What kills Schrödinger’s cat?

Underground experiment rules out a pioneering theory linking gravity to quantum decoherence

Foundational Questions Institute, FQXi

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What mechanism causes the fuzzy quantum superposition state of an alive-and-dead cat to snap into a certain outcome, when Schrödinger opens his box?

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Credit: © FQxI/Gabriel Fitzpatrick (2026)

Somewhere between the microscopic realm of elementary particles and the macroscopic world of human beings, something strange happens: The rules of quantum physics, which work so exquisitely for tiny atoms, seem to lose their grip as objects grow larger. Pondering where and how this shift from small-scale quantum fuzziness to everyday sharp certainty happens gives rise to thought-experiment oddities like Schrödinger’s famous dead-and-alive cat. The process by which quantum phenomena like superposition—the paradoxical affliction of Schrödinger’s cat—fade into the classical reality we experience is known as decoherence. Now, a new FQxI-funded experiment has narrowed the field of possible explanations for decoherence, in particular ruling out a prominent theory linking gravity to the process. The results appeared in a paper in the New Journal of Physics in June 2026.

“One of the deepest questions in modern physics is why the strange quantum behavior that governs atoms and elementary particles seems to disappear in the macroscopic world we experience every day,” says FQxI member Catalina Curceanu, director of research and spokesperson for the VIP Collaboration at the National Laboratory of Frascati of the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN-LNF) in Italy.

“One of the deepest questions in modern physics is why the strange quantum behavior that governs atoms and elementary particles seems to disappear in the macroscopic world we experience every day,” says Catalina Curceanu.

Conducted at the INFN Gran Sasso National Laboratory (INFN-LNGS), the world’s largest underground laboratory for fundamental physics research, the experiment tested one model in which decoherence is caused by gravity. Einstein’s general theory of relativity states that gravity manifests due to the warping of spacetime’s fabric around massive objects. In the 1960s, the Hungarian theoretical physicist Frigyes Károlyházy posited that spacetime is constantly rippling with tiny fluctuations that gradually erode quantum superpositions, preventing macroscopic objects from existing in the kind of quantum combinations imagined in Schrödinger’s famous cat paradox. His model continues to intrigue physicists and was recently revived, refined and reformulated by FQxI's Angelo Bassi and colleagues.

Telltale Trails

The fluctuations predicted by Károlyházy can’t be observed directly but, if they exist, they should cause charged particles to jiggle and accelerate randomly, giving telltale trails of electromagnetic radiation. This radiation would be so faint that it could easily be lost in electromagnetic background noise from sources like cosmic rays. That makes the Gran Sasso National Laboratory, which is tucked beneath 1.4 kilometers of radiation-dampening rock, an ideal place to conduct the search. “The natural shielding provided by the rock creates one of the quietest environments on Earth for detecting extremely rare physical phenomena,” says Curceanu.

The researchers used a detector made up of a coffee-mug-sized piece of high-purity germanium crystal, surrounded by layers of copper and lead shielding. They collected data for a total of 62 days. Then, they subtracted the expected background radiation from their measurements and looked for a signature that matched that predicted by the model.

The result: No signal.

“This absence of a signal is itself a major scientific result,” says Catalina Curceanu.

This doesn’t entirely rule out the possibility that gravity plays a role in quantum decoherence. But it does provide important information about where to look for a possible gravitational link. “This absence of a signal is itself a major scientific result,” says Curceanu. “By ruling out one of the oldest and most natural gravity-induced decoherence models, this work narrows the search for the theory describing the interplay between gravity and quantum mechanics, bringing us one step closer to understanding one of the deepest mysteries in fundamental physics.”

Exiting the Realm of Speculation

Károlyházy’s model rests on the notion that there is a fundamental limit to the precision with which we can locate objects and measure length. In the years since he proposed the model, this feature has emerged as a common thread in many contemporary theories seeking to unite quantum physics and gravity, including string theory and loop quantum gravity. “Every quantum gravity approach ends up with predicting the existence of a minimal length connected to the uncertainty in the measurement of spacetime,” says Kristian Piscicchia, a quantum physicist at the Enrico Fermi Research Center/INFN/VIP, in Italy, and the experimental lead on the new study.

Although many assume that quantum gravity cannot be probed by current technologies, the new research joins a growing body of work demonstrating that some ideas that involve both gravity and quantum theory are testable today. “Precision experiments are now reaching a level of sensitivity where they can test ideas that, until recently, belonged almost exclusively to the realm of theoretical speculation,” says Curceanu. “As sensitivity improves, the boundary between theory and measurement continues to move, opening new possibilities for discovering the fundamental principles that govern our universe.”

“Precision experiments are now reaching a level of sensitivity where they can test ideas that, until recently, belonged almost exclusively to the realm of theoretical speculation,” says Catalina Curceanu.

The research was supported by the Foundational Questions Institute, FQxI, through the Consciousness in the Physical World program. “The type of research that FQxI is encouraging brings teams together across generations, across boundaries, across disciplines,” says Curceanu. “It really can act as incubators of new ideas.”

You can read more about the team’s grants in the FQxI article: “Can We Feel What It's Like to Be Quantum?” by Brendan Foster.

Journal reference: Nicola Bortolotti, Kristian Piscicchia, Alessio Porcelli, Matthias Laubenstein, Simone Manti, Antonino Marcianò, Federico Nola and Catalina Curceanu, "Experimental exclusion of a generalized Károlyházy gravity-induced decoherence model," New J. Phys. 28 064511 (2026). DOI 10.1088/1367-2630/ae774c

ABOUT FQxI

The Foundational Questions Institute, FQxI, catalyzes, supports, and disseminates research on questions at the foundations of science, particularly new frontiers in physics and innovative ideas integral to a deep understanding of reality but unlikely to be supported by conventional funding sources. Visit FQxI.org for more information.

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Journal

New Journal of Physics

DOI

10.1088/1367-2630/ae774c

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Experimental exclusion of a generalized Károlyházy gravity-induced decoherence model

 

Scientists at Stevens Institute of Technology reveal that time can go quantum in ion clock experiments

Physicists show that atomic clocks can probe time ticking both faster and slower simultaneously, revealing how time itself unfolds in quantum superposition.

Stevens Institute of Technology

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Trapped ions are versatile platforms used for quantum computing and ultra-precise timekeeping. New results now show that combining these capabilities can reveal a deeper layer of physical reality: quantum superpositions of the passage of time. 

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Credit: Igor Pikovski

HOBOKEN, NJ., April 20, 2026 — Few concepts in physics are as familiar, yet as enigmatic, as time. In Einstein’s theory of relativity, time is not absolute: its passage depends on motion and gravity. But when combined with quantum physics, this relativistic form of time becomes even more counterintuitive. According to quantum theory, the flow of time itself may exist in a genuine quantum superposition, ticking faster and slower at the same time. Now, a new paper titled Quantum signatures of proper time in optical ion clocks, published on April 20, 2026 in Physical Review Letters, the premier physics research journal, shows that this striking possibility may soon be tested in the laboratory.

In this work, a team led by Assistant Professor of theoretical physics Igor Pikovski at Stevens Institute of Technology, in collaboration with experimental groups of Christian Sanner at Colorado State University and Dietrich Leibfried at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), explores quantum aspects of the flow of time and how they can be accessed with atomic clocks. Their results suggest that the same quantum technologies being developed for next-generation clocks and quantum computers may soon probe something far more fundamental: When a clock’s motion obeys quantum mechanics, its movement can exist in superposition, and with it the recorded passage of time itself. This is analogous to Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment, where the counterintuitive nature of quantum superposition is illustrated by a cat being both alive and dead; here it is the passage of time itself that is in superposition, like a cat that is both young and old at once.

“Time plays very different roles in quantum theory and in relativity,” says Pikovski. “What we show is that bringing these two concepts together can reveal hidden quantum signatures of time-flow that can no longer be described by classical physics.” 

In relativity theory, every clock experiences its own flow of time, which in turn depends on velocity and position. For example, a clock moving at 10 m/s for 57 million years would lag behind another clock at rest by just one second. This has been observed and confirmed with ultraprecise clocks, such as aluminum-ion clocks at NIST. 

The effect is often illustrated as the “twin paradox”: two identical twins will age differently, if one of them takes a high-speed roundtrip. Yet there is a more counterintuitive version: the “quantum twin paradox.” Can a single clock experience two different times in a quantum superposition, and become both younger and older simultaneously? According to quantum theory, as outlined by Pikovski and collaborators over a decade ago, that should happen. So far, such subtle effects have been beyond experimental reach, however, the team’s new theoretical study shows that atomic clocks are now up to the task.

The authors of the now published paper investigated the interplay of relativistic time and quantum effects in atomic clocks, such as those developed at NIST and at Colorado State University where scientists trap single ions (such as aluminum or ytterbium), cooling them to near absolute zero temperature and manipulate their quantum states with laser pulses. The results of their study show that by combining the rapidly improving clock technology with quantum information techniques developed for trapped-ion quantum computing, unique and yet undetected quantum features of time can be observed. 

“Atomic clocks are now so sensitive, they can detect tiny differences in time caused by just the thermal vibrations at miniscule temperatures,” says Gabriel Sorci, a PhD candidate at Stevens Institute of Technology and co-author of the paper. “But even at the absolute zero temperature, the ground state, the ticking rate will still be affected by just the quantum fluctuations alone.” 

The team went one step further. Rather than just cooling the atoms, they show that one can instead manipulate the vacuum itself, creating so-called squeezed states in which the position and velocity of the clock exhibit subtle quantum behavior. The result is a new manifestation of relativistic time in the quantum regime, where superpositions and entanglement of time arise: a single clock can measure how it ticks both faster and slower simultaneously, and entangle with the squeezed motion. The team now aims to demonstrate the effects in the laboratory.    

“We have the technology to generate the required squeezing and a path to reach the clock precision needed in ion clocks to observe such effects for the first time,” says Sanner of Colorado State. 

Looking ahead, Pikovski, whose recent work includes showing that single gravitons can be detected using quantum technology, points to the bigger picture. “Physics is still full of mysteries at the most fundamental level. Quantum technologies are now giving us new tools to shed light on them.”

 

About Stevens Institute of Technology

Stevens is a premier, private research university situated in Hoboken, New Jersey. Since our founding in 1870, technological innovation has been the hallmark of Stevens’ education and research. Within the university’s three schools and one college, more than 8,000 undergraduate and graduate students collaborate closely with faculty in an interdisciplinary, student-centric, entrepreneurial environment. Academic and research programs spanning business, computing, engineering, the arts and other disciplines actively advance the frontiers of science and leverage technology to confront our most pressing global challenges. The university continues to be consistently ranked among the nation’s leaders in career services, post-graduation salaries of alumni and return on tuition investment.

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Journal

Physical Review Letters

Article Title

Quantum signatures of proper time in optical ion clocks

Article Publication Date

20-Apr-2026

Water simulation of famous quantum effect reveals unexpected wave patterns

A new study reveals how a spinning vortex causes system-wide, counter-rotating wave patterns, mimicking effects that occur, but cannot be seen, in the quantum realm.

Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) Graduate University

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Lines of momentarily flat water extend outward and rotate, in the opposite direction to the flow of the vortex. The left video shows the pattern from the experiment, while the right video shows the same effect in a simulation model.

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Credit: Singh et. al., (2026) Commun Phys.

In the quirky, quantum world, particles can be affected by forces that they never directly encounter. A classic example is the Aharonov–Bohm (AB) effect, where electrons are affected by a magnetic field, despite not passing through it. Although predicted in 1959, it took more than two decades to confirm this effect experimentally, as the specific changes to the electrons’ wave properties could only be inferred indirectly, and with great difficulty.

Now, physicists from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), in collaboration with the University of Oslo and Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, have used a classical fluid analogue that mimics and extends the AB effect using a simple platform: a water tank. Published today in Communications Physics, the researchers have revealed that when water waves are sent towards a swirling vortex from opposite directions, it causes a striking pattern, with one or more lines of momentarily still water radiating outward and rotating in an almost hypnotic way.

“This was something new and unexpected,” says Aditya Singh, a PhD student in the Nonlinear and Non-equilibrium Physics Unit and co-first author of the study. “That’s what makes this fluid analogue system so valuable. It reveals topological effects — wave behaviors that occur across the whole system — that can’t be seen in quantum experiments.”

The beginnings with Berry

The team’s inspiration for this research traces back to a 1980 study by theoretical physicist Michael Berry, who first showed that the AB effect could be simulated in a classical fluid system. In the quantum version, electrons pass around a tightly coiled wire, called a solenoid. When an electric current flows through the solenoid, this generates a magnetic field that’s confined within the coil. However, electrons passing outside the solenoid, where the magnetic field is zero, are still affected, with their wave shifting in phase.

In Berry’s experiment, a vortex forming at the drain of a tank stood in for the solenoid. Instead of electrons, Berry caused water waves to travel across his tank, passing around the vortex rather than through it. The travelling waves developed a distinctive distortion — a pitchfork-like pattern centered on the vortex — marking a shift in their phase.

“With waves travelling the opposite direction, you see a mirror image pattern,” adds Jonas Rønning, co-first author and former postdoc in the OIST unit. “The question for us was: what happens if you send waves from both directions at the same time? We thought that the patterns might cancel each other out, or both pitchfork-like patterns would be visible, but our intuition was completely wrong.”

From travelling to standing waves 

In their experiment, the researchers created a vortex at the center of a large, custom-built water tank and generated waves from opposite sides of the tank so that they met and interfered. By illuminating the water’s surface from beneath and recording with a high-speed camera, the team could track how the wave pattern across the whole tank changed over time. 

Under conditions without a vortex, when opposing waves meet and interfere, this results in a predictable standing wave pattern where waves appear to be fixed in place. These patterns contain stationary lines, known as wavefronts, where the waves have the same phase.

But adding a vortex gives an unexpected twist. As the vortex causes shifts in the wave phase, this changes how the standing waves interfere with each other, resulting in rotating lines where the wave height is zero, called nodal lines.

“When we first saw these lines, we thought they were an experimental artefact,” says Singh. “But when we also saw them in our simulations, we dropped everything and quickly worked out the mathematics underlying how they arise.”

These nodal lines exhibit interesting behaviors, always rotating in the opposite direction to the vortex, and increasing in number as the researchers increased the vortex’s flow. 

At such an early stage of discovery, it’s unclear whether these nodal lines could have useful applications. But for the unit head and senior author, Professor Mahesh Bandi, the real draw is the limitless avenues now open for future research using their classical analogue system. “One direction is to make the system more complex by introducing multiple vortices and arranging them into a lattice,” says Bandi. “That setup would mirror conditions in some superconducting materials, with the water waves behaving like a supercurrent. We don’t yet know what we’ll see — and that’s exactly what makes it worth doing.”

More broadly, the team’s findings highlight the power of simple classical analogues to reveal new understanding about the quantum world. “Theorists might predict these effects, but quantum experiments wouldn’t see them,” he says. “With analogues like this, we can.”

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Journal

Communications Physics

DOI

10.1038/s42005-026-02603-w 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Topology made visible through standing waves in a spinning fluid

Article Publication Date

20-Apr-2026

Recreation of Berry’s travelling waves [VIDEO] 

As waves travel past the vortex, they distort and form pitchfork-like patterns, that are localized around the central vortex. When the direction of the waves is changed (arrow direction), the distortion pattern is mirrored. The top two sections show simulated patterns while the bottom two sections show the patterns seen in the experiments.

Credit

Singh et. al., (2026) Commun. Phys.

 

While identical in magnitude and frequency, the blue and red waves hit their peaks and troughs at different moments in time, and therefore have different phases. 

Credit

Waurids Baskurtf, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.5

The research team custom-built a water tank with a high-speed camera above to detect wave patterns on the water’s surface. 

Credit

Andrew Scott / OIST

OIST PhD student Aditya Singh generates and observes surface waves that act as a classical analogue to quantum effects.

Credit

Andrew Scott / OIST

Number of nodal lines is linked to vortex flow [VIDEO] 

In both simulations (above) and experiments (below), the number of rotating nodal lines increases with a faster vortex flow.  At lower flow (left), only one nodal line is seen, whilst at a higher flow (right), two nodal lines appear. 

Credit

Singh et. al., (2026) Commun. Phys.

Schrödinger’s Pipeline: Why The Ukraine-Hungary Standoff Is No Quantum Mystery – Analysis



March 22, 2026 
EurActiv
By Thomas Moller-Nielsen

(EurActiv) — Quantum mechanics, popular science books often assure us, implies that a cat trapped inside a closed box can be simultaneously dead and alive. At best, this is half-true: a process known as decoherence means that large physical objects – including Erwin Schrödinger’s unfortunate kitty – are astronomically unlikely to exhibit any quantum weirdness.

The current dispute between Kyiv and Budapest over the Druzhba oil pipeline, a Soviet-era conduit that transports Russian crude to Hungary via Ukraine, occasionally feels just as confused – and confusing – as pseudoscientific explanations of modern physics.

On the one hand, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán claims that the pipeline is not damaged, but that Ukraine is intentionally blocking oil deliveries to bolster support for opposition leader Péter Magyar ahead of parliamentary elections on 12 April. The spat has also led the Moscow-friendly leader to veto a €90 billion EU loan to Kyiv that he had previously greenlit last year.

On the other hand, Kyiv argues that the pipeline was damaged by a Russian attack in late January. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also claimed this week that his engineers are “undertaking all possible efforts” to repair it: a process he said will last until late April or early May.


So, who’s right?

We don’t know for certain. This is because Ukraine has refused for weeks to allow EU officials to assess the alleged damage. Even though EU inspectors finally arrived in Ukraine this week, it remains unclear whether they’ll actually be allowed to visit the pipeline.

Ukraine’s blocking of EU inspections – combined with Zelenskyy’s explicit reluctance to fix the pipeline and the fact that the alleged repairs will only conclude after the Hungarian elections – suggest that Orbán probably has a point. You don’t need to open the box to know the cat’s dead, especially if something smells putrid.

This view is privately conceded by many European officials. One EU diplomat noted that Kyiv’s refusal to permit inspections has been “anything but reassuring”, even if the Ukrainians “give good explanations” about why the pipeline is difficult to repair.

“If I am very, very honest, I went back and forth several times” about whether Orbán is right, the diplomat said.

In other words, the pipeline might not be in a superposition. But EU officials’ views of it are.
Hungary for trouble

None of this, of course, is to defend Orbán’s decision to veto the €90 billion loan he previously agreed to, which has – understandably – enraged European and Ukrainian officials.

Nor is it even to criticise Zelenskyy’s reluctance to repair the pipeline. On the contrary, there’s arguably something morally perverse about demanding that the leader of a war-torn country help sell the oil produced by the very nation that is attacking it.

Putting ethical assessments to one side, however, Ukraine’s behaviour also raises an economicpuzzle.

As we’ve previously reported, Ukraine is set to run out of money in late April. So if Kyiv is attempting to influence Hungary’s 12 April election – and Zelenskyy has also strongly hinted that this is indeed his goal – why is Ukraine not more worried about its financial predicament? Shouldn’t fears of an imminent financial collapse cause Kyiv to panic, or capitulate?

The obvious explanation – that Ukraine is pinning its hopes on Magyar unblocking the loan on 13 April – doesn’t hold water.

Even if Orbán loses (and recent polls suggest that he might), there is no guarantee that an opposition government will quickly be formed. Orbán himself took seven weeks to form the current government despite winning a landslide victory in 2022.

A potentially more plausible reason is that, regardless of who wins, Ukraine will be able to restart oil deliveries almost immediately after the election. Unfortunately, there’s no cast-iron guarantee that Orbán will unblock the loan post-election even if the crude begins to flow. Nor is there any certainty that Magyar would do the same, despite EU officials’ hopes that he will.
Dismal science fiction

The most important reason, though, is that – much like a simultaneously dead-and-alive cat – the notion of a suddenly cash-strapped Ukraine bears little resemblance to actual reality. Rather, it is one borne of popular-science-style journalism – including, I’m afraid to say, my own.


As analysts at the Kyiv School of Economics Institute point out, the emergence of a fiscal “pressure point” by sometime around late April is “broadly plausible”. However, the specific ways in which this pressure would manifest itself “would depend on the timing of inflows, domestic borrowing conditions, and the government’s ability to manage expenditures”.

Crucially, the analysts note that Ukraine is “unlikely” to default on its debt to foreign creditors even if the €90 billion loan fails to arrive in a timely manner. This, they explained, is because Ukraine is mostly externally indebted through economically favourable, long-maturity loans that are “fully manageable even amid significant financing shortfalls”.

In the event of a severe financing shortfall, Ukraine would likely issue more domestic debt to stay afloat, they added.

Their assessment was broadly shared by Maksym Samoiliuk, an economist at the Centre for Economic Strategy, a Kyiv-based think tank. Cuts to military expenditure are “out of the question” and the “political and practical costs” of slashing social spending are likely “too high”, he said. But Ukraine could issue bonds to state-owned banks to remain afloat, he added.

Samoiliuk also noted that, in a worst-case scenario, Ukraine’s central bank could simply print money as it did following Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 – which would likely cause inflation to soar but would, technically, cover any potential funding shortfalls.

“The key point is that Ukraine is not facing an immediate fiscal cliff today, but the margin for manoeuvre would narrow rapidly without fresh disbursements,” the Kyiv School analysts told me. “The longer the delay, the more difficult and costly the adjustment would become.”

In other words: Ukraine has significant funding needs, but it doesn’t face any immediate fiscal crunch. Its financial predicament is urgent – but not critical.

Much like with quantum theory, Ukraine’s political and financial predicament is arguably stranger than fiction. And, crucially, there’s nothing decoherent about it.

The Quantum Cat: A Campaign For Science And The Culture Of Reason – OpEd

November 12, 2025 
By K.M. Seethi

Image: From the author’s file

As the world’s technological frontiers race ahead of our collective understanding, science today stands both indispensable and contested. The twenty-first century has brought incredible progress in quantum computing, genetic engineering, and artificial intelligence, even as it has witnessed a resurgence of pseudoscience, denialism, and the ideological distortion of knowledge. The real challenge before modern societies is not simply to multiply discoveries, but to safeguard the very spirit of inquiry that makes discovery possibl

In the first week of November 2025, as the United Nations marks the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ 2025), the South Indian state of Kerala has added its own creative turn to the celebration. The Centre for Science in Society (C-SiS) at the Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT) in collaboration with the Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP) has launched the Quantum Cat campaign — a science exhibition and outreach movement that travels across ten districts. The exhibition opened on November 7 at CUSAT and will run through December, bringing to schools, colleges, and communities an experience of the “quantum century.”

But this is not just another science event. It gets underway at a critical moment when anti-science attitudes and pseudoscientific beliefs are gaining ground, encouraged by a political climate that seeks to rewrite knowledge through ideology. The Sangh Parivar’s attempts to dilute and distort scientific theories in curricula and promote mythical claims at official science events reflect a major crisis — the erosion of scientific temper, a constitutional duty that India once proudly upheld. Against this background, the campaign acquires crucial social meaning – it defends reason itself.

KSSP President Meera Bhai told this author that the initiative “seeks to promote science and scientific inquiry from the school level onwards,” continuing a long tradition that began with the Parishad’s legendary Halley’s Comet campaign in 1986. Then, too, KSSP fought superstition by turning fear into curiosity. Today, as irrationality resurfaces in new forms, such as astrology apps, miracle cures, WhatsApp “Vedic science,” the Quantum Cat becomes a new mascot of rational inquiry. Recent findings from Kerala Padanangal 2.0, KSSP’s statewide social survey, show that one in three people in Kerala still depend on astrology to make life decisions — a surprising figure in a state known for high literacy and human development. This coexistence of reason and belief, science and superstition, is precisely the paradox the campaign seeks to address.

The Century of Quantum Science

The International Year of Quantum Science and Technology commemorates a hundred years since the birth of quantum theory, the most successful and puzzling scientific framework ever devised. When Max Planck proposed in 1900 that energy comes in discrete “quanta,” he began a revolution. Einstein used that idea to explain light as particles, Bohr built his model of the atom, Heisenberg introduced the uncertainty principle, and Schrödinger described matter as waves. Together they showed that at the subatomic level, nature defies common sense. In the quantum world, particles exist in multiple states at once — a phenomenon called superposition — and remain mysteriously connected across vast distances through entanglement. Observation itself determines outcomes, making the observer part of reality. This radical idea — that measurement changes what is measured — has transformed every field of science.

Today, quantum principles underlie technologies that define modern life, from lasers, semiconductors, to solar cells, and GPS. They are now driving quantum computing and quantum communication, promising faster problem-solving and unbreakable data security. In chemistry and biology, quantum mechanics explains the structure of molecules, the efficiency of photosynthesis, and even how birds sense magnetic fields.

For some scientists, quantum mechanics defies classical explanation, operating in a realm where causality is uncertain and probability replaces determinism. Physicist Babu Joseph, former Vice-Chancellor of CUSAT, explains it more precisely: “The Schrödinger’s Cat captures the essence of quantum mechanics, which asserts that there is no observer-independent reality. The standard binary — exist or not — isn’t true. There can be combinations of varying degrees of possibilities until the observer interacts with the system.” That insight lies at the heart of the superposition principle, the backbone of quantum mechanics, he told this author.

Quantum science thus transforms how we see both matter and meaning. It teaches that reality is not fixed but relational, not given but discovered through interaction — a lesson as relevant to society as to physics.

The Cat in the Box: From Paradox to Possibility

Erwin Schrödinger’s famous cat was never real. Conceived in 1935, it was a thought experiment to expose the absurd implications of early quantum theory. In Schrödinger’s imaginary box, a cat’s life depends on a random atomic event. Until someone opens the box, the cat is both alive and dead — a paradox meant to question how far quantum laws can extend into the visible world.

Modern physics resolves the puzzle through decoherence: real cats interact with their environment, collapsing the ambiguity long before observation. However, the Quantum Cat survived in imagination, literature, and popular science — precisely because it dramatises the central mystery of observation and reality. It asks a timeless question: Can we know the world without changing it? For KSSP’s campaigners, this cat is a metaphor for scientific curiosity. It provokes questions — How can something be alive and dead at once? What does observation mean? — and in doing so, it invites thinking, reasoning, and dialogue.

The cat also teaches humility. It reminds us that nature does not always obey our common sense, and that our perceptions are limited. In a society where superstition often pretends as wisdom, such humility is a moral necessity. As Meera Bhai noted, “KSSP’s science campaigns have always connected wonder with reason — from Halley’s Comet to the Quantum Cat — to make people see the beauty of questioning.”

Used symbolically, Schrödinger’s cat bridges imagination and logic. It tells students that science is not dry or distant but full of wonder and paradox. It shows that curiosity and creativity belong together. And in public life, it becomes a counter-symbol — against fatalism, dogma, and blind belief.

The Quantum Imagination

Over the past century, quantum ideas have travelled far beyond the laboratory, shaping the way philosophers and social scientists think about knowledge, perception, and reality. Just as a quantum particle can exist in many states until observed, societies too can contain multiple, often contradictory realities — rational and irrational, secular and superstitious, progressive and reactionary — coexisting beneath the surface. These contradictions persist until some event, such as an election, a protest, or a crisis, forces them into view and “collapses” them into a single, visible outcome.

In this sense, Schrödinger’s Cat has become more than a symbol of physics; it is a metaphor for social life itself. People may believe in science yet rely on superstition, or support equality while practising exclusion. Sociologists have long explored such tensions. Émile Durkheim described societies as combining both mechanical and organic solidarity; Georg Simmel’s “stranger” is simultaneously near and distant; Karl Marx’s theory of alienation shows workers as both creative and estranged. These examples illustrate that ambiguity and coexistence, not clarity and uniformity, often define modern life.

Thus, quantum metaphors remind us that uncertainty is not the absence of understanding but a sign of complexity — and that observation itself, whether in science or society, changes what is observed. To recognise this is to accept responsibility: the act of looking, questioning, and interpreting is also an act of participation. In this sense, the observer effect is not limited to physics. Every social study, every public debate, every act of journalism alters what it observes. Recognising this responsibility — the role of agency — is a vital part of both scientific and civic inquiry. The Quantum Cat, seen in this light, becomes a symbol of reflective citizenship: one that questions, observes, and acts, knowing that observation affects reality.

The link between science and society defines KSSP’s legacy. Founded in 1962, it has grown beyond a science club into a people’s science movement connecting empirical reasoning with social progress. Its campaigns on environment, energy, health, and education have always sought to make knowledge democratic and life-oriented. The Quantum Cat campaign continues this mission, using a global scientific breakthrough to renew Kerala’s commitment to rational thought. From Halley’s Comet to Quantum Cat, the message remains the same – science belongs to the people. In 1986, KSSP volunteers explained that comets were celestial bodies, not omens, and forty years later, they travel again, showing that the cat is a metaphor for observation and reason. The persistence of astrology and pseudo-science reveals that education alone cannot ensure enlightenment. What is needed, as KSSP calls vijnanabodh, is the consciousness of science as a way of life—anchored in curiosity, scepticism, and empathy.

Toward a Culture of Reason

The Quantum Cat campaign, therefore, is not just a celebration of physics. It is a cultural intervention, telling that science and democracy share the same foundation – reasoned freedom. In an era when faith is marketed as fact and propaganda as knowledge, the defence of reason becomes a moral act.

Quantum theory offers a powerful metaphor for today’s struggle between reason and unreason. It shows that reality is not binary but a field of probabilities influenced by interaction, just as social progress depends on participation, dialogue, and openness. The spirit of quantum thought underlines democratic inquiry. In this sense, KSSP’s Quantum Cat invites young minds to look into the “box” of their own world, to question, observe, and think freely. It tells us that curiosity is not disobedience, doubt is not weakness, and imagination is part of knowledge.

As Babu Joseph says, “The Newtonian cat is either dead or alive; the quantum cat is both—until you look.” So too with society, it holds both reason and prejudice until we choose which to see. The campaign restores science’s humane meaning, not as apparatus but as a way of knowing that dignifies life and keeps curiosity alive amid ideological darkness.

K.M. Seethi

K.M. Seethi is is Director, Inter University Centre for Social Science Research and Extension (IUCSSRE), Mahatma Gandhi University (MGU), Kerala. He also served as ICSSR Senior Fellow, Senior Professor of International Relations and Dean of Social Sciences at MGU. One of his latest works is "ENDURING DILEMMA Flashpoints in Kashmir and India-Pakistan Relations."