If we look at it through quantum mechanics, the Universe is a noisy, crackling place, a space in which particles
They continually enter and leave existence, creating a kind of quantum 'background noise' whose effects, however, are too subtle to detect in the objects of our everyday lives.
But now, for the first time, a team led by researchers at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) Laboratory has managed to measure the effects of these quantum fluctuations on human-scale objects. In a paper published in Nature, the scientists show that quantum fluctuations, however tiny, are equally capable of "kicking" objects as large as LIGO's 40-kg mirrors, causing them to move slightly.