In the early days of quantum theory, scientists and philosophers had argued heatedly over the meaning of the quantum wave function, and what the superposition of states meant. What did it mean when a single electron could pass through two slits at once? Reality at the atomic level was slippery. This slipperiness had been made famous by Schrödinger’s cat; the cat who was entangled in the uncertainty of the quantum world because its fate depended on an observation. Some argued that the cat became part of the quantum world, assuming a similar duality of states: neither dead nor alive. Others
...more
