Friday, September 18, 2026
Science

What kills Schrödinger's cat? Underground experiment rules out gravity model for quantum decoherence

Somewhere between the microscopic realm of elementary particles and the macroscopic world of human beings, something strange happens: The rules of quantum physics, which work so exquisitely for tiny atoms, seem to lose their grip as objects grow larger. Pondering where and how this shift from small-...

What kills Schrödinger's cat? Underground experiment rules out gravity model for quantum decoherence
Image: Phys.org
Somewhere between the microscopic realm of elementary particles and the macroscopic world of human beings, something strange happens: The rules of quantum physics, which work so exquisitely for tiny atoms, seem to lose their grip as objects grow larger. Pondering where and how this shift from small-scale quantum fuzziness to everyday sharp certainty happens gives rise to thought-experiment oddities like Schrödinger's famous dead-and-alive cat. The process by which quantum phenomena like superposition—the paradoxical affliction of Schrödinger's cat—fade into the classical reality we experience is known as decoherence.

Originally published at Phys.org

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