Rizwan Virk

So Schrodinger's cat is this experiment where there's a cat in a box, theoretical experiment.

Nobody's killing any cats.

And there's some poison in there and there's some radioactive material that has a 50% chance of setting off the poison and a 50% chance that it won't, let's say after an hour or so.

And so after an hour, the chances that the cat is dead or alive is 50%, right?

Because it's a 50% chance.

But what the observer effect and what quantum mechanics is telling us is that both of those possibilities exist.

The cat is both alive and dead until somebody looks at that box, right?

The observer in this case.

And so until then, the cat is in the state of superposition.

And this is what makes quantum mechanics so weird.

This is why Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize winner, said, nobody understands quantum mechanics.

And Niels Bohr said, if you're not shocked by this, then you haven't understood it.

Because to us, the cat has to be alive.

or it has to be dead.

And we don't know until we see.

We don't know until we see, but it's only one.

And common sense tells us it's one of those, right?

But quantum mechanics, through the double slit experiment and the observer effect, says both of those possibilities exist in the present until the time when someone looks and someone measures that result.

So then we say the superposition, which is two states, comes down to one state.

So the cat is both alive and dead.