An international team led by Rutgers University-New Brunswick researchers has merged two lab-synthesized materials into a synthetic quantum structure once thought impossible to exist and produced an exotic structure expected to provide insights that could lead to new materials at the core of quantum computing.

Quantum effects do not seem to extend to very large objects–like cats, people or houses–and physicists do not agree on exactly why not. Now, an international team of scientists has proposed a new and refined way to test the validity of some proposed alternative models to standard quantum theory, which offer a possible explanation. Their work was published in the journal Physical Review Letters in June 2024.