Speaker 1: If you want to talk about your sincere awe and
Speaker 1: wonder at the incredible physical universe, I'm here for that.
Speaker 1: If you want to have cold water throne of your
Speaker 1: dreams of space colonization, Kelly is at your service. Today
Speaker 1: we're going to flip that script a little bit. It's
Speaker 1: my turn to be a wet blanket about overhyped technology.
Speaker 1: But along the way you learn just how amazing and
Speaker 1: weird our universe really is. No hype necessary, that's right.
Speaker 1: Today we are tackling physics buzzwords two of my favorites, actually, quantum,
Speaker 1: probably the most overused word in pop side journalism, and
Speaker 1: the Internet, the classic woid make anything sound more high
Speaker 1: tech Internet of Things was supposed to make your toaster
Speaker 1: seem like something from the future. Right, So today we'll
Speaker 1: explore the science and the hype and the actual amazing,
Speaker 1: beautiful physics behind a pair of buzzwords that have come
Speaker 1: together to make a splash in the news. The quantum Internet.
Speaker 1: It's not the latest ant Man movie, it's today's topic.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary quantum Universe.
Speaker 2: Hello, I'm Kelly Wiener Smith. I study parasites and space
Speaker 2: and when we come up with quantum parasites, you all
Speaker 2: better be worried.
Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Daniel, I'm a particle physicist, and the only
Speaker 1: kind of parasite I want is a quantum one. I
Speaker 1: don't want two point seventy two tapeworms. I want zero
Speaker 1: or one, preferably zero.
Speaker 2: Oh, but you really don't know until you actually look.
Speaker 2: You know, until you put the scope down your digestive system,
Speaker 2: you don't actually know if there's one in there or not.
Speaker 1: That's true Schrodinger's tapeworm.
Speaker 2: Oh fantastic.
Speaker 1: But now I have a real question for you. Can
Speaker 1: you have a non integer number of parasites? They pit
Speaker 1: in some weird way where you're like, hm, I'm not
Speaker 1: really sure if that's another one, But.
Speaker 2: You gotta have hard to count things. So, the way
Speaker 2: tapeworms work is they've got a head. The head holds
Speaker 2: onto part of your body, and then they form segments
Speaker 2: called proglottieds, and each proglotted makes its own sets of eggs,
Speaker 2: And sometimes the proglotted dissolves away and the eggs pass
Speaker 2: with your feces into the environment. Other times, the proglotted
Speaker 2: just pops off and passes with your feces, and sometimes
Speaker 2: it looks like pieces of rice walking around in your feces,
Speaker 2: and that's proglotted, and so you can have you know,
Speaker 2: like pieces of the tapeworm that sort of like separate
Speaker 2: but are still moving. But we usually count how many
Speaker 2: tapeworms an organism has based on the number of heads
Speaker 2: that you find. So that's pretty straightforward.
Speaker 1: So parasites are quantized. There you go, amazing. We went
Speaker 1: from quantum physics to parasites to poop in record time
Speaker 1: on the podcast. That's what happens when you have a
Speaker 1: particle physicist and a parasitologist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you're right, we got there pretty fast. Today.
Speaker 2: I'm having a good day. We're having a good.
Speaker 1: Day, all right, and we are moving at the speed
Speaker 1: of information, trying to understand how the universe works and
Speaker 1: sending it to you down the Internet tubes.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of misinformation out there about parasites.
Speaker 2: So there's also a lot of misinformation out there about
Speaker 2: what the word quantum means. So, Daniel, today we're talking
Speaker 2: about quantum Internet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, the latest word to have quantum slapped
Speaker 1: in front.
Speaker 2: Of it, that's right. So today we're gonna find out
Speaker 2: if that makes any sense, and if it's nearly as
Speaker 2: exciting as it sounds like it is on social media.
Speaker 1: And I'm not actually that upset about the misinformation about
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics because it gives me an opportunity to clarify
Speaker 1: how amazing the universe actually is. It's not really a
Speaker 1: wet blanket moment where you're like, this sounded amazing, but
Speaker 1: it's really actually boring and nothing. It's like this sounds amazing,
Speaker 1: but the reality is even more cool.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know why you gotta sound so
Speaker 2: down on wet blanket people, but all right, fine, I
Speaker 2: know you like to keep things upbeat around here.
Speaker 1: Oh I see you thought I was throwing a wet
Speaker 1: blanket on the wet blanket people.
Speaker 2: Well, on me in particular. I felt seen, but not
Speaker 2: in no way.
Speaker 1: I wasn't talking about you, but I think it says something.
Speaker 1: He responded that way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you might be right.
Speaker 1: All right, So let's hear how our listeners responded. I
Speaker 1: went out there and asked them if they knew anything
Speaker 1: about the quantum Internet, if you would like to contribute
Speaker 1: your thoughts for future episodes, we would love to hear
Speaker 1: from you. Please write to us two questions at Danielankelly
Speaker 1: dot org and you can join the choir. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: think about it for a minute. What is the quantum Internet?
Speaker 1: What does it mean? Here's what our listeners had to say.
Speaker 2: What is the quantum Internet? Now you're just making stuff up.
Speaker 3: I have no idea, but I'm willing to learn.
Speaker 1: I assume the quantum Internet is the Internet that joins
Speaker 1: together quantum computers. Well, it sounds like the interconnected web
Speaker 1: of sub atomic consciousness, or maybe where Antman hangs out.
Speaker 2: The quantum Internet is great and all, but every time
Speaker 2: I check my emails they're both read and unread at
Speaker 2: the same time. I would guess that's internet that can
Speaker 2: travel the quantum realm to go faster than the speed
Speaker 2: of light.
Speaker 3: I would assume that it is a network of computers
Speaker 3: that have all been based on quantum computing infrastructure and
Speaker 3: quantum computing nodes.
Speaker 1: Maybe the quantum Internet is to do with the Internet
Speaker 1: being both truthful and untruthful at the same time. I
Speaker 1: suspect mostly untruthful. The quantum Internet will know what you're
Speaker 1: searching for before you type it in. If someone asks
Speaker 1: me what quantum Internet is.
Speaker 2: I would say that that is the current structure of
Speaker 2: our Internet.
Speaker 1: It's either your email sent or not sent. At the
Speaker 1: same time, It's probably a place where astiophysicists and people
Speaker 1: who use quantum data exchange information.
Speaker 3: I've never heard of the quantum internet before, but perhaps
Speaker 3: use of quantum computers on the Internet. I'm assuming it
Speaker 3: could do all sorts of neat things that we can't
Speaker 3: even imagine now. It could just be an entire Internet
Speaker 3: filled with cats in boxes, and I'm okay with that.
Speaker 3: The quantum Internet is a marketing term that's really just us.
Speaker 1: I can't say what the quantum Internet is, but I
Speaker 1: can calculate various probabilities of what it might be. The
Speaker 1: quantum Internet is the name for the observation that any
Speaker 1: fact you find on the Internet is equally likely to
Speaker 1: be true or untrue.
Speaker 2: There were some really fantastic answers here where your emails
Speaker 2: are both read and unread at the same time. I
Speaker 2: love that. I wonder if you get out of trouble
Speaker 2: if you're like, well, I know it was read and
Speaker 2: it was unread, and so I answered it and didn't
Speaker 2: answer it, but like, you know, move on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as usual, people either knew the answer, were wildly
Speaker 1: off or hilarious. I love this mixture. I always look
Speaker 1: forward to listening to these. There's so much fun.
Speaker 2: Yep, I love y'all.
Speaker 1: Thanks everybody.
Speaker 2: This I think gave a really nice overview of the
Speaker 2: various thoughts that people have about quantum internet, what it does,
Speaker 2: or whether or not they have any idea at all
Speaker 2: what it does. So let's just start from the beginning, like,
Speaker 2: what is quantum internet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, quantum internet is actually a real thing. It's not
Speaker 1: total nonsense. It's the idea that you could take quantum computers,
Speaker 1: which we'll dig into in a minute, and you could
Speaker 1: connect them in a quantum mechanical way, not in the
Speaker 1: same way that we connect normal classical computers that ship
Speaker 1: bits back and forth, but you could connect them using
Speaker 1: a fancy technology called quantum teleportation, which helps you move
Speaker 1: quantum information between one computer and another. And it makes
Speaker 1: sort of sense, like we used to develop computers, and
Speaker 1: then we networked all the computers together because that has
Speaker 1: obvious advantages, sharing information, working in parallel, et cetera. And
Speaker 1: now we're developing quantum computers, and so you might think, oh,
Speaker 1: it could be beneficial to connect quantum computers to each
Speaker 1: other because maybe they could take over the world and
Speaker 1: enslave us. No, I mean calculate our taxes faster, whatever
Speaker 1: quantum computers are supposed to do. So the quantum Internet
Speaker 1: really is two different ideas. It's quantum computers connected together
Speaker 1: with quantum teleportation.
Speaker 2: Oh that sounds very star treky. But so my understanding
Speaker 2: of quantum computers is that we sort over getting a
Speaker 2: handle on it. But this is not something that you use,
Speaker 2: like every day to solve normal problems. Yep, connecting quantum
Speaker 2: computers it feels like you're jumping ahead five or six steps, Like,
Speaker 2: shouldn't we get the computers to work first?
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know. I think we should work on
Speaker 1: all the problems at the same time. Right, It's not
Speaker 1: like we should finish physics before we get started on biology,
Speaker 1: because it's the colvision of everything, right, right, I'm agreeing
Speaker 1: with you.
Speaker 2: I mean, you need to be motivated, and how can
Speaker 2: you stay motivated if you're just doing physics. You need
Speaker 2: the good stuff too.
Speaker 1: You're right, we can't use the quantum Internet without quantum computers.
Speaker 1: But we also don't want to wait until quantum computers
Speaker 1: are a full fledged thing before we start thinking about
Speaker 1: how to connect them. And you know, everybody out there
Speaker 1: is excited about different stuff. So there's a group out
Speaker 1: there that recently made a splash because of their advance
Speaker 1: in quantum connection quantum computers, and we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about that in a minute, and that's why it's in
Speaker 1: the news. But I think it's a good idea to
Speaker 1: push on all fronts simultaneously.
Speaker 2: All right, fair enough, there's enough people excited about the question.
Speaker 2: You can work on more than one front. Can you
Speaker 2: give us a quick explanation of what a quantum computer is?
Speaker 1: Right? So, the quantum Internet is a quantum connected bunch
Speaker 1: of quantum computers. The core that is a quantum computer.
Speaker 1: What is a quantum computer? And so there is so
Speaker 1: much misunderstanding and misinformation about quantum computers, especially recently because
Speaker 1: of Microsoft results and Google's claims and clickbait writing articles.
Speaker 1: Quantum computers are not computers that do infinite number of
Speaker 1: computations in parallel. They are not computers that tap into
Speaker 1: the multiverse. There are computers that use quantum mechanics to
Speaker 1: do calculations instead of using classical physics. Or just normal bits. Right,
Speaker 1: So in a classical computer, the one that I'm using
Speaker 1: right now to record this podcast episode, and the one
Speaker 1: that's inside your phone or whatever device you're listening on,
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of bits. There's zeros and ones, and
Speaker 1: all of computation involves calculating new bits and flipping bits.
Speaker 1: You know. For example, when you take a picture, it's
Speaker 1: stored in terms of those bits. When you add two numbers,
Speaker 1: it expresses those numbers in binary form, where every digit
Speaker 1: is a bit, a zero or one, and it adds
Speaker 1: them in binary form. So the lifeblood of normal computers
Speaker 1: are these bits that are zero or one, and we
Speaker 1: use the rules of logic to build up a bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff that computers can do. But that's just one
Speaker 1: kind of computer, right. Technically, anything is a computer, like
Speaker 1: a baseball is a computer. It just calculates only one thing,
Speaker 1: like what a baseball can do. The cool thing about
Speaker 1: digital computers, the ones we know and love, is that
Speaker 1: they're programmable. We figure it out a way to take
Speaker 1: advantage of this very basic operation and map into lots
Speaker 1: and lots of really interesting problems. Cool, but there's some
Speaker 1: things that classical computers are slow at you know, just
Speaker 1: because you can map them into lots of things doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that they're very good at things. You know, like
Speaker 1: counting to a super high number. It can take a while.
Speaker 1: Anybody who is like run a piece of code over
Speaker 1: massive data that knows it can take a day or something,
Speaker 1: even on fast computers. And so quantum computers say, well,
Speaker 1: what if there's another way to do computation. Instead of
Speaker 1: starting from something like a zero or one, let's start
Speaker 1: from a state that's more ambiguous, like a cubebit. A
Speaker 1: cubit is something that doesn't have to be zero or one.
Speaker 1: It can have a probability to be zero and a
Speaker 1: probably to be one, and so there's like more fuzz there.
Speaker 1: And the rules of quantum mechanics are different from the
Speaker 1: rules of digital logic, and so that maps to a
Speaker 1: different set of problems that quantum computers can do quickly
Speaker 1: or do slowly.
Speaker 2: Maybe this was when we were talking to Scott Arenson
Speaker 2: the other day. He said something about how quantum computers
Speaker 2: are better when you want to solve quantumy problems or
Speaker 2: things like protein folding, Like if I have a question
Speaker 2: about parasites, I wouldn't make a computer out of parasites.
Speaker 2: Why is using cubits make it easier to solve those
Speaker 2: kinds of problems?
Speaker 1: Well, actually, I disagree with you, Kelly. I think you
Speaker 1: should build a parasite computer. And let me tell you why.
Speaker 1: You know, Let's say you wanted to know what happens
Speaker 1: on a certain quantum process, right, Well, one thing you
Speaker 1: could do is you could try to simulate that process
Speaker 1: on a classical computer. You could like represent it abstractly
Speaker 1: using zeros and ones, and then encode the rules of
Speaker 1: quantum physics into that digital logic and run it. It might
Speaker 1: be kind of slow, or you could just ask the
Speaker 1: quantum object itself. You're going to do the experiment, right, say, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to ask the universe. I'm gonna put
Speaker 1: the quantum objects in that situation. I'm going to see
Speaker 1: what happens, and then behind the scenes, the universe is
Speaker 1: following those rules of quantum mechanics for you, and the
Speaker 1: universe of the computation is free and kind of infinitely fast,
Speaker 1: and so in comparison, if you wanted to know, Kelly,
Speaker 1: like what happens if you drop a tapeworm into a
Speaker 1: can of coke, Just drop the tapeworm into a can
Speaker 1: of coke. That's a parasite computer right there. We think
Speaker 1: about computing sort of narrowly, like what it can be
Speaker 1: done in Excel. But computing is really just like getting
Speaker 1: the answer to a question, and sometimes building the system
Speaker 1: itself that you have a question about is the most
Speaker 1: natural way to get the answer.
Speaker 2: Okay, so one, I don't expect that Coke is going
Speaker 2: to be running any ads on our website for our
Speaker 2: podcast for the foreseeable future.
Speaker 1: You don't think tapeworms like coke? What you think they
Speaker 1: prefer something else? Are they pepsi fans?
Speaker 2: I was going to make a joke about coke being
Speaker 2: no worse once a tapeworm has dropped in there, But
Speaker 2: I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1: Wait, have you done that experiment? Do you know the
Speaker 1: answer to that calculation?
Speaker 2: I would never do something like that to a parasite.
Speaker 2: Do I have dropped some ethanol and formaline?
Speaker 1: So then, backing up to Scott's comment, is natural to
Speaker 1: calculate quantum things using a quantum computer because it's simpler
Speaker 1: to express them. It's likely to be fast. Now, in principle,
Speaker 1: anything you can calculate on a quantum computer, you can
Speaker 1: also calculate on a normal computer. Why because you can
Speaker 1: simulate a quantum computer on a normal computer. Right, just
Speaker 1: design one in your symbolic logic and let it run
Speaker 1: and simulate the laws of quantum mechanics. It's going to
Speaker 1: be slower the same way, like calculating exactly what happens
Speaker 1: to a baseball could be slower than just throwing the baseball. Right,
Speaker 1: let the universe do the computation. So the thing they
Speaker 1: know about quantum computers is that it's a different way
Speaker 1: to represent problems we might want to solve, and they're
Speaker 1: fast or slow at different things than baseballs or tapeworms
Speaker 1: or normal digital computers. So they're like a radically different
Speaker 1: way to do computation, and potentially they're very powerful at
Speaker 1: some problems. So, you know, there's some problems that we
Speaker 1: think classical computers are going to be very very bad at.
Speaker 1: For example, finding out if a number is prime. If
Speaker 1: I give you a number, how do you know if
Speaker 1: it's prime? Like if I ask you ninety seven, is
Speaker 1: it prime? Well, technically you have to check all the
Speaker 1: factors that might go into it. Well, undt a time.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's some clever ways to do it to
Speaker 1: be a little bit more efficient, but it's slow, and
Speaker 1: as the number gets big, that stays slow. And amazingly,
Speaker 1: there's a guy who figured out an algorithm to do
Speaker 1: that on quantum computers much more rapidly than on digital computers.
Speaker 1: So that's an example of a kind of problem which
Speaker 1: for weird reasons, because of the way quantum bits come
Speaker 1: together and the way we can map that problem to
Speaker 1: mathematical problems, there are some things that would happen fast
Speaker 1: on a quantum computer than on digital computers, but there's
Speaker 1: a very small number of those problems. People think like, oh,
Speaker 1: quantum computers can solve anything, you know, they can break
Speaker 1: into anything, and they're often used as like the mcguffin
Speaker 1: on these action movies, Right, don't let the terrorists get
Speaker 1: the quantum computer, or they'll get your bank account. In reality,
Speaker 1: cryptography is better protected than is often described in those movies,
Speaker 1: and nobody has a quantum computer that's powerful enough really
Speaker 1: to do anything more quickly than classical computers. So quantum
Speaker 1: computers are a real thing. They're awesome in the future,
Speaker 1: and we have bigger quantum computers with more bits, they
Speaker 1: can maybe solve really interesting problems that otherwise would be
Speaker 1: very slow on normal computers. But no, they're not proof
Speaker 1: that the multiverse exists. They can do infinite computation in parallel,
Speaker 1: and they're currently not really useful for anything.
Speaker 2: A couple questions, all right, First, so you were talking
Speaker 2: about bits being zero in one, and you're like, so
Speaker 2: we're going to use something a little fuzzier that to
Speaker 2: me doesn't necessarily seem like an easy way to get
Speaker 2: a better answer. So our quantum computers. You said they're
Speaker 2: better for some questions. Are they worse for a lot
Speaker 2: of other questions?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so they don't always beat classical computers. No, okay,
Speaker 2: all right? And then you said they're not necessarily computing
Speaker 2: in the multiverse. Do all of the quantum computer people
Speaker 2: believe you, because I feel like I've heard some who
Speaker 2: are like, maybe this does prove the existence of the multiverse.
Speaker 2: Are you not teaching the controversy here, Daniel.
Speaker 1: That's a fair question. I don't know anybody who I
Speaker 1: take seriously in quantum mechanics who thinks that quantum computers
Speaker 1: prove that the multiverse exists. I mean, how would you
Speaker 1: even steal man that argument? I think the argument is
Speaker 1: that quantum computers require superposition of multiple states. You know,
Speaker 1: for example, like your baseball can only have one energy,
Speaker 1: but an electron maybe it has a probability to have
Speaker 1: two different energies. It could have this energy or the
Speaker 1: other energy, or maybe it has two possible spins. It
Speaker 1: can simultaneously be in two states, or more accurately, you
Speaker 1: can say you can have the probability to be in
Speaker 1: two states at the same time. This is something weird
Speaker 1: that quantum objects can do. Quantum computation relies on this
Speaker 1: because the law of quantum physics predicts what will happen
Speaker 1: to each of those probabilities, and we map our problems
Speaker 1: onto those quantum physics and use the outcomes of those
Speaker 1: probabilities to get the answer. So it relies on superpositions existing.
Speaker 1: But we've known superpositions exist for a long long time,
Speaker 1: you know, like we have obvious examples of quantum superposition,
Speaker 1: all the Bells experiments about quantum entanglement that we'll talk about,
Speaker 1: the interferometer experiment, the double slid experiment, Like we have
Speaker 1: proof that superposition is a real thing before quantum computers,
Speaker 1: So like, I don't think because superposition is real, that
Speaker 1: means there's any strong argument that the multiverse is real.
Speaker 1: So I'm ninety nine point nine numb percent sure that
Speaker 1: quantum computing folks would say that this is just hype.
Speaker 2: Have you let the Marvel folks.
Speaker 1: Know there's a universe in which the Marvel folks have
Speaker 1: reached out to me for physics consulting, But it's not
Speaker 1: this universe.
Speaker 2: Oh bummer, bummer, all right, that might have been the
Speaker 2: best universe to live in. But okay, so we've wrapped
Speaker 2: our heads around quantum compute. So let's take a break
Speaker 2: and when we get back, we're going to talk about
Speaker 2: quantum teleportation. All right, and we're back, Daniel in Star
Speaker 2: Trek is quantum teleportation how they move people from one
Speaker 2: place to another?
Speaker 1: You're gonna ask me about the physics of something totally fictional.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 1: That reminds me of when I used to give presentations
Speaker 1: in elementary schools, and my favorite part about that was
Speaker 1: always opening the Florida questions.
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: And I remember one day getting a question that totally
Speaker 1: stumped me, and the question was just very similar to
Speaker 1: your question. Actually, it was Hey everyone, just a note.
Speaker 1: While we were recording this episode, a minor earthquake hit
Speaker 1: southern California and my office shook a little bit. We
Speaker 1: decided to keep that audio in the record for the
Speaker 1: sake of transparency about life in California.
Speaker 2: They just got quake, Aleric, Oh do you feel it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm like literally shaking.
Speaker 2: Are you still shaking?
Speaker 1: Nope? We're done. Wow, that was cool.
Speaker 2: Do you need to check in with anyone?
Speaker 1: No, just run in the mid day in California. Some
Speaker 1: kidner gardener asked me if lightsabers were real, would they
Speaker 1: be made of liquid nitrogen?
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 1: Wow, I don't even know how to answer that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, where do you start.
Speaker 1: Here's a kyber crystal, Like you want to walk you
Speaker 1: through the physics of kyber crystals? Like, I don't know anyway,
Speaker 1: I don't know how they do it in Star Trek.
Speaker 1: But teleportation is a really interesting question philosophically, and you
Speaker 1: probably know that because every time we have a science
Speaker 1: fiction author on I ask them what they think teleportation means.
Speaker 1: Even does teleportation mean like your actual bits disappear and
Speaker 1: appear somewhere else, like these atoms are now there? Or
Speaker 1: is it enough to tear you apart and rebuild you
Speaker 1: at of different atoms with the same arrangement. Right, Is
Speaker 1: it like a cut and paste? Is it like an
Speaker 1: email of what's going on? What is required for teleportation? Anyway,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a deep philosophical question. Where do you
Speaker 1: stand on that, Kelly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're dead?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, you die and you get brought back somewhere else.
Speaker 2: You couldn't get me in one of those.
Speaker 1: But that's only because I think you're assuming that they
Speaker 1: get torn apart and rebuilt. What if there was an
Speaker 1: actual teleportation device that took your actual atoms and appeared
Speaker 1: them somewhere else, would you get into that?
Speaker 2: I would be the one millionth person in line for that.
Speaker 1: Okay, that was a yes. I heard a yes. We
Speaker 1: have it on the air.
Speaker 2: If you're in line in front of me, Daniel, then
Speaker 2: I will give it a shot.
Speaker 1: I would like my ashes teleported into the center of
Speaker 1: the sun. How about that?
Speaker 2: Oh? Interesting? All right, quantum teleportation. Let's step out of
Speaker 2: Star Trek and into the real world. How does quantum
Speaker 2: teleportation work?
Speaker 1: Right? So, quantum teleportation is arguably not teleportation. I mean,
Speaker 1: it depends again exactly what do you mean by teleportation
Speaker 1: in that sense? But quantum teleportation is a way to
Speaker 1: transmit a quantum state. You know, there's a difficulty here,
Speaker 1: which is, like, let's say I have a particle in
Speaker 1: some quantum state, And by a quantum state, I mean
Speaker 1: like it has a probability to be this and a
Speaker 1: probability to be that. Right, take an electron, for example,
Speaker 1: and say it can just have two states up or down.
Speaker 1: So let's say I have an electron and I've done
Speaker 1: some complicated thing to it so that it has a
Speaker 1: seventy percent chance of being up and the thirty percent
Speaker 1: chance of being down.
Speaker 2: Can you actually do that? Like, you can tinker with
Speaker 2: the probability that it's up or down.
Speaker 1: You can do lots of different stuff. Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: construct an experiment so that electrons have whatever probability you
Speaker 1: want of doing basically whatever. That's what experimentalists do. Yeah, exactly. Wow,
Speaker 1: force the universe to do something cool. And so let's
Speaker 1: say that's like the outcome of your calculation or whatever. Now,
Speaker 1: maybe you want that information somewhere else, right, Maybe you
Speaker 1: want this quantum state to exist not here in California,
Speaker 1: but in some quantum computer in Virginia right where you're
Speaker 1: gonna use that as the basis of your next colcolition
Speaker 1: or I don't know whatever you folks do in Virginia
Speaker 1: with quantum states.
Speaker 2: I know that we don't get earthquake alerts.
Speaker 1: Wow, too soon to superpoint. I'm sorry, No, it's fine.
Speaker 1: And so if you want to copy a quantum state
Speaker 1: from here to there, it's a little tricky because if
Speaker 1: I interact with that electron, if I like measure it,
Speaker 1: or if I touch it, or if I put in
Speaker 1: a box, I risk collapsing its state. Right, the universe
Speaker 1: allows things to stay in superposition till they interact with
Speaker 1: something that can't be in superposition, like a classical object
Speaker 1: like my eyeball or my detector or whatever, and then
Speaker 1: the universe picks okay, spin up or okay spin down.
Speaker 1: And that could be fine. But if what you want
Speaker 1: to do is preserve the quantum superposition, not to collapse it,
Speaker 1: and to copy that information somewhere else, then you do
Speaker 1: something called quantum teleportation. So that's really what quantum teleportation
Speaker 1: is is it transmits a quantum state from one system
Speaker 1: to another without collapsing it, which is pretty cool. I
Speaker 1: don't know over it really qualifies as teleportation.
Speaker 2: Are you actually moving the electron from one place to another.
Speaker 1: You're not at all moving the electron. You're moving the arrangement,
Speaker 1: the quantum state. And so I have an electron here
Speaker 1: in California, you have an electron in Virginia. I want
Speaker 1: to get your electron in Virginia to have the same
Speaker 1: quantum state as my electron. I'm not like putting it
Speaker 1: on a ups truck and driving across the country. I
Speaker 1: could do that, that's no big deal. But if I
Speaker 1: just want to transmit the information the arrangement the quantum state,
Speaker 1: that's what we call quantum teleportation. And some of the
Speaker 1: folks I know in the foundations of quant mechanics really
Speaker 1: hate that name. They're like, why they call it teleportation? Okay,
Speaker 1: I know why, because it sounds cool, but it's not
Speaker 1: really teleportation. It's misleading, and so it's important to understand
Speaker 1: like what it actually means. But it kind of makes sense, right,
Speaker 1: Like if you have a network of quantum computer it's
Speaker 1: one basic thing you're going to want to do is
Speaker 1: take a quantum state from one and copy it over
Speaker 1: to another one so it can like continue the calculation
Speaker 1: or whatever. So whatever you call it, it's an important
Speaker 1: part of having networked quantum computers.
Speaker 2: I feel like it's one of those darned if you do,
Speaker 2: darned if you don't situations. You know, like you call
Speaker 2: it teleportation and now it's awesome and I want to
Speaker 2: hear more. Or you could be like, oh, Jupiter's rings
Speaker 2: or ABC and D and I know I keep using
Speaker 2: it as an example, but like that is so boring.
Speaker 2: You've got to be kidding me. So trying to find
Speaker 2: the sweet spot for naming these things is tough.
Speaker 1: What would you call Jupiter's rings, Kelly.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm going to need some time to think about that.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry you've been complaining about the name for weeks.
Speaker 2: You're right, oh, man, putting me on the spot.
Speaker 1: I'm just calling your bluff, that's all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you are calling my bluff. Hmm. What's the name
Speaker 2: of the ring and Lord of the rings? Crashous that's
Speaker 2: what Gollum calls it.
Speaker 1: That's what Gollum calls it. Yeah. The efficient name is
Speaker 1: something in Elvish, isn't it.
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: Yeah, anyway, all right, focusing again, Okay, quantum teleportation we
Speaker 2: understand what that is now. And you said that we
Speaker 2: can connect an electron in California to an electron in Virginia.
Speaker 2: Mm hmmm, how does that process work?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so to do that, we're gonna have to use
Speaker 1: something called quantum entanglement. So we're three layers deep. Now.
Speaker 1: Quantum Internet requires quantum computers connected by quantum teleport rotation,
Speaker 1: which rests on the principle of quantum entanglement. All right,
Speaker 1: So now we're going to dig into what is quantum
Speaker 1: entanglement fundamentally, and then we'll come back and explain how
Speaker 1: you use quantum entanglement to do quantum teleportation to connect
Speaker 1: your quantum computers on the quantum Internet and play quantum
Speaker 1: doom with your quantum friends.
Speaker 2: Oh nice, but that probably would be easier on a
Speaker 2: classical computer.
Speaker 1: You can put doom on anything, though, right the day
Speaker 1: they pour doom to something, that's how you know it's
Speaker 1: a real computer.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: Amen.
Speaker 1: All right, So what is quantum entanglement? And this is
Speaker 1: again something you hear a lot about in the Internet,
Speaker 1: and I know people are confused about because I get
Speaker 1: lots of emails from people saying like, why can't you
Speaker 1: use quantum entanglement to transmit information faster than light, and
Speaker 1: you can't. And we'll talk about why that is. But
Speaker 1: you should also understand the quantum teleportation is not faster
Speaker 1: than light. It's slower than light transmission of quantum information.
Speaker 1: But before we get to that, let's understand what is
Speaker 1: quantum entanglement. Quantum entanglement has to do with the superpositions
Speaker 1: we talked about earlier, the probabilities for various outcomes. So
Speaker 1: let's say we have, instead of just one particle that
Speaker 1: can be spin up or spined down, say we have
Speaker 1: two electrons in California. Each one can be spin up
Speaker 1: or spin down. So how many possible states can they
Speaker 1: be in. Well, there's four. There's plus plus, plus minus,
Speaker 1: minus plus and minus minus, right, so there's four possible states. Cool.
Speaker 1: And if you just like scrambled the electrons, they can
Speaker 1: be in any of those states with equal probability. Cool.
Speaker 1: But let's say we've done something clever. We're an experimentalist,
Speaker 1: and we've prepared these electrons in such a way that
Speaker 1: there's a constraint on them, like they have to have
Speaker 1: opposite spins. And this isn't so hard to do. If
Speaker 1: they come from some state that has a total spin zero.
Speaker 1: The universe conserves angular momentum, and so when you create
Speaker 1: these two electrons, their spin has to add up to zero.
Speaker 1: It's not so hard. And so if you do that,
Speaker 1: it means that only two of the states are possible,
Speaker 1: the one that is plus minus or minus plus the
Speaker 1: plus plus state and the minus minus state no longer allowed.
Speaker 1: So we've crossed two of the states off the list,
Speaker 1: and boom, those two particles are now entangled. Why do
Speaker 1: we say they're entangled because their faiths are connected? Right?
Speaker 1: If one is plus, the other one is minus. If
Speaker 1: one is minus, the other one's plus. And this is
Speaker 1: not some mystical thing where like you force one particle
Speaker 1: to be minus and it reaches out through the universe
Speaker 1: and makes the other one plus. It's just that you
Speaker 1: have a list of options, and that list is limited,
Speaker 1: and in every possible outcome they have the opposite spin.
Speaker 2: I'm keeping track of, like how complicated all of these
Speaker 2: steps are. So you said it's pretty easy to get
Speaker 2: an electron that's entangled, so that one is plus and
Speaker 2: one is minus. What does pretty easy mean? Do you
Speaker 2: have to like go into the lac after spending billions
Speaker 2: of dollars, or is this something that can happen in
Speaker 2: a lab on a UC campus.
Speaker 1: This happens all the time, like every time a photon
Speaker 1: turns into an electron and a positron. Those are entangled,
Speaker 1: like it's constantly happening all of the time, and it's
Speaker 1: not actually that hard to do in the lab. The
Speaker 1: thing that's tricky to do in the lab, and the
Speaker 1: thing that's important is separating those two and maintaining their entanglement.
Speaker 1: You create those particles, they're entangled, and it's a really
Speaker 1: cool state because it's not yet determined. Right, they could
Speaker 1: be plus minus, so they could be minus plus. But
Speaker 1: then you could separate the particles. You can say, i'm
Speaker 1: gonna take particle B and i'm gonna drive it to Virginia.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna leave particle A in California. They're still entangled, right,
Speaker 1: And then if I measure particle A when it's in
Speaker 1: California and I get plus, then I know instantly what
Speaker 1: particle B in Virginia has to be. Because they're entangled.
Speaker 1: The thing that's hard is keeping them entangled, because to
Speaker 1: keep them entangled, you have to avoid them interacting with
Speaker 1: anything else. Like these electrons, they like to interact with stuff.
Speaker 1: You put them in a box, they'll interact with the box.
Speaker 1: You put them on a truck, they'll interact with a truck.
Speaker 1: So keeping these particles in that state while separating them
Speaker 1: means isolating them from everything else, because if they touch
Speaker 1: or interact with anything else, then they get entangled with
Speaker 1: that thing, or they get entangled with you. And now
Speaker 1: you were part of that quantum entanglement state to do
Speaker 1: the things that we want to do in a minute
Speaker 1: to transmit information, and we need them entangled with each
Speaker 1: other and with nothing else. And that's where the sort
Speaker 1: of onto magic comes from. Right, these two particles are
Speaker 1: now really far apart. They can be a kilometer apart,
Speaker 1: a light year apart, and they both maintain the uncertainty
Speaker 1: of being in plus minus or minus plus. Then you
Speaker 1: measure one of them, you get a minus boom. The
Speaker 1: other one is a plus. You know it, it's gone
Speaker 1: from uncertain to certain. That's the incredible thing about quantum entanglement,
Speaker 1: so that you can maintain the connection across distances, that's
Speaker 1: the non local part of quantum mechanics.
Speaker 2: Can we dig in a little bit more about how
Speaker 2: you make them not interact with anything. Do you use
Speaker 2: like electric fields to hold them in the center of
Speaker 2: a box?
Speaker 1: Electric fields are an interaction?
Speaker 2: Oh man, yeah, exactly what do you do?
Speaker 1: It's very hard. I mean, with the simplest way you
Speaker 1: can think about it as a thought experiment. It's like
Speaker 1: you're out in space. You have a photon. It turns
Speaker 1: into an electron and a positron, and they're going in
Speaker 1: opposite directions already naturally, right, Like if it had a
Speaker 1: lot of energy, then that energy is going to get
Speaker 1: transmitted to those particles. They're just going to fly apart,
Speaker 1: and so along the way they're not they interact with
Speaker 1: anything if it's really empty, and so they'll get further
Speaker 1: and further apart and still stay entangled. So on Earth,
Speaker 1: of course, it's much more complicated, and people have all
Speaker 1: sorts of tricks for keeping these things separated and keeping
Speaker 1: them isolated. It's not easy. It depends a lot on
Speaker 1: the details of the quantum system exactly the particles. We
Speaker 1: can dig into that in a future episode. I think
Speaker 1: that's a cool idea, but it's not easy. Right. The
Speaker 1: particles like to interact with everything else. And to decohere,
Speaker 1: this quantum state is very very fragile.
Speaker 2: All right, So that is really awesome. You mentioned that
Speaker 2: this can't be used for faster than light communication. Could
Speaker 2: you dig into that a little bit more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds like you should be able to use
Speaker 1: it for faster than like communication because there is something
Speaker 1: non local and instantaneous happening. Particle a's in California, particle
Speaker 1: b's in Virginia. Both of them are maintaining their superposition.
Speaker 1: Both of them could still be plus or still be minus.
Speaker 1: The entanglement just says they have to be opposite. Both
Speaker 1: of them could still be plus or minus. Right, I
Speaker 1: make a measurement in California, I get plus instantly know
Speaker 1: that you would get a minus if you measured yours
Speaker 1: in Virginia. So there is some sort of instantaneous across
Speaker 1: space and time thing happening there, which is very very cool,
Speaker 1: and it sounds like you should be able to use
Speaker 1: that for faster than like communication. And a lot of
Speaker 1: people write it and say, well, what if Daniel measures
Speaker 1: his and Kelly is watching, and so she knows, and
Speaker 1: you have a series of these things and Daniel measures
Speaker 1: them at a certain time, and Kelly is watching the
Speaker 1: pattern or something. It feels like you should be able
Speaker 1: to maybe use that for faster than like communication. The
Speaker 1: problem is if I measure mine in California and I
Speaker 1: get plus, I know that you're going to get a minus,
Speaker 1: but you don't know that. The Only thing you can
Speaker 1: do is look at your particle and measure it, and
Speaker 1: you don't know if it's collapsed or not. You can't
Speaker 1: tell that it's collapsed. I know that it's collapsed, but
Speaker 1: there's nothing about the particle itself that shows you that
Speaker 1: it's collapsed. You can measure it and get a minus. Cool,
Speaker 1: but you don't know if you got a minus because
Speaker 1: I already collapsed it, or because it was not collapsed
Speaker 1: and you collapsed. It's no like your particle has been collapsed.
Speaker 1: Light that goes on. There's no way to manipulate these things.
Speaker 1: And I also can't change it. It's not like I
Speaker 1: can say, oh, I have a plus, I'm gonna flip
Speaker 1: it to a minus to make Kelly's go the opposite.
Speaker 1: And as soon as I've measured mine, I break the entanglement.
Speaker 1: Right it's over. It's interactive with something that was a
Speaker 1: one time deal. So in science fiction novels where they
Speaker 1: have like entangled particles and they put one on a
Speaker 1: ship and they take them to Alpha's centauri and then
Speaker 1: they can use it as the basis of some answerable
Speaker 1: technology where they do FTL communication. Yeah, that's pure nonsense.
Speaker 1: It's fun. I'd love it, but it doesn't work.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it can't be used for helpful communication. But
Speaker 2: does the bit flip at a rate that's faster than light?
Speaker 2: So you bring them to opposite sides of the universe,
Speaker 2: do they communicate faster than light?
Speaker 1: Great question, Yes, but I wouldn't say bitflip. So the
Speaker 1: collapse is instantaneous, right, If I measure mine in California,
Speaker 1: then instantaneously yours collapses faster than light.
Speaker 2: Okay. Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's weird and that's cool. And that's the
Speaker 1: thing about quantum mechanics that we call non local, right,
Speaker 1: there's something global that's happening there, and people who've heard
Speaker 1: of Bell's experiment. Bell's experiment proves to us that it's
Speaker 1: not like one particle was always plus and the other
Speaker 1: one was always minus. We just don't know it. It
Speaker 1: means that this uncertainty is real, that they really do
Speaker 1: maintain the possibility of both outcomes until you do measure it.
Speaker 1: Bell's experiment proved that there's no like hidden information there
Speaker 1: that determines the outcome. It really is uncertain or at
Speaker 1: least and this is important, but it proved that there's
Speaker 1: no local hidden information. Quantum mechanics has to be non
Speaker 1: local in some way either. It really is probabilistic, and
Speaker 1: it maintains these probabilities and collapses instantaneously across space time
Speaker 1: when one of them is measured. So you should really
Speaker 1: think of it as like not two particles but one
Speaker 1: big quantum state. You collapse it anywhere, the whole thing
Speaker 1: collapses or there are some other crazy theories about global
Speaker 1: quantum information, you know, like super determinism or whatever that
Speaker 1: we can get into another time. But you know, the
Speaker 1: way most people think about it is that it does
Speaker 1: collapse instantaneously across space and time, which is crazy. But
Speaker 1: you can't use it to transmit information because you can't
Speaker 1: control it. Right. You can ask it, you can query it,
Speaker 1: you can collapse it. I can't even tell whether you've
Speaker 1: collapsed it or not. And you can't tell whether I've
Speaker 1: collapsed it or not.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it's not useful for faster than light communication,
Speaker 2: but it is useful for quantum teleportation. So after the break,
Speaker 2: let's jump back up a level to quantum teleportation and
Speaker 2: try to understand that. All right, we're back. So we
Speaker 2: now have a firm understanding of quantum entanglement. Maybe we
Speaker 2: have a firm understanding, and then we have two quantum
Speaker 2: computers and we want them to be able to communicate
Speaker 2: with quantum teleportation. Yes, tell us some more about how
Speaker 2: that works.
Speaker 1: Right, So remember the problem we want to solve is
Speaker 1: I have my electron. It's in some state, maybe it's
Speaker 1: like seventy thirty plus or minus or whatever, and you
Speaker 1: have an electron in Virginia, and I want to put
Speaker 1: your electron in the same state as my electron, and
Speaker 1: I don't want to collapse it, and I also don't
Speaker 1: want to put in a truck and drive it across
Speaker 1: the country. How do I get that quantum information without
Speaker 1: collapsing it and make your electron have it? Right? And
Speaker 1: so the way we do that is through quantum entanglement,
Speaker 1: because I can interact with my electron without collapsing it
Speaker 1: if I use with another quantum particle. So if I
Speaker 1: touch the electron, or if I poke it with something
Speaker 1: classical that can't be in a superposition, it will collapse
Speaker 1: the electron. But if I let that electron interact with
Speaker 1: some other quantum thing that can be in a superposition,
Speaker 1: it'll get entangled with that quantum thing. So I have
Speaker 1: my electronics in the special state. I bring in another particle,
Speaker 1: and I have those two interacts somehow, and now they're entangled.
Speaker 1: You have the particle we want to copy and some
Speaker 1: other particle entangled with it. Now if I planned ahead
Speaker 1: and had entangled this other particle with a third particle
Speaker 1: that we then sent to Virginia, we'd be ready to
Speaker 1: do quantum teleportation. So here's the setup. I have the
Speaker 1: original source particle I want to copy, and a pair
Speaker 1: of particles that are entangled with each other but separated,
Speaker 1: one in California and one in Virginia. I entangle my
Speaker 1: California particle with the source particle without breaking the entanglement
Speaker 1: because it's a quantum particle, and so the entanglement just spreads.
Speaker 1: It doesn't break like it would if it interacted with
Speaker 1: a classical object or with the whole environment. So I
Speaker 1: have my California end of our entangled particle pair, and
Speaker 1: now I've entangled that with the source particle I want
Speaker 1: to copy, and I can see what happens to the
Speaker 1: California end of the entangled pair. They can use the
Speaker 1: information in that new special particle. I can read that
Speaker 1: off and send you some information. I can email it
Speaker 1: to you, or I can send it to be a
Speaker 1: carrier pigeon or whatever some slower then like process, because
Speaker 1: everything is slower than night. I send you that information,
Speaker 1: and there's a recipe for using that information to copy
Speaker 1: the state of my particle onto your electron. I'm telling
Speaker 1: you what you have to do to your end of
Speaker 1: the California Virginia entangled pair to make it a quantum
Speaker 1: copy of my original source particle. So, to summarize, we
Speaker 1: entangled two particles, separate them while keeping them entangled, entangle
Speaker 1: my California end of it with the source particle, read
Speaker 1: off some information about that, and send it to you,
Speaker 1: so you know how to manipulate your Virginia end to
Speaker 1: make it a copy of my source particle.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you have something going on in your computer
Speaker 2: where you've got entangled cubits, Yes, and you send me
Speaker 2: an email with instructions for how to do that on
Speaker 2: my computer. Yes exactly, and now my computer has the
Speaker 2: same entanglement stuff going on as your computer.
Speaker 1: Yes exactly. There's a lot of little bits that we've
Speaker 1: skipped over because the math is a little complicated. But
Speaker 1: the crucial thing to understand is that I've avoided collapsing
Speaker 1: my cubit by interacting with a quantum particle, which now
Speaker 1: stores the information from it. And I can extract that
Speaker 1: information from my quantum particle and send it to you,
Speaker 1: so you can reverse the process. If we have kept
Speaker 1: our entangled pair nicely entangled, you can prepare some fond
Speaker 1: of part of in that state, have it interact with
Speaker 1: your electron, and then your electron will be in the
Speaker 1: same state as my original one was. And so this
Speaker 1: is what quantum teleportation is. It's a way to interact
Speaker 1: with the quantum objects, extract their information without collapsing it,
Speaker 1: encode it into something that we can transmit across the
Speaker 1: world or whatever, and then reverse the process.
Speaker 2: But when your quantum particle entangles with an electron in
Speaker 2: your computer, and then you look at what the quantum
Speaker 2: particle is doing, so that you can tell my computer
Speaker 2: what to do. When you look at your quantum particle
Speaker 2: because it was entangled, doesn't it mess up the system?
Speaker 1: It does actually mess up the system. And so when
Speaker 1: you copy the state, it destroys the original state. So
Speaker 1: the electron that I had in California is no longer
Speaker 1: going to be in that state that we both wanted.
Speaker 1: So I extract that information, I send it to you.
Speaker 1: You use that to create the quantum state over there
Speaker 1: in Virginia. But there's a no cloning theorem that says
Speaker 1: that you can't extract that information without also destroying it.
Speaker 1: But here we are extracting it in such a way
Speaker 1: that we can recreate the state in Virginia. Yes, we've
Speaker 1: destroyed the state of the California electron. So I'm not
Speaker 1: like just emailing you a PDF where like I also
Speaker 1: still have it. I have to like shred that PDF
Speaker 1: somehow and send it to you so you can recreate it.
Speaker 2: So the teleportation, and maybe this is where we discovered
Speaker 2: that teleportation actually wasn't a great term for this, But okay,
Speaker 2: so the teleportation is actually just that you've used entanglement
Speaker 2: to figure out what's happening with another electron. You're sending
Speaker 2: me that information and you are like teleporting it by
Speaker 2: email quote unquote, and that's where the teleportation is happening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very equivalent to saying, like, hey, Kelly, I
Speaker 1: built a really cool Lego house over here, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to send you the recipe to do so. I
Speaker 1: need to like tear apart my Lego house so I
Speaker 1: can keep track of exactly how you're going to build it.
Speaker 1: Then I'm email you the recipe and you guys are
Speaker 1: going to build the same Lego house over there. I
Speaker 1: had to destroy my Lego house to develop the recipe,
Speaker 1: and I just emailed it to you, or I send
Speaker 1: it to you via mail or whatever. But now you
Speaker 1: have the recipe to create exactly the same thing. And
Speaker 1: this is tricky only because these are quantum particles and
Speaker 1: it's not to read them off and to create these states.
Speaker 1: But this essentially is quantum teleportation. And I'll kind of
Speaker 1: argue the teleportation it's not a terrible name for it.
Speaker 1: I mean, if the Star Trek teleporter is scanning you
Speaker 1: and reading the quantum state of all your particles and
Speaker 1: then beaming that information to another machine that can reverse
Speaker 1: that process, then Yeah, that's kind of what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here.
Speaker 2: So everything we've just talked about sounds pretty complicated. Can
Speaker 2: you give me some situations where you would want to
Speaker 2: go through that process? Like, why would you create something
Speaker 2: in one computer destroy it just so you can create
Speaker 2: it on another computer. Couldn't you just create it and
Speaker 2: the second computer from scratch without making it on the
Speaker 2: other one first?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Maybe, but perhaps it's the outcome of a very complicated,
Speaker 1: very expensive quantum computation, you know. And like, let's say
Speaker 1: I have a quantum supercomputer and you ask me to
Speaker 1: do some calculation about your tapeworm simulation.
Speaker 2: I don't know, you have my attention.
Speaker 1: I do it for you, and I want to send
Speaker 1: you the result, right, I want to use the quantum
Speaker 1: Internet to send you this quantum answer to your quantum
Speaker 1: could computer from my quantum computer. And yeah, you could
Speaker 1: recreate it, but it might be really really slow, and
Speaker 1: so might well just copy the answer in the same
Speaker 1: way that your computer can calculate your taxes much much
Speaker 1: faster than you can. And you might think, well, why
Speaker 1: do I need that? I can just do it myself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you might as well skip ahead and get the
Speaker 1: answer so in that way, the quantum information here represents
Speaker 1: the results of a quantum computation, which could be extraordinarily valuable, right,
Speaker 1: and so you might want to save that. And people
Speaker 1: thought about ways to build super powerful quantum computers by
Speaker 1: tying together quantum bits across the quantum cloud, right the
Speaker 1: way you like, we make very powerful computers by spreading
Speaker 1: information and computation across them. You ask Amazon to do
Speaker 1: a complicated calculation, it doesn't just run in a one computer.
Speaker 1: It runs on ten fifty one hundred, so that you
Speaker 1: get the answer faster. In the same way, maybe you
Speaker 1: take a big quantum problem, you break it into pieces.
Speaker 1: Each quantum computer does a piece of it, and then
Speaker 1: they want to send the answer back to some central
Speaker 1: node which puts it together to get the final answer.
Speaker 1: That requires a quantum internet of quantum computers that can
Speaker 1: send quant states back and forth to each other. And
Speaker 1: so that's why this is a stepping stone to some
Speaker 1: future awesome globally linked quantum computer.
Speaker 2: And so where are we now? Has somebody recently done
Speaker 2: this quantum teleportation thing?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so people have been working on this for a while.
Speaker 1: And the bit that we talked about the quantum entanglement
Speaker 1: and sending information usually requires really specialized hardware. Keeping our
Speaker 1: two particles entangled is hard because we have to keep
Speaker 1: them isolated from any classical object. And what happened recently
Speaker 1: is a lab at Northwestern in northern Chicago managed to
Speaker 1: do quantum teleportation over normal fiber optics. Right, So usually
Speaker 1: like keeping that information pristine and clean is very very hard, Right,
Speaker 1: you have specialized hardware to transmit this information because it
Speaker 1: has to be just right. But they were able to
Speaker 1: use fiber optic cables that were thirty kilometers long that
Speaker 1: already also had normal Internet traffic, so like people randomly
Speaker 1: emailing and texting pictures of their cats and whatever, and
Speaker 1: they were able to send this information to do quantum
Speaker 1: teleportation across this noisy, totally and fiber optic cable. And
Speaker 1: so that was the excitement recently about the quantum Internet,
Speaker 1: is that we went from like you need specialized, dedicated
Speaker 1: hardware to do it for a single electron, to like,
Speaker 1: oh no, we can do it over long distances using
Speaker 1: standard equipment that already exists.
Speaker 2: But you're not sending entangled electrons through fiber optics. You're
Speaker 2: just sending instructions through fiber optics that then set up
Speaker 2: the next computer on the other side.
Speaker 1: Is that right, Yes, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2: Okay, still totally awesome. I just wanted to make sure
Speaker 2: I was understanding all right, awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so this is the first demonstration of quantum
Speaker 1: teleportation of entangled photons through busy optical fibers that are
Speaker 1: also carrying conventional telecommunications traffic. So, you know, it brings
Speaker 1: us a step closer. It's not like we have the
Speaker 1: quantum Internet. It's not like you can log on right
Speaker 1: now to the quantum Internet and do your quantum taxes
Speaker 1: or anything like that. But you know, this is an
Speaker 1: important step forward in making this realistic because if we
Speaker 1: want to build a bunch of quantum computers and connect them,
Speaker 1: it'd be nice if we could use standard equipment to
Speaker 1: do so and not have to build a whole separate
Speaker 1: quantum Internet. So it's cool, it's like, very experimentally awesome.
Speaker 2: Taxes are so complicated it wouldn't surprise me if next
Speaker 2: year we need to be doing our taxes on quantum computers.
Speaker 2: But I hope we're not getting there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you should think about whether you want to
Speaker 1: pay your taxes or not pay them or both.
Speaker 2: Whoa, I know which one I'd rather do. But on
Speaker 2: the other hand, I really like my government services, so
Speaker 2: I feel complicated and.
Speaker 1: I like not being in jail.
Speaker 2: Yeah, me too, Me too. There's a lot of things
Speaker 2: that would be hard to do from jail, like this podcast.
Speaker 1: Actually that might be possible. We'll find out maybe.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the quantum Internet is a real thing, right. Quantum
Speaker 1: computers are real and they're awesome, not always in the
Speaker 1: way people say they are. They're not the multiverse, but
Speaker 1: they are a new way to do computation. And quantum
Speaker 1: teleportation is a real thing. It's not faster than light,
Speaker 1: it's not Star Trek, but it is a way to
Speaker 1: transmit quantum states across vast distances, which is very cool.
Speaker 1: Bring them together and you get the quantum Internet. Quantum
Speaker 1: computers connected through quantum teleportation to do massive quantum problem solving.
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: The future is now, and so.
Speaker 1: I hope I didn't throw too much of a wet
Speaker 1: blanket on the quantum Internet. There is really a lot
Speaker 1: of awesome physics happening there. And if one day we
Speaker 1: do have very powerful quantum computers. They may be able
Speaker 1: to solve problems that do stomp us today. So I
Speaker 1: look forward to the first time an episode of this
Speaker 1: podcast is released on the quantum Internet.
Speaker 2: Well, you are now a member of the Wet Blanket Club.
Speaker 2: But it's going to be a while before your president.
Speaker 2: But I enjoyed spending this time with you.
Speaker 1: Are you dictator for lives that hot works?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, that's right, and Zach's first husband of the Dictator.
Speaker 1: I'll start as as secretary, work my way up.
Speaker 2: Oh right, good luck?
Speaker 1: All right, thanks everybody for listening. I hope we didn't
Speaker 1: entangle your minds at least not too much.
Speaker 2: Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeartRadio. We
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