Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • This wouldn't be a youtube channel without a cat video - so without further ado, we present:

  • Schrodinger's cat.

  • I'm sure you've heard some version of this famous thought experiment: you put a cat in

  • a bunker with some unstable gunpowder that has a 50% chance of blowing up in the next

  • minute, and 50% chance of doing nothing. [the gunpowder is Einstein's version - Schrodinger

  • preferred poisonous gas] So until we look in the bunker, we don't know whether the cat

  • is dead or alive, and when we do look, it is either dead or alive. But if we repeat

  • the experiment enough times with enough cats and bunkers and gunpowder, we'll see that

  • half the time kitty survives, and half the time kitty goes bye-bye. The quantum mechanical

  • interpretation is that before we look, the cat is in a superposition - it's both dead

  • AND alive - and our act of looking forces nature's decision. So our curiosity kills

  • the cat.

  • But what about the cat's perspective? Well, the cat either sees the gunpowder explode,

  • or notso inside the bunker we actually have these two possibilities: "the powder

  • exploded and the cat saw it explode" or "the powder didn't explode and the cat didn't see

  • it explode". There's no option: "the powder exploded and the cat didn't see it explode"

  • - so the cat's reality becomes entangled with the outcome of the experiment! And it's our

  • observation of the experiment that forces nature to "collapse" to one option or the

  • other.

  • But we're like the cat, tooeither the cat dies and we see it dead, or the cat lives

  • and we see it aliveso who's observing us to force nature to "collapse" to one reality?

  • Or do both possibilities happen in parallel within a larger multiverse?

  • This "collapsing to one reality" problem is one of the biggest unanswered questions in

  • quantum physics. So for kitty's sake, can i has answer pleez?

This wouldn't be a youtube channel without a cat video - so without further ado, we present:

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it