Erwin Schrödinger’s carried out an experiment in which, he took his cat and placed it in a box which contained a mechanism involving a radioactive material and a flask of poison. If the radioactive material undergoes decay, it will cause the bottle to break and release the poison.
After an hour, there are 2 equally likely events, either the decay has occurred and the poison released has killed the cat or that the above-mentioned events has not occurred and the cat is alive. As long as the box remains closed, no one can be certain of the events that had taken place.
At that time of uncertainty, the cat is considered to be both dead and alive at the same time. This formed the basis of “Superposition” in quantum physics. Superposition states that in a quantum system there are several quantum states that all exist together at the same time. Quantum superposition is something that happens throughout nature. Let’s consider an electron, it consists of an intrinsic angular momentum called as spin and there are 2 spin states: spin-Up and spin-Down respectively. When an electron is in superposition, it’s different states are considered as different outcomes of equal probability, only when the property is measured, one can be for sure of the event that has occurred.
Similarly, an electron is considered to have both up and down spin, during superposition, but only when it is measured, we know which spin state in exact.
The Schrödinger’s cat wasn’t a real experiment in the first place, it was merely a thought process to show how different people interpreted quantum mechanics that lead to absurd outcomes.
Considering the theory of parallel universe, there are multiple outcomes of an event occurring differently in each universe. For example, a coin is tossed and it has 2 outcomes that are either heads or tails. The outcome might be heads in this universe but it might be tails in the parallel. The uncertainty will always lie.
Branching out a bit from quantum mechanics, is there somethings that we can learn from this experiment? For any path we choose, there are going to a hundred of outcomes and no one can predict it before-hand. The only way of knowing is by taking that chance. It might turn out to be good or bad but only the experience will tell. Procrastinating will not take you anywhere, just take an action and know it for yourself. Also, we now know that Schrödinger’s was a cat person after all!
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