Although the “crystal cat” was very small compared to a real cat, it was huge by quantum standards—and at the time of writing, it was the largest object ever put into a quantum state.

The cat lives in another world.

The researchers hope to use their “crystal cat” to gain more insight into one of the greatest mysteries of quantum mechanics: What happens physically when you don’t just talk about the probability of an atomic lattice being in a certain place or that the cat is alive or dead, but make an actual measurement?

Is there a physical process taking place that follows an as-yet-unknown natural law? Does the fact that consciousness must exist to be measured have any bearing? Or will the universe split into two new worlds – one where the cat is alive and the other where it is dead?

There are many theories, but physicists in Zurich have already measured it.

They performed the experiment on crystals of different sizes, and found that the larger the “cat crystal,” the faster it decayed back to its natural state. In their next project, the scientists want to try to push the upper limit of the crystal size they can bring to the quantum state, until they reach the upper limit of the quantum world.