stopping. Now scientists had to deal with the unexpected revelation that the universe expansion rate was actually increasing.

This revelation has led to a new cosmological concept, called Dark Energy. Dark Energy is the term used to describe the as yet still mysterious force that is causing the increasing expansion rate.

A Summarizing Limerick

Dark Energy Surprise by keendesigns
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I've been interested in astronomy for most of my life, having studied it in college and since. Like everyone else who keeps up with the field, I was totally surprised by the revelation of dark energy. I've created a little science limerick that tries to capsulize the strange phenomenon. You can see it on posters, shirts, and mugs at Keen Designs, my web store created in association with Zazzle. At the top of the page you can see a poster example of the design, and below you can see a mug and shirt example with the design.

Does Dark Matter -- Matter?

2012-01-17T13:46:00.001-08:00

Dark Matter Limerick by keendesigns
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By now you've probably heard the term Dark Matter bandied about in the news and on science shows. So -- what's the big deal? What is it?

Ah, that's the rub. No one knows for sure what dark matter is. And I can imagine that you then wonder: "If no one knows what dark matter is, why do scientists even believe it exists?" A fair question, for sure.

We NEED Dark Matter

One thing is, for the universe to even have galaxies such as the one in which we blissfully live, we need dark matter, at least according to many cosmologists. We need it because the extreme high temperature caused by the Big Bang would have prevented galaxies from forming so soon after the event, had there not be something other than the mass of the observable stars withing the galaxies to draw the matter together.

We live in a rather mature galaxy, which formed within only a few billion years after the Big Bang. Without dark matter to help collect the mass together to make stars and galaxies, that could never have happened in so short a time.

But aside from such esoteric speculation, there is direct evidence of the existence of dark matter.

Indication One: Galaxy Clusters

The first direct evidence of the existence of dark matter isn't something locally observed. In fact, so far there's no locally observed evidence of the existence of some new type of elusive matter. But it has been found that galaxies are not uniformly scattered across the expanse of the universe. The galaxies seem to be strung along in streaks and clusters in an arrangement resembling the material of a sponge.

The galaxies seen in clusters are a clue to the existence of dark matter. If the mass contained in galaxy clusters was primarily contained in the observable stars within the galaxies, then the galaxies would long ago have drifted apart. There just doesn't seem to be enough observable matter in the galaxy clusters to cause them to stay together. But clearly, they do stay together. The inescapable conclusion is that there is much more matter in the galaxy clusters than is directly observable. Some kind of invisible matter that pulls on the observable matter and keeps the galaxy members of the clusters from getting away.

Indication Two: Galaxy Rotation

You've likely seen Hubble and other telescope photos of some of the great spiral galaxies. The pinwheel shape of rotating galaxies at first glance seems like a very reasonable thing. But upon closer examination, it would seem that if the rotation of stars within the galaxies are caused the the masses of the visible stars, and perhaps even a hidden black hole, then the spiral arms should be wrapped around many more times than they are. The orbital velocities of the stars as a function of their distance from the galaxy centers doesn't seem to match up well with predictions.

This strange phenomenon was studied extensively by Vera Rubin, as well as others. One popular theory for the apparent observed rotational speed anomaly is that galaxies are surrounded by a halo of dark matter, which if true, accounts for the observed rotational rates. Dark matter is not the only proposed answer for the rotational rate quandary of galaxies. Another less well accepted explanation is that our understanding of gravity may not be entirely correct, and that a better understanding of gravity on large scales might explain the galaxy rotation problem without need of dark matter.

Indication Three: Gravity Lensing

A more recent indication of the existence of dark matter is based on a prediction by Albert Einstein. He suggested that a super massive galaxy that happened to occur between Earth and an even more distant galaxy might act as a gravitational lens, with the nearer galaxy's gravity focusing the light from the more distant galaxy. This would produce an image, likely distorted, of the more distant galaxy. In fact, the gravitational lens may make possible observing a galaxy too distant to be seen otherwise.

Albert Einstein didn't necessarily believe anyone would actually observe this effect, but just that it was theoretically possible. As it happens, this effect has been observed and photographed a number of times. And the lensing appears to be of a magnitude in excess of that possible by only the mass of the visible stars in the lensing galaxies. This is evidence again for dark matter, being the added yet invisible matter that gives rise to the observed lensing effect.

My Poetic Addendum

I'm fascinated by the ongoing research and debate about dark matter. Clearly something we don't entirely understanding is involved. While some believe we need to modify our view off gravity to solve the observed problems instead of searching for some exotic form of dark matter, most cosmologists seem to believe that dark matter is the culprit.

I've had some fun trying to capsulize the dark matter enigma in a concise science limerick. You can see it below, illustrated on a coffee mug and a shirt. It's also available on posters, as shown on the image link near the top of the page. You can click on any of the images to see the range of products that carry the design, and purchase any of the products if you desire. You can see many more witty science limerick poster, mug, and shirt designs at Keen Designs, which presents my designs in association with Zazzle.

Does Dark Matter Matter? by keendesigns
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Does Dark Matter Matter? by keendesigns
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Maxwell's Equation Physics Limerick

2012-01-17T13:45:00.000-08:00

Physics 101 by keendesigns
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So it was that in the mid 1800's, the famed Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell created his famous quartet of equations and defined the field of E&M, or Electricity and Magnetism. While giving concise and elegant mathematical expressions for Gauss's laws for electric charges and magnetism, he also -- in physics speak -- unified electricity and magnetism.

Unified? Whazat?

What physicists mean when they say unified is that Maxwell described the precise relationship between electricity and magnetism with the famous Maxwell's Equations. For some time, especially since the innovative experiments of Michael Faraday in the early 1800's, physicists knew that some kind of relationship existed between electricity and magnetism. Faraday discovered, for example, that a magnetic field produced around a current carrying wire in a coil would induce a current through another coil in close proximity. But the precise and predictable relationship was unknown until Maxwell defined the relationship.

Essentially, Maxwell's equations define the complex relationship between electric and magnetic fields in all circumstances, from the creation of magnetic fields by moving electrons, to the creation of current by a fluctuating magnetic field, to even the coupled electric and magnetic fields of photons. The definition of a relationship between physical phenomenon is called unification. Maxwell's discovery is so complete that now the coupling is considered a single entity called electromagnetism.

In a similar context, Abdus Salam, Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg were awarded the Physics Nobel Prize for their successful effort in unifying the electromagnetic force with the nuclear weak force. The result is now referred to as the Electroweak Interaction. In this case, the problem was much more difficult to work out. Even in a high school science lab one can demonstrate the existence of a connection between electricity and magnetism, but not so for the connection between the electromagnetic force and the weak nuclear force.

The Weak Nuclear Force is involved with the radioactive decay of neutrons into protons and electrons. When a neutron decays, it emits an electron (beta decay) and becomes a proton. Because the strength of the weak nuclear force is so much less than that of the electromagnetic force, at low energy levels the two forces can be effectively treated as if they are independent. But at high energies, like that which existed shortly after the big bang, the two forces are on a more equal footing, and the relationship between the two must be known in order to understand what happens at those energy levels.

As you can imagine, this isn't the kind of science that can be accomplished in a high school physics lab. You can also see why it was over 100 years between the unification of the electric and magnetic forces and the unification of the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces.

But what can be accomplished with even a t-shirt, poster, or mug from Keen Designs is the display of a clever encapsulation of Maxwell's discovery with a witty physics limerick. I created such a limerick, and you can get it on products like those below:

Maxwell's Equations by keendesigns
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Maxwell's Equations by keendesigns
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Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle Limerick

2012-01-17T13:44:00.002-08:00

Heisenberg Uncertainty by keendesigns
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If you've bumped into physics classes in school, at some point or another you may have encountered the mystical Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. The first impression most students get when introduced to the Uncertainty Principle is that it describes a measurement problem, and that making measurements on sub-atomic particles is a tricky business.

In fact, measuring parameters relating to sub-atomic particles is a tricky business, and many things can't be directly measured, but only concluded by watching the results of quantum events. But the Heisenberg Principle isn't about measurement accuracy as much as it is about complementary parameters. It turns out that many of the parameters one wants to know are in a complimentary pair with another parameter. One thing the complimentary feature insures is that one cannot know with precision both parameters of a complementary pair. It isn't because they are hard to measure, but the physics of the quantum world insures that you cannot know them both with precision.

I've used the following example as a non-mathematical way to grasp the concept. Imagine that you are researching the day to day habits of bees. You want to know with as much precision as possible information about individual bee characteristics, and their normal daily behavior.

You could, for example, set up a telescope or use a pair of binoculars to observe bees from a distance as they leave and return to their hive. In this way, you would observe bees behaving quite routinely, but with pretty poor precision on the individual bees.

You could walk up and pull the top off of the beehive and see the bees with much better clarity, but now the bees in large part would be reacting to your presence, and not behaving as they were before you removed the top from the hive. So you would be trading precision of viewing the bees for the precision of observing their normal behavior. You can't seem to have it both ways. Observe normal behavior, but from a distance that precludes close examination of the individual bees, or view the bees inside of the hive directly, but with a severe impact upon the behavior you want to study.

Of course, in this technical world you could perhaps install an observing device inside the hive, and observe a monitor from a distance so as not to disrupt their normal behavior. But this is the kind of trick not possible in the quantum world.

Another example is to imagine that you're wanting to observe in great detail the markings and grooves on the faces of a cube. Imagine even further that the markings on the faces change over time, and that you suspect that the changes are in some way correlated on the different faces of the cube.

But from a distance, you can't simultaneously observe multiple faces. You can turn the cube to see one face with great detail, but the others are hidden from view (again, without any camera contrivance, which we must assume is not possible). If you turn the cube so that you can get a glimpse of two or more faces simultaneously, each will be seen foreshortened, and some of the grooves and markings may be obscured. So you can't see more than one face at a time in the greatest detail. You could consider the different faces as being complimentary in that sense.

In each of these simple and non-precise examples, you can grasp the reason why the parameters you want to observe cannot be simultaneously observed in great detail. But in the quantum world, I'm not sure if anyone quite knows why the parameters are paired in this way, they just are.

I've had fun creating a few t-shirt, mug, and poster designs that play on this mysterious aspect of quantum physics, from just some comical designs like the one at the top of the page, to the clever physic limerick featured below. You can see a number of other witty science limerick and humorous physics shirt designs at Keen Designs.

Quantum Uncertainty Poem by keendesigns
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Quantum Uncertainty Limerick by keendesigns
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Wigner's Friend And The Enigmatic Cat

2012-01-17T13:44:00.001-08:00

Schrödinger's Cat Revisited - Wigner's Friend

Wigner's Friend Limerick by keendesigns
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If you're familiar with the thought experiment about Schrödinger's cat, then you know for sure that it's a real head-scratcher. The idea of the thought experiment was to help people visualize the implications of the strange quantum world. In the thought experiment, Schrödinger described a scenario in which a live cat was put into a box that contained a vial of poison and a quantum trigger device. If and when the quantum trigger device went off, it would break the vial of poison and kill the cat.

Since the trigger device was to be controlled by a quantum event, it's state when unobserved within the box was determined by its quantum wave function, which implied a simultaneous superposition of all possible states. So the trigger device, unobserved, would simultaneously exist in both a triggered and un-triggered state. This leads to the conclusion that the vial of poison, unobserved, would exist simultaneously in a broken and unbroken state. Which leads to the non-intuitive conclusion that the cat would exist simultaneously in both the alive state and the dead state.

Only when an observer opened the box would the wave function of the combined system collapse to one state or the other, leading to either an un-triggered device with an unbroken vial and a live cat, or a triggered device with a broken vial and a dead cat. This is not the same as saying that the observer wouldn't know the state of the cat until he opened the box. It's saying that the cat would exist in both a live and dead state until the observer opened the box.

This thought experiment has lead to many additional thought experiments and subsequent ringing of hands. One of the most notable is the Wigner's Friend conundrum. This thought experiment came about when considering the implications of the apparent need of an intelligent observer in order for the quantum world to take on any specific state of existence. The question being posed explored the extent of the quantum entanglement.

In this thought experiment, a fellow (known as Wigner's friend) is positioned in the room to watch the box and determine the ultimate state of the cat. Wigner would wait outside the room. So the question is whether the room would now contain a determined state for Wigner to discover with he entered the room because there was a conscious observer present, or if the friend would simply be entangled in a larger superposition, being both simultaneously the observer of a live cat and the observer of a dead cat. If the latter is true, the state of the experiment would only collapse to a final state of existence for the cat and the observer once Wigner opened the door and made his observation.

There are a number of different thoughts on the meaning and nature of the reality surrounding the quantum math that describes the different situations, one of which is the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum reality. In this view, as soon as a conscious observer is involved, the world splits into two realities, one with each of the possible results. The parallel observers would be unaware of the other's existence and the alternate reality, and the observer in each of the split realities would interpret their viewed result as being a wave function collapse to the state they observe.

In pondering the curious conclusions, I created a humerous physics limerick to sum up the quandary of the hypothetical Wigner's friend, whom I took the liberty of naming Lyle. You can see and purchase the limerick on shirts, mugs, and posters at Keen Designs. Or, you can just click on one of the product links below:

Wigner's Friend Limerick by keendesigns
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Wigner's Friend Limerick by keendesigns
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The Confounding Schrödinger's Cat

2012-01-17T13:41:00.000-08:00

The Strange Quantum World

Schrodinger's Cat's Tale by keendesigns
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Near the end of the 19th century, physicists concluded that they had the science of physics pretty much figured out. All that was left were a few details. When taken together, the various fields of physics at the time, such as Mechanics, Optics, Electricity and Magnetism, and Thermodynamics, seemed to describe all observed physical phenomenon.

That is, except for a stubborn problem with black body radiation. Measurements of the energy distribution given off by a black body just didn't agree with predictions. And for that matter, the predictions themselves didn't make all that much sense.

Max Planck eventually solved the problem by assuming that energy was given of by the black body as indivisible quanta rather than as a continuous distribution of wavelengths, and his solution launched an entire new field of science -- Quantum Physics.

What developed after that, in only a few years, was the bizarre apparent truth that unlike a macro object such as a ball, quantum objects behave quite differently and strangely. You can put a ball on a table, go into another room, and assume quite confidently that the ball is sitting there all the while that you are away, and will be there as you left it when you return.

And quite logically, if you roll another ball at the first, you can predict with precision what will happen when the rolling ball hits the stationary ball, if you know parameters of the two balls prior to the collision. The line of reasoning is called Cause and Effect.

Enter Quantum Weirdness

But after Planck, physicists began the laborious study of the very small, the world of atomic particles. They found quite disturbingly that the quantum world behaves quite differently than the macro world that we're used to. The quantum world seems to be a kind of shadow world, with things not existing specifically in one state or another when no one is looking. Objects seem to manifest their concrete existence only when they are observed. If a ball behaved in the quantum way, you'd have no idea what state the ball would be in once you left the room, and would not know what state it would be in when you returned.

Perhaps saying that you'd have no idea is overstating it a bit. It's not that you could have no idea, but you could only compute a distribution of possibilities, and the ball may be in anyone of the possible states when next observed. If you had such a quantum ball and performed the experiment thousands of times, you'd be able to see that the observed states of the ball over time matched up in frequency with the predicted probabilities. You could never predict which state the ball would be in at any given time, but would be able to predict how many times out of some number of trials that the the ball would be in any given state.

So in the weird quantum world, one doesn't compute the next state of an atomic particle like they compute the next state of colliding billiard balls. Instead one computes the next distribution of probabilities, and witnesses one of those possible outcomes when making an observation. It's like things exist in a dream world in all possible states at the same time, and only settle on one specific state when an observation is made.

Erwin Schrödinger, an early pioneer in the development of quantum physics, developed what's known as the Schrödinger Wave Equation as a way of managing these quantum probabilities. With the equation, an object's wave function could be calculated, which has since been interpreted as a distribution of possible states for the object.

Enter Schrödinger's Cat

In an effort to help explain the workings of the strange quantum world, Schrödinger introduced a thought experiment called Schrödinger's Cat. In this thought experiment, a familiar macro-world cat is placed in a position that puts its existence into a quantum dependence.

As the experiment goes, the cat is placed in a box along with a vial of poison. If and when some quantum event occurs, the vial will be broken, releasing the poison. Of course, the release of the poison will kill the cat.

But the quantum process that will trigger the release of the poison has no specific state of existence, being in a sense in all possible states at once. One cannot compute when the quantum event might take place, only compute the distribution of possibilities.

Since the cat is in the box with the poison and the quantum trigger, its fate is now part of the quasi-state of the quantum process. The math that must be used to compute the cat's fate is that which computes the quantum process. The thought experiment suggests that while in the box and unseen, the cat, like the quantum trigger process, exists simultaneously in all possible states -- that being both alive and dead.

Some probability function of possible states becomes the only quantitative statement that can be made. Physicists refer to this coupling of the cat's state of existence and the quasi-state of the quantum process as entanglement, meaning that the cat's wave function and the quantum process wave function become entangled. Entanglement means that the cat's wave function (and existence state) is coupled with the quantum trigger's wave function.

It turns out that all objects have a wave equation description, but it degenerates to a classical physics description for macro objects. However, when the cat is in the box with a quantum process, the wave functions for the cat and the quantum process become entangled, and must be solved together using the quantum equations.

My Schrödinger's Cat Limerick

The Schrödinger's cat thought experiment is introduced to all students of physics at some point, and is also oft lampooned because of its confusing implications. Just for fun, I've created a humorous science limerick about Schrödinger's cat, and placed it on some products you may enjoy:

Schrodinger's Cat's Tale by keendesigns
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Schrodinger's Cat Poem by keendesigns
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