To the human eye, most stationary objects appear to be just that — still, and completely at rest. Yet if we were handed a quantum lens, allowing us to see objects at the scale of individual atoms, what was an apple sitting idly on our desk would appear as a teeming collection of vibrating particles, very much in motion. In the last few decades, physicists have found ways to super-cool objects so that their atoms are at a near standstill, or in their “motional ground state.” To date, physicists have…
