{"id":1675,"date":"2025-02-19T19:43:37","date_gmt":"2025-02-19T19:43:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/?p=1675"},"modified":"2025-02-19T19:50:52","modified_gmt":"2025-02-19T19:50:52","slug":"are-people-in-superposition-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/2025\/02\/19\/are-people-in-superposition-states\/","title":{"rendered":"Are people in superposition states?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For any quantum system, <i>every<\/i> pure state is a superposition. The moment we have complete specification of one observable we lose complete specification of another. (In more technical language, whatever eigenstate we are looking at is a superposition of eigenstates of the complementary observable.)<\/p>\n<p>But noone has ever seen a macroscopic object of any kind in a pure state, so the state of our knowledge is even weaker. Every system that is not <i>completely<\/i> isolated is in a statistically mixed state. Just the slightest thermal interaction with an external environment introduces classical uncertainty that precludes the identification of a pure state; and even for a completely isolated system that is anything close to the size of a human, the amount of information required to specify a pure state makes it out of the question.<\/p>\n<p>So the answer to your first question is that quantum mechanics does suggest that anything you ever look at is in an unknown superposition.<\/p>\n<p>But the second question is just totally meaningless.<\/p>\n<p>Source: <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.quora.com\/Does-quantum-mechanics-actually-suggest-people-in-other-rooms-to-you-are-in-a-superposition-Does-it-deny-the-physical-processes-happening-within-spatially-separated-observers\/answer\/Alan-Cooper-5\">(1001) Alan Cooper&#8217;s answer to Does quantum mechanics actually suggest people in other rooms to you are in a superposition? Does it deny the physical processes happening within spatially separated observers? &#8211; Quora<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For any quantum system, every pure state is a superposition. The moment we have complete specification of one observable we lose complete specification of another. (In more technical language, whatever eigenstate we are looking at is a superposition of eigenstates of the complementary observable.) But noone has ever seen a macroscopic object of any kind &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/2025\/02\/19\/are-people-in-superposition-states\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Are people in superposition states?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,4],"tags":[28,94],"topics":[14],"class_list":["post-1675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all","category-quora-answers","tag-quantum","tag-superposition","topics-quantum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1675"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1677,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1675\/revisions\/1677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1675"},{"taxonomy":"topics","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topics?post=1675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}