Physicists push thousands of atoms to a 'Schrödinger's cat' state — bringing the quantum world closer to reality than ever before

An illustration of particles behaving like a wave.

Physicists have put thousands of atoms into a "Schrödinger's cat" state — smashing the record for the most macroscopic object to be observed in a quantum state.

In a new study, researchers observed nanoparticles of 7,000 sodium atoms acting as a cohesive wave, pushing the strange world of quantum mechanics to new limits. Building on this research, future experiments could finally put biological molecules into a quantum state, opening up new ways to investigate their physical properties.