In 1935, an Austrian physicist named Erwin Schrödinger devised a thought experiment to explain quantum superposition:
Imagine that a cat, a hammer, a flask of poison, a Geiger counter, and a source of radioactivity are placed in a box and sealed off from any outside observers. If the Geiger counter is triggered, the hammer breaks the flask and the cat dies. If it doesn’t, the cat lives.
I don’t know why the hammer doesn’t just hit the cat in the head and kill it directly. Why the Rube Goldberg business? No need to be squeamish about the cat, it’s all imaginary anyway.
But the point is, the thought experiment is supposed to demonstrate that until someone observes that the cat is alive or dead, it should be considered both.
This is called “the observer effect,” and it’s one reason why I’m not a theoretical physicist.
And people like AOC are why I’m not a politician.