Hypothetical Cat Simultaneously Dead And Alive, Physicists Say

SYRACUSE, NY—In a turn of events that has baffled students of quantum mechanics for more than half a century, a hypothetical cat was suspended in a state of unknowable probability flux between life and death Tuesday, after being placed in a box during a “thought experiment” in a Syracuse University lecture. Approx-imately 15 Physics 252 undergraduates blinked uncomprehendingly at high-energy physicist and instructor Chad Parks, 41, as he explained that the box contained a radioactive atom which may or may not decay, releasing an alpha particle which, if detected by a geiger-counter, may or may not trigger a hammer, shattering a flask of deadly prussic acid. The cat, originally postulated by wave-particle duality theorist Erwin Schroedinger in 1935, is expected to remain in this paradoxical superposition of decayed and undecayed states until an observer opens the box, collapsing the animal’s wave function.