SchrГ¶dinger's Canon: The Expanded Universe is only proven canonical or not when the next primary canonical installment is released.SchrГ¶dinger's Butterfly: The story is both real and All Just a Dream simultaneously.Here's a video that explains the principle in question.ДЄs you might know, even This Very Wiki is fond of using this. Sometimes though, it's just used to show off the writer's cleverness. To put it another way, even famous and intelligent physicists like SchrГ¶dinger can be completely wrong. In short, the Copenhagen Interpretation doesn't predict a cat simultaneously alive and dead, but rather a cat that is fully alive until it is fully dead. To learn more, see the Quantum Physics page. In the theoretical box (no physicist would actually do this it's highly unethical), the observer isn't the scientist, it's not even the cat it's the Geiger counter, and it keeps the wave function collapsed into either 100% alive or 100% dead, and not 50% both. The flaw lies in not knowing what it means to observe something observation is not the passive thing like in the world of the everyday, but an active process. SchrГ¶dinger thought that this idea was Insane Troll Logic, so he extended it to show: if the decay of a radioactive nucleus will set off a device which will release toxic gas into a box that contains a cat, and if (as per the Copenhagen interpretation) the nucleus is 50% decayed and 50% undecayed, the device is 50% triggered and 50% untriggered, so the cat is simultaneously 50% killed and 50% still alive.ДЄs mentioned earlier, the supposed paradox relies on a flawed understanding of Quantum Physics. The Copenhagen interpretation says that, because of this, each particle is 50% decayed and 50% undecayed. Ironically, the original experiment was used to show how stupid the idea of superposition was. This thought experiment immediately became popular as a metaphor for uncertainty of the truth, fate, Quantum Physics, how quantum physics can do anything, and whatever the hell is inside that box. The experiment posits that if we can accept that small particles (like the radioactive trigger) can be in these kinds of states, then we have to accept that large objects (like the cat) can also be in these kinds of states, raising the question of why we don't routinely observe that. The reason the experiment is interesting is that in quantum mechanics, things like subatomic particles routinely exist in superpositions of states, and correct predictions of the outcomes of certain experiments can only be made by taking these effects into account note A classical example is the double-slit experiment for electrons where the resulting interference pattern is only expected if you assume the electron is in a superposition of states.

According to the many-worlds interpretation, what actually happens is that the entire world splits into a superposition of worlds where the cat is alive, and those where it is dead. Note that the paradox only exists in a flawed understanding of the Copenhagen interpretation, the classic interpretation of quantum mechanics. The thought experiment was originally a critique of the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Physics, where the cat can be living and dead at the same time as a superposition of 'realities'. The thing is, after an hour, until the box is open, there is no way to determine whether the cat inside is alive or dead, thus allowing the cat to be both alive and dead. A small amount of radioactive substance is placed near the Geiger counter, calibrated so that there is a 50% chance of triggering the death trap within one hour. The Geiger counter controls a mechanism to smash a vial of toxic gas, killing the cat.

Erwin SchrГ¶dinger's thought experiment involved a cat sealed inside a box with a Geiger counter. The SchrГ¶dinger's Cat thought experiment is increasing in popularity as a Motif in fiction.

Erwin schrГ¶dinger cat