The world’s heaviest Schrödinger cat points to more robust quantum bits

Quantum mechanics allows for all sorts of wacky phenomena that aren’t observed at a macroscopic scale. So where does the realm of quantum mechanics stop and where does the world as people experience it start? The latest results of ETH Zurich scientists show that quantum mechanics still holds for objects as large as 10¹⁷ atoms. The tiny vibrating crystal they used has become the heaviest object ever to be recorded in a superposition of locations.

Essentially, the Swiss researchers have created the heaviest real-world Schrödinger cat to date. In Erwin Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment, a cat’s fate is tied to whether or not an atom decays radioactively. If it does, a gaseous poison is released into the closed box in which the cat is locked, killing the poor animal. A common explanation of quantum mechanics, called the Copenhagen interpretation, asserts that as long as nobody checks inside the box, the cat is dead and alive simultaneously – just like quantum mechanics allows for subatomic particles to be in two states at once.