Every quantum physicist’s favourite feline, Schrödinger’s cat, used to make about as much sense to me as this photo:
Philippe Halsman's 1948 photo of Salvador Dalí, some flying cats, and a chair
But things are now a great deal clearer, thanks to this excellent “Minute Physics” animation:
And here’s an explanation of the science behind this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics, won by Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess for their mind-bending discovery that the expansion of the universe is speeding up.
Lots of other equally awesome animations can be viewed over on the Minute Physics YouTube channel.
CATCH AS CAT CAN
– James Ph. Kotsybar
Due to quantum flux in which it is caught,
Schrödinger’s cat’s both still and a breather.
Something that has to be either or not
can also be both while it is neither.
The observer is the important part,
determining the final feline fate.
By measurement, there beats a feline heart:
By measurement, the purring does abate.
But there’s a factor often overlooked
when staging this experiment in thought:
Before the box is closed and latch is hooked,
there’s the observer within who’s been caught.
Before the box opens on judgment-day,
the cat in the box has something to say.