-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here's another odd photo (pileated woodpecker) showing how lighting can play tricks on perception:
http://natureinquiries.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/schrodinger%E2%80%99s-woodpecker/
The analogy to 'Schrodinger's cat' has also of course been made repeatedly to the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Another, more-current analogy one might make though is to the Higgs Boson. I'm not competent to describe the technicalities of the Higgs, but simply put, years and years of tangential evidence has indicated its likely existence, yet no proof of it has been forthcoming -- one of the major goals of the much-publicized Large Hadron Collider is to establish the presence of this elementary particle (known popularly as "the God particle"... hmmm, echoes of "the Lord God Bird"). Both the LHC and its rival, the Tevatron collider in the US, have recently found rumored evidence (still being analyzed) for the Higgs, after decades of theorizing and failed searches. Hints, glimpses, findings, calculations, debates... but still awaiting proof.
I'll confess my bias: Schrodinger's cat is mostly an abstract thought exercise... I suppose I prefer an analogy to the Higgs, because so many of those in the know feel sure it is really there, and just a matter of time before that is patiently demonstrated... may it still be so for the Ivory-bill... not Schrodinger's Woodpecker, but Higgs.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment