Schrödinger’s Cat
Schrödinger’s cat is a famous thought experiment that connects a microscopic quantum event to a macroscopic outcome. This experiment uses the quantum random number generator to simulate the decay time of a single rubidium-82 nucleus, which determines whether a virtual cat will live or die.
What you are seeing
The box below contains a virtual cat and a radioactive device that releases poisonous gas if a single rubidium-82 nucleus decays. Its half-life is 75 seconds. While the box is closed, the cat is treated as being in a superposition of alive and dead, and the display shows the changing probabilities of both outcomes. After 75 seconds, the box opens automatically and reveals the cat as either alive or dead.
Sources: vecteezy.com (living cat) · vecteezy.com (dead cat)
- Time until automatic opening
- 75.0 seconds
- Elapsed opening time
- ---
- Alive probability
- 100.0%
- Dead probability
- 0.0%
What is quantum here?
Schrödinger’s cat is a thought experiment first proposed by in 1935 by famous Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger. It exposes the strange consequences of applying quantum mechanics to everyday objects. A cat is placed in a sealed box with a radioactive nucleus, a detector and a mechanism that releases poison if the nucleus decays. Quantum theory describes the nucleus, before measurement, as a superposition of decayed and undecayed states. Because the detector and poison are linked to it, the entire system, including the cat, becomes entangled with that quantum event, leaving the cat both alive and dead until the box is opened.
This simulation uses rubidium-82, whose half-life (the time it takes to have a 50% chance of decaying) is about 75 seconds. With no rubidium-82 physically present, the quantum random number generator (QNRG) supplies genuinely quantum-generated random data, which the software converts into the decay time to be used for a simulated rubidium-82 nucleus. Short decay times are more likely than long ones, following the same exponential probability law as real radioactive decay. If the simulated nucleus decays before the box opens, the cat dies; otherwise, it remains alive. After one half-life, each outcome has a 50% probability. The quantum element here is therefore the QRNG’s physical source of randomness; the cat and radioactive decay are a visualization built from its output.
About the experiment
- Location
- Bladel, the Netherlands
- Experiment type
- QRNG-driven simulation
- Randomness source
- Crypta Labs Cicada 0.5 USB QRNG
- Quantum source
- Photon shot noise
- Simulated nucleus
- Rubidium-82
- Half-life
- 75 seconds
- Decay time
- Simulated from the physical quantum randomness supplied by the QRNG