This wouldn't be a youtube channel without a cat video - so without further ado, we present:
Schrodinger's cat.
I'm sure you've heard some version of this famous thought experiment: you put a cat in
a bunker with some unstable gunpowder that has a 50% chance of blowing up in the next
minute, and 50% chance of doing nothing.
[the gunpowder is Einstein's version - Schrodinger preferred poisonous gas] So until we look
in the bunker, we don't know whether the cat is dead or alive, and when we do look, it
is either dead or alive.
But if we repeat the experiment enough times with enough cats and bunkers and gunpowder,
we'll see that half the time kitty survives, and half the time kitty goes bye-bye.
The quantum mechanical interpretation is that before we look, the cat is in a superposition
- it's both dead AND alive - and our act of looking forces nature's decision.
So our curiosity kills the cat.
But what about the cat's perspective?
Well, the cat either sees the gunpowder explode, or not – so inside the bunker we actually
have these two possibilities: "the powder exploded and the cat saw it explode" or "the
powder didn't explode and the cat didn't see it explode".
There's no option: "the powder exploded and the cat didn't see it explode" - so the cat's
reality becomes entangled with the outcome of the experiment!
And it's our observation of the experiment that forces nature to "collapse" to one option
or the other.
But we're like the cat, too – either the cat dies and we see it dead, or the cat lives
and we see it alive – so who's observing us to force nature to "collapse" to one reality?
Or do both possibilities happen in parallel within a larger multiverse?
This "collapsing to one reality" problem is one of the biggest unanswered questions in
quantum physics.
So for kitty's sake, can i has answer pleez?