This stuff is a bit over my head, but...our man Anton discusses new developments in quantum physics. Note that the "virtual" particles (really transient particles) don´t *really* appear out of Nothing, since they take their energy from the so-called quantum foam, the idea being that there is no vacuum in the spacetime continuum. And presumably energy is everywhere.
Even more intriguing is the recent experiment which showed that an object 7,000 atoms large (OK, it´s still smaller than a virus, but you get the point) can exist in a "quantum state". Not sure what that even means, but our "classical" macro-world clearly obeys different laws than the quantum world. But where exactly is the boundary? Roger Penrose has proposed that maybe consciousness can be explained by quantum effects in the brain affecting its microtubules. They are of course very small, but still larger than the "sodium nanocluster" made to exhibit quantum properties in the previously mentioned test.
Maybe we shouldn´t cut quantum physicist´s funding just yet, LOL.
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