Quantum McCannics and Schrödinger's Cat

For all those who don't know, Schrödinger's Cat is a famous illustration of the principle in quantum theory of superposition, proposed by Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. The experiment ended with a cat simultaneously alive and dead and then either dead or alive.

Has anybody come across Schrödinger's Cat before? I ask this not because I have any particular fondness for our feline friends, but because Madeleine's fate is not unlike that of Schrödinger's famous pussy.

Schrödinger's Cat is a thought experiment devised by Erwin Schrödinger and reimagined some years later by Hugh Everett III, the quantum physicist; the kind of person who says that because we are made up of atoms and because atoms can be in two places at once it's only logical to assume that there are literally dozens of versions of ourselves floating around in parallel worlds. Every time we make a decision we divide into two different versions of ourselves, their own distinct universes branching off into different directions. Housewives might know this as multitasking: cleaning the house, getting the kids to school, doing the shopping, mouthing-off randomly at guests on the Jeremy Kyle Show, group messaging the equivalent of Marcel Proust's, 'la recherche du temps perdu' before dinnertime, catching-up with the soaps. It's about being in two different places at once. Remember Gerry McCann being both 4 kilometres and 28 kilometres away from Praia Da Luz on the morning of June 10th? Well it's a little like that, only without the hapless team of detectives and the dreadful shorts.

Schrödinger's Cat is described as a paradox. In much the same way Madeleine's 'cuddle cat' can be both on the bed and on the shelf above the bed at the same time or key witness Jane Tanner can be both arriving late for dinner and leaving early to tend to a sick child. What Portugal's Policia Judicia fondly refer to as 'contradictions and inconsistencies in their statements' can now be revealed as Quantum McCannics.

People like Schrödinger believed that a subatomic particle (really small atoms) can exist in a superposition of states; that is, a combination of possible states. Everywhere and nowhere. Some place and no place, neither one thing nor the other. Not alive, not dead but somewhere in-between (a bit like being in Stafford).

And according to people like Schrödinger, the combination of possible states only settles into a definite state upon observation. Until we see and experience it with our own two eyes.

This is known as collapse.

But where does the 'cat' come into all this? Well it's a bit like this. According to Schrödinger's thought experiment we place a living cat into a steel chamber, along with a device containing a vial of hydrocyanic acid. Also in the chamber, is a very small amount of a radioactive substance. But this is the exciting part; if even a single atom of the substance decays during the experiment, a relay mechanism will trip a hammer, which will, in turn, break the vial and kill the cat.

But because the box is closed and we cannot observe the cat, the observer cannot know whether or not an atom of the substance has decayed, and consequently, cannot know whether the vial has been broken, the hydrocyanic acid released, and the cat killed.

And because we cannot know, the cat is both dead and alive according to quantum law, in a superposition of states. It is only when we break open the box and learn the condition of the cat that the combination of possible states is lost, and the cat becomes one or the other (dead or alive).

Until Madeleine is observed, she, like Schrödinger's Cat, is both enjoying the life of a healthy pre-schooler and not enjoying the life of a healthy pre-schooler, co-existing in two possible states where she is both enjoying ice cream and watching 'Fifi and the Flowertots' whilst simultaneously lying in a shallow grave on some remote scrubland in Portugal.

And this is where we find her now, forever splitting and dividing, spinning around in a blur of possibilities, isolated, directionless, poised in the bi-polar regions at either end of happiness, travelling around without ever arriving, turning around in a photon blur on a voyage of discovery, aggravating an infinite number of outcomes to an immensurable series of possible events.

But that's kids for you.

Anyway, the whole 'Schrödinger's Cat' caper is just to illustrate a point.

The idea of Madeleine's life hanging in the balance like Schrödinger's Cat brings together so many of the already existing threads and plotlines and stuffs them all into one 4x4 ft. steel chamber.

On any one day we can have the headline 'Madeleine's Alive!' coexisting with 'Madeleine's Dead!? on another headline in another newspaper.

And then there?s the prolonged standoff between the 'Pro-McCanns' and the 'Anti-McCanns', the 'Hoax Theories', the 'Conspiracy Theories'. Should it be discovered tomorrow that Madeleine died as the result of an apple falling on her head in a monkey sanctuary, I dare say we might even be able to stir into the broth both Newton's Theory of Universal Gravitation and Darwin?s Theory of Evolution too.

It's all in there. Madeleine has become something of a cultural hologram, dividing as many people as she unites. Looking at the case from one angle suggests one thing, from another angle something else, and all of them perfectly plausible.

Let's be honest, you can also trace something of this mass hysteria back to the resurrection: Christ predates Schrödinger's Cat by some two thousand years but it's much the same proposition. Until the disciples roll away the stone from the front of the tomb - Christ, like the Cat, exists in a combination of possible states - both dead and alive. The bonus for Christians is that once they rolled away the stone Christ continued to exist in a combination of possible states - he was still both dead and alive: the whole 'dead and alive' thing is at the very heart of the resurrection, at the very heart of the mass hysteria it provoked. And if you are anything like me, the whole bi-location of Madeleine (like that of Christ) won't have been lost on you either. Madeleine is spotted in Morocco at the same time she is spotted in Belgium, in France, in Spain, in Malta, in Bosnia. And what's more, we have the tabloid reports of her bloodied 'shroud' found in the barn. No body, just a shroud. The only thing we haven?t had is Madeleine in a Kaftan gliding across the Sea of Galilee hand in hand with Schrödinger's Cat. But there's still time, I suppose.

Could the whole preposterous spectacle be a hoax? An elaborate piece of street theatre?

There's certainly no shortage of stage-managers and stagehands. A closer look at the curriculum vitaes of key players in this soap opera certainly yields a few clues there: key witness Jeremy Wilkins and partner, Bridget O' Donnell (BBC/Crimewatch producers), Kate's friend Esther McVey (Find Madeleine Fund Director and GMTV producer responsible for 'The Heaven and Earth Show' and Channel4's 'Nothing But The Truth), visiting celebrity psychics, Amanda Hart and Diane Lazarus (Channel 5's 'Psychic Challenge'?), John Corner (former BBC copy writer/ producer and godparent to the twins) and'family spokesperson' Clarence Mitchell (BBC Crime Correspondent).

If I didn't know any better I'd the say the whole dire spectacle was a split-screen, crossover spin-off of Yvette Fielding?s Most Haunted, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and Songs of Praise - with a smidgen of You've Been Framed.

If Madeleine came back tomorrow - it wouldn't be unlike how the disciples are alleged to have felt at discovering Christ after the crucifixion. It would be a recruitment drive for millions of lapsed Catholics. It would be an inspiration, a latter-day miracle. The hysteria we're experiencing now would be dwarfed by what came next.

Like the resurrection and Schrödinger's Cat, the lack of closure (or collapse) about Madeleine?s fate, and the infinite number of possibilities surrounding it, offers comfort to a world that is unable to terminate its grief, but it also offers an opportunity for that same audience to be exploited.

" ... because the box is closed and we cannot observe the cat, the observer cannot know whether or not an atom of the substance has decayed, and consequently, cannot know whether the vial has been broken, the hydrocyanic acid released, and the cat killed. And because we cannot know, the cat is both dead and alive. It is only when we break open the box and learn the condition of the cat that the combination of possible states is lost, and the cat becomes one or the other (dead or alive) ... "

And there we have it; a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma wrapped in a copy of last week's News Of The World.

Does any editor worth their salt dare break open the box?

more info on Schrödinger's Cat:

Stony Brook have demonstrate macroscopic Schr?dinger cat state for the first time

Schr?dinger's Cat - Wikipedia

What Is Schr?dinger's Cat?

What Is Quantum Theory All About - Schr?dinger's Cat

Schr?dinger's Cat Triliogy

Hugh Everett's 'Many Worlds Interpretation' of Schrödinger's Cat: