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Physicists have learned how they could breed Schrödinger cats in optics. Scientists tested a method that could potentially amplify superpositions of classical states of light beyond microscopic limits and help determine the boundaries between the quantum and classical worlds. ... Co-author and University of Calgary graduate student Anastasia Pushkina explains: "The idea of the experiment was proposed in 2003 by the group of Professor Timothy Ralph of the University of Queensland, Australia. In essence, we cause interference of two "cats" on a beam splitter. This leads to an entangled state in the two output channels of that beam splitter. In...

Dear Cecil: Cecil, you're my final hope Of finding out the true Straight Dope For I have been reading of Schroedinger's cat But none of my cats are at all like that. This unusual animal (so it is said) Is simultaneously live and dead! What I don't understand is just why he Can't be one or other, unquestionably. My future now hangs in between eigenstates. In one I'm enlightened, the other I ain't. If you understand, Cecil, then show me the way And rescue my psyche from quantum decay. But if this queer thing has perplexed even you, Then I...