Quantum Suicide, first proposed by Hans Moravec and Burno Marchal in 1987, is what is known to physicists as a thought experiment, a mental pondery that cannot actually be carried out in real life but is meant to eluicidate or explain a hypothesis. In order to understand Quantum Suicide, one must first understand the theories which it attempts to debunk.

An early problem with the emerging field of Quantum Mechanics in the 1930s was the paradox of Quantum Entanglement. Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen in 1935 published an article in which they outlined mathematically that when two subatomic particles become intertwined (enjoined, as in as part of an atom), and then become separated (e.g., by nuclear fission or particle acceleration for example), that their actual state (collectively defined as their position, spin, momentum, and polarization) remain indefinite and unpredictable, as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle initially proposed about the state of electrons orbiting protons in an atom's nucleus. The classic interpretation, known as the Copenhagen Interpretation, proposed that if the state of the loose subatomic particles could be measured, that the act of measurement would collapse the infinite number of variable outcomes into a single observable outcome and all other subsequent observations would bear-out the initial observation as accurate. While this has been proven by experiment, it left mathematical inconsistencies with the underlying theory of Quantum Mechanics. The famous Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment was proposed by Erwin Schrodinger in response to Einstein's article in 1935. He postulated that, were it possible, you could tie the outcome of a cat's life to the observation of a quantum particle. In his thought experiment, a cat is put into a sealed container with a vial of poison. The state of a subatomic particle is then measured, and depending on the outcome, the vial of poison is either released or remains sealed. However, since the state of a subatomic particle is inherently unobservable, the cat by definition is both alive and dead simultaneously. If the sealed container were opened, however, all possible outcomes collapse (known as Theory of Waveform Collapse), and only one outcome is possible. The thought experiment was meant to demonstrate the absurdity of the Copenhagen Interpretation, that somehow the cat could be both alive and dead, but then when observed, it could only exist in one state--either alive or dead.

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