• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Quantum Cat Experiment Breaks Record By Surviving For Incredible 1,400 Seconds

October 30, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

States in quantum superposition are notoriously fragile but researchers in China have reported creating such a state that lasted for a whopping 23 minutes and 20 seconds. This record-breaking result is exciting in itself but the team believes that it could open new ways to high-precision measurements and even information processing for quantum computers – possibly even allowing scientists to probe the limits of physical theories.

The study, which is yet to be peer-reviewed, conducted by scientists at the University of Science and Technology of China, saw 10,000 atoms of ytterbium cooled down to a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero and trapped using light. Each atom could be controlled with great accuracy and was put into the superposition of two very different spin-states. This is known as a “quantum cat” state.

Advertisement

In the famous Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment, we see a cat closed in a box with a poison activated by a random quantum process. Without opening the box we cannot ascertain the state of the cat, so it is both alive and dead, two contradictory states in the non-quantum reality we experience. In the quantum world, quantum cat states are superpositions where a quantum state can exist in several ways at once, although it’s impossible to tell which one it really is so it’s effectively all of them at once.

In the new experiment, it is the length of this quantum cat state that is astounding. In nature, the superposition will collapse into one or the other in a fraction of a second, but here it persisted for 1,400 seconds. The team thinks that with a better vacuum system, it can be made to last even longer.

“It’s a big deal because they’re making this beautiful cat state in an atomic system and it’s stable,” Barry Sanders, from the University of Calgary who was not involved in the study, told New Scientist. “A probe gets jiggled and pushed and nudged and prodded, and then by seeing what happens, you learn about the things that interact with it.”

The research shows that there are lots of different elements that can be used for these devices, it doesn’t have to be ytterbium, however, they did show that this particular setup with the ytterbium atoms is extremely sensitive to measuring magnetic fields, with exciting applications.

Advertisement

This is not the only recent record-breaking event when it comes to quantum cat experiments. Last year, researchers successfully placed the heaviest macroscopic object in superposition. It was a crystal weighing just 16 micrograms but it shows that the field is truly breaking new ground into what is possible.

A preprint paper describing the experiment and the result is available on the ArXiv.

[H/T: New Scientist]

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. No ‘magic wand’ to fix Lebanon crisis, new prime minister says
  2. Google wants to use AI to time traffic lights more efficiently
  3. Tissue Regenerating Tech Could Make Root Canals A Thing Of The Past
  4. IFLScience The Big Questions: Why Are We The Only Surviving Human Species?

Source Link: Quantum Cat Experiment Breaks Record By Surviving For Incredible 1,400 Seconds

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Humans’ Hidden “Sixth Sense” To Be Mapped Following $14.2 Million Prize – What Is Interoception?
  • Purple Earth Hypothesis: Our Planet Was Not Blue And Green Over 2.4 Billion Years Ago
  • Hippos Hung Around In Europe 80,000 Years Later Than We Thought
  • Officially Gone: Slender-Billed Curlew, Once-Widespread Migratory Bird, Declared Extinct By IUCN
  • Watch: Rare Footage Captures Freaky Faceless Cusk Eels Lurking On The Deep-Sea Floor
  • Watch This Funky Sea Pig Dancing Its Way Through The Deep Sea, Over 2,300 Meters Below The Surface
  • NASA Lets YouTuber Steve Mould Test His “Weird Chain Theory” In Space
  • The Oldest Stalagmite Ever Dated Was Found In Oklahoma Rocks, Dating Back 289 Million Years
  • 2024’s Great American Eclipse Made Some Birds Behave In Surprising Ways, But Not All Were Fooled
  • “Carter Catastrophe”: The Math Equation That Predicts The End Of Humanity
  • Why Is There No Nobel Prize For Mathematics?
  • These Are The Only Animals Known To Incubate Eggs In Their Stomachs And Give “Birth” Out Their Mouths
  • Constipated? This One Fruit Could Help, Says First-Ever Evidence-Led Diet Guidance
  • NGC 2775: This Galaxy Breaks The Rules Of “Galactic Evolution” And Baffles Astronomers
  • Meet The “Four-Eyed” Hirola, The World’s Most Endangered Antelope With Fewer Than 500 Left
  • The Bizarre 1997 Experiment That Made A Frog Levitate
  • There’s A Very Good Reason Why October 1582 On Your Phone Is Missing 10 Days
  • Skynet-1A: Military Spacecraft Launched 56 Years Ago Has Been Moved By Persons Unknown
  • There’s A Simple Solution To Helping Avoid Erectile Dysfunction (But You’re Not Going To Like It)
  • Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS May Be 10 Billion Years Old, This Rare Spider Is Half-Female, Half-Male Split Down The Middle, And Much More This Week
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version