Quantum physicists just supersized Schrödinger’s cat

Individual clusters of 7,000 sodium atoms have been coaxed into existing in multiple places at once, creating the largest quantum superposition ever achieved. University of Vienna physicists managed to make these chunky clusters — each about 8 nanometers wide and as massive as a protein — behave like waves rather than particles, spreading across different paths separated by 133 nanometers before interfering in detectable patterns.

This breakthrough pushes the boundaries of where quantum mechanics meets our everyday world, helping answer what one researcher calls the "big, almost philosophical question of 'is there a transition between the quantum and classical?'" The experiment required two years of painstaking work in basement laboratories, with physicist Sebastian Pedalino spending "thousands of hours" staring at "flat lines and noise" before achieving success.

The implications stretch beyond academic curiosity. Quantum computers will need to maintain millions of objects in quantum states to perform useful calculations, making these scale experiments crucial for practical applications. The team is now working toward putting biological matter — potentially viruses — through the same process, which would move quantum interference "into a new regime" and bring Schrödinger's famous thought experiment tantalizingly close to living matter.