It is discouraging we live in an age where absolutely mind-blowing science receives, effectively, zero air time while Lohan’s latest faceplant or Sheen’s recent dalliance get multi-night coverage.

So, enjoy:

A team of scientists has succeeded in putting an object large enough to be visible to the naked eye into a mixed quantum state of moving and not moving.

Andrew Cleland at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his team cooled a tiny metal paddle until it reached its quantum mechanical ‘ground state’ — the lowest-energy state permitted by quantum mechanics. They then used the weird rules of quantum mechanics to simultaneously set the paddle moving while leaving it standing still. The experiment shows that the principles of quantum mechanics can apply to everyday objects as well as as atomic-scale particles.

What does the mean? Well, to my very little understanding it is the first, or one of the first, experiments to produce some of the weird “quantum physics” that we know exist in the impossibly small world of electrons in the macro-sized world.

Think about that, something you can see with your own eyes was moving and not moving at the same time.

So, if any of us, scientist or layman, believer or non-believer, is feeling smugly sure about “the way things are” I’d suggest a large helping of of humility and wonder at the astounding unfolding of the way things really can be. The ramifications of quantum weirdness in our world means all bets are off.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_tNzeouHC4[/youtube]

Further reading.