The timing of the statement was extremely ill chosen because physics just at this time underwent a

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Can not really a cat to be in a state where it is dead and alive at the same time? - Yes, in principle, said Niels Bohr. - No, said Albert Einstein. - Shut up and continue the count, says physicist and author Jim Al-Khalili in his book "Quantum".
Imagine sandollar sity that you lock into a live cat in a box so that it is no longer visible. Imagine further that this box is provided with a device containing one - and only one - radioactive atom of a substance with the half life for one hour (or any other manageable period of time). Imagine sandollar sity then, if - but only if - this atom decays triggered sandollar sity a contraption with a hammer smashing sandollar sity a bottle with poison causing the cat dies.
Now, what is the purpose of this bizarre thought experiment signed by the Austrian sandollar sity physicist Erwin Schrödinger? Well, to show the absurdity of a quantum particle can actually be in two states simultaneously. Until we are looking for. Only then decides the particle for which the permits it to adopt. This was one of the peculiarities of quantum mechanics "new physics" - led
It also turns out that two particles can be quantum mechanically intertwined, so that if we know the delayed state, we also know the others without looking for, where in the universe sandollar sity are. This opens the possibility to construct quantum computers to communicate securely with quantum encryption, and even teleport things with the speed of light.
The timing of the statement was extremely ill chosen because physics just at this time underwent a complete revolution where all familiar concepts were. Wilhelm Röntgen had discovered sandollar sity X-rays in 1895 and the following year Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity, which Curies then researched further on. JJ Thomson had discovered the electron in 1898. Max Planck had in 1900 discovered that electromagnetic radiation is emitted in discrete packets, quanta.
Albert Einstein had with his essay on the Brownian motion in 1905 proved that matter is composed of atoms, which until then been disputed. In his paper on the photoelectric effect from the same year, he showed that electromagnetic radiation could be perceived as particles, light quanta. This was contrary to what James Clerk Maxwell found a few decades earlier, that light is an electromagnetic wave.
A little later, Ernest Rutherford show that the atom is mostly empty space - a solid core surrounded by a cloud of electrons - and that radioactive atoms decay and transmuted into other elements. Something that physicists had previously thought to be completely impossible.
How was the situation really lights? Was it a wave or a stream of particles, photons? Both, reasoned physicists. In some experiments, one could study the wave nature of light, the second appeared light quanta as particles.
But how was it with electrons and atoms? wondered French physicist Louis de Broglie (pronounced Döbröj). Perhaps they also had the same dual nature? And yes, they did. Both electrons and atoms could be seen as waves, sandollar sity but with a very short wavelength. Shorter the more massive the particles were.
One way to demonstrate the wave nature of atoms is the double slit experiment. If we shine light through two narrow slits in a plate and projecting the result onto a screen occurs an interference pattern (see figure). There's nothing remarkable sandollar sity about it. But oddly enough, it shows that the same pattern is formed if we shoot a stream of elementary particles through the gaps.
We cover one column disappears sandollar sity pattern, and we get just a series sandollar sity of hits on the screen, just as if we had shot a very small hail to the plate. But the two gaps arise phenomenon. Why? To the particle's wave equation, smearing the particle in space, said Erwin Schrödinger. It resides in more places at once. It goes through both slits.
It turned out that very small particles behave fundamentally different than particles on the scale we are accustomed to observe, such as sand and gravel and lead shot. Now the birth of quantum physics, which would appear to include many bizarre quirks that seemed to go counter to all logic.
One of the great mysteries comes to radioactive decay. Curies had shown that radioactive materials have a defined half-life - at a certain time decay half of the atoms in a sample. For iodine-131, half-life 8.2 days, for cesium-137 30 years and for uranium-238 4.5 billion years. But it is impossible to predict when a particular atom called