Straggler writes:
That sounds intriguing. What recent developments have occurred that make this more possible/reliable? Are you talking technological, mathematical, conceptual....??
All three. The fields of quantum computation, quantum statistical mechanics and quantum measurement theory have provided the main advancements.
Contrary to popular belief, it is not the size of an object which determines if it is classical or not, but rather how "thermal" it is. Thermal meaning how much it interacts with its surroundings. Large objects are always interacting and hence are rarely quantum in nature. To help people in seeing this, one may view an interaction as a measurement. Big objects are always being measured and are thus "forced" by measurement to be in a definite state.
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