What I am on about? Who is Schrödinger and what about his pregnant cat?
Endulge me here for a moment. Erwin Schrödinger was a physisist who created a thought experiment concerning a cat, which, by the way, was not pregnant, in an effort to explain the Copenhagen inerpretation of quantum physics, which made it possible to conceive of subatomic particles in superimposed states (that is to say, they could be doing any number of things and be in any number of places at once), and only upon observation or measurement could they be discovered to be in any one particular state. At the moment of measurement or observation all other possibilities collapse. It’s kind of like choosing a lottery ball from the bunch spinning around in the old machine. Any one of the numbered balls may possibly come out but only when you stop the machine and a ball falls out do we find what number it is. Apparently this concept is acceptable with subatomic particles but not larger objects.
Your eyes are glazing over, aren’t they? Here’s a mocha latte and a cranberry pumpkin muffin I got from MissMimi (thanks, love).
So, Schrödinger came up with this idea that was not meant to condone abusive treatment of animals but express how this quantum quirk could be understood in the macro-world. He imagined a cat in a box with some method to kill the cat. (Some versions have a hammer falling to strike the cat dead, others have a vail of poisonous gas that will be released once the vail is broken.) There is a mechanism that will at some time cause the actions that will bring the cat to its doom but we don’t know when this will be. So, when we approach the box the cat is either alive or dead – or possibly dying horribly – and until we open the box and observe the mistreated cat, it can be in any state: alive, dead, or any number of stages near death. Hopefully, we open the box before the cat has been killed. For a moment the cat is in all possible states, meaning the cat is alive and dead at the same time, and in all states of the throes of death. Then we open the box and all states other than the one we observe collapse.
And that brings me to my point, if you are still with me. But even my point has a preamble. And amble I shall!
K and I are planning to marry next March. You know that most of you. We are arranging to be married in New Zealand. Before then, however, as many of you know, we had planned to go to Europe for Christmas. We had a date with the Alps! From there on I was looking to the future and planning possibly a trip to China next summer, certainly more hikes in Japan, the purchase of yet another camera, and I was beginning to plan an exhibition have been wanting to hold at a prestigious gallery in Tokyo for a couple of years now. After two years we were thinking to take a couple of months off and do an extended trip to maybe a dozen countries or so. All these things were possible. All we (or I) had to do was save the money and make the plans.
Then something happened. Or rather didn’t happen. K’s period was late. That in itself was nothing that hadn’t happened before. (Some of you are cluing into the pregnant cat part now, aren’t you?) But recently we had gotten a little careless; not really careless, no, but anyway, damn the torpedoes, we went ahead and had unprotected sex a few times. Let’s just say that we were very glad to be together and would together face anything the Life, Fate, God, the Universe, or whatever else threw at us. And that’s why this time the delayed menstral flow caused all plans to be frozen. Was she preggers? If she was, it would change everything. I saw all our plans suddenly as a path with many forks and another path with other forks branching off in the very near future. This new fork included a baby and was very different from the fork without the baby. Our future was in a superposition of states, or so it occurred to me to think so.
For a couple of weeks we wondered. She had small cramps and felt as though her period was coming. But after almost three weeks there was reason enough for her to visit the local woman’s clinic. The box was then opened, so to speak (eww, the innuendo just occurred to me), and we found the cat alive and pregnant. Or rather, K was pregnant. There was no cat. That was just a thought experiment made up by some guy named Schrödinger. (I told you to wake up.) At that moment, all the possible futures on the branch without a baby collapsed and the only branch we saw ahead of us now was with a baby. The trip to Europe had to be cancelled. Oh, well. We can still go ahead with plans to marry in New Zealand it seems but the wedding dress sizing will be an issue. And we are not to drive on any unpaved roads. Hiking in NZ is out!
So, anyway, it seems next year in June there will be a MiniHot or Hotakette in the world. Am I ready? That’s the subject for another post. Am I happy? It certainly is exciting and my brain is on the subject almost all day. All to come in a forthcoming post.
However, in closing I will add that I left two clues here on SoulCast a couple of weeks ago and gingersoul picked up on them right away. Unless anyone else has guessed, ginger gets the prize for being the most perceptive. A big hug to her for paying attention.
