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(More physics: The Physics of Waterslides.) Until the box is opened, an observer doesn't know whether the cat is alive or dead-because the cat's fate is intrinsically tied to whether or not the atom has decayed and the cat would, as Schrödinger put it, be "living and dead. Physicists say the atom exists in a state known as a superposition-both decayed and not decayed at the same time. The radioactive decay is a random process, and there is no way to predict when it will happen. When the radioactive substance decays, the Geiger detects it and triggers the hammer to release the poison, which subsequently kills the cat. The Nobel prize-winning physicist would have turned 126 years old on Monday and to celebrate, Google honored his birth with a cat-themed Doodle, which pays tribute to the paradox Schrödinger proposed in 1935 in the following theoretical experiment.Ī cat is placed in a steel box along with a Geiger counter, a vial of poison, a hammer, and a radioactive substance. Despite his misgivings, Schrödinger shared the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics with Dirac for his work on formulating new theories of quantum mechanics.His feline paradox thought experiment has become a pop culture staple, but it was Erwin Schrödinger's work in quantum mechanics that cemented his status within the world of physics. Schrödinger thought this made the probabilistic interpretation of his theory a nonsense! Born retorted that as soon as the lid on the box is lifted so we can observe the cat, the act of observation collapses the two possible wave functions into a single one, causing the cat to be definitely dead or alive. In the language of quantum mechanics, the cat's wave function is a superposition of the 'dead' and 'alive' wave functions. According to Max Born's interpretation of quantum mechanics, exactly one hour after this macabre experiment began, the box would contain a cat which is neither alive nor dead but rather in a mixture of these two states.
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After one hour, it would be equally likely that the cat would be alive or dead. The radioactive source would be selected to have a quantum mechanical probability of 50% to decay per hour. Alongside the cat would be a radiation detector which, upon registering a radioactive decay, would cause a hammer to fall and break open a flask of deadly poison that would kill the cat immediately. In Erwin Schrödinger's famous thought experiment he imagined a cat in a box together with a radioactive source. Is Schrödinger's cat the most famous cat in science? Despite his misgivings, Schrödinger shared the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics with Dirac for his work on formulating new theories of quantum mechanics.
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Nobel Prize - Is Schrödinger's cat the most famous cat in science? In Erwin Schrödinger's famous thought experiment he imagined a cat in a box together with a radioactive source.