The life and entangled adventures of Schrödinger’s cat

Abstract

This paper, intended for a general audience, contains a description of Erwin Schrödinger’s thought experiment which was designed to show the strange results of extending the formalism of quantum theory, particularly the idea of superposition, beyond the subatomic regime. A way of understanding superposition in the terms of formal logic is outlined. The development of Schrödinger’s ideas after this thought experiment is traced along with a brief description of some work which realises it in actual experiments, as well as proposals for taking it further.