Andromeda

Dylan: There, everybody wins. That's what the Commonwealth always strives for.
Miskich: And what do I win?
Tyr: No one's blown you out of the sky.
Miskich: Ahh...

Schrodinger's Cat:

Hawkin's old alias "Schrodinger's Cat" is from a thought experiment in quantum mechanics which creates a paradox. Hypothetically speaking, a cat, along with a flask containing a poison and a radioactive source, is placed in a sealed box shielded against environmentally induced quantum decoherence. If an internal Geiger counter detects radiation, the flask is shattered, releasing the poison that kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when we look in the box, we see the cat either alive or dead, not both alive and dead. In other interpretations, instead of a paradox we have a split in reality, creating one in which the viewer opens the box to find the cat dead, and another in which the viewer finds the cat alive.