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.

In a groundbreaking experiment, UNSW researchers successfully applied the Schrödinger’s cat concept using an antimony atom to enhance quantum computations. This method significantly improves the reliability of quantum data processing and error correction,

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.