Today Google pays homage to Erwin Schrödinger on his 125th birthday. See the Doodle below:

The principle itself is quite complicated to understand but I’ll do my best to explain it. You start off with three items; a cat, a glass phial containing a lethal poison and small piece of radioactive material. These three items are put into a box with the glass phial set to detect radioactivity, and If the phial does detect radioactivity (which it surely will) then the glass will shatter, releasing the poison and killing the cat.

At this moment I’d like to explain that this is a thought experiment. No cats were harmed in the construction of this blog post.

As there is an air of inevitability about the poor cats demise you can then apply the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics (you’ll have to take me at my word for that) to state that the cat is both alive and dead at the same time. Alive because not enough time has passed for the phial to smash, and dead because the cat is inevitably doomed.

It’s meant to pose the question of when does quantum superposition (cat both alive and dead) end and when does reality kick in to determine the outcome of the cat’s fate i.e. peering into the box.

Interesting no doubt but how does this apply to SEO? Sit tight and I’ll tell you, we’ll just be making a few simple swaps.

Instead of a cat you have blog post you’ve written. Instead of a box you have someone else’s blog/email address. The radioactive material is instead you requesting to publish a blog, and the glass phial is the blog owner who will smash/publish a post when it detects a request and a blog post.

So, you find the blog you wish to publish on (the box) and put in your blog post (the cat), the author (the glass phial) and your request for the author to publish it (radioactive material).

So as it stands it is inevitable that your blog post will get published on the authors blog. But when you put them in the box together the author still needs to detect the request which will then trigger him to publish your article. So at the same time, again applying the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, your blog post is simultaneously published and unpublished. The same as the cat being alive and dead.

The only way to then stop the quantum superposition of this is to then “peer in the box” by checking the blog.

Simple really. I think?

Blog Post by: Greg McVey