Happy Birthday to Schrödinger’s Cat

Schrödinger’s cat is a thought experiment, sometimes described as a paradox, devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. It illustrates what he saw as the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics applied to everyday objects.

Inside a box, there is a cat. It may be dead or it may be alive, because also in that small space is a vial of poisonous gas that has a 50/50 chance of releasing its destruction upon kitty. But no one can know the feline’s fate until they look. This is the basic story of Schrödinger’s Cat, a thought experiment physicist Erwin Schrödinger first proposed 80 years ago today. 

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