It comes from Schrödinger's thought experiment where the act of looking at the result of the experiment, in which he places a cat and lethal gas in a closed space, results in 2 possibilities 1. The cat lives or 2. The cat dies, according to Schrödinger both possibilities are happening in tandem. The act of observing is what killed the cat.
Makes sense, observing means letting time flow meaning giving time for the lethal gas to kill the cat or at least that is my interpretation of it
maybe that resulted in the saying 'cats can't always land on their feet', the brave cats of past might have thought they could always land on their feet but when they tried jumping off a cliff due to their curiosity, they fell down to their death. So 'curiosity killed the cat', 'cats can't always land on their feet'. Well, just my twisted look on your question, without any research
Yes. And no. The cat thing really has very little to do with radioactivity and a lot to do with quantum electro and chromodynamics, but those go over most people's heads even in fields that focus on them (like mine). It's based on statistical uncertainty and the nature of information in the universe, primarily uncertainty relationships a la Heisenberg and phase space dynamics. And I've probably lost everyone by this point so I'm going to stop. No. There is no lethal gas. It's always a radioactive isotope. With lethal gas the cat dies in a certain amount of time no matter what, rendering the thought experiment moot. Haaa.... Time is a variable that is dependent on velocity and acceleration (as well as the shape of space-time and the magnitude of gross force, but that isn't as important). The presence or absence of an observer does nothing to affect. That explanation is a bit wrong. And by a bit I mean completely.
Can't quote since I'm on the phone, but from what I remember the cat is both dead and alive until one observes and proves that the cat is one or the other.
So far all your comments about it depress me. It depresses me because this was an important experiment but so few know it or what it meant. The experiment was: A cat was sedated and placed into a box with a poison timed to release at a random point in time. The only way to know whether the cat was still alive(but sedated) or dead was to open the box. The idea is we won't know something unless we observe it. This experiment has nothing to do with radiation/radioactivity or anything like that. It was to express how we can't really see electrons when they are orbiting atoms, but how we can guesstimate where they are/can be based on pattern an probability. Now just because you know roughly where it is doesn't mean it is exactly there. We won't know until we observe what the true value/location. This can also be applied to photons, though I can't recall the details for the experiments relating to them, but similar results. (Photons are a measure of light in terms of units). I may be wrong about a few details, but I think most of it was right.....and at no point was there any talk about satisfaction and that bringing back dead cats.....
if curiosity kill the cat, then why mine isnt dead yet? he curious about my leg and always rub his head against my leg every time