2012-02-18
Original: 2012-02-18 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1 (header: WHAT "SCHRODINGER'S CAT" MEANS.)
Elderly man with glasses (smiling): Suppose that inside a box you have a cat and a glass container of poison. Suppose there is also a radiation emitter and a Geiger counter, and that if the counter detects radiation, it causes a hammer to break the glass. According to the Copenhagen interpretation, the cat is both alive and dead until something collapses the wavefunction. This is, of course, absurd. So, the interpretation must be wrong.
Panel 2 (header: WHAT PEOPLE THINK IT MEANS.)
Young man with red/brown hair: So there's this cat in a box and hey maybe it's dead, but who knows?! SCIENCE!
Votey:
Woman with glasses (off to the side): You're a million years old.
The elderly man (now hunched, writing/gesturing): People have to know they're wrong!
Elderly man with glasses (smiling): Suppose that inside a box you have a cat and a glass container of poison. Suppose there is also a radiation emitter and a Geiger counter, and that if the counter detects radiation, it causes a hammer to break the glass. According to the Copenhagen interpretation, the cat is both alive and dead until something collapses the wavefunction. This is, of course, absurd. So, the interpretation must be wrong.
Panel 2 (header: WHAT PEOPLE THINK IT MEANS.)
Young man with red/brown hair: So there's this cat in a box and hey maybe it's dead, but who knows?! SCIENCE!
Votey:
Woman with glasses (off to the side): You're a million years old.
The elderly man (now hunched, writing/gesturing): People have to know they're wrong!
Alt text
A two-panel SMBC comic contrasting a scientific concept with its popular understanding. The first panel, titled "WHAT 'SCHRODINGER'S CAT' MEANS," shows a smiling elderly man with round glasses delivering a careful explanation: a cat and a glass of poison sit in a box with a radiation emitter and Geiger counter; if radiation is detected, a hammer breaks the glass. Per the Copenhagen interpretation the cat is both alive and dead until the wavefunction collapses, which, he concludes, is absurd, so the interpretation must be wrong. The second panel, titled "WHAT PEOPLE THINK IT MEANS," shows a grinning young man with reddish hair shrugging: "So there's this cat in a box and hey maybe it's dead, but who knows?! SCIENCE!" The joke: the thought-experiment is actually a critique of the interpretation, but pop culture reduces it to vague mystery-worship of science. Votey: a small black-and-white sketch. A woman with glasses says to the hunched old man, "You're a million years old." He retorts emphatically, "People have to know they're wrong!"
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.