"Ed Cregger" wrote in message
.. .
Cecil Moore wrote:
John Smith wrote:
Time is not a physical reality, the past and the future exist only in
human reasoning.

Lots of things didn't exist before homo sapiens. :-)


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What if all things were true - and false? Personally, I'd just open the
box and ask the cat. Assuming that it was still alive, that is. G

And who was this Schroedinger guy anyway?


Ed, NM2K

The point Schroedinger was trying to make is that in the absence of
information, there is no way we can absolutely know something. The very act
of measuring or observing something causes the wave function to collapse and
reveal an object's position, speed or some other state we are trying to
establish. Opening the box and asking the cat seems eminently reasonable.
The cat is never actually in a quasi alive/dead condition. In it's own
'universe' (box) it is either alive or dead. We cannot know which without
opening the box at which point the two separated 'universes' collapse into
one. Prior to opening the box it is necessary to consider both options alive
or dead as a possibility but there is no third case where the cat is both
alive and dead at the same time. The physical laws in our universe do not
appear to allow for objects larger than a buckyball molecule of C60 to exist
in quasi states.
Trying to establish whether individual photons or electromagnetic waves are
emitted by an antenna suffers from the same difficulties. The very act of
trying to establish what is being emitted will collapse the wave function of
the photons or electromagnetic wave to reveal one or the other, but not both
simultaneously.

Mike G0ULI