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Thought Experiment! Any bacterium is right out!
A sensor would be an observer. It would influence the outcome. There are plenty of ways to get a 50/50 kill on the cat without a sensor. It's also why this does not work in real life. You'd need to put the cat in circumstances it couldn't possibly survive to begin with to take out all random factors, thereby dooming it anyway.

That's kind of the idea of a thought experiment. Anything not defined isn't there. -.-

I stopped reading newscientist when its news feeds turned into partial articles. It can go stick its bloated head in the nearest black hole, all it ever did was state the obvious anyway. Diseases make you sick, quantum computing will be fast and people believe in things that don't exist. So I chose not to spend my time lounging around on the poop deck of the S.S. Obvious. The magazine... is too bloody expensive over here :P

Besides most scientists publish their things for free anyway.