Schrödinger's cat in popular culture

Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment (a way to imagine something that isn't real) created by an Austrian physicist named Erwin Schrödinger in the 1930s. It is a way of thinking about the behavior of tiny particles called atoms. In the thought experiment, Schrödinger imagined a cat in a box, with a bottle of poison that might be opened by a random event. The idea was that, as long as the box remained closed and the bottle of poison unpredictably sealed, the cat would be both alive and dead at the same time. This idea has been popular in popular culture since it was invented because it is a fun and interesting way to think about the strange behavior of tiny atoms. People often use references to Schrödinger's cat to refer to something that might be in one state or another, depending on an unknown or unpredictable event.