Michael Jackson and Schrodinger’s Twit

A particularly maudlin friend of mine runs a celebrity death sweepstake in his local pub. Members chip in with a small wager each week and offer their prediction as to which celeb will die next. If no celebs on their list dies, then the chip in with another pound and the pot gets bigger.

Needless to say members of the syndicate are keen to read the gossip columns in their favorite tabloid paper just in case the celeb they love to hate has popped their clogs, snuffed it, gone to that great glitzy audition in the sky where everyone gets a part…

Of course, these days, we tend to discover about celebrity activities on Twitter first, usually when a famous name starts trending on the site. But, until you click the link on Twitter you cannot be sure whether twitter interest in a particular celebrity is because they had a baby, got arrested, are heading for the divorce courts, or just plain old dead. Those names sit in a kind of limbo state.

It’s almost like Schrodinger’s cat in its lethal box. Until you lift the lid you won’t know whether the quantum-controlled cyanide capsule burst and killed the cat or not. Think about it, when you first saw Michael Jackson trending on Twitter, you may not have heard he’d died. After all, he was about to perform in London, maybe that was why his name was trending. For a fleeting second as your cursor hovered over his name, and in some bizarre sense, Michael Jackson’s name was an infinity of possibilities.

By the way, no one in the celebrity death sweepstake had Michael Jackson as their wager although at least one of them will certainly recognise the Schrodinger reference.