Skip to main content

Schrodinger's cat

If you believe your head is not screwed on right, this movie may be for you.   No it is not called  'Schrodinger's cat' but is based on the paradox of that name.   Schrodinger was an Austrian who formulated this idea to describe the multiple states in which something can exist.



The Austrian physicist posited that if a cat is enclosed in a box with a substance that might kill the cat then at any given time there are two (or more) states that simultaneously exist with respect to the cat.  It is both Dead and Alive at the same time and the actual outcome is confirmed by an observer who opens the box.


The movie that explores this idea is called 'Coherence'.



It is a sort of low budget, stage play set in a house (of the director) to handle a complex subject in this sci fi thriller.  Director portrays this concept, not unlike duality using a passing comet as the backdrop.  Movie has a cast of completely unfamiliar actors but the acting is very natural and engaging.


A group of friends gathered in a house over dinner find strange incidents happen to them during this passage of the comet.  All their mobile phone screens shatter for no reason.  Then there is a widespread blackout.  The lights go out in the house and one of the friend decides to go to the only house that has lights on the street to try and email his scientist brother about the unfolding events.


While he and a friend go out the rest of them wait it out for their return.  When the two do come back they are stunned and one of them describes watching the same set of friends minus the two (themselves) in a room sitting at a table in the other house but exactly like the one they left.  From there on events unfold that convey to the viewer that there are basically at least two sets of friends (the same friends) having a similar conversation and interaction which confounds logic.


They are all living in parallel universes and each stream continues to exist without collapsing into the other.


The movie ends with one of the guys talking to his female friend when his phone rings with the caller id of the same girl standing in front of him.


I suppose I now see the way things really are.  Or do I?







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New England is gleaming in the fall

 This autumn the weather gods cooperated as we took a family trip in the northeast to see six states that qualify or makeup what is known colloquially in America as New England. Mass, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Rhode Island (tiniest state in the union). The outing helped tally up the states we either lived in, visited or have worked in to 47. Guess which three have eluded this intrepid traveling family. Any rate the drive was all in about 1,800 miles and included some memorable geographic wonders or points of interest.  Easternmost part of state of Massachusetts being one.  Furthest drivable road east in Mass being another. Visit to all Ivy League schools (term harkens to a collegiate athletics conference and generally regarded as elite academic institutes of some repute worldwide) is another random bucket list item of which this trip afforded the chance to knock two more of the list.  Dartmouth in Hanover, NH and Brown (and its sister institute the RISD  - school f

Searching for a lavish 'fill in the blank with other adjectives and gender' in bed

 Many of the readers of this blog have experienced this. Strange sounding messages popping up in your text or WA or emails all day long from some exotic sounding locale with an out of this world individual looking for love, sex, money or other paraphernalia to get a high. I mean granted that electronic spamming is a low cost enterprise and all but the sheer volumes and the variety in these exhortations is beyond imagination. Having a desire to engage you in some sort of sexual payola or invest in some arcane crypto scheme must be a profound algorithm that someone from Oklahoma to Odessa is cranking on through the night and watching one in a few million fall for. Otherwise this nonsense would not exist I suspect. It would be funny to watch the lifecycle of some such persona that creates said content and that of a prospect for this invite becoming an unwilling or willing participant. Then that whole thing could go on some social channel and earn likes and subscriptions for someone else a

Lakeside frivolities

 We moved to the Charlotte area not knowing where exactly our new home would be. Turns out it was by a popular lake formed by the damming of the Catawba river which flows north to south in the Carolinas. Local electricity generation utility built a series of dams along the waterway for hydro and couple nuclear plants as well to supply the state grid.  The lake our house butts into is Lake Wylie. While tract home build has picked up in the Carolinas the developer often carves out parcels that they can get their hands on leaving behind privately owned lots that the individual owner may not want to sell. Our house is part of a subdivision but backs into actual lake front yardage that has always been part of legacy family owned properties who chose to build a cabin or getaway and did not sell to a corporation wanting to build in the hundreds. As such we can see the water through the year but it does not afford actual water access.  That privilege is to our neighbors who still maintain thei