To get the sapphire, which consists of about 10 17 atoms, to behave like a quantum-mechanical object, the research group set it to oscillate and coupled it to a superconducting circuit.

The new sapphire cat is a relatively hefty 16 micrograms, physicists report in the April 21 Science. That’s close to half the mass of an eyelash, and more than 100 trillion times the mass of cat ...