Over Shabbos, the Shalosh Seudos discussion turned to the Monty Hall problem, which confused a lot of people [and which (#Humblebrag) I was able to clear up for them in under 30 seconds ;)].
Then, because I saw they were having such a good time with that thought, I brought up Schrödinger's cat. This isn't really a puzzle, but rather a mashal for an idea in quantum physics.
The basic idea of Schrödinger's cat is that you put a cat in a box, along with a Geiger counter connected to a source of radiation, with a machine that will release poison that will kill the cat should the device detect radioactivity. What they claim is that until you open the box and see what happened, the cat is both alive and dead until observed (see here, here and here). [and this threw my friends for a real loop ;)]
This got me thinking: what would happen if someone's son (only child) found their way into a Schrödinger's cat box, and his father died while he was in there? Would his wife have to do yibbum/chalitza?
What if the father was the one in the box, and the son died while he was in there, and after that the box was opened and the father is found dead in the box -- is there yibbum?
Please note: unless you can tell me otherwise (with a source!) that this is a regular safek, for argument's sake let's assume that it's not; and that there is such a thing as
alive and dead until observed.
No comments:
Post a Comment