Researchers have measured the quantum world's "pushes"

The LIGO plant in the USA became famous a few years ago when it succeeded in registering the first gravitational waves; an Einstein theory was confirmed, and it became the Nobel Prize for this.

The gravitational wave meant an extremely small displacement, no larger than an atom or part of an atom. Now LIGO has done it again, and this time it is much less.

- These quantum fluctuations are only 10 raised to minus 20 meters. That's twenty zeros before the number. An ordinary hydrogen atom is about 10 raised to minus 10. So the quantum fluctuations are for the hydrogen atom as the hydrogen atom is for man. Or if you turn it around: a hair in relation to the entire Milky Way, says quantum physicist Igor Pikovski at Stockholm University.

The quantum world is bizarre, with its own physical laws that lead to strange phenomena. Particles can be present in two places at the same time. If something happens to one particle, it seems to be able to be intertwined with another, where exactly the same thing happens. Although the distance can be enormous and there is no trace of contact or signal between them.

- It is connected with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, says Pikovski. We cannot know two properties simultaneously in a quantum system. Either we can measure the position of a particle or its velocity, not both.

That they have now managed to get measurement results from this bizarre world is unique and important, he believes.

- When we have measured them, we can see them. There is no boundary between the quantum world and our world. How far can we go now? Can we control these phenomena? Some are already in progress: quantum sensors, quantum computers, quantum encryption.

Quantum computer work is already underway, including at Chalmers in Gothenburg. Quantum encryption can be described as a secret message sent via individual light particles. These can not be taken out of the broadcast and read without being noticed.

- The code can not be broken because then you have to break the laws of physics, says Igor Pikovski.