Editing Schrödinger's cat (section)

=== Relational interpretation ===
{{main|Relational quantum mechanics}}
The [[Relational quantum mechanics|relational interpretation]] makes no fundamental distinction between the human experimenter, the cat, and the apparatus or between animate and inanimate systems; all are quantum systems governed by the same rules of wavefunction [[Time evolution|evolution]], and all may be considered "observers". But the relational interpretation allows that different observers can give different accounts of the same series of events, depending on the information they have about the system.<ref>{{Cite journal|last = Rovelli|first = Carlo|author-link = Carlo Rovelli|title = Relational Quantum Mechanics|journal = International Journal of Theoretical Physics|volume = 35|pages = 1637–1678|year = 1996|arxiv = quant-ph/9609002 |doi = 10.1007/BF02302261|bibcode = 1996IJTP...35.1637R|issue = 8 |s2cid = 16325959}}</ref> The cat can be considered an observer of the apparatus; meanwhile, the experimenter can be considered another observer of the system in the box (the cat plus the apparatus). Before the box is opened, the cat, by nature of its being alive or dead, has information about the state of the apparatus (the atom has either decayed or not decayed); but the experimenter does not have information about the state of the box contents. In this way, the two observers simultaneously have different accounts of the situation: To the cat, the wavefunction of the apparatus has appeared to "collapse"; to the experimenter, the contents of the box appear to be in superposition. Not until the box is opened, and both observers have the same information about what happened, do both system states appear to "collapse" into the same definite result, a cat that is either alive or dead.