Schrödinger’s cat, meet Babin’s Rabit [sic]

Too long with radioactive isotopes

Isotopes may cause cancer, but only in California.

I have had students of varying intellectual finesse in my tenure as an Information Technology instructor. We’re required to teach “bare-bones” skills, but I enjoy dropping other nuggets of current information to my classes as I find them in hopes of inspiring discussions about where technology is heading and how it will affect us. Well, I shared an article found on Engadget earlier this year about Quantum Networks being faster than light (http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/13/northwestern-university-researchers-route-photon-qubit-make-qua/) which started a rather spirited dialogue in a Computer Forensics class.  The rest of this story and resulting theory happens in three parts.

Act 1: Explaining (briefly) quantum physics for non-science majors

Einstein once explained that quantum physics is, “Spooky action at a distance.” Spooky, to be forward, will find new meaning later. The tragic Lolcat for this theory (belonging to the imagination of Erwyn Schrödinger) is a particular feline known for living in a box with radioactive isotopes, a hammer, and a flask of hydrocyanic acid.  Hey, it was 1935 and the science kits back then had all the fun stuff.  The cat and all of the (in the state of California) cancer causing materials work in the story as so: if the isotope should degrade (as it measurably will at some point depending on the quality of previously unmentioned sensors), the hammer shatters the flask thus releasing poisonous gas. Assuming the cat was not Ninja-turtled by the radiation, the purr thing would be rendered “living impaired,” by the vapors of kitty-unfriendly gas. The trick is that the box was sealed and no one could possibly know the current living conditions of Schrödinger’s Cat. So, the feline existed as both alive and dead simultaneously. This is referred to as being in two states concurrently. In the argument of science, the cat could continue to exist (or not) indefinitely until 1980, when PETA was  formed and would’ve surely ransacked the cat box, killing Schröddy accidentally; thus ending all hopes for thwarting Shredder as a ninja turtl…  …cat.

  Act 2: In which a Rabbit is completely unrelated to physics, but maybe voodoo

A story was shared in the same class (on a later date) by the only student to ever borrow every issue of Wired Magazine I keep available in the computer lab (I put them there for just such reasons). His story begins with a deceased rabbit. He found a dead bunny in his front yard (its demise was met by unknown means). He tells us that he then hung the bunny in a tree (I like to imagine that by, “hung,” he meant in a cage, but there’s no telling). He made a sign which read “Free Radit [sic, with the d being a backwards b].” His youthful hopes, I think, were just to creep out his neighbors. The plans of mischief ended up backfiring when the first highly-anticipated knock on his door was a woman who informed him that the hanging rabbit would welcome voodoo and black magic into his house if he chose to leave the carcass there. His practical joke was promptly removed and given a proper burial…    …with holy water…    …so that it wouldn’t become bunnicula, a zombunny, or something worse of course. This led to a few nights of unrest.

  Act 3: In which the rabbit joins Schröddy in the box and adds a third quantum option

Armed now with dark magicks; science fiction; science fact; and science theory, Mr. Babin proposed the following spooky actions. If a rabit [sic] were to be sealed in a box with radioactive isotopes, a hammer, and a flask of hydrocyanic acid then hung (sealed in said box) from a tree where a wiccan, witch or voodoo doctor lived in the same neighborhood (statistically, a 1 in 4 chance); then at any given moment the “harmless bunny” could be any state of alive, dead, or zombified by either the extended exposure of unlicensed radiactive materials (see what you get for taking the cool materials out of “My First Science Kit” toys) or dark thaumaturgy. Take your pick.  The rabit [sic] could also exist as combinations of alive/dead, alive/undead, dead/undead, or alive/dead/undead.

Conclusion
This effectively makes seven states to a Qubit allowing for multiple superpositions of quantum state and now blows open the world of quantum computing. Eat that Schrödinger’s Cat.