Title: Is Quantum Uncertainty All in the Mind? - SAND
Headings: Is Quantum Uncertainty All in the Mind?
Is Quantum Uncertainty All in the Mind?
“A physicist is just an atom’s way of looking at itself.”
Frequently wrong
End of observers

Content: At best, quantum theory allows you to calculate the probability of one outcome from many encoded in a multifaceted wave function that describes the particle’s state. Another observer making an identical measurement on an identical particle might measure something very different. You have no way of saying for sure what will happen. So what state is a quantum object in when no one is looking? The most widely accepted answer is the Copenhagen interpretation, so named after the site of many early quantum musings. Schrödinger’s notorious cat illustrates its conclusion. Shut in a box with a vial of lethal gas that might, or might not, have been released by a random quantum event such as a radioactive decay, the unfortunate feline hangs in limbo, both alive and dead. Only when you open the box does the cat’s wave function “collapse” from its multiple possible states into a single real one. This opens a physical and philosophical can of worms. Einstein pointedly asked whether the observations of a mouse would be sufficient to collapse a wave function.