[tiernano]

Given how photos are "imported" into a Lightroom Catalog, some might think thats where they live... On a Mac, IIRC (its been a while since i used LR on a Mac) if you look at your catalog, its a single large "file" with all the meta data, edits, originals, etc, in one place...

[iriche]

This isn't really correct, the original image is always stored in the original place or the place you select to copy it too. That's why I also think the title is a bit miss leading, cause it was never the Lightroom catalog that was the issue, it was the RAW-images them self.

[Saris]

The catalog only contains the edits and changes to an image, it doesn't actually contain any images.

Lightroom can move or copy images to a new folder for you, but they're still just normal image files you can open with any supported software.