Schrödinger's Dyson Shell is constructed around a dying star and its orbiting planets. It is thick and impenetrable to light in order to retain all the energy from inside. There is no way of knowing what is happening inside the solar system within.

When the dying star emits it's final dying cataclysmic breath everything within the sphere will be annihilated but the sphere will remain, due to the divergence theorem applied to gravity.

A small hatch sits lonely on the endless field of the shell's outer surface. Floating by its side is a man, named Erwin, in a pressurised suit, attached by cable to a bracket on the surface. Floating beside him is his cat in another, smaller, pressurised suit.

Erwin, and his cat, wait for an eternity pondering the hatch, the existence of many inhabited planets hinging (literally) on their opening of it, for until it is opened the solar system within is both dead and alive at once.

...

Unbeknowest to Erwin, a man named Freeman, living on the inside of the sphere, floats but 3 metres away examining the hatch from the inside. It occurs to Freeman that if he opens the hatch, he might discover that the entire outside has been destroyed in a freak gravitational prolapse... and it suddenly becomes clear that the entire Universe's existence rests in his trembling hands.
-- theleopard, Jan 23 2007

Schrödinger's Cat http://en.wikipedia...C3%B6dinger%27s_cat
I'm sure everybody knows, but for those who don't... [theleopard, Jan 24 2007]

Dyson Sphere http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere
Similarly... [theleopard, Jan 24 2007]

It does raise the interesting point about Schrödinger's thought experiment; Were the cat to wire up the universe to explode (based on the outcome of some indeterminate event) prior to being interred in his information proof box, then from the cat's point of view, the universe would have to both exist and not exist in a superposition of existential states.
-- zen_tom, Jan 23 2007


You mean it doesn't?
-- BunsenHoneydew, Jan 23 2007


A mind-bendingly intelligent cat who displays meloncholic qualities of pondered philosophy, machiavellian research, existential-based moral denial and, of course, oblivion.

"Meow, meow, meow."
-- theleopard, Jan 23 2007


Brilliant!+
-- zeno, Jan 24 2007


My skull is a locked box, containing my brain. Inside my brain is this idea, which may at some point cause my brain to explode.

Thus, my brain is now both alive and dead, in a //superposition of existential states//.

I think I'll have a beer, now. [+]
-- m_Al_com, Jan 24 2007


Beer kills brains too ya know. Not just existential flabbergastery.

But, "Cheers" anyway.
-- theleopard, Jan 24 2007


[z_t]'s first point is an interesting one. Schroedinger's cat illustrates how quantum events will not resolve themselves into a particular outcome until measured by an observer. If you destroy the universe then there is effectively no observer so everything will exist in a constant state of flux. Probably.

It's also a little like the tree falling in the empty forest question: does the universe exist at all if there's no one here to see it? I, for one, am guessing 'yes'.
-- wagster, Jan 24 2007


Trees don't fall, what we perceive (or not) as a falling tree is actually the action of the universe bending about the pivot located at a particular tree's base. Any sound that might be generated is a function of these hinges not being oiled frequently enough.
-- zen_tom, Jan 24 2007


I stand corrected by someone with a better grasp of fizzics than me.
-- wagster, Jan 24 2007


Hmm. However, both the inside and the outside of the sphere is under constant observation, and thus neither the sphere's internals, nor the rest of the universe can be in superimposed quantum states?

If I were Freeman, I'd be legging it out of that hatch.
-- david_scothern, Jan 24 2007


I am beginning to get the idea that physics simply derives its origen from a never ending string of gags and spoofs that no one happenes to see any measurable contradiction in. Thank you leopard for your brilliant work I am sure this will be quoted endlessly in classrooms to stimulate the thought of youngsters like the demon controlled gate between two boxes of particles.
-- MercuryNotMars, Jan 24 2007


Er... any time.

[zen_tom] What happens to the monkey?
-- theleopard, Jan 24 2007


Opening the hatch isn't a problem is it? Surely it's the looking outside/inside that's the problem. It seems to me that we should find this Erwin bloke and his mate Mr Freeman and cut off their air supplies in order to possibly save the Universe...or not.
-- DrBob, Jan 25 2007


I rather like the idea of the enormous responsibility both Erwin and Freeman have been bestowed, like Gods presiding over a World that they have the power to destroy, but only by looking at it. If they look and it's destroyed, it could be perceived as their fault because if they don't look the other World could still be there, alive and well. Therefore, if the World is destroyed and one of them looks (for there would only be one), curiosity will have killed the Universe, and not just the cat.
-- theleopard, Jan 25 2007



random, halfbakery