The unknowable aliveness of Schrödinger’s cat is key to more stable quantum devices Olivia ZZ/Getty Images
Quantum superpositions are typically fragile and fleeting, but one such state has now been maintained for a record-breaking 23 minutes. Keeping quantum states stable for this long could help make more robust quantum devices, or lead to discoveries of strange new effects in quantum physics.
This long-lived phenomenon is known as a cat state, named for Erwin Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment where a cat is placed in…
