Re: Lima Beans & Walt Burgers

"Lambda" <eta@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:hZHDj.1679$qT6.1194@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> "A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following
> diabolical device (which must be secured against direct interference
> by the cat): in a Geiger counter there is a tiny bit of radioactive
> substance, so small that perhaps in the course of one hour one of the
> atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it
> happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a
> hammer which shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has
> left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the
> cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The first atomic
> decay would have poisoned it. The Psi function for the entire system
> would express this by having in it the living and the dead cat (pardon
> the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts."
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger's_cat_in_popular_culture
>
>
>
> ----------------------------------
>
> I have no idea what this is trying to say...I read the wikipedia
statement 
> and this one several times but I guess it doesn't sink in.
>



Ok I got it...the "expression" is the two possible outcomes. The cat is 
alive and the cat is dead expressed as a single "unit". So the cat is both

alive and dead within the "system".