In the experiment with the cat Schrödinger thought of the cat remains dead AND alive during the time the box is closed. When the box is opened and the observer does an observation the uncertanty of the cats death becomes certanty (the cat is dead OR alive). Some people took this one step further and suggested that astronomers observing dark matter in the universe during 1998 may have "reduced its life expectancy" through a pseudo-Schrödinger's cat scenario. My quenstion is why should we think of our selves and only of our selves as observers Eg when the cat is alive and dead the walls of the box observe the heat released from the cats body, if it is dead it does not release heat if it is alive it releases. So when the box is openned the observation has already been made and the cat is dead OR alive. SO why should the astronomers be the observers, cant the observers be the planets and stars feeling the gravidational pull of the dark matter? The same thing happens with timetravel paradoxes. Why do i have to kill my earlier self to create a paradox? I ,by simply beeing there(in front of my earlier self) have created a paradox because there are no major events all events are the same.
Update:@eri I am saying that the observation has been made by the walls. U dont have to measure anythink, u just watch tv or smth.
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You are right. Egotistical anthropomorphism.
We don't have to see to be an observer. We don't have to realize it is there. We will be affected by the gravitational forces.
Schrödinger cat does not work simply because the information in the box escapes. (Tunneling, etc.). So long as we are in the same universe and within a distance c/t, we will information on whether that cat is dead or alive.
Your comment on the walls of the box is very perceptive. There is a theory of quantum computing and information which says that all of the information is on the surface area, i.e., walls.
There are also questions related to causality which you raise. If you went back and killed your younger self, your previous universe would no longer exist. You will now take a different branch of time.
The heat radiation from the cat is a good point. Of course, some physicists reach for their Rottweilers when they hear of the cat.
People have been observing the Universe for thousands of years. Training a telescope on some place that is supposed to have dark matter has no more effect than the millions of people who have looked at the stars for a few minutes on a warm night since time out of mind.
Any animal with sufficiently developed eyes can see the stars, back long before the dinosaurs.
I'm not sure I followed all of that, but the continuing heating of the walls of the box by the cat is a kind of observation - you had to measure the heat in some way to know it was there, either with a thermometer, or feeling it, or looking at it with an IR camera, etc. Measuring the rotation curves of galaxies gave us an indirect observation of dark matter, as do other observations. I guess the stars in the galaxy could have been affected by the dark matter, but if this paradox relies only on us for some reason, until we measured where they were we didn't know it. But I don't see how that 'reduces the life expectancy of dark matter'.
I in basic terms hate this test. it is so deceptive. it won't be a query of whether it is logical or no longer, good judgment does not practice to the quantum international as others have pronounced. yet people, please think of previous what the inventor of this test is attempting to lead you into. The cat is a macroscopic merchandise. "lifeless" or "alive" describe macroscopic and rather complicated states of being in the organic and organic methods of that cat. If the cat is truly alive and lifeless on the comparable time, the style of quantum activities that differentiate those 2 states is very nearly countless after any length of time. no longer achieveable except it is authentic that each and each quantum journey creates 2 separate universes. some people have faith this wacko nonsense. it is ridiculous in basic terms because it became into while it became into dreamed up many years in the past. many people misread this test. commentary potential that the object interacts with something else in the ambience as a manner to rigidity it to take a single state because of the fact the state of that different merchandise sooner or later relies upon on it. The cat is an observer! something that interacts with the quantum journey in this sort of way that it could cave in the state so it could proceed to alter state is an observer. I truthfully wish people are not speculating that human cognition is the only component that collapses quantum risk to certainty. we're not that self-conventional, are we? The atom could be decayed and not decayed for a volume of time till the particle produced with the aid of that decay interacts with something else that calls for an answer.
Some would suggest that it is the force of human will, the presence of a higher level sentient being that effects the observed.