How Do Quantum States Manifest In The Classical World?

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This episode of space time is brought to you by the information flowing through an impossibly complex network of quantum entanglement, that just happens to mutually agree that you and I exist inside it. Oh, and Schrodinger’s cat is in here too.

Hosted by Matt O'Dowd

Written by Matt O'Dowd

Graphics by Leonardo Scholzer, Yago Ballarini, & Pedro Osinski

Directed by: Andrew Kornhaber

Executive Producers: Eric Brown & Andrew Kornhaber

End Credits Music by J.R.S. Schattenberg

In quantum world things are routinely in multiple states at once - what we call a “superposition” of states. But in the classical world of large scales, things are either this or that. The famous thought experiment is Schrodinger’s cat - in which a cat is in an opaque box with a vial of deadly poison that’s released on the radioactive decay of an atom. Quantum mechanics tells us that the atom’s wavefunction can be in a superposition of states - simultaneously decayed or not decayed. So is the cat’s wavefunction also in a superposition of both dead and alive.

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