In the Schrödinger's cat experiment 'there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small that perhaps in the course of the hour, one of the atoms decays'. The rest of the experiment magnifies this into a macroscopic superposition, but I want to know more about the claim that the radioactive decay produces a superposition.
Firstly, has this been experimentally tested? Something along the lines of accelerating radioactive ions so there is a chance that they will decay while in flight (and so change trajectory), and then combining the decayed and undecayed parts to look for interference.
Secondly, the tiny bit of radioactive substance will still contain large numbers of atoms. Won't this cause problems? If the atoms were in a Bose-Einstein condensate, then I would expect that there could be a superposition of 'one (unspecified) atom decayed' and 'no atoms decayed', but they're not, so a specific atom will decay. Won't that mess things up?
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