The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics

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   Before you look, a quantum particle can be in several states at once — the puzzle is that the rules seem to say a big object could be too.

   The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics · 1935

   Quantum rules, applied at a large scale, generate absurd paradoxes like a cat both alive and dead.

   Schrödinger imagined a cat sealed in a box, linked to a random quantum event. By the strict rules, the cat would be, on paper, both alive and dead until you open the box. He did not actually believe this — he wanted to show how strange the theory gets at a large scale.

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