![]() Quantum tunneling is the finite possibility that a particle can break through an energy barrier. Physicists call this process decoherence. As we zoom out towards the larger scales that we experience day to day, those layers untangle into the worlds of the many worlds theory. Instead, as far as a quantum particle is concerned, there’s just one very weird reality consisting of many tangled-up layers. It gets around the thorny issue of needing an observer to make stuff happen - does a dog count as an observer, or a robot? ![]() Instead, at the moment the measurement is made, reality fractures into two copies of itself: one in which we experience outcome A, and another where we see outcome B unfold. Advocates of the ‘many worlds’ interpretation argue that there is no choice involved at all. However, it’s not the only option on the table. The idea that observation collapses the wave function and forces a quantum ‘choice’ is known as the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics. We could just be one bubble of many, each containing a different version of the universe. As the device exists in both states until a measurement is made, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead until we look. A cat in a sealed box has its fate linked to a quantum device. This idea is behind the famous Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment. Making an observation is said to ‘collapse’ the wave function, destroying the superposition and forcing the object into just one of its many possible states. These odds are encapsulated into a mathematical entity called the wave function. We can only say which state an object is most likely to be in once we look. This makes quantum physics all about probabilities. It’s only once we do an experiment to find out where it is that it settles down into one or the other. ![]() An electron, for example, is both ‘here’ and ‘there’ simultaneously. That is, a quantum object existing in multiple states at once. Wave-particle duality is an example of superposition. (Image credit: Mopic / Alamy Stock Photo) Erwin Schrödinger used the idea of a cat in a box to simplify superposition.
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