Betelgeuse

In 1935, physicist Erwin Schrödinger devised a thought experiment to highlight the bizarre nature of quantum mechanics. He imagined a cat sealed inside a steel box with a tiny bit of radioactive material, a Geiger counter, and a vial of poison. If a single atom decayed, the poison would release; if it didn’t, the cat would remain unharmed. According to quantum theory, until someone opens the lid to look inside, the cat exists in a strange, simultaneous state of probability: it is both alive and dead at the exact same time. It’s a famous paradox, but what if we took that steel box and scaled it up to the size of the cosmos?Continue Reading