The unknowable aliveness of Schrodinger’s cat is key to more stable quantum devicesOlivia ZZ/Getty Images
Quantum superpositions are typically fragile and fleeting, but one such state has now been maintained for a record-breaking 23 minutes. Keeping quantum states stable for this long could help make more robust quantum devices, or lead to discoveries of strange new effects in quantum physics.

This long-lived phenomenon is known as a cat state, named for Erwin Schrodinger’s famous thought experiment where a cat is placed in a box under such…