As mentioned here, using lasers to cool objects is becoming common in the lab. Now researchers at MIT have managed to cool a large (relatively) object to near absolute zero.
This study marks the coldest temperature ever reached by laser-cooling of an object of that size, and the technique holds promise that it will experimentally confirm, for the first time, that large objects obey the laws of quantum mechanics just as atoms do.
The researchers are using two lasers. One to hold the mirror in place and another to bring the temperature of the laser down to 0.8 degrees Kelvin.
They still have a few hurdles to overcome before they’ll be able to observe quantum effects with the mirror but the progress to date seems to indicate they are far away.
Once the objects get cold enough, quantum effects such as squeezed
state generation, quantum information storage and quantum entanglement
between the light and the mirror should be observable
