LA13023AR

Curiosity Doesn't Kill the Cat

In Schroedinger's famous thought experiment, a cat might exist in a nebulous quantum state, in which it is neither alive nor dead. But upon an observer looking to *see* if the cat is alive or not, it reverts immediately to one of the two possibilities, destroying the quantum weirdness. Physicists at the University of Massachusetts at Boston have shown how such a nebulous quantum state could be viewed, and even controlled in real-time, without forcing the "cat" into being alive or dead. The experimenter's curiosity need not kill the cat. In this case, the "cat" is actually a nano-scopic mechanical "guitar string", fabricated on a micro-chip. The string is placed in a nebulous state in which the string is at two different positions at the same time. By using a superconducting circuit to monitor the resonator, an experimenter could control the motion of the string, while it continues to exist at both locations.