Schrodinger's cat is a flawed thought experiment. Observation just means "interaction"
The way I learned it, Bohr would say "the atom is in a superposition of states until it is observed". Schrödinger used the cat thought experiment to show the absurdity of Bohr's position: "... and then, when I look at the cat, it is forced to take a stand, poof it goes 'alive', or 'dead'"
As far as I know, we still don't understand what, exactly, constitutes an "observation". Quoth Bell (the guy from Bell's experiment):
... current interest [in questions of foundations of
quantum mechanics] is small. The typical
physicist feels that they have long been answered,
and that he will fully understand just how if he
ever can spare twenty minutes to think about it.
The way I learned it, Bohr would say "the atom is in a superposition of states until it is observed". Schrödinger used the cat thought experiment to show the absurdity of Bohr's position: "... and then, when I look at the cat, it is forced to take a stand, poof it goes 'alive', or 'dead'"
As far as I know, we still don't understand what, exactly, constitutes an "observation". Quoth Bell (the guy from Bell's experiment):
... current interest [in questions of foundations of quantum mechanics] is small. The typical physicist feels that they have long been answered, and that he will fully understand just how if he ever can spare twenty minutes to think about it.
http://www.amazon.com/Speakable-Unspeakable-Mechanics-Collec...
Jaynes is also worth reading, in spite of his non-mainstream position: http://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/articles/prob.in.qm.ps.gz