fragment describing the gist of the experiment: "The [entering] microwaves are so far off resonance with the [superconducting] circuit that they cannot drive i

fragment describing the gist of the experiment: "The [entering] microwaves are so far off resonance with the [superconducting] circuit that they cannot drive it between its ground and its excited state. So instead of being absorbed, they leave the box bearing information about the quantum system in the form of a phase shift (the position of the troughs and peaks of the photons’ wavefunctions). Although there is information about the quantum system in the exiting microwaves, it is only a small amount of information. “Every time we nudge the system, something different happens,” Murch said. “That’s because the photons we use to measure the quantum system are quantum mechanical as well and exhibit quantum fluctuations. So it takes many of these measurements to distinguish the system’s signal from the quantum fluctuations of the photons probing it.” Or, as physicists put it, these are weak measurements."