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Artist's
depiction of Schrödinger's cat. (Image credit: Shutterstock) |
The thought experiment known as Schrödinger's cat is one of quantum physics' most famous and misunderstood concepts. Researchers have come to amazing conclusions regarding physical reality after giving it a lot of thought.
Who came up with Schrödinger's cat?
According
to an article in Quanta Magazine, the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who
helped develop the study of quantum mechanics, first conceived up his feline
conundrum in 1935 as a remark on issues first given by the luminary Albert
Einstein.
Most of
Einstein and Schrödinger's colleagues had noticed that quantum entities
exhibited exceedingly strange behaviour while building their new grasp of the
subatomic realm. Niels Bohr, a Danish physicist, advocated for the idea that
particles like electrons do not have well-defined properties until they are
measured. Before that, the particles were in a state known as a superposition
of states, with 50 percent of the time being oriented "up" and 50
percent of the time being orientated "down."
This
ambiguous explanation irritated Einstein in particular. He was curious as to
how the universe recognizes when someone is measuring something. With his
famous conceptual cat, Schrödinger exposed this folly.
In a 1935
paper titled "The Current Situation in Quantum Mechanics,"
Schrödinger proposed a weird contraption. A hammer attached to a Geiger counter
is suspended above a box containing a sealed vial of cyanide, which is pointed
towards a small lump of moderately radioactive uranium. There's also a kitty
inside the box (remember, this is a thought experiment that's never been
carried out).
The
experiment is then sealed and let to run for a given amount of time, possibly
an hour. The uranium, whose particles obey quantum physics, has a probability
of producing radiation that will be detected by the Geiger counter, which will
then unleash the hammer and smash the vial, killing the cat by cyanide
poisoning.
Until the
box is opened and the cat's status is "measured," according to those
like Bohr, it will exist in a state that is both alive and dead. People like Einstein
and Schrödinger were sceptical of such a concept, which contradicts everything
we know about cats: they are either living or dead, not both at the same time.
In his book "What Is Real?" science journalist Adam Becker writes, "Quantum physics lacked a key component, a tale about how it linked up with objects in the world" (Basic Books, 2018). "How does quantum physics govern the amazing number of atoms that make up the world we see?"
Is Schrödinger's cat real?
The lack of a clear dividing line between the quantum and ordinary realms was at the heart of Bohr's odd view of reality, as illustrated by Schrödinger's cat. While most people believe it demonstrates the validity of particles having no clearly defined qualities until they are measured, Schrödinger's original goal was to demonstrate that such a concept was absurd. Physicists, on the other hand, have largely disregarded this subject for decades, preferring to focus on other issues.
However,
beginning in the 1970s, researchers were able to demonstrate that quantum
particles may be generated in states that constantly correspond to one another
— for example, if one is "up," the other is "down" — a
phenomenon known as entanglement. Quantum computing, which promises to develop
calculating machines that are significantly quicker than present technology, is
based on such research.
In 2010,
physicists also succeeded in creating a real-world replica of Schrödinger's
cat, however this time without the use of felicide (aka, kitty murder).
Scientists from the University of California, Santa Barbara, created a
resonator, which is essentially a small tuning fork the size of a pixel on a
computer screen. They put it in a superposition where it was oscillating and
not oscillating at the same time, demonstrating that even very massive things may
occupy strange quantum states.
Recent
tests have put groups of up to 2,000 atoms in two separate places at the same
time, blurring the microscopic-macroscopic divide even further. Researchers at
the University of Glasgow were able to photograph entangled photons in 2019
using a unique camera that took a picture every time a photon appeared with its
entangled partner.
While
physicists and philosophers have yet to agree on how to conceive about quantum
mechanics, Schrödinger's ideas have spawned a slew of promising research
directions that are expected to continue for the foreseeable future.
References:
Read how
one physicist reconciles the conundrum of Schrödinger's cat, from TheConversation.
Learn more
about the basics of quantum mechanics from Stanford University.
Watch
"The Real Meaning of Schrödinger's Cat," from Ask A Spaceman, withPaul Sutter.
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