Errors in quantum computers are an obstacle for their widespread use. But a team of scientists say that, by using an antimony atom and the Schrödinger's Cat thought experiment, they could have found a way to stop them.

A team led by UNSW quantum engineers has created a “Schrödinger’s cat” – a famous quantum thought experiment – inside a silicon chip.

First proposed in 1935 by the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, "Schrödinger's cat" was designed to highlight the physicist's concerns with one interpretation of quantum mechanics—the then relatively new theory that explains how matter behaves at the atomic (and smaller) scale.

Using famous Schrodinger's cat thought experiment, researchers devise a new silicon quantum chip that is less prone to logical errors.

Quantum mechanics has long been the playground of paradoxes, a field where atoms behave like both waves and particles, and cats are both alive and dead. Now, researchers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) have brought a twist to the famous Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment,