January Gallery

Art of Schrodingers Cat experiment

Schrodinger's Cat. Computer artwork depicting the famous "Schrodinger's Cat" thought experiment. The image shows a cat both dead (grey) and alive (ginger) inside a box on a starfield background. The orbitals of a radioactive isotope are superimposed over the cat. In this hypothetical situation, the cat is thought to be both alive and dead until observed. This is because a quantum event (the decay of a radioac- tive particle) is set up to trigger the release of a lethal poison from a vial (not seen here) that kills the cat. According to quantum physics, the unstable particle exists in an intermediate "probabilistic" state until it is observed

© VOLKER STEGER/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

30 Jan 1999

© Design Pics / Dave Fleetham

Computer graphic of global internet traffic

Internet traffic. Computer graphic of global internet traffic. Each line represents the path of sample data sent out to one of 20, 000 pre- selected locations using a system called Skitter. The lines are colour-coded to show the nationality of that part of the internet, for example: USA (pink), UK (dark blue), Italy (light blue), Sweden (light green) and white (unknown). The internet is a global computer network through which information can be shared. Maps like this will make moving around the internet easier, as well as showing when and where data jams occur. Made by the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis, University of California, USA

© CAIDA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY