FT267


The myth

Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) proved that a cat in a box could be both alive and dead at the same time. This, in turn, proves that quantum physics is a load of nonsense peddled by madmen.


The “truth”

The reason the alive-and-dead cat sounds ridiculous is because it was meant to. Schrödinger’s 1935 thought experiment was intended to show what he considered to be the absurdity of a particular interpret­ation of quantum mechanics. He imagined shutting a live cat in a box containing what he called a “diabolical mechanism”, which, depending on an event that can’t be predicted, would either kill or not kill the animal.