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Creating a Quantum Superposition of Living Things
KentuckyFC writes "Having created quantum superpositions of photons, atoms, and even molecules, scientists are currently preparing to do the same for larger objects — namely viruses. The technique will involve storing a virus in a vacuum and then cooling it to its quantum-mechanical ground state in a microcavity. Zapping the virus with a laser then leaves it in a superposition of its ground state and an excited one. That's no easy task, however. The virus will have to survive the vacuum, behave like a dielectric, and appear transparent to the laser light, which would otherwise tear it apart. Now a group of researchers has worked out that several viruses look capable of surviving the superposition process, including the common flu virus and the tobacco mosaic virus. They point out that after creating the superposition, scientists will be able to perform the Schrodinger's Cat experiment for the first time, which should be fun (but less so for the virus)."
Viruses are not living things. They have no metabolism and need a host to reproduce. They're basically just packets of proteins containing DNA.
-- Cheers!
won't someone think of the viruses? I'm going to pen a letter to the Amercian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Microscopic Organisms That May Or May Not Be Alive immediately!
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We are still experimenting on this mans cat after all these years? Im surprised PETA isnt all over this...
Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man, and let history make its own judgment - Zemfram Cochrane
The virus will be both dead and alive! So this is how the zombie plague will begin...
Seriously, people, anyone who has read comic books knows that strange scientific experiments involving lasers, quantum mechanics and viruses can only lead to an acute case of superheroitis.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Since the collapse of the state vector is an illusion caused by the entanglement of the experimenter with the experiment, whereupon the experimenter (now in a superposition of states) can only measure one outcome, this recless creation of macromolecular superpositions will deplete the multiverse's supply of world-lines and immanentize the eschaton. We'll have doppelgangers racing madly through the streets, and it will all end in tears.
I'm not certain that this technique will scale to cats.
Don't worry, the next step up from viruses are lawyers. Since they have to put them in a vacuum and hit them with a laser, line 'em up and put it on Youtube ... in the name of science!
My work here is dung.
A lot of the researchers who work with viruses consider them to be alive. See for example this piece by Abbie Smith explaining why viruses should be considered to be alive and why most of the arguments against are not convincing: http://scienceblogs.com/erv/2009/03/ten_five_reasons_clumsy_excuse.php. The people who argue that viruses aren't alive are almost inevitably non-biologists or biologists who don't work with viruses.
I was under the impression that there was nothing to be gained by doing the schrodinger's cat experiment. The idea is that in collapsing the probability wave of any object, the "observer"-object (really anything that the collapsing object interacts with, conciousnes not required!) essentially becomes a superposition of states. This forms an outward expanding wave of super position with the individuals caught within the wave observing it as collapsed and those outside the event observing all those that interact with the superpositions becoming superpositions themselves.
For example scientist-A is in an isolated box and has a cat in an isolated box. The cat is a superposition either dead or alive, is definately one or the other when he opens the box. Let's say for him, the cat is dead when he opens it and that makes him sad. However the scientist-B, outside the larger box which contains scientist-A can now say that the box is filled a superposition of A-with dead cat (sad scientist), and A-with live cat (happy scientist). This is because scientist-B does not know the result of scientist-A opening the box,only that room now contains a superposition of a sad or happy man with a dead or live cat. Only when B opens this larger box does it the superposition of A collapse for scientist B. Now B is in the same position - he is now be a superposition of states of scientist-B seeing sad-man with dead cat, and scientist-B seeing happy-man with live cat. So the idea is that ALL quantum events function in this way. Performing this on any object, be it virus or molecule or cat. Of course because the real world has no such isolation boxes, these wavefronts of collapse and local superposition happen continuously and undetectably.
So what will happen is they'll go through all this difficulty to superpose two states. Then view the virus, seeing it in one state - all the while oblivious that they are now intertwined with that superposition to an outside observer.
Surely all you need to perform the Schroedinger's Cat experiment for real is a box, a cat and a radioactive substance which decays into a poison. I thought the whole idea of superposition is that the object is simultaneously in multiple states until you observe it, at which point it is in a single state. If they can observe something in different states simultaneously, doesn't that debunk the whole theory? If they can't then what is the point of the experiment? My layman's knowledge of quantum physics is obviously lacking. Could someone explain?
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
With the Schroedinger cat you didnt know if it was alive or dead in the physical experiment. But biology has decided yet if virus are alive to start it? What will be the next thing they will use for this test? a meme?
it's not less alive, per-say, than a single celled amoeba or an atom
Wut?
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
I can see it now...
Me: Tell me Doc, do I have HIV?
Doctor: Well, yes and no.
"This is amazing! I'm coming/not-coming at the same time!"
"Nice try. I observed you ejaculating three seconds into it."
The enemies of Democracy are
The smell, if there is such a thing. I feel saturated by it. I can taste the Slashdotters' stink and every time I do, I fear that I've somehow been infected by it.
The definition of life is somewhat squishy, even in Biological fields, but still, technically, viruses are not living as they do not exhibit many traits that living creatures do (eg. homeostasis, metabolism, growth, asexual or sexual reproduction, etc).
In common language, and philosophically speaking, the argument for calling a virus living could be made, but it's all just semantics.
Wikipedia has an interesting article on life and its varying definitions throughout time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life
Schrodinger's Flu!