Monday, September 21, 2015

Putting Living Organism in Two Places at Once...Schrödinger's Affair with Twin Young Women

The Guardian reported on September 16 2015

"Schrödinger's microbe: physicists plan to put living organism in two places at once- A radical demonstration of quantum theory could see a bacterium suspended in an uncertain state similar to that famously endured by Schrödinger’s cat...


Erwin Schrödinger, one of the founding fathers of quantum theory, proposed his thought experiment in 1935. In it, a cat found itself in a closed box with a small radioactive source, a Geiger counter, a hammer and a small bottle of poison.

Schrodinger explained that if an atom of the radioactive source decayed, the Geiger counter would trigger a device to release the poison. In quantum mechanics, the state of the cat would then be “entangled” with the state of the radioactive material. In due course, the cat would be in a superposition of both alive and dead states.."
Stephen G. Brush, 'Should the History of Science Be Rated X?':

" My concern in this article is with the possible dangers of using the history of science in science education. I will examine arguments that young and impressionable students at the start of a
scientific career should be shielded from the writings of contemporary science historians for reasons similar to the one mentioned above-namely, that these writings do violence to the professional ideal and public image of scientists as rational, open-minded investigators,
proceeding methodically, grounded incontrovertibly in the outcome of controlled experiments, and
seeking objectively for the truth, let the chips fall where they may..."



John Gray:

"Science can advance human knowledge, it cannot make humanity cherish truth. Like the Christians of former times, scientists are caught up in the web of power; they struggle for survival and success; their view of the world is a patchwork of conventional beliefs. Science cannot bring ‘miracle, mystery and authority’ to humankind, if only because – like those who served the Church in the past – its servants are all too human."




Neil Gussman with Sarah Reisert:

"...Of course there has been a trend recently in scientific biographies to talk about lust in the lives of their subjects. We all know now that Einstein would not be named husband of the century.
Erwin Schrödinger, known for the thought experiment "Schrödinger's Cat," created the Schrödinger equation, central to quantum mechanics, on a winter semester break. At the time he was having an affair with twin young women in one of his classes. He took one twin to the Alps and came back with the equation..."



...He took twin to the Alps.....

now my caption to the cartoon below would be:

"oh! Like in the previous room, he too is Erwin Schrödinger...One of them got the Nobel prize..."
 
Artist: Michael Ffolkes (1925-1988), The New Yorker, June 9 1980