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Schrödinger’s Cat
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Schrödinger's cat
Schrödinger's cat is a famous illustration of the principle in quantum theory
of superposition, proposed by Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. Schrödinger's cat
serves to demonstrate the apparent conflict between what
quantum theory tells us is true about the nature and behavior of matter
on the microscopic level and what we observe to be true about the nature and
behavior of matter on the macroscopic level.
Here's Schrödinger's (theoretical)
experiment: We place a living cat into a steel chamber, along with a device
containing a vial of hydrocyanic acid. There is, in the chamber, a very small
amount of a radioactive substance. If even a single atom of the substance
decays during the test period, a relay mechanism will trip a hammer, which
will, in turn, break the vial and kill the cat. The observer cannot know
whether or not an atom of the substance has decayed, and consequently, cannot
know whether the vial has been broken, the hydrocyanic acid released, and the
cat killed. Since we cannot know, the cat is both dead and alive according to
quantum law, in a superposition of states. It is only when we break open the
box and learn the condition of the cat that the superposition is lost, and the
cat becomes one or the other (dead or alive). This situation is sometimes
called quantum indeterminacy or the observer's paradox: the
observation or measurement itself affects an outcome, so that the outcome as
such does not exist unless the measurement is made. (That is, there is no
single outcome unless it is observed.)
We know that superposition actually
occurs at the subatomic level, because there are observable effects of
interference, in which a single particle is demonstrated to be in multiple locations
simultaneously. What that fact implies about the nature of reality on the
observable level (cats, for example, as opposed to electrons) is one of the
stickiest areas of quantum physics. Schrödinger himself is rumored to have
said, later in life, that he wished he had never met that cat.
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