The Cat isn't Alive
Let's understand Schrödinger's cat experiment because there is so much nonsense around it in terms of interpretation that people literally think that the cat was both alive and dead at the same time.
People interpret this as the outcomes of collapsing wave function where the result was literally a dual state before the observation. None of these are correct interpretations because you think there is a cat but there is no cat in the first place. It's just a thought experiment to understand how wave function behaves prior to measurement and even mathematically they collapse too when you calculate it on a piece of paper.
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This Schrödinger's cat thought experiment, proposed by Austrian-Irish physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935, is actually meant to illustrate the paradoxes and strange implications of quantum mechanics over the macroscopic world and even in that he meant to make the superposition principle understand more intuitively. It's not a literal suggestion of a cat being both alive and dead at once, but rather, he was showing how bizarre quantum mechanics could be when extended to larger systems. Systems like even a small rock or a glass marble or a piece of paper on which we calculate wave function mathematically.
A cat is placed in a sealed box with a radioactive atom, a Geiger counter, a vial of poison, and a hammer. If the radioactive atom decays, the Geiger counter triggers the hammer to break the vial, releasing the poison and killing the cat. If the atom doesn’t decay, the cat remains alive. Quantum mechanics predicts that until the system is observed, the radioactive atom exists in a superposition of decayed and undecayed states. But if you try to do this with an actual cat, within a certain time span the atom will decay and the cat is killed and you are the murderer.
This paradox was intended to highlight the strange nature of quantum measurement performed on macroscopic systems - how the physics that we use for the microscopic world is not meant to be applied to the macroscopic world because it generates inconsistency.
This idea is not about the 'Duality' of outcomes. When quantum mechanics says that the wavefunction of a system, which represents all the possible quantum states, evolves into a superposition until it's measured or observed. This does not in a single iota mean that the cat is both alive and dead on a macroscopic level. The wavefunction is a mathematical tool, it means nothing in a physical sense except It describes all possible states of a quantum system before measurement.
So, when you calculate it on paper, you don’t have a dual state cause all you have are possible solutions of an equation and it doesn’t even look pretty if you are not a STEM major. Schrödinger’s cat was meant to provoke thought about how quantum mechanics applies to everyday objects not to make nonsense YouTube or Instagram videos about how its a quantum mechanics is spooky.
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Wave-function is not an actual wave, it’s just there for mathematical understanding. The Idea that Schrödinger's cat thought experiment proposes is about how the framework of mathematically viable quantum mechanical systems actually becomes absurd when you apply them to a macroscopic entity like a cat.
Imagine if you have a cat and you did that experiment with a Geiger counter, a hammer, and a vial of poison, The Cat is surely dead because the atom will decay. Or let's say if you try to solve a wave-function on a piece of paper, with each mathematical step you are near absolute determination that will eventually collapse the wave-function. This shows how even simple mathematical solutions can make a wave-function collapse, let alone applying it to the macroscopic world.
So, the crux is that the wave-function is a mathematical tool, not an actual physical wave that moves around like sound or light waves.
It’s a mathematical function that provides the probabilities of where a particle might be, known as probability clouds. if you are STEM student you have probability studies them in you 11th standard inorganic chemistry. These clouds are probability that you have a higher chances of finding a orbiting electron here rather then any other place. Higher the probability higher the chances that in what state a particle might be found when you measure it. It’s a tool to predict the outcomes of measurements, not a physical entity itself.
Wave-function evolves over time according to the Schrödinger equation, which is why we have the time-dependent Schrödinger equation. These are deterministic equations that govern quantum systems. The wave-function is like a CV of a particle but it encapsulates all of the possible states that a system could be in at any point and how those states change over time. It's a particle's browsing history.
So, when you perform quantum calculations, you use the wave-function to determine the possible states of a system. You solve for a particle's position, or momentum, or energy maybe, and the wave-function will give you a probability distribution, not an accurate answer like classical mechanics. This is why you need to understand Hilbert space, matrices, profound understanding of algebra, and probability theory to understand quantum mechanics better. if you are good at classical mechanics it does not mean you understand quantum mechanics intuitively better.
Its determinism approach vs probabilistic approach.
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As you solve the wave-function step-by-step on a piece of paper you're already moving towards the actual measurement or outcome and the moment you did a correct calculation, the wave-function you were solving on your notebook that wave-function collapses not literally because its postulated phenomenon.
Before that, everything was in superposition but here is the catch. Superposition is a Mathematical Representation of Probabilities. It's a mathematical construct and does not have any physical meaning as you think it has .
Superposition means that a quantum system can exist in multiple states at the same time, and the moment you perform any measurement or observation, the states collapse into a single state. It do have has physical implication but we have not observed it in isolation and there is a difference. Its more like a mathematical description of possible outcomes rather then a real physical state.
You must remember this crucial point that this “multiple state” scenario is purely mathematical. It represents a probability distribution over different possible outcomes. Imagine an electron with two possible energy states, E1 and E2. Quantum mechanics says the electron is in a superposition of both states at once because we do not know which certain state it is, so each state has a certain probability amplitude.
Mathematically, the total state Ψ of the electron is the sum of the wave-functions corresponding to E1 and E2, and this sum is what we call quantum superposition.
The electron's state can be written as:
Ψ = a1⋅Ψ1 + a2⋅Ψ2
Here
- Ψ1 and Ψ2 are the wavefunctions corresponding to each energy state,
- a1 and a2 are probability amplitudes describing how much the system is in each state.
But in practical terms or, I should say, in reality, we never directly observe the superposition itself. Instead, when we make a measurement, the superposition collapses into one of the possible states. This collapse is often called wave-function collapse. But before that measurement happens, the system can exist in a mix of possibilities, which is why we describe it with superposition. Nowhere does it have any significant physical meaning; it's just hard math on paper which is experimentally validated and proved.
So, superposition is a model, and when you come back to Schrödinger’s cat, we see that superposition works mathematically, but the moment you apply, it falls apart conceptually when applied to large objects. The cat is in a superposition of being both alive and dead—but only mathematically. This doesn't mean the cat is physically alive and dead at the same time. It just means that, before measurement, the atom and the cat's state can be mathematically described as a mixture of possibilities. This is why Schrödinger was showing how superposition doesn’t work well when scaled up to large, everyday objects like a cat or on macroscopic points.
It’s a valid mathematical tool for quantum systems, but it leads to a paradox when applied to something we can actually experience. So, the crux is that superposition is not a physical phenomenon. It’s a mathematical framework that quantum mechanics uses to represent multiple potential outcomes or states of a quantum mechanical system because superposition is purely a tool for prediction.
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You know what absurdity is? It's like applying the rules of classical physics to the microscopic world. When you try to understand black body radiation using classical mechanics, you get ultraviolet catastrophe. Rayleigh-Jeans Law predicted the intensity of black-body radiation, but according to classical mechanics, the value of the emitted energy should not have decreased while going left in the black-body curve.
As it kept increasing, a continuously increasing graph should have been obtained. The wavelength kept getting smaller, and the intensity of the radiation kept increasing, and it finally increased so much that at infinite wavelength, the value of the radiation emitted energy should also be infinite. But this does not happen, it should not happen. The temperature of a body that absorbs radiation of all wavelengths should keep increasing exponentially.
Classical physics failed here. But then came Planck, and applying the Planck energy as a discrete amount, the theory of Quanta or his quantum hypothesis, everything seems to fit into a framework of mathematically sound and experimentally validated. Because if you apply classical mechanics to the microscopic world, you can explain it mathematically, but experimental validation punctures your framework. Schrödinger's cat experiment is a wave function catastrophe in the macroscopic world. Quantum mechanics is not meant to be applicable in the macroscopic world and vice versa. You will get absurd results doing so.
Quantum mechanics works beautifully at the microscopic level where particles and atoms and photons and other subatomic particles exhibit quantum behaviours. e.g. superposition and wave-particle duality. These effects are mathematically sound and validated by experimental results too. But when you try to implement quantum mechanics in the macroscopic world, all you get are “cat catastrophe due to decoherence."
see I created this world "Cat Catastrophe" LOL
The cat is a thought experiment specifically designed to understand that quantum mechanics is not meant for macroscopic objects. Like classical mechanics couldn't explain black-body radiation, the idea of applying quantum mechanics to everyday objects leads to absurdities. The mathematical framework of quantum mechanics is neither applicable nor consistent with the macroscopic world in a direct way.
And for that really absurd idea that a cat is both alive and dead at the same time, you need a cat as small as an electron, neutron, or any other subatomic particle. Good luck finding such a cat.
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This discussion intentionally leaves out many complex aspects of quantum mechanics.
- I’ve avoided deep dives into decoherence, which explains how superpositions vanish in large systems.
- The technicalities of mesoscopic “cat states” in experiments.
- We haven’t explored alternative interpretations like Many-Worlds, Bohmian mechanics, or other hidden-variable theories that challenge conventional views and those are some thought provoking aspects.
- Detailed mathematics of the wave function, entanglement, Bell’s theorem, and quantum information theory.
- Topics including quantum computing are also beyond this scope to keep article short and on point .
These omissions reflect a focus on accessibility rather than completeness, acknowledging that the field is vast, evolving, and full of open questions even experts continue to debate and reader must understand the my classical intuition might have biased me toward the thought experiment.
M. Dinesh
-Dinesh Mandora
Dinesh Mandora All rights reserved ©
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