WEBVTT - Quantum Immortality 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.840 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.840 --> 0:00:14.160 Works dot com. Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:14.200 --> 0:00:16.840 your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. 0:00:17.280 --> 0:00:21.040 And today we're going to be talking about broadly a 0:00:21.079 --> 0:00:23.400 topic that we've touched on a number of times here before, 0:00:23.640 --> 0:00:27.400 and that is immortality. We've touched on it in terms 0:00:27.440 --> 0:00:30.840 of religion and mythology. We've touched on it from the 0:00:31.320 --> 0:00:35.120 standpoint of our our great fear of mortality and death 0:00:35.159 --> 0:00:39.680 and therefore our longing for immortality and basically every aspect 0:00:39.680 --> 0:00:42.519 of our lives. And we have also talked about it 0:00:42.560 --> 0:00:46.320 a little bit in terms of improving human longevity. And 0:00:46.360 --> 0:00:48.280 I'm sure we've talked about it a good bit in 0:00:48.320 --> 0:00:52.680 reference to Highlander, because Robert, you've been watching that movie 0:00:52.760 --> 0:00:56.720 for about thirty five years, I think since you started 0:00:56.720 --> 0:01:00.000 it in like three second increments or something. Yeah, I'm 0:01:00.000 --> 0:01:03.319 watching it on a streaming service in five to ten 0:01:03.360 --> 0:01:06.600 minute sections. It's a race against time to see if 0:01:06.600 --> 0:01:09.400 I can finish Highlander before it's removed from this particular 0:01:09.400 --> 0:01:11.360 streaming service. You know what they call that kind of 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:15.360 lunch break, it's the quickening. I tend to call it 0:01:15.400 --> 0:01:17.360 a squatt and gobble because you're just kind of like 0:01:17.880 --> 0:01:21.759 squatting in your in your living room, just eating as 0:01:21.760 --> 0:01:24.720 fast as possible and watching just a little bit of 0:01:24.800 --> 0:01:26.800 Highlander and then going back to work. Now, how does 0:01:26.840 --> 0:01:29.560 the Highlander version of immortality stack up against all the 0:01:29.600 --> 0:01:32.440 normal kinds of immortality you find in mythology and religion. 0:01:32.680 --> 0:01:35.120 I think you would probably agree with me that it's 0:01:35.120 --> 0:01:40.600 not the deepest treatment of immortality and mortality in in 0:01:40.600 --> 0:01:44.080 in our collective storytelling. But it does hit on some 0:01:44.120 --> 0:01:47.640 of the main points, right, Like, oh, immortality sounds great, 0:01:47.680 --> 0:01:49.400 but then when you actually have to do it, it's 0:01:49.440 --> 0:01:52.280 kind of a pain. Um. Well, I'd say a lot 0:01:52.280 --> 0:01:54.880 of religious visions are actually like that. They tell you, 0:01:54.880 --> 0:01:58.720 you know, a lot of religions include some version of immortality, 0:01:58.760 --> 0:02:01.680 whether it's a sort of linear survival after death of 0:02:01.680 --> 0:02:04.840 the soul, or there's a kind of eternal cycle of 0:02:05.240 --> 0:02:08.840 reincarnation or something like that. In any event, it very 0:02:08.880 --> 0:02:11.919 often is not necessarily encouraged for you to look too 0:02:11.919 --> 0:02:16.079 closely at the details of immortality. Right, But this Highlander 0:02:16.080 --> 0:02:19.320 is essentially another version of the wandering immortal story where 0:02:19.680 --> 0:02:21.840 they're kind of stuck with it it what seems like 0:02:21.880 --> 0:02:23.519 it would be a blessing is kind of a curse. 0:02:24.320 --> 0:02:27.160 I feel like human perceptions of immortality, they tend to 0:02:27.200 --> 0:02:32.280 break down to this imagined things that would normally terminate 0:02:32.400 --> 0:02:35.480 or undergo a phase shift but magically don't have to. 0:02:36.120 --> 0:02:39.280 So the desire to for immortality is often either a 0:02:39.360 --> 0:02:42.480 reaction to just the reality of death and mortality itself, 0:02:42.520 --> 0:02:46.280 which is very understandable. Uh, kind of defines our existence 0:02:46.320 --> 0:02:49.480 is modern humans, or it comes from a desire for 0:02:49.600 --> 0:02:54.480 a certain state of existence to continue unchanged. But it 0:02:54.800 --> 0:02:57.919 does often kind of come back to this idea of stagnation, 0:02:58.360 --> 0:03:02.720 you know. Um, Like the thing I want is really stagnation. 0:03:02.760 --> 0:03:06.720 The thing I'm afraid of is change, um you know 0:03:06.760 --> 0:03:09.120 I and I wonder if if that's what we see 0:03:09.200 --> 0:03:11.880 in Highlander, you know, in these characters like Connor McLeod 0:03:11.960 --> 0:03:16.400 and Ramires. You know this Connor changed? Is he changed 0:03:16.400 --> 0:03:18.679 by his experience in the film? I mean certainly that 0:03:18.760 --> 0:03:22.240 the Kurgan, the villain isn't. Um. It seems like it 0:03:22.240 --> 0:03:25.200 would be more interesting if you like switched around backgrounds 0:03:25.200 --> 0:03:28.160 and had like the Goody two shoes becomes the villain 0:03:28.240 --> 0:03:31.760 and the and the the ancient villain becomes the modern hero, 0:03:32.480 --> 0:03:35.800 that sort of transformation, but instead these are very stagnant characters. Well, 0:03:35.840 --> 0:03:39.200 it's actually part of the ancient mythological tradition of immortality 0:03:39.280 --> 0:03:42.160 that if it comes with too much change, it's actually 0:03:42.200 --> 0:03:45.480 a curse rather than a blessing. Uh. Think about Aos 0:03:45.520 --> 0:03:48.200 and Tiffannus in Greek mythology. We we've talked about them 0:03:48.240 --> 0:03:51.440 recently or where the ideas Aos, the goddess of Dawn, 0:03:51.760 --> 0:03:54.880 has this lover, this mortal human lover named Tiffanus, and 0:03:55.160 --> 0:03:57.080 she wants him to be able to live forever. So 0:03:57.160 --> 0:03:59.680 she cries to Zeus and says, please grant him and 0:03:59.720 --> 0:04:04.200 more to Lity, and Zeus, being the jerk that he has, says, okay, done, 0:04:04.720 --> 0:04:08.760 makes Tiffanness an immortal, but doesn't grant him eternal youth. 0:04:09.280 --> 0:04:12.000 So he's gonna live forever, but he's just gonna get 0:04:12.040 --> 0:04:14.800 older and older, and that seems to be implied to 0:04:14.800 --> 0:04:17.520 be a fate worse than death. Yeah. You know another 0:04:17.920 --> 0:04:20.920 treatment on this that I really like Richard K. Morgan 0:04:21.000 --> 0:04:23.599 in his book Altered Carbon uh, and then also in 0:04:23.600 --> 0:04:26.080 the Netflix series that just recently came out, that that 0:04:26.400 --> 0:04:30.520 is basically that first book brought to life on the screen. 0:04:31.200 --> 0:04:35.080 In this show, you have essentially immortality via digital consciousness, 0:04:35.080 --> 0:04:38.760 digitized human consciousness moved from body to body, and typically 0:04:38.760 --> 0:04:42.320 you have a very grim vision of what that would mean. 0:04:42.440 --> 0:04:45.760 It basically means that the the worst, you know, richest 0:04:45.920 --> 0:04:49.680 decrepit individuals in society, they're just gonna grow more and 0:04:49.720 --> 0:04:53.000 more awful because they have more they have an increased 0:04:53.080 --> 0:04:56.120 lifespan in which to be awful and become jaded to 0:04:56.200 --> 0:05:00.080 their various uh um, you know, inappropriate pleasures. Yeah, we 0:05:00.120 --> 0:05:03.159 have a concept that the elderly tend to become wise 0:05:03.240 --> 0:05:05.440 in their old age. I mean, who knows if that's 0:05:05.440 --> 0:05:08.240 actually true, but well there's at least an impression along 0:05:08.279 --> 0:05:10.200 those lines. But it seems to be premised on the 0:05:10.279 --> 0:05:13.840 knowledge that death is coming. What if wisdom is contingent 0:05:14.000 --> 0:05:16.640 on that. Yeah, it takes me back to our episode 0:05:16.640 --> 0:05:19.599 on Chinese immortality and some of these Dallas concepts of 0:05:19.680 --> 0:05:23.640 like the the elder enlightened being where you're aging is 0:05:23.640 --> 0:05:26.880 a transformation into a different state. But so many of 0:05:27.120 --> 0:05:29.680 these ideas of immortality, it's like, yeah, you get to 0:05:29.800 --> 0:05:34.200 remain young forever, uh forget without really thinking about what 0:05:34.279 --> 0:05:36.760 that would do, how that might warp the individual. But 0:05:37.000 --> 0:05:40.480 what if there was a concept of immortality that in 0:05:40.600 --> 0:05:44.880 fact didn't imply any of these changes, right. It didn't 0:05:44.920 --> 0:05:46.919 say that you're going to make a phase transition to 0:05:47.000 --> 0:05:49.599 another kind of being. It didn't say that your soul 0:05:49.680 --> 0:05:52.120 is going to leave your body. It didn't say any 0:05:52.160 --> 0:05:56.320 of that. It was just a literal, physical, straightforward statement 0:05:56.520 --> 0:05:59.240 that everything is going to be normal. There's no magic, 0:05:59.400 --> 0:06:03.120 except you'll just happen to never die. What sounds good 0:06:03.160 --> 0:06:06.000 is their catch, Whether or not it sounds good. This 0:06:06.080 --> 0:06:08.360 is what we want to talk about today, a physical 0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:12.640 possibility of immortality presented as a thought experiment with a 0:06:12.760 --> 0:06:17.560 lot of perhaps flawed underlying assumptions. So you're unfortunately not 0:06:17.640 --> 0:06:20.520 going to walk away from today's episode probably with the 0:06:20.520 --> 0:06:24.359 assumption that yes, all humans will live forever based on 0:06:24.400 --> 0:06:27.080 the laws of physics, but we do want to explore 0:06:27.160 --> 0:06:30.280 that as a possibility. Yeah, nothing we're going to talk 0:06:30.279 --> 0:06:32.640 about here today is actually going to impact your life, 0:06:33.480 --> 0:06:35.840 except in the way maybe you think about your existence. 0:06:36.240 --> 0:06:38.880 Quite true, unless it does impact your life, in which 0:06:38.920 --> 0:06:42.520 case this is going to be very important. We're barely 0:06:42.520 --> 0:06:45.159 talking about quantum mechanics, and it's already tangled up it 0:06:45.240 --> 0:06:47.719 or not here, right, So we should make the transition 0:06:47.760 --> 0:06:50.039 to talking about physics, because this is going to be 0:06:50.040 --> 0:06:55.200 a physics spaced episode talking about interpretations of quantum mechanics. Uh, 0:06:55.240 --> 0:06:57.200 and so I guess we should begin with just a 0:06:57.200 --> 0:07:00.279 little bit of the discussion of weirdness of scale sale. 0:07:00.839 --> 0:07:03.520 If you listen to this podcast, you've probably heard at 0:07:03.600 --> 0:07:07.240 least a little bit about the deep strangeness of physics 0:07:07.279 --> 0:07:12.240 at scales much bigger or smaller than the energy, mass, distance, speed, 0:07:12.320 --> 0:07:14.200 and so forth that we deal with on a day 0:07:14.200 --> 0:07:17.920 to day basis. On, for example, vast scales, we live 0:07:17.920 --> 0:07:21.720 in a universe apparently dominated by dark matter, these gigantic 0:07:21.760 --> 0:07:26.040 gravitational anomalies that can't be seen or touched except by 0:07:26.040 --> 0:07:29.200 the way that they've been space time and hold galaxies together, 0:07:29.560 --> 0:07:33.920 and on these huge scales, the dominating physics regime, the 0:07:34.360 --> 0:07:37.400 kind of physics that makes the biggest difference is not 0:07:37.560 --> 0:07:40.400 the kind of physics that governs our everyday lives, but 0:07:40.680 --> 0:07:44.680 of Einstein's general relativity, where time is not a universal 0:07:44.760 --> 0:07:47.320 measure and can appear to slow down or speed up 0:07:47.360 --> 0:07:51.200 from different vantage points. Where mass changes the geometry of 0:07:51.200 --> 0:07:54.920 space time itself and can warp or even trap light itself. 0:07:55.480 --> 0:07:58.800 Now shrink down to roughly human sized scales, and suddenly 0:07:58.800 --> 0:08:01.400 the laws of physics appear or to change. They don't 0:08:01.400 --> 0:08:05.280 really change, but different physical phenomena become the most salient, 0:08:05.400 --> 0:08:08.960 become the most important types of calculations to do when 0:08:08.960 --> 0:08:11.120 you're trying to figure out how things are moving and 0:08:11.160 --> 0:08:15.280 how one physical thing is affecting another. So this normal scale, 0:08:15.320 --> 0:08:18.720 general relativity doesn't matter very much. We can throw baseballs 0:08:18.760 --> 0:08:21.880 and shoot cannons and smash watermelons and all that stuff 0:08:22.080 --> 0:08:27.120 without taking general relativity into the equation. And this scale 0:08:27.160 --> 0:08:30.560 is generally best described by Isaac Newton's classical mechanics. This 0:08:30.640 --> 0:08:33.439 is also the realm which physics is intuitive. Right at 0:08:33.440 --> 0:08:36.400 this scale, everything seems to fly and fall and push 0:08:36.440 --> 0:08:39.520 and resist in a way that makes sense to us. Yeah, 0:08:39.600 --> 0:08:41.439 this is the This is the room in which we 0:08:41.440 --> 0:08:44.640 we have evolved to thrive exactly. That's the important point. 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:46.760 It's kind of hard to remember this, but we should 0:08:46.760 --> 0:08:49.400 do our best to internalize the fact that this middle 0:08:49.559 --> 0:08:53.520 scale of physics, the Newtonian scale, does not actually make 0:08:53.640 --> 0:08:57.640 any more sense in an objective point of view than 0:08:57.679 --> 0:09:00.240 the other scales do. It's just the scale at which 0:09:00.240 --> 0:09:03.800 our brains evolved. So presumably, if we happen to be 0:09:03.840 --> 0:09:08.520 evolved star sized organisms, things like general relativity would be 0:09:08.559 --> 0:09:11.760 intuitive and would make natural sense to us, and Newtonian 0:09:11.800 --> 0:09:16.520 physics would be crazy, weird stuff that goes on down there. Well, 0:09:16.559 --> 0:09:19.839 one way that I like to think about it is 0:09:19.880 --> 0:09:22.400 the explanation that you can think of classical physics as 0:09:22.440 --> 0:09:25.760 the Earth's crust and quantum physics as the underlying mantle, 0:09:26.120 --> 0:09:27.240 and then you have to keep in mind that there 0:09:27.280 --> 0:09:29.320 are things about Earth's mantle. They only make sense if 0:09:29.320 --> 0:09:32.240 you take into account Earth's in our core. I think 0:09:32.240 --> 0:09:35.120 that's a good analogy, because if we do keep zooming down, 0:09:35.320 --> 0:09:37.640 we of course get get to what you just mentioned, 0:09:37.720 --> 0:09:40.920 quantum mechanics, this next realm where things change. Yet again, 0:09:41.400 --> 0:09:43.680 you get too extremely small scales on the scale of 0:09:43.720 --> 0:09:49.239 elementary particles and tiny objects like atoms, protons, electrons, photons 0:09:49.280 --> 0:09:52.920 of light, and at this scale the physics regime changes 0:09:53.000 --> 0:09:55.880 so that things stop behaving in a way best described 0:09:55.920 --> 0:09:59.840 by either general relativity or classical mechanics, and they int 0:10:00.360 --> 0:10:03.360 behave according to a theory we now know as quantum 0:10:03.360 --> 0:10:07.600 mechanics or quantum physics. And this came about because, you know, originally, 0:10:08.000 --> 0:10:11.080 say the dawn of the twentieth century, scientists were trying 0:10:11.120 --> 0:10:14.400 to figure out how things like atoms could behave as 0:10:14.480 --> 0:10:17.040 reconciled by classical mechanics. They were trying to look at 0:10:17.040 --> 0:10:19.839 things like the orbit of electrons around the nucleus of 0:10:19.880 --> 0:10:21.800 an atom and say, okay, does that work in a 0:10:21.880 --> 0:10:25.040 classical mechanics way, like the way planets orbit around a star, 0:10:25.679 --> 0:10:28.880 And it just didn't work. So they had to figure 0:10:28.920 --> 0:10:31.600 out what's actually going on here, and eventually they came 0:10:31.679 --> 0:10:34.679 up with the theory of quantum physics, which is now 0:10:34.800 --> 0:10:37.920 predicted mainly by what is called I've been saying his 0:10:38.000 --> 0:10:41.480 name wrong my whole life. I think that the Shreddinger equation. 0:10:41.520 --> 0:10:44.840 I've been calling him Schrodinger. I've been saying Schrodinger as well. 0:10:44.880 --> 0:10:47.360 I feel like I've heard Schrodinger from everybody. Yeah, I 0:10:47.360 --> 0:10:49.280 think I've heard it, but I don't know. I think 0:10:49.320 --> 0:10:52.480 shredd Shreddinger is shredding. It's hard to even say. I 0:10:52.559 --> 0:10:58.040 want to go Schrodinger Shreddinger. It's all because of Shreddinger. 0:10:59.080 --> 0:11:02.800 It does it sounds more wholesome than than than cats 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:06.200 and boxes, uh, than that are neither dead nor alive, 0:11:06.400 --> 0:11:10.559 or are both dead and alive at the same time. Yeah, so, well, 0:11:10.559 --> 0:11:13.040 you'll probably hear us say it both ways in this podcast. 0:11:13.080 --> 0:11:15.319 I apologize for that, but there's gonna be just no 0:11:15.400 --> 0:11:17.760 getting around it. I guess it depends on how the 0:11:17.760 --> 0:11:21.640 wave function collapses each time, but um so anyway. It 0:11:21.720 --> 0:11:26.840 is named after the Austrian physicist Irvin Shreddinger, and Shreddinger 0:11:26.960 --> 0:11:29.520 derived the equation in the mid nineteen twenties and ever 0:11:29.600 --> 0:11:34.520 since then it has been profoundly useful and profoundly confusing. 0:11:35.000 --> 0:11:38.320 And this is because quantum mechanics is simultaneously one of 0:11:38.320 --> 0:11:41.680 the best most predictive theories in all of science, and 0:11:41.720 --> 0:11:45.200 at the same time it clearly implies a reality that 0:11:45.240 --> 0:11:49.800 makes absolutely no intuitive sense to us mammals that evolved 0:11:49.920 --> 0:11:53.160 to deal with classical physics on the Newtonian scale. It 0:11:53.320 --> 0:11:57.199 is bonkers and completely defies our expectations of how the 0:11:57.240 --> 0:11:59.679 world should work. And there are a bunch of different 0:11:59.720 --> 0:12:01.920 ways you could explain this, but just to pick the 0:12:01.960 --> 0:12:05.360 simplest version for now, that the Shreddinger equation can be 0:12:05.440 --> 0:12:09.040 used to predict the behavior of tiny particles like atoms 0:12:09.040 --> 0:12:12.080 and electrons over time. So just the way that you 0:12:12.120 --> 0:12:15.160 can use Newtonian equations to predict something like the arc 0:12:15.200 --> 0:12:18.559 of a cannonball or the force of a falling boulder, 0:12:19.000 --> 0:12:22.120 you can use the Shreddinger equation to predict the behavior 0:12:22.360 --> 0:12:26.880 of tiny particles like electrons or photons. But a Newtonian 0:12:26.920 --> 0:12:30.560 cannonball is experienced by us and described by physics as 0:12:30.600 --> 0:12:33.800 a single solitary object with one starting point a single 0:12:33.920 --> 0:12:37.200 ending point in a clear trajectory. A particle on the 0:12:37.240 --> 0:12:40.880 quantum scale does not behave that way at all, but rather, 0:12:40.920 --> 0:12:43.880 according to the shredding Ear equation, it behaves a lot 0:12:43.920 --> 0:12:47.480 like a pattern of waves in a fluid, and this 0:12:47.559 --> 0:12:52.040 means it can have what can seem like multiple contradictory properties. 0:12:52.320 --> 0:12:55.320 For example, a particle can, from our point of view, 0:12:55.440 --> 0:13:00.600 appear to have multiple different positions, velocities, or spin directions 0:13:00.880 --> 0:13:05.120 at the same time. And this range of possible simultaneous 0:13:05.200 --> 0:13:08.760 behaviors is what's known as the wave function. The wave 0:13:08.920 --> 0:13:12.520 function is all of these potentialities that seemed to be 0:13:12.600 --> 0:13:17.080 simultaneously true about a quantum object or system, and this 0:13:17.160 --> 0:13:21.720 wave function exists in an abstract infinite dimensional space that's 0:13:21.800 --> 0:13:25.320 known as the Hilbert space. Now again, of course this 0:13:25.400 --> 0:13:27.680 makes no sense to us, but it's proven to a 0:13:27.800 --> 0:13:30.440 degree that's almost beyond dispute. Like one of the most 0:13:30.480 --> 0:13:33.839 classic proofs of the wave function behavior of quantum scale 0:13:33.840 --> 0:13:36.560 objects is the double slit experiment. Yes, this is where 0:13:36.559 --> 0:13:39.319 we get the same. When you're out of slit, you're 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:42.520 out of peer. Right now, that's a different situation. I 0:13:42.559 --> 0:13:44.880 don't know what you're talking about. Old beer ad slit 0:13:44.920 --> 0:13:49.040 speer sla. We've actually just been looking at old beer 0:13:49.080 --> 0:13:51.800 ads here on the podcast. There apparently was an old 0:13:51.840 --> 0:13:54.199 Miller ad that had gigantic monsters in it where they 0:13:54.240 --> 0:13:57.120 grab a truck full of miller and just chugged the truck. Yeah, 0:13:57.160 --> 0:13:58.960 now that one's awesome. I think that was that was 0:13:59.000 --> 0:14:01.079 from from when I was a kid, or in junior 0:14:01.120 --> 0:14:05.000 high or something. I remember seeing that one, the Schlitz 0:14:05.080 --> 0:14:07.439 beer ad where they have this whole when you're out 0:14:07.440 --> 0:14:10.240 of slits, you're out of here. Uh, it's one I 0:14:10.280 --> 0:14:13.240 never actually saw, but was referenced on Mystery Science Theater 0:14:13.320 --> 0:14:16.320 three thousand. Growing up. So one of these these these 0:14:16.360 --> 0:14:21.600 many pop culture references that I have no direct experience with, 0:14:21.840 --> 0:14:25.080 only a secondhand experience with them from watching MST. Isn't 0:14:25.080 --> 0:14:28.000 it sweet that all of these beer commercials are imprinted 0:14:28.000 --> 0:14:31.480 on your childhood? Yeah, well it's some of them were 0:14:31.600 --> 0:14:33.560 not too bad. Some of them had monsters in them. 0:14:34.040 --> 0:14:37.080 But the double slit experiment to get to get it 0:14:37.080 --> 0:14:40.440 back to quantum mechanics here, the basic idea is pretty simple. 0:14:40.720 --> 0:14:43.720 The experimenter shines a light on a barrier that has 0:14:43.760 --> 0:14:48.080 two narrow slits in it, and then the experimental studies 0:14:48.120 --> 0:14:51.280 the interference pattern produces on a screen. So you've got 0:14:51.320 --> 0:14:54.560 like two walls in order, and the first wall that 0:14:54.640 --> 0:14:56.520 the light has to go through as the two slits, 0:14:56.520 --> 0:14:58.400 and then the back wall has a screen on it 0:14:58.480 --> 0:15:00.760 that the light can be projected on after it goes 0:15:00.800 --> 0:15:03.440 past the first wall. Right, And I should also add 0:15:03.480 --> 0:15:05.600 that this was first performed by Thomas Young in eighteen 0:15:05.640 --> 0:15:09.040 o one. Now, light has a dual nature, it's both 0:15:09.080 --> 0:15:12.600 wave like and particle like. In the experiment, light travels 0:15:12.600 --> 0:15:16.280 through both slits and creates this interference pattern. And if 0:15:16.280 --> 0:15:21.560 you send a single photon through photon being the light particle, right, 0:15:21.640 --> 0:15:24.600 the single unit of electromagnetic energy. So you send a 0:15:24.680 --> 0:15:27.960 single photon through it still forms an interference pattern as 0:15:27.960 --> 0:15:33.480 if the single photon travels through both slits simultaneously. If 0:15:33.520 --> 0:15:35.280 you hear me laughing, it's because at this point in 0:15:35.320 --> 0:15:38.040 our notes, Robert has inserted an image from the movie 0:15:38.120 --> 0:15:41.520 Time Cop two of what actor Ron Silver, Yeah, he 0:15:41.560 --> 0:15:44.480 played the villain. And here we have two different the 0:15:44.560 --> 0:15:47.240 villain from different time periods encountering each other and kind 0:15:47.240 --> 0:15:51.600 of looking at each other with amusement and or confusion. 0:15:52.200 --> 0:15:54.800 And I think both of these responses are are apt 0:15:54.880 --> 0:15:58.560 when contemplate and quantum mechanics. I mean, basically, though this 0:15:58.640 --> 0:16:01.760 is a simple experiment. Who observes something that should not 0:16:01.880 --> 0:16:04.920 be at least as far as classical physics is concerned. Yeah, 0:16:04.960 --> 0:16:08.000 the the idea that at the quantum level, a single 0:16:08.120 --> 0:16:11.640 object can appear to inhabit multiple places at one time. 0:16:11.680 --> 0:16:14.640 It produces this wave of like effect when it should 0:16:14.640 --> 0:16:17.280 be more like, you know, we think on a classical level, 0:16:17.320 --> 0:16:20.880 would be like a ball thrown at something. It's one object, 0:16:21.240 --> 0:16:23.680 but it's not. And you have to wonder how can 0:16:23.720 --> 0:16:27.040 this be true? Like objects in our experience never appear 0:16:27.160 --> 0:16:29.480 to be in more than one place at one time. 0:16:29.560 --> 0:16:33.120 A baygel does not behave like a wave pattern in 0:16:33.160 --> 0:16:37.120 which you know their peaks and troughs at different locations. Right. 0:16:37.400 --> 0:16:40.960 A bagel is just a single solid object that doesn't 0:16:40.960 --> 0:16:43.280 move unless you move it. Yeah, I think, I mean 0:16:43.720 --> 0:16:46.520 we we we mentioned time cop in passing here, and 0:16:46.560 --> 0:16:48.960 I don't think a deep scientific reading of time cop 0:16:49.040 --> 0:16:52.400 is is essential here. But this in other films do 0:16:52.480 --> 0:16:54.760 kind of get into this territory when you have the paradox, 0:16:54.880 --> 0:16:58.280 right of of the same character encountering themselves from a 0:16:58.280 --> 0:17:03.440 different time. Um, well, anytime something that is I mean, 0:17:03.480 --> 0:17:05.800 how can that be, right, something somebody is in two 0:17:05.880 --> 0:17:09.000 places at once. Yeah, it's used in fiction because obviously 0:17:09.000 --> 0:17:12.199 it never happens on a macroscopic scale and reality. So 0:17:12.240 --> 0:17:15.080 the contradiction here is between the fact that the Shreddinger 0:17:15.200 --> 0:17:19.040 equation is obviously correct and the fact that it predicts 0:17:19.040 --> 0:17:22.600 stuff that makes no sense and we never see. And 0:17:22.720 --> 0:17:25.359 so it's led to the need for what are called 0:17:25.480 --> 0:17:30.480 interpretations of quantum mechanics. Pretty Much everybody accepts the underlying 0:17:30.560 --> 0:17:32.960 theory of quantum mechanics. You'd be a fool not to. 0:17:33.119 --> 0:17:36.800 It's incredibly experimentally verified and very predictive, but there's a 0:17:36.800 --> 0:17:40.080 lot of disagreement about what it means and how it 0:17:40.119 --> 0:17:43.840 actually connects to our experience of reality. So, Robert, you 0:17:43.880 --> 0:17:47.160 mentioned the dead cat in the box earlier. Yes, this 0:17:47.280 --> 0:17:49.879 is going to be a feature of what's been for 0:17:49.920 --> 0:17:54.480 a long time the leading interpretation of quantum mechanics. So 0:17:54.480 --> 0:17:57.160 you've got different interpretations that we're going to talk about 0:17:57.160 --> 0:18:00.560 two mainly today, but there have been actually a bunch 0:18:00.600 --> 0:18:03.640 of different interpretations. The two we're gonna be focusing on 0:18:03.840 --> 0:18:06.960 are the Copenhagen interpretation and what we will later discuss 0:18:07.000 --> 0:18:11.080 as the many Worlds interpretation. But the Copenhagen interpretation was 0:18:11.560 --> 0:18:14.280 created in the nineteen twenties by the physicist Nil Spoor 0:18:14.800 --> 0:18:19.520 and Werner Heisenberg, and the Copenhagen interpretation essentially postulates a 0:18:19.560 --> 0:18:24.960 world governed by quantum mechanical probabilities, and these probabilities get 0:18:25.000 --> 0:18:28.800 decided on through a process known as wave function collapse. 0:18:28.960 --> 0:18:31.280 So you've got these multiple possibilities at the same time. 0:18:31.320 --> 0:18:34.280 That's the way of function. Uh. And then they're going 0:18:34.320 --> 0:18:37.000 to say it collapses, So what does that mean? So 0:18:37.200 --> 0:18:40.480 imagine you've got a quantum level particle like an electron, 0:18:40.800 --> 0:18:42.679 and you're trying to figure out where is it going 0:18:42.720 --> 0:18:44.960 to be? Is the electron going to be on the 0:18:45.040 --> 0:18:46.600 right or is it going to be on the left. 0:18:47.080 --> 0:18:50.960 What the Copenhagen interpretation says is that this wave function 0:18:51.080 --> 0:18:55.159 is in a state of unresolved potential called superposition, and 0:18:55.200 --> 0:18:57.920 the electron could be on the right, and it could 0:18:57.960 --> 0:19:00.280 be on the left, and in fact it's neither one. 0:19:00.400 --> 0:19:02.840 But it's in this state where there's a fifty percent 0:19:03.080 --> 0:19:06.439 probability of each And here's where it connects with our 0:19:06.520 --> 0:19:09.720 world of solid macroscopic objects that are in only one 0:19:09.800 --> 0:19:13.040 state in one place at a time. The Copenhagen interpretation 0:19:13.320 --> 0:19:17.520 says that the wave function collapses into only one of 0:19:17.560 --> 0:19:22.120 its potential configurations once somebody observes it. Now, this has 0:19:22.200 --> 0:19:24.720 led to a lot of people reading all kinds of 0:19:24.760 --> 0:19:29.840 crazy esoteric things about consciousness into quantum mechanics, right right, Yeah, 0:19:29.920 --> 0:19:33.520 basically what is the role of the observer and everything? Yeah, 0:19:33.760 --> 0:19:36.920 But I think a lot of those, uh, those consciousness 0:19:36.960 --> 0:19:40.520 type ideas are based on a misinterpretation of the grounding 0:19:40.560 --> 0:19:44.240 of the Copenhagen interpretation and a misinter misunderstanding of the 0:19:44.240 --> 0:19:46.960 fact that the Copenhagen interpretation is not a sure thing 0:19:47.400 --> 0:19:51.080 that it is an interpretation, not the theory itself. But 0:19:51.160 --> 0:19:52.800 this is again, this is where the cat comes in 0:19:53.040 --> 0:19:57.840 the idea that the cat is simultaneously dead and alive 0:19:58.160 --> 0:20:01.320 inside of this box where where random life or death 0:20:01.920 --> 0:20:04.000 is going to occur. Right, So that, yeah, this is 0:20:04.000 --> 0:20:05.840 going to be how they map it up from the 0:20:05.920 --> 0:20:09.399 quantum realm into the macroscopic world and how does our 0:20:09.520 --> 0:20:15.879 reality connect with these probability distributions on the quantum level. Uh, So, 0:20:15.920 --> 0:20:18.320 you've got an electron. It's neither on your left nor 0:20:18.440 --> 0:20:21.080 on your right, but in a state of superposition where 0:20:21.119 --> 0:20:25.400 there is simultaneously a fifty probability of finding it on 0:20:25.480 --> 0:20:28.600 each side if you look with precision, and it just 0:20:28.720 --> 0:20:33.400 stays this way, suspended it with these possibilities until somebody 0:20:33.440 --> 0:20:35.879 observes it, meaning you use some kind of device or 0:20:35.920 --> 0:20:38.720 method to figure out exactly where that particle is. And 0:20:38.720 --> 0:20:41.920 then the once somebody does that, then it's actually only 0:20:42.080 --> 0:20:45.680 one place it was in superposition. Then you looked at it. 0:20:45.840 --> 0:20:48.320 Now it's on your left. It's not crazy. That crazy 0:20:48.880 --> 0:20:51.359 situation to to really wrap your head around. If you 0:20:51.359 --> 0:20:53.520 sort of think of it in terms of like TV 0:20:53.640 --> 0:20:56.480 production or something. You know, if you're on one of 0:20:56.480 --> 0:20:58.479 these shows, we have to guess what's behind the curtain, 0:20:58.680 --> 0:21:01.280 and there's something behind each curtain, but only one curtain 0:21:01.359 --> 0:21:03.400 is actually gonna be opened. Oh yeah, and a kind 0:21:03.400 --> 0:21:06.280 of solipsistic way. It's almost not hard to believe that 0:21:06.320 --> 0:21:09.240 the universe only only matters when I look at it. 0:21:11.320 --> 0:21:14.080 But yeah, So, despite the fact that many physicists have 0:21:14.200 --> 0:21:17.439 felt fine relying on this interpretation for the decade since then, 0:21:17.480 --> 0:21:18.919 I mean, one thing we should point out is that 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:22.600 you can do all kinds of useful quantum mechanics science 0:21:23.040 --> 0:21:26.320 and and even use it for technology without knowing which 0:21:26.359 --> 0:21:29.320 interpretation is correct. And in fact, it sometimes doesn't matter 0:21:29.400 --> 0:21:32.679 which interpretation is correct. The math of the theory works 0:21:32.680 --> 0:21:37.000 either way, right, Yeah, absolutely, But many continue to protest 0:21:37.080 --> 0:21:41.159 that the Copenhagen interpretation is nonsensical and it leads to 0:21:41.200 --> 0:21:44.399 these apparent absurdities like as as you mentioned, Robert the 0:21:44.440 --> 0:21:48.960 cat in the box, the famous Schrodinger's cat or Shreddinger's cat. Yeah, 0:21:48.960 --> 0:21:50.920 we've we've already referenced a couple of times. You should 0:21:50.920 --> 0:21:53.200 probably just lay it out for us here exactly how 0:21:53.240 --> 0:21:57.040 this experiment goes. Uh, However, you know I do have 0:21:57.080 --> 0:21:59.560 a soft spot for cats. Yeah, let's let's get rid 0:21:59.600 --> 0:22:01.520 of cats. Don't want to kill a cat again. We 0:22:02.200 --> 0:22:04.680 people talk about killing cats way too much in science. 0:22:04.920 --> 0:22:07.080 Maybe they're anti cat. I'm going to bring in a 0:22:07.200 --> 0:22:12.560 unicorn because we've established that maybe unicorns aren't as perfect 0:22:12.560 --> 0:22:17.040 as everybody thinks they are. This particular experiment funded entirely 0:22:17.119 --> 0:22:22.639 by Tim Curry, Lord of Darkness. Full disclosure. Okay, so 0:22:22.640 --> 0:22:25.159