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Zeno's Arrow
An arrow in flight is motionless at every instant. If time is composed of instants, how does motion exist?
The cat is both alive and dead.
Until you look.
Schrödinger's Cat · Quantum Superposition · The Art of Uncertainty
Open the BoxThe Paradox
In 1935, Erwin Schrödinger imagined a cat sealed inside a steel box with a tiny bit of radioactive substance, a Geiger counter, and a flask of poison.
If the radioactive atom decays, the Geiger counter triggers the flask to break, and the cat dies. If it does not decay, the cat lives. But until someone observes — until the box is opened — both realities exist simultaneously.
The cat is neither alive nor dead. It is both.
The Experiment
The cat awaits your observation.
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ψ = |alive⟩ + |dead⟩
√2
Observations:
0
Famous Paradoxes
Other thought experiments that challenge our perception of reality.
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Fermi's Paradox
The universe is vast and ancient. The probability of extraterrestrial life is high — yet we see no evidence. Where is everyone?
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Ship of Theseus
If every plank of a ship is replaced over time, is it still the same ship? At what point does identity change?
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Grandfather Paradox
If you travel back in time and prevent your grandfather from meeting your grandmother, how could you ever have been born?
Reflections
On uncertainty, observation, and the nature of reality.
"The universe does not exist 'out there' independent of us. We are inescapably a part of the reality we observe."
— John Archibald Wheeler
"The quantum world is not strange. What is strange is that we expected it to behave like ours."
— Carlo Rovelli
"Every observation is a choice. Every choice collapses a world of possibilities into one."
— Paradox.cat