PP3

A problem with wind turbines is, of course, that their power is intermittent. I have seen talk of using compressed air or batteries to store the power but both these solutions have problems with efficiency, and batteries leak power even when not used. I was thinking, what about using a heavy weight to store power? Electric motors would lift a weight, then when power was needed, the weight would fall, running the motors backwards and generating power. I guess it would be very efficient, and there would be no leakage of power even if the stored energy was not used for months or even years. It is low-tech and very low maintenance. The heavier the weight, the less far it would need to travel up and down to store and produce the same amount of power. To save materials, I was thinking the wind turbine itself could be the weight: it would only need to move up and down a few cm to store a huge amount of power. I have no background in engineering, so please tell me, is this a good idea, or is there a reason why this has not already been done?

Imagine the standard Schrodinger's cat (let's call it AliceCat). It exists in a quantum superposition of both alive and dead until it is observed. But what if the observer is another Schrodinger's cat (let's call it BobCat)? A one way mirror lets BobCat observe AliceCat, but as BobCat is both alive and dead he is both observing and not observing AliceCat. What would happen? I don't think BobCat could simultaneously cause and not cause AliceCat's position to collapse into dead or alive. And what if the mirror were replaced by glass so that AliceCat and BobCat were observing (and not observing) each other? Am I right in thinking that only an observer that is not in a superposition can cause a superposition to collapse? If so, what would happen if a weapon big enough to destroy the universe were hooked up to a Schrodinger mechanism, putting the entire universe into a superposition (Schrodinger's universe if you will)? If there can be no observer outside the universe, presumably the whole universe and everything in it would remain in a superposition indefinitely - and no observer in the universe could cause superpositions to collapse? If so, does that prove, from the fact that we can cause superpositions to collapse, that the universe is not in a superposition?