But for what observations are concerned, the result is exactly the same as in the Copenhagen interpretation. When someone opens the box, that decides which universe they’re in. So, there’s a universe where the cat lives and one where the cat dies. In the many-worlds interpretation, in contrast, each possible measurement outcome happens in a separate universe. The same is the case in all interpretations according to which quantum mechanics is a theory about the knowledge we have about a system, and not about the system itself.
In the most widely taught interpretation, the Copenhagen interpretation, the question what state the cat is in before you measure it is just meaningless. Well, depends on your interpretation of quantum mechanics, that is, what you think the mathematics means. Before you measure it, the nucleus is both decayed and not decayed, and so, it seems that before one opens the box, the cat is both dead and alive. If it decays, the trigger breaks the vial of poison, which kills the cat.īut the decay follows the laws of quantum physics. The nucleus of the atom has a fifty percent chance of decaying in a certain amount of time. In this experiment, a cat is in a box, together with a vial of poison, a trigger mechanism, and a radioactive atom. This amplification is what Erwin Schrödinger wanted to illustrate with a hypothetical experiment he came up with in 1935. But these superpositions for large objects can’t be easily ignored, because you can take the tiny ones and amplify them to macroscopic size. Now, you may think that being in a quantum superposition is something that only tiny particles can do. We know this experimentally, and I explained the mathematics behind this in an earlier video.
The thing is that in quantum mechanics, if two states exist separately, like an object being here and being there, then the superposition – that is the same object both here and there – must also exist. The system here could be a single particle, like a photon, but it could also be a big object made of many particles. That are systems which can be in two states at the same time, until you make a measurement, which suddenly “collapses” the superposition into one definite measurement outcome. One especially peculiar aspect of quantum mechanics is that it forces you to accept the existence of superpositions.
Quantum mechanics has struck physicists as weird ever since its discovery, more than a century ago. It is really both dead and alive? If so, what does that mean? And what has recent research to say about it? That’s what we’ll talk about today. The internet, as we all know, was invented so we can spend our days watching cat videos, which is why this video is about the most famous of all science cats, Schrödinger’s cat.
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