Schrödinger's Cat ObservedNew Scientist magazine, in the printed, dead-tree edition, has a regular snarky page which lovingly details the copious nonsense and hilarious mistakes often reported in the press under the guise of some or other scientific principle or theory.
Sometimes though, I have to despair for the journalistic and editorial standards of New Scientist itself. As for instance in the current issue, where a moderately interesting article on foundational research in quantum physics offers examples of "physical predictions that are confirmed time and time again by experiment".
The third of these examples: "cats that remain suspended between life and death as long as we don't look at them".
LOL... I had no idea that one had been directly verified, in experiments using actual cats!
Photo credit: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported.
Title credit: Psalm of Montreal, Samuel Butler, 1878.
John, John, where have you been over the last few days? the eminent Professor Mary Bale has directly verified this physical prediction with subject "Lola"...and captured on film to boot!
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Wow, that poor cat! And that poor woman too. Doesn't she know the internet is made of cats? And weighs five hundred tons?
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