A sapphire Schrödinger’s cat shows that quantum effects can scale up

With the mass of about half an eyelash, a hunk of crystal exists in two distinct states at once

A close up photo of a tiny transparent rectangle sitting on the tip of a person's finger.

In a sliver of sapphire crystal within a specially designed device (shown), scientists created a mimic of the dead-and-alive Schrödinger’s cat, in which the crystal jiggles in two directions simultaneously.

Matteo Fadel

In keeping with the grand tradition of tubby cats, a newly created quantum “cat” is particularly massive — at least for the quantum realm.