An experiment devised on 1935 where a
cat is placed in a steel box along with a Geiger counter, a vial of poison, a hammer, and a radioactive substance. When the radioactive substance decays, the Geiger detects it and triggers the hammer to release the poison, which subsequently kills the
cat. The radioactive decay is a random process, and there is no way to predict when it will happen. Physicists say the atom exists in a state known as a superposition—both decayed and not decayed at the same
time.
Until the box is opened, an observer doesn't know whether the
cat is
alive or dead—because the
cat's fate is intrinsically tied to whether or not the atom has decayed and the
cat would, as Schrödinger put it, be "living and dead ... in equal parts" until it is observed.
