By making a kind of high-speed movie of a quantum leap, the work reveals that the process is as gradual as the melting of a snowman in the sun. “If we can measure a quantum jump fast and efficiently enough, it is actually a continuous process.” But there’s more. With their high-speed monitoring system, the researchers could spot when a quantum jump was about to appear, “catch” it halfway through, and reverse it, sending the system back to the state in which it started. What seemed to be unavoidable randomness in the physical world is now shown to be amenable to control. We can take charge of the quantum.

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