Physicists, it seems, can't seem to stop 'feeding' Schrödinger's cat.
The theoretical feline has gone from a Slinky Malinki to a Butterball Brown – and just keeps on growing bigger.
Not literally, of course. Rather, physicists have been trying to push the quantum states in a superposition farther and farther apart, trying to discover just how close they can get to the realm of classical physics before the cat is no longer Schrödinger's.
Now, scientists in Germany have created a record-breaking optical version of the famous thought experiment – using some of the strangest atoms known to physics.
By exploiting a super-puffy type of atom known as the Rydberg atom, a team led by physicist Hendrik Hegels of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics has created Schrödinger's chonkers – optical cat states at what the researchers describe as "world-record sizes".
And the bigger the cat gets, the more closely physicists can interrogate one of quantum mechanics' most enduring mysteries: Where, exactly, does the quantum world end and ours begin?
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