Schrodinger's Splat

The theory of Schrodinger's cat is a paradoxical thought experiment wherein a cat is placed in a box with a Geiger counter, a sealed flask of airborne poison and a small amount of radioactive material. The mechanism is designed in such a way that if the radioactive material decays, the Geiger counter will detect it, activating the mechanism that will shatter the glass and kill the cat.

Quantum mechanics has always been above my pay grade, but as I understand it, the theory was designed to illustrate its limitations. The point is that as long as the box is sealed, there exists an unlimited number of possibilities within it. The unobserved cat, which may or may not be conscience, is simultaneously alive, dead and everything in between. Inside the box, all possibilities and probabilities exist, insulated from time and space. In the box, there exists a dead cat, a living cat, sixteen copies of Henry Kissinger's Harvard transcripts, a headlight from 1974 Dodge Dart, an empty copy machine toner cartridge, the holy grail, and just about everything else.

The point of the experiment (as far as it's been explained to me by very good-bearded scientists) is that outside of human observation, all probabilities exist paradoxically. By the act of observation, we inject the variable probability of ourselves into the infinitely complex equation, changing the results. In this theory, the act of opening the box kills or rescues the cat, not the poison.



The fetching Mrs. Sonnier and I are scheduled for our first "anatomical ultrasound" today. Yes, another post about baby-related insecurities, you're no doubt groaning. The fact is, this is about the most monolithic thing going on in the world today, so you can just shut it.

There exists, in Mrs. Sonnier's abdomen, all probability of things. Granted, it's most probably a baby boy or girl, but, though improbable, it could also be an octopus, the DVD special edition of C.H.U.D., or a ziploc bag filled with paper clips and stale Fritos.

Despite the clear 50/50 probability of human male or human female, I can't help but be flabbergasted that one of the two has to be true. By the very act of observation, everything will change. The very act of narrowing the list of probable names from two to one, will change the outcome of every action I take for the rest of my life. There exists in that container all things, all manners of joy, grief, responsibility and possibility.

There exists in that container my first and most important contribution to the world, and once the nature of that thing is observed, the nature of everything else will change.

UPDATE

It's an anatomically perfect baby girl.