Braininvat » May 18th, 2017, 8:34 am wrote:When a quantum system is not perfectly isolated from other particles, quantum decoherence occurs. This means a system as complex as a cat in a box cannot maintain a state of superposition. Please ignore Handmade's posts.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherenceIn other words, the box is self-observing. Even if the bit of radioisotope only interacted with another particle, it would decohere.
Schrodinger's thought experiment has passed its freshness date.
Review your link again. It implies nothing about the Schroedinger’s thought experiment being “past its freshness date” and Schroedinger’s cat is still relevant because it cautions how actions on the atomic scale do not behave the same as actions on the macro scale.
http://www.iflscience.com/physics/schr% ... explained/ The article says, “While it is true that modern experiments have revealed that while quantum superposition does work for tiny things like electrons, larger objects must be regarded differently.”
Decoherence would be a major problem if anyone tried to perform Schroedinger’s experiment for real but that misses the point. Nothing about the experiment is intended to be real any more than Einstein’s trains moving at relativistic speeds.
That is not to say that decoherence is not a serious problem in all experiments involving entangled particles and superposition. It is hard to demonstrate entanglement and to demonstrate that it has been maintained over the distance of an experiment. This limits the distance of an experiment and, if I recall, the long distance record is now about 100 km which is good but disappointing considering that entanglement can theoretically span the visible universe.
The above article also links to a video from “Sixty Symbols.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrxqTtiWxs4If you follow this video to the end it explains how the Copenhagen interpretation, mocked by Schroedinger, gives an accurate account of how matter behaves at the quantum level and superposition is an observable effect. It states near the end of the video, “We have done experiments and, at the quantum level, that’s how matter behaves.”