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Speaker 1: Hi, it's Jorge and Daniel here. And this holiday season,

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Speaker 1: if you're looking for a gift for yourself, for a friend,

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Speaker 1: or for your family, why not get him the Gift

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Speaker 1: of Answers about the Universe. To check out our new

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Speaker 1: book Frequently Asked Questions about the Universe, you can find

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Speaker 1: details at Universe f a Q dot com. Thanks for

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Speaker 1: supporting the podcast. Happy holidays everyone, Y Daniel, I've got

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Speaker 1: a really easy question for you. Oh, those the trickiest

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Speaker 1: ones relaxed. I'm sure it'll be trivial, but here we go.

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Speaker 1: What is a medal? Kind of depends on what temperature. Actually,

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Speaker 1: it depends on whether you're an astronomer, a geophysicist, or

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Speaker 1: a solid state physicist. But those are all physicists. You

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Speaker 1: can't agree on what a medal is. No astronomers think

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Speaker 1: that anything heavier than helium is a metal, and a

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Speaker 1: solid state physicist thinks that anything that conducts electricity is

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Speaker 1: a metal. Sounds like a little disaster. Don't get me

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Speaker 1: started on how we define heavy metal, well, because you

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Speaker 1: have to call the music physicists. It depends on the

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Speaker 1: number of electric guitars involved. And how do you define

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Speaker 1: space elevator? Music. Who do you call that? Hi, I'm

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Speaker 1: or handmade cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi.

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Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor at

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Speaker 1: u C Irvine. And while I do want to ride

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Speaker 1: in this space elevator, I've given no thought to what

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Speaker 1: kind of music I want to hear as I'm writing

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Speaker 1: up into space. I guess you want maybe um cosmologically

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Speaker 1: classical music. Maybe maybe I want the opening music to

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Speaker 1: our podcast, which is sort of space. You must want

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Speaker 1: electric music, because you know that's a physical property. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I definitely don't want anything catastrophic or electromagnetic orchestra email music.

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Speaker 1: But anyways, welcome for a podcast. Daniel and Jorge explain

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Speaker 1: the university production of I Heart Radio. We are your

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Speaker 1: mental musical accompaniment to our ride through the universe, elevating

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Speaker 1: ourselves up into understanding the very nature of space and

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Speaker 1: time and fields and particles. We go up and down

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Speaker 1: while we examine what we do know and what we

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Speaker 1: don't know about some of the deepest questions in the universe.

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Speaker 1: Where did the universe come from? How is it gonna end?

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Speaker 1: What does it all mean? Anyway? We talk about all

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Speaker 1: of these things on the podcast, and we try to

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Speaker 1: explain as much as we understand to you. Yeah, because

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Speaker 1: it is a pretty musical universe. It's it sounds a

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Speaker 1: little melodious and sometimes kind of chaotic and definitely epic.

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Speaker 1: Definitely has an epic score for quality to the universe,

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Speaker 1: that's right, And definitely kudos to the audio engineers for

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Speaker 1: the universe. There's so many really rul sounds out there,

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Speaker 1: and you just sit out there and listen. You hear

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Speaker 1: all sorts of squishing and banging and squeaking, and wow,

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Speaker 1: the universe is definitely chock full of cool special effects. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and we listen to the universe in all kinds of ways, right,

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Speaker 1: Like there's sound waves, there's electromagnetic waves, there are gravitational waves.

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Speaker 1: It's like the universe is a symphony using all kinds

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Speaker 1: of instruments. Do you think any collection of sounds is

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Speaker 1: a symphony? Like when you pick up your kids from

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Speaker 1: daycare when they're two, you consider that sound a symphony

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Speaker 1: tense screaming children? Depends on my mood, I guess, am

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Speaker 1: I feeling like a cacophony of two year olds? Or

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Speaker 1: would some peace and quiet be nice as a parent

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Speaker 1: sort of like early heavy metal. All they're doing is shouting. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: one person's music is another person heavy metal screaming. But

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Speaker 1: it's true that the university is filled with incredible and

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Speaker 1: amazing things, and as we look around, we're continually impressed

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Speaker 1: by the complexity of stuff that we see around us.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's not just one kind of sound or

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Speaker 1: one kind of object or one kind of material we

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Speaker 1: find out there in the universe. There's all sorts, and

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Speaker 1: in them is variety and complexity of things that we

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Speaker 1: get to dig into and try to understand. Yeah, because

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Speaker 1: I guess even after millions of years of being humans

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Speaker 1: and looking at the world and listening to the world,

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Speaker 1: there are still things about it that's surprises, Like we

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Speaker 1: are still finding out new kinds of materials and new

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Speaker 1: ways in which matter behaves. That's right, because it turns

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Speaker 1: out that the things around us are not the basic

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Speaker 1: building blocks of the universe. It's not like there's a

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Speaker 1: fundamental ice cream particle and a fundamental tuna sandwich particle

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Speaker 1: that makes up the things you eat or the things

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Speaker 1: that are you. Everything around us is actually made of

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Speaker 1: really small little particles arranged in different ways. And those

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Speaker 1: arrangements can do startling things. You take a set of

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Speaker 1: particles and you can make a kitten. Rearrange those same particles,

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Speaker 1: and you can make lava or neutron star or a

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Speaker 1: blueberry sandwich. It's all the same bits, just arranged in

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Speaker 1: different ways, and we're continuing to discover other ways to

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Speaker 1: arrange those bits to make new, even weirder kinds of stuff. Yeah. Wait,

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Speaker 1: are you telling me that ice cream is not i

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Speaker 1: the mental particle in the universe? It should be. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I know it seems like fundamental to our existence as

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Speaker 1: and it's hard to imagine being human without ice cream.

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Speaker 1: But you know, most humans who have ever lived and

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Speaker 1: never had ice cream, and that is called the human

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Speaker 1: tragedy in literature. Think about it this way. That means

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Speaker 1: there might be some dessert invented by future humans that

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Speaker 1: you never taste. The future humans can't imagine life without.

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Speaker 1: I find it hard to believe that they can improve

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Speaker 1: on ice cream. I take open the fact that in

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Speaker 1: the long run there will partably be more humans that

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Speaker 1: have even ice cream than U have. Not. Well, that's

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Speaker 1: an optimistic view, but I think ice cream is a

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Speaker 1: great example because it's obvious to us that ice cream

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Speaker 1: is not fundamental to the universe, right like ice cream

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Speaker 1: takes special conditions in order to exist, and nobody would

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Speaker 1: be surprised to learn that there might have been a

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Speaker 1: time in the universe when there was no ice cream.

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Speaker 1: It's the same kind of question we ask about other

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Speaker 1: things about whether they're fundamental. Is it necessary to have

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Speaker 1: electrons in the universe? Are they fundamental? Or could there

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Speaker 1: have been a time before or was electrons? Could there

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Speaker 1: be a time in the future without electrons. That's sort

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Speaker 1: of the question about whether something is fundamental or whether

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Speaker 1: it emerges from the complex interplay of fundamental things. So

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Speaker 1: more humans used electrons than not used electrons. Humans are

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Speaker 1: made partially out of electron So I guess we've used

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Speaker 1: them and everything we do right well. I look forward

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Speaker 1: to our future episode about the physics of ice cream.

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Speaker 1: Today on the podcast, we'll be asking a different question

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Speaker 1: about matter and the different ways that it can come

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Speaker 1: together and do interesting and new things. So our question

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Speaker 1: for today is what is topological matter? Topological matter? That's

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Speaker 1: not an everyday word. It's not an everyday word. It's

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Speaker 1: a very recent discovery. Physicists working in their basements, with

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Speaker 1: their lasers and their supercold temperatures and their bizarre materials,

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Speaker 1: have been able to concoct kinds of things no human

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Speaker 1: has ever seen before, to put these same ingredients together

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Speaker 1: in new recipe, to make weird, new kinds of matter

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Speaker 1: that can do things that are familiar matter just cannot do.

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Speaker 1: Man physicists. First, we're talking about physicists as musicians. Now

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Speaker 1: we're talking about them as cook or mad scientists. I

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Speaker 1: wasn't quite sure what you were going for there. I

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Speaker 1: think there's a big overlap between cooks and mad scientists.

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Speaker 1: I think a big part of being a baker is

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Speaker 1: being a mad scientist. You know, Like what happens if

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Speaker 1: I just put a lot of butter in this recipe?

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Speaker 1: Let's see. I don't think that's what I want to

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Speaker 1: hear from when I go to a restaurant. It's like

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Speaker 1: the mad scientist today has a very special treat for you.

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Speaker 1: That's how all of French cooking was invented. Let's just

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Speaker 1: add more butter and see what happens. Oh man, you

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Speaker 1: just call it all a French culture. Man, No, there's

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Speaker 1: an insanity to their creativity which has led to this

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Speaker 1: exquisite discovery of their pastries. They're creative. Yes, yes, that's

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Speaker 1: what we call those kids in class. That kids really creative.

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Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to when the French invent the topological pastry.

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Speaker 1: How do you know they haven't? Can you deform a

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Speaker 1: cross on so that it's equivalent to another pastry? What

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Speaker 1: is the shape of a croissland? Really? And is it

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Speaker 1: a croissant if it's not that shape? Yeah? Well, you know,

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Speaker 1: sometimes we ask if the universe is actually the shape

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Speaker 1: of a doughnut, but maybe we should be asking if

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Speaker 1: it's the shape of a croissant, right, And each quantum

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Speaker 1: field is like a layer in the flakiness of the croissant.

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Speaker 1: That's right. Quantum lamination theory, quantum croissant, quantum heart attack? Really?

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Speaker 1: What is what should call it? For all the ridiculous

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Speaker 1: quantum things out there? I don't know if anybody's ever

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Speaker 1: done quantum pastry yet, I mean much idea. Yeah, but

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Speaker 1: you know, every time I say it on the podcast,

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Speaker 1: we can email from a listener who's like, actually, here's

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Speaker 1: an example. They sell this around the corner. So folks

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Speaker 1: out there, if you've eaten a quantum pastry, send me

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Speaker 1: the recipe. Actually, um, here's a season this this letter.

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Speaker 1: Stop talking about my product. But yeah, topological matter. That's

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Speaker 1: a pretty interesting idea for a name for a kind

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Speaker 1: of material. And I imagine, I mean, the word topological

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Speaker 1: comes up a lot in like mat makers, right, and

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Speaker 1: I guess architects in you know, people who build houses,

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Speaker 1: they have to deal with topological maps a lot, right,

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Speaker 1: exactly In the field of topology is the one that

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Speaker 1: studies questions about shapes and surfaces and asks questions like

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Speaker 1: can you take a donut and smoothly deform it so

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Speaker 1: that it turns into a coffee cup, for example? And

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Speaker 1: the answer is yes, you can. So a topologist says

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Speaker 1: that like, a coffee cup and a doughnut are basically

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Speaker 1: the same shape, and they're both different from like a sphere,

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Speaker 1: because the sphere has no holes in it, and a

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Speaker 1: doughnut and a coffee cup both have one hole in it.

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Speaker 1: So that's the field of topology interesting. And so if

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Speaker 1: you take a donut and dip it into a coffee cup,

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Speaker 1: what does that give you? It gives you a soggy donut.

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Speaker 1: Is that a new kind of shape? But the same

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Speaker 1: as a fear if it sogs, it doesn't it become

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Speaker 1: a sphere. It requires an entirely new field of math.

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Speaker 1: Soggy topology hasn't been invented yet. Deep questions here today

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Speaker 1: and new fields being invented around every corner. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's kind of an interesting question. What is topological matter?

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Speaker 1: Maybe it's not something people have heard, or maybe it

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Speaker 1: is something people have heard those usual Daniel went out

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Speaker 1: there to ask people on internet this question. So be

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Speaker 1: grateful to these volunteers who were willing to answer a

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Speaker 1: random question without preparation and have their voice played on

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Speaker 1: the podcast. If you would like to play along for

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Speaker 1: a future episode, please, I totally encourage you. Right to

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Speaker 1: me two questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Think

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Speaker 1: about it for a second. How would you answer the

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Speaker 1: question what is topological matter? Here's what people had to say.

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Speaker 1: So I hear the word topological, and I think of

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Speaker 1: a topological map, which sort of gives you an idea

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Speaker 1: for how things are spaced out and organized the elevations.

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Speaker 1: So I'm wondering if topological matter has to do with

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Speaker 1: like the number of protons and neutrons and a nucleus

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Speaker 1: or something. I don't know. I think topology is the

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Speaker 1: study of two day and three day shipes and their properties,

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Speaker 1: and I think there's some rules about how you can

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Speaker 1: compare different shipes topologically. So my guess is the topological

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Speaker 1: comata is matter that conforms to the rules of topology.

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Speaker 1: Topological matter I haven't heard of before, but I imagine

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Speaker 1: it's matter with measurable geometry to it existing in three

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Speaker 1: D space instead of point matter, which might be black hole.

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Speaker 1: I have never heard the term topological matter before, but

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Speaker 1: I think topological is some geometry which has fixed properties.

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Speaker 1: So maybe topological matter is matter whose properties does not change,

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Speaker 1: but I don't know which properties. I'm guessing it's when

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Speaker 1: we're talking about matter and topological I'm guessing it's the

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Speaker 1: shape of sub atomic particles. I have no idea what

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Speaker 1: topological matter is. Is it something that you make maps

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Speaker 1: out of? Topological topography? Is method? Is map making? Right?

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Speaker 1: And I don't know. Topological matter is all of the

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Speaker 1: matter we can see in a three universe? All right?

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Speaker 1: Pretty interesting questions to feel like there's a deep level

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Speaker 1: of knowledge about physics here because I hear a lot

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Speaker 1: of words related to physics. Yeah, people definitely get the

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Speaker 1: clue also that it's related to topology and geometry and

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Speaker 1: thinking about shapes and structures and maps. I like the

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Speaker 1: person who said it's all the matter in the universe technically, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean in the universe or there's all kinds of matter.

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Speaker 1: M Yeah, that's true, it's something in the universe. That's

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Speaker 1: a good answer the generic physics question. But do you

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Speaker 1: say something in a universe or the universe or in

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Speaker 1: our universe? All right, So it's kind of an interesting

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Speaker 1: question let's dig into and this conversation is going to

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Speaker 1: get pretty mind blowing and pretty technical and in detailed here.

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Speaker 1: So let's start with the basic question, Daniel, what is

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Speaker 1: topological matter? Yeah, topological matter is something we've only recently

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Speaker 1: invented in the last twenty years or so, and it's

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Speaker 1: something that's different from anything we've ever seen before because

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Speaker 1: it's neither an insulator something that cannot conduct electricity, nor

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Speaker 1: a metal something that can conduct the electricity. So solid

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Speaker 1: state physicists used to divide all kinds of stuff into

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Speaker 1: two categories insulator or metal, and now they've developed this

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Speaker 1: thing which is sort of like neither and both. I see.

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Speaker 1: So solid state physicist is like a physicist that studies

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Speaker 1: I guess solid things, like they don't study energy or

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Speaker 1: particles that they study like materials, yeah, exactly. Sometimes they're

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Speaker 1: called condensed matter physicists, and you know they deal with

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Speaker 1: things like in a lattice, like a crystal, like a

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Speaker 1: big blob of stuff, not plasma, not liquid, but like

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Speaker 1: just a blob of stuff. And the name of the

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Speaker 1: game there's like can you rearrange stuff so it has

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Speaker 1: weird properties? Because you know, I, as a particle physicists,

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Speaker 1: I study like one proton at a time or two

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Speaker 1: of them smashing into each other. But we know that

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Speaker 1: when these protons get together with electrons and make all

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Speaker 1: sorts of interesting structures, crazy things happen. You can get carbon,

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Speaker 1: you can get diamond, you can get all sorts of

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Speaker 1: bizarre stuff. You get ice cream croissance. Yes, yeh. It's

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Speaker 1: sort of studies for like how properties of materials emerge

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Speaker 1: from rearranging the little bits inside matter into new arrangements. Right,

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Speaker 1: And it's like solid stuff. It's not stuff that's like

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Speaker 1: flying around or you know, moving or it's like what

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Speaker 1: can you do with this solid thing? Exactly? And the

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Speaker 1: question of you know, what's a metal what's a conductor

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Speaker 1: is very important because some of this stuff goes into

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Speaker 1: fueling lack our electronics industry. You know, we need insulators

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Speaker 1: and we need conductors to make circuits, and so you

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Speaker 1: can make like new kinds of stuff that has interesting properties.

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Speaker 1: You might be able to make like new weird electronic

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Speaker 1: do hikeys that power the next generation of quantum computers

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Speaker 1: that you're use in your phone as you ride the

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Speaker 1: space elevator up to the moon. Yeah, listening to space

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Speaker 1: elevator music on your quantum phone. And so that you're

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Speaker 1: saying that they see the world as or they see

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Speaker 1: materials usually as either insulators or conductors. That's right. The

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Speaker 1: whole theory of condensed matter physics until about twenty years

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Speaker 1: ago was that materials are either insulators or metals. And

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Speaker 1: they have this whole theory about electrons in bands inside

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Speaker 1: the material that helped them understand that. Okay, so let's

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Speaker 1: get into how do you define conductivity and what makes

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Speaker 1: something not conductive or an insulator. So it's easiest to

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Speaker 1: start out with an individual atom. You remember that atom

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Speaker 1: has a nucleus of right at the core where you've

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Speaker 1: got protons and neutrons, that's where most of the stuff

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Speaker 1: is of the atom, and then around it are the electrons.

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Speaker 1: And electrons around an atom have these energy levels, right

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Speaker 1: because they're quantum particles. But now we want to think

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Speaker 1: about a whole bunch of atoms, right, you want to

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Speaker 1: put them together, stack them together like legos to make

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Speaker 1: a blob of stuff, because that's what condensed matter solid

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Speaker 1: state physics is about. It is about like a crystal

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Speaker 1: lattice of stuff. So material is sort of like a

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Speaker 1: grid of atoms. And now we want to think about

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Speaker 1: like how electrons can move through that grid of atoms.

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Speaker 1: And you know, an individual atom has its electrons and

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Speaker 1: the next one has its electrons, and the material is

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Speaker 1: a conductor when an electron can hop from one atom

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Speaker 1: to the next, when you can sort of like jump

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Speaker 1: around slide around easily. And material is an insulator when

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Speaker 1: you can't, when it's sort of like stuck on one

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Speaker 1: atom no matter how hard you push it. Well, I

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Speaker 1: think this is something that maybe a lot of people

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Speaker 1: don't think about when you know, I think when you

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Speaker 1: grow up and you learn about like a wire conducting electicity,

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Speaker 1: you think of like one electron going into the wire

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Speaker 1: and then traveling through the wire and then coming out

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Speaker 1: the other end. But really that's not what's happening in

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Speaker 1: conducting metals. It's it's more like electrons are being passed,

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Speaker 1: traded around from one end to the other, right, that's right.

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Speaker 1: You should sort of think of it like a hose,

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Speaker 1: but instead of an empty hose that you're passing one

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Speaker 1: electron all the way through, think about like a hose

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Speaker 1: it's already filled with electrons. You're pushing one in and

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Speaker 1: then another electron pops out the other side. So all

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Speaker 1: the electrons slide down the whole like one notch, and

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Speaker 1: one electron pops out the other side, but not the

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Speaker 1: one that you put in originally, you know, on your

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Speaker 1: side or maybe right, like, we don't know. It's like

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Speaker 1: it's it's a bit of a mess. It's like you

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Speaker 1: put an electron on one end and maybe that one

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Speaker 1: will hop to the next one, or maybe it'll stay in,

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Speaker 1: but it will kick off an electron from the existing atom,

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Speaker 1: and that one will go to the next atom, and

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Speaker 1: who knows what's going to happen, right, Yeah, Well, the

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Speaker 1: more orderly it is, the more it happens, Like you know,

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Speaker 1: everybody's sliding down one chair in the bus or something.

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Speaker 1: Then the better the conductivity, the more messy it is,

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Speaker 1: the more electrons bounce around and go in the wrong direction,

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Speaker 1: the worst the conductivity is. That's why we have some

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Speaker 1: conductors that are excellent in the conductors that are sort

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Speaker 1: of poor conductors. Right, And so what makes something more

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Speaker 1: conductive or one atom more prone to conductivity than others.

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Speaker 1: Is it just that it's electrons aren't like held on tightly,

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Speaker 1: or that there are at the surface and you know,

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Speaker 1: the atom can sort of take them relieve them. The

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Speaker 1: key thing is what energy levels are available to the electron.

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Speaker 1: So for an atom, you just have like a ladder

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Speaker 1: of energy levels and the electron can go up or

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Speaker 1: down those energy levels. But when you put all these

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Speaker 1: atoms together to make a material, something different happens. Instead

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Speaker 1: of having just like a full ladder of energy levels,

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Speaker 1: you get these bands that the electron can be into.

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Speaker 1: You have like a bunch of energy levels clustered together,

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Speaker 1: and then a gap where like electrons are not allowed

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Speaker 1: to have those energies, and then maybe there's another band

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Speaker 1: above it. And so this makes something an insulator. If

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Speaker 1: for example, a band is all full if a band

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Speaker 1: is all filled with electrons, is like no room for

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Speaker 1: electrons to jump in there unless they have crazy high energy.

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Speaker 1: So an insulator is one where you would need to

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Speaker 1: give the electron enormous energy so it could jump up

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Speaker 1: into the next band to move around. But normally electrons

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Speaker 1: don't have that energy, so they're sort of stuck where

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Speaker 1: they are. I feel like we're talking about heavy metals

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Speaker 1: and bands here. Hand. It's confusing my brain a little bit.

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Speaker 1: I think what you mean is, you know, electrons are

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Speaker 1: happy in certain energy levels around an atom, but when

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Speaker 1: you put a lot of atoms together, you know, things

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Speaker 1: get kind of fuzzy now, and an electron can be

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Speaker 1: happy sort of a multiple levels because it's near another atom, right,

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Speaker 1: But sometimes it can work out that there are big

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Speaker 1: gaps in like these energy levels. That's what you mean

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Speaker 1: by a band, right, It's like a sort of like

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Speaker 1: a gap in the sort of the different levels that's right,

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Speaker 1: the band are the allowed energy levels, and then there's

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Speaker 1: gaps between these bands, and an insulator has a really

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Speaker 1: big gap between the bands, and the lower band is

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Speaker 1: like all filled up, so that if an electron is

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Speaker 1: in that lower band, it can't just like jump to

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Speaker 1: the next atom, because the next atom is also filled up,

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Speaker 1: there's like no empty chairs and a conductor and a metal.

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Speaker 1: Then the band is only half filled, and so the

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Speaker 1: neighboring atoms have empty chairs for an electron to jump into.

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Speaker 1: They can slide over to the next one, sort of

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Speaker 1: like if you have a bottle and it's half filled

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Speaker 1: with water, it's a lot easier to slash the water

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Speaker 1: around than if you have a bottle it's totally filled

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Speaker 1: with water, because it's sort of like packed in there.

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Speaker 1: Nothing can move. And so if you have your band

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Speaker 1: half filled, then the electrons can slide around from atom

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Speaker 1: to atom. If your band is totally filled, that's an insulator.

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Speaker 1: Then the electrons are sort of all stuck and nobody

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Speaker 1: can go anywhere. Right, But I guess you make it

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Speaker 1: sound like it's just a matter of having too many

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Speaker 1: or too little electrons. It's really, But but really it's

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Speaker 1: more of a question of like the structure of the crystal,

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Speaker 1: right exactly. These bands come from the structure of the crystal.

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Speaker 1: Like you might wonder, why are there bands in a

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Speaker 1: crystal when there aren't band for an atom, There aren't

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Speaker 1: like these gaps where electrons are not allowed to have

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Speaker 1: the energy level in an atom, where do they come

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Speaker 1: from in a crystal? And that's the really interesting thing, right,

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Speaker 1: is that when you put atoms together into a crystal,

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Speaker 1: they get properties that the individual atoms don't have. And

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Speaker 1: what's going on is the spacing between the atoms. As

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Speaker 1: an electron passes through the crystal, sometimes it reflects off

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Speaker 1: of those atoms and bounces back and defracts and destructively

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Speaker 1: interferes with itself. And so if the energy of the

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Speaker 1: electron is such that the wavelength of its wave function

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Speaker 1: is similar to the spacing of the atoms in this crystal,

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Speaker 1: then you get all sorts of complex destructive interference and

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Speaker 1: electrons basically just can't have those energy levels. Mmm. Interesting.

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Speaker 1: It has to do with the waveform of the electrons

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Speaker 1: and how close or how far apart the crystal puts

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Speaker 1: the atoms together exactly. And the really fascinating thing is

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Speaker 1: that you could take the same material, the same elements,

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Speaker 1: and arrange them in different crystal structures and you get

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Speaker 1: different bands. So, for example, if you take tin, tin

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Speaker 1: has two different crystal structures, they call it gray tin

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Speaker 1: and white tin based on how it looks to your eye,

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Speaker 1: and white tin is a conductor, whereas gray tin is

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Speaker 1: an insulator. It's exactly the same stuff, but you can

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Speaker 1: build it together in different ways, sort of like using

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Speaker 1: the same legos to make something slightly different. The crystal

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Speaker 1: relationships are different, so the spacing is different, and so

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Speaker 1: electrons behave differently in those materials because I guess, you know,

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Speaker 1: the properties or the levels of one atom sort of

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Speaker 1: start to interfere with the properties and levels of its neighbors,

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Speaker 1: and so things sudden will become like prohibitive or easy

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Speaker 1: to kind of move around, exactly, And the properties of

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Speaker 1: a whole set of things can be very different from

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Speaker 1: the properties of one. Like you ever go listen to,

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Speaker 1: you know, children's choirs, like, well, one kid on their

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Speaker 1: own kind of terrible. But if you get like thirty

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Speaker 1: kids singing a song together, like it sort of averages

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Speaker 1: out to give you, like something maybe pleasant to listen to,

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Speaker 1: spoken like a true parent exactly. And so I think

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Speaker 1: this is really fascinating, And for a long time people thought,

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Speaker 1: well that was it. That it's all about having these

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Speaker 1: bands and it's determined by the crystal structure. That the

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Speaker 1: crystal structure tells you whether something is insulator or something

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Speaker 1: as a conductor. And this is called the band theory,

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Speaker 1: and it's sort of rained in condensed matter physics for

430
00:22:15,880 --> 00:22:19,000
Speaker 1: decades and decades, and people thought this is how conduction

431
00:22:19,080 --> 00:22:23,120
Speaker 1: works in materials. It's all about the structure of the crystal,

432
00:22:23,200 --> 00:22:26,280
Speaker 1: like the arrangement of the atoms that will determine what's

433
00:22:26,280 --> 00:22:29,000
Speaker 1: an insulator or a conductor exactly, and like not the

434
00:22:29,000 --> 00:22:31,439
Speaker 1: shape of the material. Doesn't matter how big a blob

435
00:22:31,480 --> 00:22:33,200
Speaker 1: you have, or how thin it is or how thick

436
00:22:33,240 --> 00:22:35,719
Speaker 1: it is. It's just about the nature of the material

437
00:22:35,760 --> 00:22:38,440
Speaker 1: and its crystal structure. This rain supreme. People thought of

438
00:22:38,520 --> 00:22:41,160
Speaker 1: this for a long time. But I'm guessing that there's

439
00:22:41,200 --> 00:22:43,840
Speaker 1: a twist to this story where everything is proven wrong.

440
00:22:44,040 --> 00:22:47,080
Speaker 1: That's usually how it works in physics, isn't it. That's right.

441
00:22:47,119 --> 00:22:49,600
Speaker 1: Here comes the revolution, and so let's get into the

442
00:22:49,640 --> 00:22:52,240
Speaker 1: plot twist here. But first let's take a quick break.

443
00:23:04,680 --> 00:23:08,719
Speaker 1: All right. We're talking about topological matter, and we were

444
00:23:08,760 --> 00:23:11,119
Speaker 1: talking about how something We used to think that everything

445
00:23:11,200 --> 00:23:15,840
Speaker 1: was either a conductor or an insulator, meaning it can

446
00:23:15,920 --> 00:23:19,240
Speaker 1: conduct electricity or not conduct electricity, and that we thought

447
00:23:19,320 --> 00:23:21,080
Speaker 1: it had everything to do with the way that the

448
00:23:21,160 --> 00:23:23,679
Speaker 1: structure of the material, in the way in which the

449
00:23:23,760 --> 00:23:27,359
Speaker 1: atoms suld have compacted together and form crystals. But now

450
00:23:27,440 --> 00:23:29,399
Speaker 1: there's a plot to with Daniel, So we learned some

451
00:23:29,440 --> 00:23:32,399
Speaker 1: new information. That's right. Clever people thinking hard about the

452
00:23:32,400 --> 00:23:34,480
Speaker 1: way these things work came up with an idea for

453
00:23:34,560 --> 00:23:37,159
Speaker 1: how to build a new kind of material. And this

454
00:23:37,240 --> 00:23:40,520
Speaker 1: is super cool because it came out of people's brains.

455
00:23:40,920 --> 00:23:42,920
Speaker 1: This is not something we like discovered in the lab

456
00:23:43,000 --> 00:23:44,920
Speaker 1: and we're like, look at this weird kind of stuff

457
00:23:44,960 --> 00:23:46,920
Speaker 1: we built. Oh my gosh, you can do something weird.

458
00:23:47,080 --> 00:23:49,399
Speaker 1: This came out of smart people scratching their heads and

459
00:23:49,480 --> 00:23:53,000
Speaker 1: drinking coffee and scribbling in their notebooks and doing calculations,

460
00:23:53,119 --> 00:23:54,840
Speaker 1: and they were able to come up with an idea

461
00:23:54,880 --> 00:23:58,400
Speaker 1: for how to build something which is called the topological material,

462
00:23:58,720 --> 00:24:02,560
Speaker 1: which is an insulator on the inside but a conductor

463
00:24:02,720 --> 00:24:06,040
Speaker 1: on the surface. So like the outer edges of a lava,

464
00:24:06,119 --> 00:24:09,280
Speaker 1: this stuff will conduct electricity, but the interior of it

465
00:24:09,359 --> 00:24:13,520
Speaker 1: will not. Interesting so sort of like a coating almost

466
00:24:13,560 --> 00:24:16,480
Speaker 1: like you have something that doesn't conduct electricity, like like

467
00:24:16,520 --> 00:24:18,760
Speaker 1: a ceramic or something, and then you codd with something

468
00:24:18,800 --> 00:24:22,560
Speaker 1: that does conduct electricity. No it's all one material. So

469
00:24:22,600 --> 00:24:26,280
Speaker 1: you have like some kind of material and inside it

470
00:24:26,320 --> 00:24:29,520
Speaker 1: doesn't conduct electricity, but then the same material on the surface,

471
00:24:29,520 --> 00:24:32,439
Speaker 1: the surface of that same material. It's all uniform and

472
00:24:32,440 --> 00:24:35,159
Speaker 1: homogeneous what the stuff is, but the surface of it

473
00:24:35,200 --> 00:24:38,960
Speaker 1: does conduct electricity. Oh wait, it's the same material with

474
00:24:39,040 --> 00:24:42,679
Speaker 1: the same structure, or is it on the surface you

475
00:24:42,720 --> 00:24:45,000
Speaker 1: have a different structure. It's the same material with the

476
00:24:45,040 --> 00:24:48,440
Speaker 1: same structure. But now the behavior of the material depends

477
00:24:48,480 --> 00:24:50,879
Speaker 1: on where you are in the shape. If you're on

478
00:24:50,920 --> 00:24:53,520
Speaker 1: the edge, you conduct electricity. If you're in the middle,

479
00:24:53,560 --> 00:24:57,359
Speaker 1: in the bulk, you insulate. WHOA, So how does that work?

480
00:24:57,440 --> 00:24:59,880
Speaker 1: Like how can something conduct only on the surface. Yeah,

481
00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:03,440
Speaker 1: it's really interesting. It has to do with how electrons move.

482
00:25:03,520 --> 00:25:06,520
Speaker 1: And so we talked previously about insulators being when electrons

483
00:25:06,520 --> 00:25:09,720
Speaker 1: are stuck. So now imagine a material where electrons aren't

484
00:25:09,760 --> 00:25:12,240
Speaker 1: quite stuck and they're not like exactly stuck on one atom.

485
00:25:12,280 --> 00:25:14,880
Speaker 1: They can sort of like move in little circles. And

486
00:25:14,960 --> 00:25:18,080
Speaker 1: that doesn't allow this to conduct electricity because electrons like

487
00:25:18,240 --> 00:25:20,840
Speaker 1: sort of can't move all together. Like you move in

488
00:25:20,880 --> 00:25:22,760
Speaker 1: a circle, you end up back where you started. So

489
00:25:22,800 --> 00:25:26,760
Speaker 1: there's no effective flow of electricity. But if electrons are

490
00:25:26,760 --> 00:25:28,959
Speaker 1: moving in a circle, then think about what happens on

491
00:25:29,000 --> 00:25:32,400
Speaker 1: the surface or near the surface. Instead of having electrons

492
00:25:32,440 --> 00:25:34,879
Speaker 1: moving little loops, their loops are sort of like cut

493
00:25:34,880 --> 00:25:37,320
Speaker 1: in half, and so now they can only do sort

494
00:25:37,320 --> 00:25:39,560
Speaker 1: of like half of the loop before they hit the surface,

495
00:25:39,880 --> 00:25:41,639
Speaker 1: and then they can do the next loop, and the

496
00:25:41,680 --> 00:25:43,639
Speaker 1: next loop in the next loop, and that sort of

497
00:25:43,680 --> 00:25:46,080
Speaker 1: like adds up to the electrons can now flow all

498
00:25:46,119 --> 00:25:49,840
Speaker 1: the way around the edge of the material because they're

499
00:25:49,840 --> 00:25:52,960
Speaker 1: only doing half of these loops. Wait what, well, I

500
00:25:52,960 --> 00:25:54,920
Speaker 1: guess first of all, I back up a little bit.

501
00:25:55,000 --> 00:25:57,600
Speaker 1: What do you mean electrons moving little loops, like little

502
00:25:57,600 --> 00:26:01,480
Speaker 1: loops around the atom, or little loops like around multiple atoms,

503
00:26:01,560 --> 00:26:03,159
Speaker 1: or what do you mean? Because they're already sort of

504
00:26:03,200 --> 00:26:05,760
Speaker 1: in loops in orbit around the nucleus of each atom.

505
00:26:05,880 --> 00:26:07,800
Speaker 1: But so what do you mean by they move in loops?

506
00:26:08,040 --> 00:26:09,919
Speaker 1: The first idea for how to build these things was

507
00:26:09,960 --> 00:26:13,080
Speaker 1: to have them move in little orbits around several atoms.

508
00:26:13,160 --> 00:26:16,439
Speaker 1: And they created this first by having really powerful magnetic fields,

509
00:26:16,440 --> 00:26:19,040
Speaker 1: which will make electrons move in little circles. Why do

510
00:26:19,080 --> 00:26:22,280
Speaker 1: they think to make the electrons move in circles? Because

511
00:26:22,320 --> 00:26:24,640
Speaker 1: they were hoping to get exactly this effect. They were

512
00:26:24,640 --> 00:26:27,080
Speaker 1: hoping to do something which on the center of the

513
00:26:27,119 --> 00:26:29,800
Speaker 1: materials would make us to the electrons effectively we can't

514
00:26:29,800 --> 00:26:32,119
Speaker 1: go anywhere because they're stuck in this little circle, but

515
00:26:32,160 --> 00:26:35,000
Speaker 1: that on the edges would have a different behavior that

516
00:26:35,240 --> 00:26:37,359
Speaker 1: you know, these circles are sort of cut in half

517
00:26:37,440 --> 00:26:40,120
Speaker 1: on the edges, and so they only go in one direction.

518
00:26:40,240 --> 00:26:42,760
Speaker 1: Like in the center of the material, the electrons basically

519
00:26:42,760 --> 00:26:44,919
Speaker 1: go back and forth because they're moving in a circle,

520
00:26:45,040 --> 00:26:47,880
Speaker 1: but near the edges they can only do the back right,

521
00:26:48,119 --> 00:26:50,840
Speaker 1: So all those electrons are now moving in the same direction,

522
00:26:50,920 --> 00:26:54,639
Speaker 1: and that's effectively conducting electricity. It's like having a flow

523
00:26:54,720 --> 00:26:57,560
Speaker 1: of the electrons all the way around the edge. Okay,

524
00:26:57,640 --> 00:27:00,200
Speaker 1: so you need an electromagnetic field to make these things

525
00:27:00,200 --> 00:27:02,360
Speaker 1: going little loops or were you saying that these things

526
00:27:02,400 --> 00:27:05,440
Speaker 1: go in loops. Anyways, So the original design for these things,

527
00:27:05,440 --> 00:27:07,400
Speaker 1: and the first way they were realized in the lab

528
00:27:07,600 --> 00:27:09,679
Speaker 1: was to make a really strong magnetic feel to make

529
00:27:09,720 --> 00:27:12,399
Speaker 1: electrons do this. Later on people realized, oh, there are

530
00:27:12,400 --> 00:27:14,240
Speaker 1: other ways to do this, you know, just to get

531
00:27:14,240 --> 00:27:16,920
Speaker 1: the electrons to like do loops around their atoms into

532
00:27:17,000 --> 00:27:19,320
Speaker 1: couple like their orbits and their spins. But that's a

533
00:27:19,359 --> 00:27:21,840
Speaker 1: bit more technical. So the first way people made this

534
00:27:21,880 --> 00:27:24,080
Speaker 1: happen was to have the electrons do these little dances

535
00:27:24,080 --> 00:27:26,439
Speaker 1: in a circle. It's sort of like a big square dance, right.

536
00:27:26,680 --> 00:27:29,520
Speaker 1: Imagine everybody's like dancing and they've hooked their arms together.

537
00:27:29,560 --> 00:27:32,320
Speaker 1: You're not really going anywhere, but if you're on the edge,

538
00:27:32,400 --> 00:27:34,600
Speaker 1: then you're sort of getting passed from partner to partner

539
00:27:34,760 --> 00:27:36,560
Speaker 1: and you're gonna end up moving all the way around

540
00:27:36,560 --> 00:27:39,520
Speaker 1: the square dance. So what you're saying that normally the

541
00:27:39,560 --> 00:27:44,240
Speaker 1: electrons don't conduct, but they move in circles around inside

542
00:27:44,240 --> 00:27:47,160
Speaker 1: of the material. So it's a conductor on the inside,

543
00:27:47,440 --> 00:27:49,520
Speaker 1: or no, it's an insulator on the inside because the

544
00:27:49,520 --> 00:27:51,880
Speaker 1: electrons are trapped. They can't really go anywhere, they're stuck

545
00:27:51,920 --> 00:27:54,359
Speaker 1: moving in these circles. But it's a conductor on the

546
00:27:54,400 --> 00:27:57,320
Speaker 1: surface because these circles are cut in half, and so

547
00:27:57,359 --> 00:27:59,400
Speaker 1: the effective path of the electron is all to point

548
00:27:59,480 --> 00:28:02,359
Speaker 1: in the same direction. Oh, I see, Okay. I think

549
00:28:02,840 --> 00:28:04,920
Speaker 1: asking us to sort of think about these loops and

550
00:28:04,960 --> 00:28:07,200
Speaker 1: these structures is kind of hard on an audio podcast,

551
00:28:07,200 --> 00:28:08,800
Speaker 1: But I think what I'm getting is that inside of

552
00:28:08,800 --> 00:28:12,280
Speaker 1: the material. The conditions of the crystal are such the

553
00:28:12,320 --> 00:28:15,600
Speaker 1: electrons that are sort of stuck moving around in circles,

554
00:28:15,640 --> 00:28:18,520
Speaker 1: but at the edges, because there's no full circle they

555
00:28:18,560 --> 00:28:21,240
Speaker 1: can do. Then they can then jump around and move

556
00:28:21,280 --> 00:28:23,359
Speaker 1: to other atoms. Is that what you're saying. Yeah, they

557
00:28:23,359 --> 00:28:26,640
Speaker 1: can jump from atom to atom on the surface exactly

558
00:28:26,720 --> 00:28:29,040
Speaker 1: because you're sort of breaking the conditions that are making

559
00:28:29,080 --> 00:28:31,919
Speaker 1: them be stuck in these loops. Yeah, they only do

560
00:28:32,040 --> 00:28:34,000
Speaker 1: half of the loops, right, and the half of the

561
00:28:34,000 --> 00:28:36,560
Speaker 1: loops basically always point in the same direction. So you

562
00:28:36,560 --> 00:28:38,080
Speaker 1: do half of one loop, and you do half the

563
00:28:38,080 --> 00:28:39,560
Speaker 1: next loop, and the half the next loop. You never

564
00:28:39,600 --> 00:28:42,080
Speaker 1: do the other half of any of these loops because

565
00:28:42,080 --> 00:28:44,520
Speaker 1: the surfaces they're sort of preventing you. Let me just

566
00:28:44,600 --> 00:28:47,960
Speaker 1: try one more visual analogy. So think about like a

567
00:28:48,000 --> 00:28:51,239
Speaker 1: swimming pool in your backyard. Now, put a lot of

568
00:28:51,280 --> 00:28:55,280
Speaker 1: tiny whirlpools in it, all swirling around. Fill the whole

569
00:28:55,280 --> 00:28:58,400
Speaker 1: thing up with whirlpools. Now, what happens if you toss

570
00:28:58,440 --> 00:29:00,560
Speaker 1: a ping pong ball into it, Well, it's going to

571
00:29:00,680 --> 00:29:03,400
Speaker 1: get stuck in one of the whirlpools, and it will

572
00:29:03,440 --> 00:29:05,600
Speaker 1: be really hard for it to jump from one to

573
00:29:05,680 --> 00:29:08,880
Speaker 1: the other. So that's like an electron getting stuck moving

574
00:29:08,880 --> 00:29:11,320
Speaker 1: in a circle around one of the atoms in a crystal.

575
00:29:11,680 --> 00:29:13,920
Speaker 1: But if you put it right at the edge of

576
00:29:13,920 --> 00:29:16,719
Speaker 1: the pool where the whirlpools are all pushing in the

577
00:29:16,760 --> 00:29:20,280
Speaker 1: same direction, so that instead of getting stuck in one whirlpool,

578
00:29:20,320 --> 00:29:23,400
Speaker 1: it moves around the whole edge of the pool, getting

579
00:29:23,440 --> 00:29:26,680
Speaker 1: passed from one whirlpool to another. So it doesn't conduct

580
00:29:26,680 --> 00:29:29,840
Speaker 1: the electricity in the center, but it does around the edges.

581
00:29:30,280 --> 00:29:32,280
Speaker 1: So that gives you a material if you can make it,

582
00:29:32,880 --> 00:29:36,680
Speaker 1: that doesn't conduct electrons through the material, but it conducts

583
00:29:36,680 --> 00:29:39,600
Speaker 1: electrons on the surface of it. That's right exactly. And

584
00:29:39,640 --> 00:29:41,880
Speaker 1: this sort of blew everybody's minds because they were like,

585
00:29:41,960 --> 00:29:44,560
Speaker 1: what is it. Is it an insulator, is it a conductor?

586
00:29:44,680 --> 00:29:47,400
Speaker 1: Is it both? Is it neither? It's something new, and

587
00:29:47,480 --> 00:29:50,640
Speaker 1: so this sort of blew up this whole band theory

588
00:29:50,840 --> 00:29:53,440
Speaker 1: of materials and made people realize that there's like a

589
00:29:53,520 --> 00:29:56,800
Speaker 1: whole possibility for new things that you could build that

590
00:29:56,920 --> 00:30:00,120
Speaker 1: have weird behaviors that you didn't possibly anticipate. And the

591
00:30:00,160 --> 00:30:02,880
Speaker 1: cool thing is that this idea came about and just

592
00:30:02,920 --> 00:30:04,720
Speaker 1: like a couple of years later, people were able to

593
00:30:04,720 --> 00:30:07,240
Speaker 1: make them, so went from like crazy idea in somebody's

594
00:30:07,280 --> 00:30:09,760
Speaker 1: notebook to like, Okay, we made it, We saw it

595
00:30:09,840 --> 00:30:12,080
Speaker 1: actually do this thing in just a couple of years,

596
00:30:12,080 --> 00:30:14,680
Speaker 1: which is sort of astounding. I guess maybe the confusing

597
00:30:14,720 --> 00:30:16,680
Speaker 1: thing might be that the way you describe it doesn't

598
00:30:16,760 --> 00:30:19,360
Speaker 1: sound so different, Like what I could just maybe take

599
00:30:19,360 --> 00:30:21,640
Speaker 1: a ceramic and coated with the conducting metal and I

600
00:30:21,640 --> 00:30:24,200
Speaker 1: would get something that's conductive on the outside and not

601
00:30:24,280 --> 00:30:27,000
Speaker 1: on the inside. Like why can you explain maybe why

602
00:30:27,080 --> 00:30:30,080
Speaker 1: this was so revolutionary. Well, it's different from having a

603
00:30:30,120 --> 00:30:32,960
Speaker 1: ceramic coated with a metal, right, that's just having a

604
00:30:33,000 --> 00:30:35,920
Speaker 1: metal that conducts. Here we have something which is fundamentally

605
00:30:35,920 --> 00:30:38,520
Speaker 1: different because it's the same material all the way through,

606
00:30:38,840 --> 00:30:42,160
Speaker 1: but that material behaves differently on the inside and the outside.

607
00:30:42,480 --> 00:30:45,040
Speaker 1: And that's exciting because it suggests that you can get

608
00:30:45,120 --> 00:30:49,400
Speaker 1: new properties for familiar materials, the materials you thought you knew.

609
00:30:49,720 --> 00:30:52,000
Speaker 1: You might get them to do different kinds of things,

610
00:30:52,000 --> 00:30:55,080
Speaker 1: different weird kinds of things if you create new conditions

611
00:30:55,120 --> 00:30:57,360
Speaker 1: for them that there's like a whole other avenue. It's

612
00:30:57,360 --> 00:30:59,360
Speaker 1: sort of like you've been playing with your legos for

613
00:30:59,480 --> 00:31:02,000
Speaker 1: ten years and your friend comes over and build something

614
00:31:02,120 --> 00:31:05,040
Speaker 1: mind blowing, You're like, what I never thought legos could

615
00:31:05,040 --> 00:31:07,360
Speaker 1: do that. That's awesome, and it gives you ideas for

616
00:31:07,440 --> 00:31:09,160
Speaker 1: all sorts of other things you might be able to

617
00:31:09,160 --> 00:31:11,920
Speaker 1: build with your legos you never even considered. And in

618
00:31:11,960 --> 00:31:14,840
Speaker 1: this case it's exciting because the outside surface of these

619
00:31:14,880 --> 00:31:19,959
Speaker 1: topological conductors are very very low resistance. For example, they

620
00:31:19,960 --> 00:31:23,920
Speaker 1: can conduct electricity better than copper, better than gold. They're

621
00:31:23,960 --> 00:31:27,560
Speaker 1: not quite super conductors with zero resistance, but they're better

622
00:31:27,640 --> 00:31:31,280
Speaker 1: conductors than almost any material we have and the operator

623
00:31:31,360 --> 00:31:33,680
Speaker 1: room temperature. So it's promising that there might be like

624
00:31:33,800 --> 00:31:35,800
Speaker 1: new kinds of things we can build. And that's kind

625
00:31:35,800 --> 00:31:38,840
Speaker 1: of what's called topological matter because it's sort of happens

626
00:31:38,880 --> 00:31:42,000
Speaker 1: on the surface, like the fun things happened on the surface.

627
00:31:43,360 --> 00:31:46,000
Speaker 1: It's tempting to think about that because it sounds like

628
00:31:46,080 --> 00:31:49,360
Speaker 1: we're saying, well, the properties of these material doesn't just

629
00:31:49,400 --> 00:31:52,520
Speaker 1: depend on the crystal structure, you know, on like the

630
00:31:52,640 --> 00:31:55,719
Speaker 1: organization internally, but also in the shape of the object,

631
00:31:55,760 --> 00:31:58,400
Speaker 1: because originally these things were made super flat, and we're

632
00:31:58,400 --> 00:32:01,160
Speaker 1: talking about like the shape and the nucture of it. Actually,

633
00:32:01,160 --> 00:32:04,240
Speaker 1: in this case, topological refers to something much more technical.

634
00:32:04,440 --> 00:32:07,200
Speaker 1: Physicists like to think about these things in terms not

635
00:32:07,280 --> 00:32:09,920
Speaker 1: in physical space, but in something else called momentum space,

636
00:32:10,000 --> 00:32:12,720
Speaker 1: where you do like a fury transform from physical space

637
00:32:12,720 --> 00:32:15,400
Speaker 1: to momentum space, and then in that momentum space they're

638
00:32:15,400 --> 00:32:19,360
Speaker 1: doing some complex analysis, some complicated counting of the shape

639
00:32:19,400 --> 00:32:21,520
Speaker 1: of that space, and it turns out there are really

640
00:32:21,520 --> 00:32:24,320
Speaker 1: interesting symmetries. They're like states there that have the same

641
00:32:24,360 --> 00:32:27,200
Speaker 1: topology will tend to have the same kind of behavior,

642
00:32:27,200 --> 00:32:29,360
Speaker 1: will be an insulator, or will be a conductor. But

643
00:32:29,400 --> 00:32:31,720
Speaker 1: I think that's a little bit deeper on the mathematics

644
00:32:31,720 --> 00:32:33,720
Speaker 1: than we want to get into today. Well, I guess

645
00:32:33,720 --> 00:32:35,440
Speaker 1: maybe step us through. Then. What are some of the

646
00:32:35,440 --> 00:32:37,520
Speaker 1: ways in which it blew people's mind, Like, what were

647
00:32:37,560 --> 00:32:39,400
Speaker 1: some of the cool things that people found you can

648
00:32:39,440 --> 00:32:42,120
Speaker 1: do with these Well, we're just really beginning and exploring

649
00:32:42,160 --> 00:32:43,600
Speaker 1: what you can do them, and we're talking a minute

650
00:32:43,600 --> 00:32:46,480
Speaker 1: about potential applications. But one of the really interesting things

651
00:32:46,720 --> 00:32:49,440
Speaker 1: is that people went back to old experiments that they

652
00:32:49,520 --> 00:32:52,320
Speaker 1: never really understood before. Like people have been, you know,

653
00:32:52,520 --> 00:32:55,800
Speaker 1: doing weird things with gold for a long time, and

654
00:32:55,840 --> 00:32:58,360
Speaker 1: sometimes they would do experiments and not really understand the

655
00:32:58,440 --> 00:33:00,480
Speaker 1: results and see they were sort of scratch their head

656
00:33:00,520 --> 00:33:03,440
Speaker 1: and then move on. And now with this new understanding,

657
00:33:03,480 --> 00:33:05,920
Speaker 1: we can look back and realize, oh, we were seeing

658
00:33:06,080 --> 00:33:10,600
Speaker 1: topological effects in ordinary materials. We just didn't really understand it.

659
00:33:10,800 --> 00:33:13,160
Speaker 1: Like people took gold and they made like thinner and

660
00:33:13,200 --> 00:33:16,160
Speaker 1: thinner sheets of gold, and they studied the conductivity of it,

661
00:33:16,280 --> 00:33:18,720
Speaker 1: and they were sort of surprised that it didn't really

662
00:33:18,760 --> 00:33:21,040
Speaker 1: depend on like the thickness of the gold and only

663
00:33:21,080 --> 00:33:24,440
Speaker 1: depended on the surface area of the gold. And that

664
00:33:24,480 --> 00:33:26,840
Speaker 1: was weird because people thought, like, you should depend on,

665
00:33:26,880 --> 00:33:29,280
Speaker 1: you know, the crystal structure and what's going on inside.

666
00:33:29,520 --> 00:33:31,880
Speaker 1: And so there's like a whole list of experiments that

667
00:33:32,000 --> 00:33:34,640
Speaker 1: people didn't really understand, sort of befuddled the field. And

668
00:33:34,640 --> 00:33:36,560
Speaker 1: now people go back and like, oh, wow, it turns

669
00:33:36,600 --> 00:33:40,240
Speaker 1: out that's a topological material. And more broadly, as we

670
00:33:40,280 --> 00:33:43,040
Speaker 1: look at it now, people are realizing that something like

671
00:33:43,240 --> 00:33:46,120
Speaker 1: one third of all materials that are out there have

672
00:33:46,400 --> 00:33:49,240
Speaker 1: some sort of these topological effects that it turns out

673
00:33:49,280 --> 00:33:51,440
Speaker 1: to have been everywhere all the time, we just never

674
00:33:51,480 --> 00:33:53,800
Speaker 1: noticed it, and the other two thirds just don't have

675
00:33:53,880 --> 00:33:56,800
Speaker 1: these effects. And so now we're doing these like really

676
00:33:56,840 --> 00:34:00,000
Speaker 1: complicated calculations to try to understand, like under what condition

677
00:34:00,240 --> 00:34:02,600
Speaker 1: can you get these kinds of effects. And it turns

678
00:34:02,600 --> 00:34:04,600
Speaker 1: out that, you know, a lot of things that we

679
00:34:04,680 --> 00:34:07,760
Speaker 1: think of as insulators turn out to have some amount

680
00:34:07,800 --> 00:34:11,160
Speaker 1: of topological conductivity, and things that we think about as

681
00:34:11,200 --> 00:34:15,359
Speaker 1: conductors sometimes are insulators on the inside. And so it's

682
00:34:15,400 --> 00:34:17,880
Speaker 1: like being unaware of a third phase of matter. You know.

683
00:34:17,880 --> 00:34:20,640
Speaker 1: It's like if you're a fish scientist, you've been swimming

684
00:34:20,640 --> 00:34:22,960
Speaker 1: around water forever and then you go to the surface

685
00:34:22,960 --> 00:34:25,440
Speaker 1: and you discover, oh wow, there's other things. You know,

686
00:34:25,480 --> 00:34:28,799
Speaker 1: water has other phases. I never even realized. You know,

687
00:34:28,840 --> 00:34:31,800
Speaker 1: it's like opening up an entirely new area for people

688
00:34:31,800 --> 00:34:34,600
Speaker 1: to explore. It's it's really the beginning of a revolution

689
00:34:34,680 --> 00:34:37,439
Speaker 1: in condensed matter physics. It's like maybe like figuring out

690
00:34:37,440 --> 00:34:40,720
Speaker 1: that water can form little layers and on solid things,

691
00:34:40,800 --> 00:34:43,760
Speaker 1: and then little animals can live on that surface. Stuff

692
00:34:43,800 --> 00:34:46,200
Speaker 1: like that, Or like a fish discovering rain, You're like,

693
00:34:46,200 --> 00:34:48,560
Speaker 1: oh wow, water falls through the sky and these weird

694
00:34:48,640 --> 00:34:53,680
Speaker 1: little drops. How interesting. I need to invent an umbrella exactly.

695
00:34:53,880 --> 00:34:55,880
Speaker 1: And the other interesting thing is that this is a

696
00:34:55,920 --> 00:34:58,680
Speaker 1: discovery that was just sort of like sitting there waiting

697
00:34:58,719 --> 00:35:01,560
Speaker 1: to happen, like mathe medical tools that were used to

698
00:35:01,840 --> 00:35:04,239
Speaker 1: come up with this idea, and then mid two thousand's

699
00:35:04,280 --> 00:35:06,880
Speaker 1: are ancient. This could have been thought of in the fifties,

700
00:35:07,040 --> 00:35:09,200
Speaker 1: and the experimental results were sitting out there in the

701
00:35:09,239 --> 00:35:12,040
Speaker 1: literature for decades. You know, it's like this pattern of

702
00:35:12,120 --> 00:35:15,760
Speaker 1: unexplained experimental measurements that nobody was able to put together.

703
00:35:15,960 --> 00:35:17,840
Speaker 1: So when they put this story together, it's sort of like,

704
00:35:17,880 --> 00:35:21,080
Speaker 1: oh my god, it's so fascinating but kind of obvious.

705
00:35:21,239 --> 00:35:23,479
Speaker 1: And that's really exciting to me as a physicist because

706
00:35:23,480 --> 00:35:26,239
Speaker 1: it tells me like, well, what other discoveries are just

707
00:35:26,320 --> 00:35:28,560
Speaker 1: out there waiting, Like there's gonna be a whole series

708
00:35:28,600 --> 00:35:32,600
Speaker 1: of Nobel Prizes, one for the topological materials, and all

709
00:35:32,600 --> 00:35:34,960
Speaker 1: of that information was just like literally sitting out there

710
00:35:35,000 --> 00:35:37,520
Speaker 1: waiting for almost anybody to put it together. Now, is

711
00:35:37,520 --> 00:35:42,359
Speaker 1: a Nobel Prize medal going to be topological material as well? Well?

712
00:35:42,360 --> 00:35:44,560
Speaker 1: One cool effect I think you wrote down here is

713
00:35:44,600 --> 00:35:47,439
Speaker 1: that you can take an insulator and turn it into

714
00:35:47,440 --> 00:35:51,160
Speaker 1: a conductor and back again just by changing its shape. Yeah,

715
00:35:51,400 --> 00:35:53,520
Speaker 1: people used to think that if you had a material

716
00:35:53,560 --> 00:35:56,400
Speaker 1: that's an insulator and you sort of started pulling it apart,

717
00:35:56,440 --> 00:35:59,080
Speaker 1: you made the atoms further and further apart, then it

718
00:35:59,120 --> 00:36:01,520
Speaker 1: would stay in insulatly because as the atoms get further

719
00:36:01,520 --> 00:36:04,080
Speaker 1: and further apart, obviously it gets harder and harder for

720
00:36:04,080 --> 00:36:06,400
Speaker 1: electrons to jump from one to the other. And so

721
00:36:06,440 --> 00:36:08,200
Speaker 1: this is sort of like a common belief that all

722
00:36:08,239 --> 00:36:10,759
Speaker 1: insulators are insulators even if you pull them apart. Well,

723
00:36:10,800 --> 00:36:13,719
Speaker 1: if you have a topological material, then what happens when

724
00:36:13,719 --> 00:36:16,799
Speaker 1: you start pulling it apart is that that insulator at

725
00:36:16,840 --> 00:36:21,000
Speaker 1: the core becomes a conductor because you're effectively now creating

726
00:36:21,040 --> 00:36:24,840
Speaker 1: like new surfaces, and these things can conduct at surfaces.

727
00:36:25,080 --> 00:36:27,880
Speaker 1: And then as you keep pulling it apart, then you know,

728
00:36:27,920 --> 00:36:30,160
Speaker 1: the atoms get so far apart that they're basically not

729
00:36:30,440 --> 00:36:33,360
Speaker 1: part of a material anymore, and it's effectively an insulator.

730
00:36:33,520 --> 00:36:35,960
Speaker 1: So it's a really weird kind of material that you know,

731
00:36:36,000 --> 00:36:40,040
Speaker 1: the conductivity of it also depends on how you smoothly

732
00:36:40,120 --> 00:36:43,719
Speaker 1: deform it. Interesting, so it didn't conduct before even at

733
00:36:43,719 --> 00:36:45,839
Speaker 1: the surface, but once you pull it apart, you're sort

734
00:36:45,840 --> 00:36:48,360
Speaker 1: of rearranging the atoms in such a way that suddenly

735
00:36:48,400 --> 00:36:51,680
Speaker 1: on the surface it can conduct. Yeah, exactly. It's really interesting,

736
00:36:51,800 --> 00:36:53,879
Speaker 1: and so this gets condensed. Matter of physic is very

737
00:36:53,880 --> 00:36:56,320
Speaker 1: excited about the kinds of things they might be able

738
00:36:56,320 --> 00:36:59,400
Speaker 1: to invent using these techniques or other techniques similar in

739
00:36:59,440 --> 00:37:04,319
Speaker 1: the future. Are they thinking topological ice cream? That's right.

740
00:37:04,360 --> 00:37:06,360
Speaker 1: It's frozen in the middle and liquid on the center.

741
00:37:07,800 --> 00:37:10,200
Speaker 1: Mean that discovery has been there all these years for

742
00:37:10,239 --> 00:37:12,000
Speaker 1: people to find. That's right. You get the ice cream

743
00:37:12,040 --> 00:37:14,360
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize. The Nobel Prize made out of ice cream.

744
00:37:14,560 --> 00:37:16,560
Speaker 1: You just have to keep it in the freezer otherwise

745
00:37:16,600 --> 00:37:18,840
Speaker 1: it melts. All right, Well, let's get into what this

746
00:37:18,960 --> 00:37:21,120
Speaker 1: new kind of material can do. What are some of

747
00:37:21,120 --> 00:37:24,040
Speaker 1: the exciting things that might be able to be made

748
00:37:24,040 --> 00:37:26,879
Speaker 1: from these and what the potential of that is. But first,

749
00:37:26,960 --> 00:37:42,319
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break. All right, we're talking about

750
00:37:42,360 --> 00:37:47,359
Speaker 1: ice cream Nobel Prizes for discovering new flavors or or

751
00:37:47,800 --> 00:37:50,480
Speaker 1: discovering ice cream that doesn't melt. That's right. Well, you

752
00:37:50,520 --> 00:37:52,640
Speaker 1: know I would take two blobs of ice cream and

753
00:37:52,640 --> 00:37:54,799
Speaker 1: accihilarate them at high speed and moush them together and

754
00:37:54,840 --> 00:37:57,319
Speaker 1: see if a new flavor comes out. Well, nobody would

755
00:37:57,360 --> 00:37:59,960
Speaker 1: give you a Nobel Prize, But if you can find

756
00:38:00,000 --> 00:38:03,160
Speaker 1: a solid state ice cream that's permanently solid. And maybe

757
00:38:03,160 --> 00:38:05,799
Speaker 1: you got something there room temperature ice cream. Now there

758
00:38:05,800 --> 00:38:08,000
Speaker 1: would be an invention. Well, it's at you can eat

759
00:38:08,040 --> 00:38:11,200
Speaker 1: in the winter, maybe, So it's a new kind of material,

760
00:38:11,440 --> 00:38:15,480
Speaker 1: these topological matter materials because they have interesting conducting and

761
00:38:15,560 --> 00:38:18,040
Speaker 1: non conducting property. So what are some of the things

762
00:38:18,040 --> 00:38:19,560
Speaker 1: you can do with them? Well, one of the most

763
00:38:19,680 --> 00:38:24,400
Speaker 1: useful immediate applications are to use them to build computer chips.

764
00:38:24,560 --> 00:38:27,680
Speaker 1: The basis of all modern computing and your phone and

765
00:38:27,719 --> 00:38:30,719
Speaker 1: your laptop and your iPad and everything use these these

766
00:38:30,760 --> 00:38:34,399
Speaker 1: little silicon chips that have tiny little circuits, and those

767
00:38:34,440 --> 00:38:37,480
Speaker 1: circuits are mostly transistors put together in different ways to

768
00:38:37,520 --> 00:38:40,279
Speaker 1: make logic gates. And those are printed using silicon, which

769
00:38:40,320 --> 00:38:42,640
Speaker 1: is a fascinating material because you can dope it in

770
00:38:42,680 --> 00:38:44,160
Speaker 1: one way to make it a conductor, and dope it

771
00:38:44,239 --> 00:38:45,960
Speaker 1: another way to make it an insulator. So you can

772
00:38:46,000 --> 00:38:49,000
Speaker 1: print these circuits. One issue is that these things get

773
00:38:49,080 --> 00:38:52,279
Speaker 1: hot right as electrons pass through the silicon when it's

774
00:38:52,280 --> 00:38:55,160
Speaker 1: in its conducting mode, it's not perfectly conducting, and so

775
00:38:55,280 --> 00:38:57,080
Speaker 1: it heats up a little bit. And if you know,

776
00:38:57,120 --> 00:38:59,640
Speaker 1: for example, your laptop, right it gets hot when you're

777
00:38:59,680 --> 00:39:03,040
Speaker 1: running really complex game on it, and that wastes a

778
00:39:03,080 --> 00:39:05,520
Speaker 1: lot of heat, right, Yeah, I guess that's an effect

779
00:39:05,560 --> 00:39:07,319
Speaker 1: that I thought I knew how to work, but now

780
00:39:07,360 --> 00:39:10,520
Speaker 1: I don't because of this conversation. Because I always felt like, Okay,

781
00:39:10,560 --> 00:39:13,680
Speaker 1: it's electrons going through the copper, and so it's somehow

782
00:39:13,760 --> 00:39:16,120
Speaker 1: creating some kind of friction and that's where the heat

783
00:39:16,160 --> 00:39:19,920
Speaker 1: comes from. But how does resistance cause heat? Well, resistance

784
00:39:20,040 --> 00:39:22,279
Speaker 1: is when you're taking the motion of the electrons and

785
00:39:22,320 --> 00:39:24,680
Speaker 1: you're just converting it to the heat of the material,

786
00:39:24,840 --> 00:39:27,480
Speaker 1: meaning that like you know, an atom absorbs that electron,

787
00:39:27,560 --> 00:39:29,600
Speaker 1: and now that atom is just sort of like has

788
00:39:29,680 --> 00:39:32,480
Speaker 1: more energy, so you like sped up the motion of

789
00:39:32,480 --> 00:39:35,279
Speaker 1: that atom, and so instead of the electrons just like

790
00:39:35,320 --> 00:39:38,080
Speaker 1: sort of surfing along on top of the atoms, some

791
00:39:38,200 --> 00:39:40,439
Speaker 1: of that energy is sort of like sucked down into

792
00:39:40,480 --> 00:39:43,479
Speaker 1: the atom and trapped to energize the lattice, to shake

793
00:39:43,600 --> 00:39:45,799
Speaker 1: up those atoms in the lattice, And that's what you

794
00:39:45,840 --> 00:39:48,359
Speaker 1: don't want. You want to keep it cold, you want

795
00:39:48,360 --> 00:39:50,600
Speaker 1: to keep it firm. It doesn't conduct as well when

796
00:39:50,640 --> 00:39:53,200
Speaker 1: it gets warm also, so it gets worse and worse.

797
00:39:53,360 --> 00:39:55,920
Speaker 1: And so what you like is something which stays cold,

798
00:39:56,000 --> 00:39:59,279
Speaker 1: it just passes the electricity through it. And not just

799
00:39:59,320 --> 00:40:01,760
Speaker 1: because they would be form better and faster, but also

800
00:40:01,800 --> 00:40:04,240
Speaker 1: because it's a huge waste of energy. You know, something

801
00:40:04,320 --> 00:40:08,319
Speaker 1: like ten percent of our worldwide energy use goes to

802
00:40:08,600 --> 00:40:11,840
Speaker 1: running computers. And if we can make that more efficient

803
00:40:12,080 --> 00:40:15,239
Speaker 1: and we can find materials that have less resistance, then

804
00:40:15,280 --> 00:40:17,720
Speaker 1: these computers can operate more efficiently and they can operate

805
00:40:17,800 --> 00:40:20,400
Speaker 1: faster and more reliably. Yeah, if you can take a

806
00:40:20,480 --> 00:40:23,640
Speaker 1: chunk out of that, you know, ten percent of worldwide

807
00:40:23,719 --> 00:40:26,080
Speaker 1: energy that you would save a lot. And so these

808
00:40:26,120 --> 00:40:30,480
Speaker 1: materials are better conductors than for example, copper is and

809
00:40:30,560 --> 00:40:34,239
Speaker 1: so that's very promising. Practically speaking, there are big obstacles there, right.

810
00:40:34,239 --> 00:40:35,799
Speaker 1: You can't just be like, oh, I have a new

811
00:40:35,840 --> 00:40:38,840
Speaker 1: complex kind of material which only works in the lab

812
00:40:38,920 --> 00:40:43,440
Speaker 1: in tiny microduces. Can we now insert it into everyday electronics?

813
00:40:43,840 --> 00:40:45,480
Speaker 1: You know, if you want to get into the supply

814
00:40:45,640 --> 00:40:48,319
Speaker 1: chain for the Apple iPhone, then there's a lot of

815
00:40:48,320 --> 00:40:51,279
Speaker 1: constraints there. You have to be like cheap and available,

816
00:40:51,480 --> 00:40:53,520
Speaker 1: you have to be ductiles so you can make wires

817
00:40:53,520 --> 00:40:55,800
Speaker 1: out of it. So there's a long road to go there,

818
00:40:56,080 --> 00:40:58,279
Speaker 1: but it's it's sort of promising maybe give us a

819
00:40:58,320 --> 00:41:01,120
Speaker 1: sense of how difficult to is to make these materials,

820
00:41:01,160 --> 00:41:05,200
Speaker 1: Like what's the standard way to make a topological matter conductor,

821
00:41:05,640 --> 00:41:08,640
Speaker 1: like using what kind of materials? Yeah, so originally you

822
00:41:08,680 --> 00:41:10,839
Speaker 1: have to make them really really thin and have very

823
00:41:10,880 --> 00:41:14,480
Speaker 1: powerful magnetic fields. These days, people have made three D

824
00:41:14,800 --> 00:41:18,040
Speaker 1: topological materials, and the way they do it is sort

825
00:41:18,040 --> 00:41:21,000
Speaker 1: of similar to the way you operate with semiconductors, which

826
00:41:21,000 --> 00:41:23,200
Speaker 1: is that you add other kinds of things, so you

827
00:41:23,320 --> 00:41:26,640
Speaker 1: like inject weird things into the crystal lattice to get

828
00:41:26,680 --> 00:41:29,240
Speaker 1: these effects on the surface you mean on the surface

829
00:41:29,360 --> 00:41:31,680
Speaker 1: or in the center also, but you end up getting

830
00:41:31,719 --> 00:41:34,920
Speaker 1: the same effects. I mean, you code something like you

831
00:41:34,960 --> 00:41:38,040
Speaker 1: code a ceramic with something no. No, you add like

832
00:41:38,280 --> 00:41:40,640
Speaker 1: a new kind of material inside the lattice, so that

833
00:41:40,960 --> 00:41:43,200
Speaker 1: inside the crystal lattice you have, like you know, some

834
00:41:43,360 --> 00:41:45,680
Speaker 1: other element that's occupying some of these things, and it

835
00:41:45,760 --> 00:41:48,920
Speaker 1: changes the behavior of the electrons, forcing them, for example,

836
00:41:49,160 --> 00:41:51,719
Speaker 1: spin locking them, forcing them to move in these circles

837
00:41:51,920 --> 00:41:54,719
Speaker 1: without having a powerful magnetic field. Currently. Of course, it

838
00:41:54,800 --> 00:41:57,840
Speaker 1: takes sort of complex machinery to fabricate these things, to

839
00:41:57,920 --> 00:42:00,520
Speaker 1: make these mixtures. But you know, if you find one

840
00:42:00,560 --> 00:42:03,680
Speaker 1: that's especially useful, especially powerful. I'm sure we'll come up

841
00:42:03,680 --> 00:42:06,319
Speaker 1: with ways to mass produce them. I see, they're not

842
00:42:06,440 --> 00:42:08,800
Speaker 1: super easy to make yet. Yeah, they're not super easy

843
00:42:09,000 --> 00:42:10,960
Speaker 1: to make yet. But that's true of almost everything, right,

844
00:42:10,960 --> 00:42:14,399
Speaker 1: you know, Like the first transistor was not simple or small, right, right,

845
00:42:14,440 --> 00:42:16,960
Speaker 1: And they've gotten smaller and smaller. But now we're sort

846
00:42:16,960 --> 00:42:18,959
Speaker 1: of reaching the limits of what we can do even

847
00:42:18,960 --> 00:42:23,839
Speaker 1: with silicon and these crazy powerful ways to make tiny chips. Like,

848
00:42:23,880 --> 00:42:26,000
Speaker 1: we're reaching a limit, and we're going to need something

849
00:42:26,000 --> 00:42:28,680
Speaker 1: new for want to make things even smaller and more powerful.

850
00:42:28,760 --> 00:42:30,880
Speaker 1: That's right, we're very used to Our computer is getting

851
00:42:30,920 --> 00:42:34,560
Speaker 1: more powerful and smaller every single year. There's More's law

852
00:42:34,640 --> 00:42:38,000
Speaker 1: where computing power doubles every eighteen months because we can

853
00:42:38,040 --> 00:42:40,759
Speaker 1: make smaller transistors. But there is a limit there, right.

854
00:42:40,800 --> 00:42:44,279
Speaker 1: If silicon gets too small, then it loses these properties,

855
00:42:44,360 --> 00:42:47,320
Speaker 1: it's conductivity and its resistance, and we're pushing up against

856
00:42:47,400 --> 00:42:49,560
Speaker 1: that limit. So people are working hard to find new

857
00:42:49,600 --> 00:42:52,480
Speaker 1: materials that we can use to print these transistors. So

858
00:42:52,719 --> 00:42:54,960
Speaker 1: it's a good time to discover that there's a whole

859
00:42:55,040 --> 00:42:57,960
Speaker 1: new class of stuff out there that we can design

860
00:42:58,040 --> 00:43:00,880
Speaker 1: and build that has weird new properties, right, right, to

861
00:43:00,920 --> 00:43:06,160
Speaker 1: make phones even smaller and you know, higher resolution, and

862
00:43:06,239 --> 00:43:08,560
Speaker 1: to make your batteries last longer. Oh that's right. Yeah,

863
00:43:08,600 --> 00:43:11,200
Speaker 1: if they're more conductive, then you're not wasting as much

864
00:43:11,320 --> 00:43:14,040
Speaker 1: energy into into heat, right. Yeah. Every time you feel

865
00:43:14,040 --> 00:43:16,360
Speaker 1: your phone get hot, that's energy from your battery that

866
00:43:16,480 --> 00:43:19,080
Speaker 1: could have been used to play your Netflix show but

867
00:43:19,239 --> 00:43:21,360
Speaker 1: is instead is heating up your pocket. But that's just

868
00:43:21,480 --> 00:43:24,560
Speaker 1: for regular computers that we know. Now, you could also

869
00:43:24,680 --> 00:43:27,800
Speaker 1: use these new materials for a whole new kind of computer,

870
00:43:28,000 --> 00:43:30,480
Speaker 1: that's right. We think that they might be excellent as

871
00:43:30,480 --> 00:43:32,960
Speaker 1: a sort of base material out of which to build

872
00:43:33,120 --> 00:43:36,719
Speaker 1: quantum computers. Quantum computers, remember, don't have this sort of

873
00:43:36,920 --> 00:43:40,439
Speaker 1: normal switches that classical computers have, like that are either

874
00:43:40,520 --> 00:43:43,920
Speaker 1: one or zero. They have these things inside them called cubits,

875
00:43:44,040 --> 00:43:47,040
Speaker 1: which are in a quantum state superposition of ones and

876
00:43:47,160 --> 00:43:50,680
Speaker 1: zeros with various probabilities. And these quantum computers are really

877
00:43:50,719 --> 00:43:54,520
Speaker 1: fascinating and have some interesting potential to solve some weird problems.

878
00:43:54,640 --> 00:43:57,640
Speaker 1: But one of the obstacles to building quantum computers is

879
00:43:57,840 --> 00:44:00,680
Speaker 1: error correction. These quantum computer is gonna be a little

880
00:44:00,719 --> 00:44:02,560
Speaker 1: bit noisy and a little bit fuzzy, and you don't

881
00:44:02,600 --> 00:44:04,640
Speaker 1: always get the answer out that you want. And so

882
00:44:04,719 --> 00:44:08,040
Speaker 1: they have all these complicated error correcting devices that get

883
00:44:08,120 --> 00:44:10,600
Speaker 1: more and more laborious, more and more difficult as you

884
00:44:10,640 --> 00:44:13,759
Speaker 1: get bigger and more powerful computers, which is one reason

885
00:44:13,800 --> 00:44:16,520
Speaker 1: why we've only ever seen quantum computers with like ten

886
00:44:16,560 --> 00:44:19,480
Speaker 1: bits or twenty bits, whereas, for example, you know your

887
00:44:19,520 --> 00:44:22,960
Speaker 1: phone has megabits and megabits inside of it. We think

888
00:44:22,960 --> 00:44:27,239
Speaker 1: that potentially these topological materials might have the right ingredients

889
00:44:27,440 --> 00:44:30,399
Speaker 1: to be sort of self correcting. They might be able

890
00:44:30,400 --> 00:44:34,200
Speaker 1: to develop cubits that automatically correct themselves, right Like if

891
00:44:34,239 --> 00:44:37,520
Speaker 1: there's an error somehow, that error disappears somehow by itself,

892
00:44:38,080 --> 00:44:40,360
Speaker 1: and it comes from the way that the electrons flow

893
00:44:40,400 --> 00:44:43,719
Speaker 1: in these materials. They're actually sort of symmetries that preserve

894
00:44:44,200 --> 00:44:47,520
Speaker 1: the electrons in these quasi particles. Remember we talked once

895
00:44:47,520 --> 00:44:49,960
Speaker 1: about what quasi particles are. Like the way we think

896
00:44:49,960 --> 00:44:54,640
Speaker 1: of photons as excitations in the electromagnetic field, you can

897
00:44:54,680 --> 00:44:57,880
Speaker 1: also think about other fields fields inside materials and having

898
00:44:58,160 --> 00:45:01,680
Speaker 1: energy stored inside those yields. So, for example, like a

899
00:45:01,800 --> 00:45:04,640
Speaker 1: vibration inside a material, you think of that as like

900
00:45:04,680 --> 00:45:08,279
Speaker 1: a phone on like a basic element of the vibration

901
00:45:08,400 --> 00:45:11,680
Speaker 1: field inside a material. So some of these topological materials

902
00:45:11,680 --> 00:45:15,480
Speaker 1: have these symmetries that preserve these quasi particles that allow

903
00:45:15,560 --> 00:45:20,000
Speaker 1: you to build basically self error correcting quantum bits. I see. Yeah,

904
00:45:20,040 --> 00:45:23,680
Speaker 1: because these kinds of like new kinds of quasi particles

905
00:45:23,719 --> 00:45:27,480
Speaker 1: can only happen under special conditions like what you get

906
00:45:27,520 --> 00:45:32,040
Speaker 1: with these topological materials exactly, and the topological nature of

907
00:45:32,080 --> 00:45:35,160
Speaker 1: them preserves these symmetries that it forces them to act

908
00:45:35,200 --> 00:45:38,480
Speaker 1: in certain ways, and those ways help prevent errors from

909
00:45:38,520 --> 00:45:41,000
Speaker 1: cropping up and correct them when they do. Right, Because

910
00:45:41,080 --> 00:45:42,880
Speaker 1: right now, to make a quantum computer, you need like

911
00:45:42,960 --> 00:45:45,640
Speaker 1: these extreme machines, right, you need like a machine the

912
00:45:45,680 --> 00:45:47,799
Speaker 1: size of a room just to have ten cubits. But

913
00:45:47,840 --> 00:45:51,680
Speaker 1: if you can somehow use these tiny materials, then you

914
00:45:51,760 --> 00:45:54,719
Speaker 1: might get a quantum computer in your pocket. Yes, you're right,

915
00:45:54,920 --> 00:45:57,160
Speaker 1: you might, and they might be self air correcting, so

916
00:45:57,200 --> 00:46:00,600
Speaker 1: you wouldn't need this like really complicated devices to help

917
00:46:00,640 --> 00:46:03,600
Speaker 1: fix the errors from ten or twenty bits. Currently, the

918
00:46:03,719 --> 00:46:06,640
Speaker 1: error rate grows very rapidly as you add quantum bits,

919
00:46:07,000 --> 00:46:09,240
Speaker 1: and so if they're self air correcting, that might solve

920
00:46:09,280 --> 00:46:11,799
Speaker 1: that problem. But that's sort of like potential. That's something

921
00:46:11,800 --> 00:46:14,760
Speaker 1: people are exploring. But you know, the flavor of it

922
00:46:14,840 --> 00:46:16,680
Speaker 1: is that we have a new kind of material and

923
00:46:16,719 --> 00:46:19,480
Speaker 1: we don't even really know what it can do. Somebody's

924
00:46:19,520 --> 00:46:22,120
Speaker 1: gonna come along next year or the year after and

925
00:46:22,160 --> 00:46:24,560
Speaker 1: come up with a crazy idea for how you can

926
00:46:24,600 --> 00:46:27,160
Speaker 1: put these things together to make something nobody's ever imagined.

927
00:46:28,280 --> 00:46:30,680
Speaker 1: I see, because it's like opened up a whole new

928
00:46:30,760 --> 00:46:34,200
Speaker 1: kinds of behaviors of matter that we didn't know before exactly,

929
00:46:34,239 --> 00:46:36,840
Speaker 1: Like all the complicated behavior of matter that you're familiar

930
00:46:36,880 --> 00:46:40,200
Speaker 1: with is an emergent phenomena from putting together in complex ways,

931
00:46:40,200 --> 00:46:42,040
Speaker 1: and now we know there are a whole new areas.

932
00:46:42,120 --> 00:46:44,640
Speaker 1: Like imagine if nobody had ever seen a conductor before,

933
00:46:44,680 --> 00:46:46,920
Speaker 1: we only ever had insulators, and then you showed up

934
00:46:46,920 --> 00:46:49,640
Speaker 1: with this material that can like zap people and transmit

935
00:46:49,760 --> 00:46:52,400
Speaker 1: energy and you know, create these arcs through the area, Like,

936
00:46:52,400 --> 00:46:54,640
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, it's like magic. This is like that

937
00:46:54,680 --> 00:46:56,880
Speaker 1: moment when somebody's come up with something new. It's not

938
00:46:56,960 --> 00:47:00,360
Speaker 1: exactly a conductor, not exactly insulators, something new and weird

939
00:47:00,520 --> 00:47:02,640
Speaker 1: can do new stuff. And so you know what it's

940
00:47:02,640 --> 00:47:04,800
Speaker 1: going to be able to accomplish might seem like magic

941
00:47:04,840 --> 00:47:08,600
Speaker 1: to us today. Wow, interesting, in the future will be

942
00:47:08,640 --> 00:47:11,120
Speaker 1: like this ice cream taste amazing? What is it? It's

943
00:47:11,120 --> 00:47:16,359
Speaker 1: a topological material. Topological mint chip is so much better

944
00:47:16,400 --> 00:47:19,040
Speaker 1: than classical mint chip. Oh my god, yeah, it's it

945
00:47:19,120 --> 00:47:22,680
Speaker 1: has a mint que chips. And you're like, oh my goodness,

946
00:47:22,680 --> 00:47:25,399
Speaker 1: I can't believe most humans have never tasted a mint

947
00:47:25,480 --> 00:47:27,600
Speaker 1: que chip. What a tragedy. What do it even mean

948
00:47:27,680 --> 00:47:30,319
Speaker 1: to be human before that was invented? Right? Like, were

949
00:47:30,360 --> 00:47:33,640
Speaker 1: they even really fully aware? Life really started when quantum

950
00:47:33,680 --> 00:47:36,120
Speaker 1: ice cream was invented. That's what the aliens are waiting for,

951
00:47:36,120 --> 00:47:38,560
Speaker 1: for us to achieve that level of technology before they

952
00:47:38,600 --> 00:47:41,040
Speaker 1: come and visit us. Oh, I see, because they don't

953
00:47:41,040 --> 00:47:43,600
Speaker 1: want to go anywhere that doesn't have these quantum mint

954
00:47:43,640 --> 00:47:45,480
Speaker 1: ke chips. It's like, you don't want to go to

955
00:47:45,520 --> 00:47:49,160
Speaker 1: that place if it doesn't have bathroom that what kind

956
00:47:49,160 --> 00:47:52,200
Speaker 1: of occasion is that? All? Right? Well, again, I think

957
00:47:52,239 --> 00:47:55,160
Speaker 1: this isn't an exciting thing because it feels like, you know,

958
00:47:55,280 --> 00:47:58,040
Speaker 1: we're learning all the time that there are new things

959
00:47:58,160 --> 00:48:01,120
Speaker 1: yet to be discovered in this universe, new even new

960
00:48:01,200 --> 00:48:03,759
Speaker 1: kinds of material and new kinds of matter that we

961
00:48:03,800 --> 00:48:07,120
Speaker 1: can potentially engineer amazing new devices out of. That's right,

962
00:48:07,160 --> 00:48:10,640
Speaker 1: So we have not just revolutions in our basic understanding

963
00:48:10,640 --> 00:48:13,640
Speaker 1: of the fundamental particles and what the universe is. We

964
00:48:13,800 --> 00:48:17,000
Speaker 1: also have revolutions all the time in how those bits

965
00:48:17,040 --> 00:48:19,960
Speaker 1: fit together to make weird kinds of stuff that exist

966
00:48:20,040 --> 00:48:24,000
Speaker 1: at our scale. So our understanding the universe is constantly transforming,

967
00:48:24,200 --> 00:48:26,680
Speaker 1: and there are enormous opportunities out there for people to

968
00:48:26,680 --> 00:48:29,919
Speaker 1: make discoveries. So you young scientists out there, seven, eight,

969
00:48:29,920 --> 00:48:33,280
Speaker 1: ten years old, fifteen years old, you can still revolutionize

970
00:48:33,320 --> 00:48:36,919
Speaker 1: our understanding of the universe. There's so much left to do.

971
00:48:37,000 --> 00:48:39,279
Speaker 1: But if you're sixteen, it's over for you, right, is

972
00:48:39,280 --> 00:48:42,720
Speaker 1: that what you're saying in But no, I mean anything

973
00:48:42,760 --> 00:48:45,799
Speaker 1: could come up of anyone of any age, right, Yes, absolutely,

974
00:48:45,840 --> 00:48:48,839
Speaker 1: sixteen year olds could totally revolutionized the universe. I don't

975
00:48:48,840 --> 00:48:52,080
Speaker 1: know a seventeen eighteen and any universe whited. No, it's

976
00:48:52,080 --> 00:48:54,880
Speaker 1: it's open for everybody. Absolutely, a non exhaustive list of

977
00:48:54,920 --> 00:48:57,080
Speaker 1: example ages. Ask yourself, do you want to be in

978
00:48:57,120 --> 00:48:59,440
Speaker 1: the group of humans that have never seen these revolutions

979
00:48:59,480 --> 00:49:01,000
Speaker 1: or do you want to be in the group of humans,

980
00:49:01,440 --> 00:49:05,480
Speaker 1: the future, humans that know these amazing things. All right, Well,

981
00:49:05,520 --> 00:49:08,080
Speaker 1: we hope you enjoyed d and it blew your mind

982
00:49:08,120 --> 00:49:10,400
Speaker 1: a little bit, at least on the surface. Thanks for

983
00:49:10,480 --> 00:49:21,000
Speaker 1: joining us, See you next time. Thanks for listening, and

984
00:49:21,040 --> 00:49:23,719
Speaker 1: remember that Daniel and Jorge explained the universe is a

985
00:49:23,800 --> 00:49:27,239
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast from my

986
00:49:27,360 --> 00:49:30,920
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

987
00:49:31,040 --> 00:49:35,320
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H