The bizarre nature of reality as laid out by quantum theory has survived another test, with scientists performing a famous experiment and proving that reality does not exist until it is measured.

AFAIK, to give a schroedinger's cat analogy, it's like putting the cat in the box, closing it, and putting the poison in. The cat is neither dead nor alive, but a probability of both events. The cat has a 50% chance of being either scenario. And we observe this to be true.

However, now, we simply never put in the poison. This forces the cat to be 100% alive. And indeed we observe this when we open the box to check.

But here's the weird part. We put in the cat and the poison. And then, before the cat 'decides' whether to consume the poison, we remove it from the box.

Whenever we ultimately decided to remove the poison, we find the cat alive. However, whenever we leave it in there, we once again get the 50% result.

How does the cat know to not eat the poison when we decide to remove it? The actual prediction should remain the same: a 50% probability of being dead or alive. But whenever we decide to remove the poison, we always find the cat alive. Just like how if the poison was never in there in the first place. However, leaving it in there (rather than taking it out) results in the 50% result as usual.

Which means that the cat is deciding whether to eat the poison depending on whether we remove it or not. But the cat clearly can't eat the poison if we remove it.

The article is implying that the cat's decision to eat the poison literally doesn't exist until we decide whether to pull it out and check. Another interpretation is that the cat is receiving information from the future.

IIRC the actual scientific explanation is that the consumption of the poison exists as a probability, which then "collapses" (determines an outcome) when you finally check the box. So the cat is neither dead nor alive until we actually open the box to find out. At which point, depending on whether we took out the poison, the outcome is determined. This shouldn't be possible with our current understanding of reality, the cat should naturally have a 50% chance of being both, regardless of whether we take out the poison. But what what we find is whenever we take out the poison, the cat is always alive.

/r/science Thread Parent Link - sciencedaily.com