The Cat is Back

Seems on the quantum level an object can have different temperatures at the same time.

Oh Heizenburg....90 years later and you're still frustrating us. Not only is the cat both alive and dead, it's now hot and cold!

https://www.livescience.com/63595-schrodinger-uncertainty-relation-temperature.html

Originally posted by @uzless
Seems on the quantum level an object can have different temperatures at the same time.

Oh Heizenburg....90 years later and you're still frustrating us. Not only is the cat both alive and dead, it's now hot and cold!

https://www.livescience.com/63595-schrodinger-uncertainty-relation-temperature.html

Same goes for the spelling on his name, our dear Werner Heisenberg. Sometimes it's Heizenburg, sometimes it's Heisenberg, and sometimes they are superpositioned and is spelled Heizenburg and Heisenberg at the same time. This has to do with uncertainess.

Either you know his spelling, or else you know his whereabouts, neither both at the same time.
Is he alive or is he dead? Noone knows, perhaps both.
Is he warm or is he cold? Noone knows, perhaps both.

Originally posted by @uzless
Seems on the quantum level an object can have different temperatures at the same time.

Oh Heizenburg....90 years later and you're still frustrating us. Not only is the cat both alive and dead, it's now hot and cold!

https://www.livescience.com/63595-schrodinger-uncertainty-relation-temperature.html

I'm in two minds about this. On the one hand the article you referenced quotes one of the authors of the paper talking about energy uncertainty in the thermometer, which isn't the same as the system whose temperature being measured being in a linear superposition of temperatures. So I'm not certain if the journalist hasn't got hold of the wrong end of the stick. Unfortunately the link in the article referenced in the OP is broken so I couldn't look at the actual paper. One issue is that the statistical physics definition of temperature has it defined in terms of the gradient of the density of states function. So temperature is a function of energy. But that does not entitle one to claim it should be indefinite just because the energy is. My understanding of the definition is that the "input" variable is the energy expectation value and it's not clear this will lead to a linear superposition. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle has two variables, only one of which can be known exactly. In technical terms the quantum operators do not commute.

However, on the other hand, in finite temperature quantum field theory temperature replaces time. So one would expect, instead of energy time uncertainty, energy temperature uncertainty. This, however, jars somewhat with the considerations of the previous paragraph as the temperature and energy should be "knowable" at the same time.

So I'd have to read the paper to form an opinion.

Originally posted by @deepthought
I'm in two minds about this. On the one hand the article you referenced quotes one of the authors of the paper talking about energy uncertainty in the thermometer, which isn't the same as the system whose temperature being measured being in a linear superposition of temperatures. So I'm not certain if the journalist hasn't got hold of the wrong ...[text shortened]... ergy should be "knowable" at the same time.

So I'd have to read the paper to form an opinion.

NO! Don't you dare do that, if you do it will collapse the wave function and you will die😉

Originally posted by @uzless
Seems on the quantum level an object can have different temperatures at the same time.

Oh Heizenburg....90 years later and you're still frustrating us. Not only is the cat both alive and dead, it's now hot and cold!

https://www.livescience.com/63595-schrodinger-uncertainty-relation-temperature.html

In an article about this it states: The uncertainty principle says that we cannot measure the position (x) and the momentum (p) of a particle with absolute precision. The more accurately we know one of these values, the less accurately we know the other.

This makes formulating theories about things on the quantum level, problematic at best, and something something my high school science teacher once said about a number of studies of the universe. "We know more and more about less and less, until we know everything about nothing!" 😳

Originally posted by @mchill
This makes formulating theories about things on the quantum level, problematic at best, and something something my high school science teacher once said about a number of studies of the universe. "We know more and more about less and less, until we know everything about nothing!" 😳

Your teacher was joking.
The truth is that we know more and more stuff about more and more subjects.
Quantum physics is like 100 years old (and some) and it is still being found new marvelous things about the smallest parts of the Universe.