Matt Haig's "The Midnight Library," Shrödinger's Cat, and Sex in the Park

Recently a good friend and former third grade teammate from Sunrise Elementary, Susan, 

invited me to join a new book club with some retired colleagues, the Sunettes.

It had started while I was in Hawaii, so I missed had the first two meetings.

"I'd love to," I said.  "When are we meeting?"

"On Thursday afternoon," Susan replied.

It was Sunday evening.  "Okay!  What's the book?"

"The Midnight Library by Matt Haig."

Ahh.  Teachers, libraries. Perfect! I thought.  

I vaguely remembered hearing of the book,

A New York Times bestseller.  "I'll order it tonight."  

After slogging through Philip Goff's Galileo's Error for weeks, 

I needed an easy read and a break from philosophy, quantum physics,

and my favorite, Schrödinger's cat.

My Favorite Cat

Sorry, Grumpy Cat ~ You've been dethroned!

I coughed up an extra $2.99 to have Amazon deliver it the next morning.

My week was shaping up to be hectic, and I didn't have time to run to a local bookstore.

When Haig's novel hit my front step late on Monday morning, I dove right in.

No time to read the back cover or inside jacket,

and besides, sometimes it's fun to jump into a book with no preconceptions.

Like when I started a new school year without reading the cum files on my kiddos.

I wanted to spend time with them and form my own first impressions.

With a hot cup of coffee, I settled in to read, pirate style with an eyepatch.

Three hundred pages and one eye, this was totally doable in three days.

Like No Pirate Ever!

I read the opening line:  "Nineteen years before she decided to die, Nora..."

Oh, oh!  I thought.  The novel started with a bang, an undisclosed tragedy.

On the third page, nineteen years later

and twenty-seven hours before Nora decided to die, I read,

"And although she had studied enough existential philosophy..."

Oh, no! Philosophy! I thought Nora wanted to be an astronaut or glaciologist!

What happened?

It was downhill from there.  Her cat Voltaire had been killed.

Nora was a suicidal young woman on antidepressants and anxiety medications.

Too close to home for someone who has struggled with

depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts forever.

Nora decides that she is crap at life and swallows an overdose of her meds.

At 00:00:00, midnight, she walks into an immense library and time doesn't advance.

She meets her high school librarian, Mrs. Elm, who had delivered the news

of her father's death nineteen years before she decided to commit suicide.

"So, I am dead?" Nora asks?

"... Between life and death..."

Damn! I thought.  Quantum Superposition.  Here we go.  

I swear my favorite cat will make an appearance.

Alive or Dead?

"To be, or not to be?"

So begins Nora's adventure in the Midnight Library,

stuck between life and death at 00:00:00.

The library books enable Nora to live different lives,

each life in a different world where she made different choices.

Before time runs out, how does she answer the ultimate question:  

"What is the best way to live?"

Damn! I thought.  The multiverse.  A possibly infinite number of parallel universes,

including one where Louise is getting it right.

I'm not going to say any more about Matt Haig's amazing novel The Midnight Library

except to say that I absolutely loved it.

I connected more with this book than perhaps any other I have read.

So what happened to my post which I was writing last Thursday night

after the book club meeting with my dear Sunrise friends?

I was utterly exhausted after a week of multiple appointments,

enthralled reading and rereading,

and enthusiastically discussing the novel with the Sunettes.

I started to write my post, but I got distracted

by Schrödinger's cat and played in a rabbit hole instead.

When I realized what had happened, it was after 2:00 am,

and there was no way I was going to get anything published.

Not this night.  Not Friday.

But in some parallel universe I did get it published ~ lol!

So here are some Schrödinger cat funnies that I enjoyed:

It has taken me a long time to wrap my mind around

Schrödinger's cat and quantum superposition.

So if you haven't heard about my favorite feline, here's a quick introduction.

Schrödinger's cat is one of the most famous thought experiments in science.

We are often so locked into empirical evidence in science 

that we forget that thought experiments are useful exercises.

"A thought experiment is a hypothetical situation in which a hypothesis, theory,

or principle is laid out for the purpose of thinking through its consequences."  (Wikipedia)

Depending on how the experiment is structured, it may not be possible to perform it,

and, there may not be a need or intention to perform it.

Schrödinger's Cat in Quantum Superposition, Both Alive and Dead 

Consider Schrödinger's unfortunate feline.

The poor creature is trapped in a steel chamber that is sealed off from the outside.

Sealed in with the cat is a Geiger counter containing a tiny amount of radioactive material.

Within an hour, or maybe not, a single atom of the radioactive material will decay.

When an atom decays, the counter tube discharges, 

and through a relay it releases a hammer 

which shatters a flask of hydrocyanic acid and kills the cat.

The radioactive decay is random, and therefore so is the cat's survival or death.

In quantum physics the cat is in a state of superposition, simultaneously alive and dead.

Only when the container is opened by an observer is the superposition resolved.

The cat is dead, or the cat is alive, 

depending upon whether an atom radioactively decayed or not.

My Former Most Favorite Feline, Grumpy Cat

Schrödinger wasn't promoting simultaneously alive-and-dead cats as a serious possibility.

He was illustrating the absurdity of the existing view of quantum mechanics in 1935.

The prevailing theory, the Copenhagen interpretation, maintained that a quantum system

remained in superposition until it reacted with or was observed by the external world.

When this occurs the superposition collapses into one or the other possible states.

"Schrödinger's famous thought experiment poses the question, 

"when does a quantum system stop existing as a superposition of states

and become one or the other?"  (Wikipedia)

PETA exposes animals suffering in laboratories, in the food industry, 

in the clothing trade, and in the entertainment industry

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)

I probably should have introduced Erwin Schrödinger, an Austrian-Irish theoretical physicist (12 August 1887 - 4 January 1961).                                     

Schrödinger in 1933
Wikimedia

Schrödinger won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933 together with

English theoretical physicist Paul Dirac for their work on quantum mechanics.  

Schrödinger was interested in explaining

that an electron in an atom would move as a wave.  

This resulted in the Schrödinger equation, which calculates

how the wave function of a quantum mechanical system evolves over time.  (Britannica)

A Cat Comedian

I will always struggle with the quantum world and how it forces us to see the universe.

I wish I had been born with the gift of understanding higher mathematics.  

I hit a wall with algebra and geometry and just forget calculus and statistics and beyond.

I can sense mathematic's clarity and beauty, but its exact meaning eludes me.

Too often I feel like Charlie Gordon in Flowers for Algernon.

If I had understood higher mathematics, I might have become

an astrophysicist, a cosmologist, or an astrogeologist.

Well, Himself, my sometimes-not-so-Ever-Patient husband, 

is trying to tempt me away from cats, quantum theory, mathematics, and posting.

He knows how to work with ADHD personalities:  

Warn them in advance that closure is coming at a specific time.

He told me about ten minutes ago that he would make me his summer cocktail,

if I would join him for a drink in thirty minutes on our warm deck

(before the snow starts to fly tomorrow).

That gives me about five more times to listen to

Radio Head's 2009 Grammy Performance of 15 Step 

and a chance to add some more Schrödinger cat funnies.

(You may have to click on the volume button in the lower left of the video, if you wish to listen to the video.)

I'm sorry.  I am out of control.  This is my favorite cat, and I can't help myself!

And this feline has been the target of many, many funny jokes.

Schrödinger's cat is alive!

"I'm making the cocktail," Himself is calling.

Closure is approaching.

Just one more funny, and it has nothing to do with my favorite feline.

It is just too darn cute!

"Your drink is ready!"

Closing time.  

I wonder how editing will go after one of Terry's potent cocktails?

***********

And for Rain's Thursday Art Date prompt of May Flowers, Pollination, and Birds,

here are five photographs:

May Flowers Along Piney Creek

Aurora, Colorado

May 5, 2022

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue  

All Rights Reserved

Sex in the Park ~ Pollination 

Cottonwoods are dioecious.

Female and male flowers (catkins) are borne on separate trees.

Top:  Female       Middle:  Male       Bottom:  Female with Seeds Embedded in Cotton

They are cross-pollinated by the wind.

The female catkins produce seeds embedded in cotton which are dispersed by the wind.

Along Piney Creek Aurora, Colorado

May 2020 and 2022

June 2022

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue  

All Rights Reserved

A Male and Female Mallard Pair ~ Birds

Along Piney Creek, Aurora, Colorado

May 5, 2022

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue  

All Rights Reserved

Stay hopeful and creative!

Till next time ~
Fundy Blue



On the Bay of Fundy
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved