
The metaphorical cat that represents quantum weirdness has escaped its box
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Several weeks ago, I was huddled over a laptop with two researchers from IBM to learn about a Schrödinger’s cat they had made in one of their quantum computers. It was a big one – big enough, I learned, to be considered proof that their computer was worth paying attention to.
Now, this wasn’t a real cat with paws and whiskers, of course, but a metaphorical one made from tiny superconducting circuits called…