{"id":519915,"date":"2026-06-05T10:09:33","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T10:09:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/519915\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T10:09:33","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T10:09:33","slug":"physicists-make-quantum-mechanics-breakthrough-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/519915\/","title":{"rendered":"Physicists make quantum mechanics breakthrough"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Physicists put a single chunk of metal into two places at once, the largest object ever shown to obey quantum mechanics\u2019 weirdest rule.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">At atomic scales, matter behaves like both wave and particle, meaning an electron, say, is not in one location but is smeared across space in a probabilistic \u201cwave function.\u201d At macro scales, this quantum superposition becomes undetectable \u2014 the objects we see tend to just be in one place \u2014 and scientists have long sought the boundary between the quantum and the everyday world.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The bundle of 10,000 sodium atoms, about the size of a modern transistor gate, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-025-09917-9\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"elm:link;elmt:article_link;slk:is an order of magnitude larger than previous records;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;is an order of magnitude larger than previous records&quot;}\" class=\"link \">is an order of magnitude larger than previous records<\/a>, but still significantly smaller than Erwin Schr\u00f6dinger\u2019s pet cat.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.semafor.com\/author\/tom-chivers\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"elm:link;elmt:article_link;slk:Tom Chivers;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;Tom Chivers&quot;}\" class=\"link \">Tom Chivers<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Physicists put a single chunk of metal into two places at once, the largest object ever shown to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":519916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[271],"tags":[18,19,17,224696,452,317,13729,76172,133,152352],"class_list":["post-519915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-physics","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-macro-scales","tag-physics","tag-quantum","tag-quantum-mechanics","tag-quantum-superposition","tag-science","tag-wave-function"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116696957854645180","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/519916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}