Physicists bring human-scale object to near standstill, reaching a quantum state: The results open possibilities for studying gravity's effects on relatively large objects in quantum states

In the last few decades, physicists have found ways to super-cool objects so that their atoms are at a near standstill, wrestling small objects such as clouds of millions of atoms, or nanogram-scale objects, into such pure quantum states. Now scientists have cooled a large, human-scale object to close to its motional ground state. The object isn't tangible in the sense of being situated at one location, but is the combined motion of four separate objects. The 'object' that the researchers cooled has an estimated mass of about 10 kilograms, and comprises nearly 1 octillion atoms.