Verschränkung! Schrödinger's Hole Cards
24 February 2010 , By: foldsworth
How does quantum mechanics and a half-dead cat relate to
your ability to read your opponents' hole cards? Maybe a lot
less than you think. The Austrian physicist Erwin Schröder's famous experiment
of placing a cat in a box with a Geiger counter, a
radioactive substance and a flask of hydrocyanic acid is
interesting in itself:
After a while, the radioactive substance might and might not
(both are equally likely) have released a subatomic particle
that set of the Geiger counter, which in turn would have
released the poison and killed the cat. According to one
interpretation of quantum mechanics, the cat would then be
simultaneously alive and dead. (Obviously no peeking is
allowed.
