May 14,
2007
Scientist’s work puts ‘quantum cat’
to the test
New Scientist,
one of the world’s largest general-interest science magazines,
recently featured the research of Andrew Jordan, assistant professor of
physics, on its cover.
The cover image of a cat fading into ethereality
speaks to Jordan’s work exploring a quirk of quantum physics—an
oddity that has long been illustrated by a “quantum cat.”
A somewhat morbid thought experiment half a century
old suggests that if you were to place a cat into a box along with a vial
of cyanide that would be released in the event of a specific quantum event,
then the cat would be both alive and dead because certain quantum events
can both happen and not happen at the same time. Although we never see
simultaneously alive and dead cats, physicists have shown that there are
large systems that obey the laws of quantum mechanics, just like the famous
quantum cat.
Jordan, however, has theorized a way in which it is
possible to exploit a gray area of the morose experiment, getting a quick
peek at the quantum event without forcing it to kill, or even not kill, the
cat.
Beyond its feline favor, Jordan’s work has
stirred up the world of physicists because his theory, if correct, dooms
another quantum theory that has been around for more than twenty years,
known as the “decoherence theory of quantum measurement.” One
of Jordan’s colleagues at the University of California is now setting
up an experiment to test this new theory, and if it’s shown to be
correct, then it will send many scientists scrambling back to blackboards
to grapple with the implications it has for all of physics.
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