The quantum world is about to get bigger

The quantum world is about to get bigger thanks to a technique that
will allow objects big enough to see with the naked eye to exist in two
places at once.

Quantum
properties are most prominent in single particles. In bigger objects
thermal vibrations destroy the quantum effects. So in theory, chilling
a large object should allow its quantum properties to shine through.

This week, three teams of physicists have perfected a way of doing this (Nature, vol 444, p 67). Their technique is to bombard a mirror of roughly 10¹⁴ atoms with photons in a way that damps out thermal vibrations, cooling it to 135 millikelvin.

However,
the researchers will need sophisticated techniques to see the quantum
behaviour. "You can see the mirror with the naked eye but you won't be
able to resolve the quantum effects," says Markus Aspelmeyer, at the
University of Vienna in Austria.

Of course, you won't be. If you were, you would be a measuring device and according to the laws of quantum mechanics the quantum effect should disappear (decoherence and in the end collapse of the wave function.) So in the end it is not a question of size!

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