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Originally Posted by supersix2
You actually interpretted that wrong. Quantum theory says that everything exsists in wave form until it is observed and forced to become a particle. Schrodinger's cat is a layman's way of saying that.
The whole idea of Schrodinger's cat is that if you put a cat in a box with poison food and you close the box the cat is actually alive and dead at the same time until you open the box and observe if the cat is either alive or dead.
Schrodinger's equation shows the probability of something exsisting and where and when it can exsist. So with the story of the cat the cat can either be alive or dead and therefore according to Schrodinger's equation it is either 50% alive or 50% dead and until we open the box and force it to be a certain way it is alive and dead at the same time.
Quantum theory is all about the probability of where and when particles exsist.
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Actually, you have it wrong. Schrodinger's cat is a thought experiment designed to show the absurdity of applying quantum mechanics to macroscopic objects. The cat can't be in a superposition of dead and alive. They are mutually exclusive states of being. It makes no sense. The cat, being a macroscopic object, has to either be alive, or dead. And must be so without the intervention of a self-aware being to do the "observing". The point is that interactions between particles which number on the order of 10^23 cause the quantum states to be decoherent, and this interaction is what in fact causes collapse of the wavefunction.
The only example of quantum coherence at the macroscopic level that I am aware of is this one:
http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/4/7/2/1
but this experiment was carried out at about 40 millikelvin, using a superconductor, thus drastically reducing the number of degrees of freedom.
Edit: spelling. Also, I believe Bose-Einstein condensates and superfluids can aslo be considered to be macroscopic coherent quantum phenomenon, although I don't think they exhibit superpostions, since by definition they exist completely in the lowest energy state.