SUGGESTED READING Reality is just a quantum wave function By Alyssa Ney But cats? Cats are either one thing or another, dead or alive, they can’t be both, surely. It’s one thing having particles be in a state of superposition. We might be able to dismiss this effect as a peculiarity of the microscopic world of atoms, but what happens when that world has a direct consequence on the macroscopic, everyday world of tables, chairs, and cats? That’s what Schrödinger’s thought experiment sought to illuminate, and in the process expose the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics as absurd. Writing to Einstein in 1935, Schrödinger’s imaginary experimental set-up was designed to expose the critical flaws of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, which holds that quantum systems stay in a superposition of two or more states until the system interacts with an external observer ]. But for a cat in a box to be both asleep and awake - as opposed to the original cat which was both dead and alive - is, if decidedly less cruel, just as strange. Amanda Gefter Sheldon Goldstein Jenann Ismael Chiara Marletto Tim Maudlin Alyssa Ney Tim Palmer Carlo Rovelli Lev Vaidman.Ĭontemporary versions of Erwin Schrödinger’s famous cat thought experiment often prefer to use sleeping gas instead of cyanide. Nine leading thinkers interpret the meaning of Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment.

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