Schrödinger's cat Schrödinger's cat Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment, sometimes described as a paradox, devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. It illustrates what he saw as the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics applied to everyday objects. The scenario presents a cat that may be simultaneously both alive and dead, a state known as a quantum superposition, as a result of being linked to a random subatomic event that may or may not occur. The thought experiment is also often featured in theoretical discussions of the interpretations of quantum mechanics. Schrödinger coined the term "Verschränkung" (entanglement) in
Quantum tic-tac-toe seems to imply that before being subjected to quantum measurement (or "observed") certain quantum particles can be in multiple places at once. (The textbook example of this is the double-slit experiment.) How the universe can be like this is rather counterintuitive. There is a disconnect between the mathematics and our mental images of reality, a disconnect that is absent in classical physics. This is why quantum mechanics supports multiple "interpretations". The researchers who invented quantum tic-tac-toe were studying abstract quantum systems, formal systems whose axiomatic foundation included only a few of the axioms of quantum mechanics. Quantum tic-tac-toe became the