Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from My Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with my Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and how the tech are you? And Happy Halloween. This
Speaker 1: episode is publishing on Halloween, October thirty one, two thousand
Speaker 1: twenty two. That's for those of you in the future
Speaker 1: who are listening back on this episode. So throughout this month,
Speaker 1: I have published a few episodes that are at least
Speaker 1: tangentially connected if I'm being generous to to scary spooky stuff.
Speaker 1: It's a little tricky with tech because I don't want
Speaker 1: to go into like really big paranormal kind of things
Speaker 1: and technology that purports to do stuff that's impossible, because
Speaker 1: that really just comes down to debunking. I want to do, um,
Speaker 1: you know, some stuff that that has spooky names, but
Speaker 1: ultimately it's not that scary stuff like vampire power and
Speaker 1: zombie computers, although those are scary. The phrase ghost in
Speaker 1: the Machine was an episode that kind of thing. But
Speaker 1: on Halloween itself, I thought we could chat about something
Speaker 1: Einstein himself referred to as spooky action at a distance,
Speaker 1: and this does tie into tech. We are going to
Speaker 1: talk about tech, not just theories and physics, and we're
Speaker 1: also going to talk about tech that's in the realistic
Speaker 1: world and in like science fiction ee kind of applications. Now,
Speaker 1: Einstein when he said spooky action at a distance, wasn't
Speaker 1: trying to describe, you know, ghosts involved in a long
Speaker 1: distance relationship or anything. So we're not gonna have any
Speaker 1: specters making you know, erotic FaceTime calls to each other.
Speaker 1: That's not what we're talking about here. Instead, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about quantum mechanics. So at the heart of
Speaker 1: this concept of spooky action at a distance is this
Speaker 1: idea of quantum entanglement and how quantum entanglement violates locality.
Speaker 1: So Einstein was a truly brilliant physicist and mathematician, but
Speaker 1: he was no Einstein. Okay, all right, that makes no sense.
Speaker 1: He was and Einstein he was the Einstein. But there
Speaker 1: were certain leaps he wasn't yet ready to make, and
Speaker 1: a big one of those is how quantum mechanics isn't
Speaker 1: necessarily confined to locality. Einstein had issues with quantum mechanics
Speaker 1: in general because quantum mechanics has a lot of elements
Speaker 1: to it that seemed completely alien to us based on
Speaker 1: our understanding of classical physics, and there were certain bits
Speaker 1: of that that Einstein had some real problems with. So
Speaker 1: what is locality, Well, it what it sounds like, right.
Speaker 1: It's locality is it describes that there's a limitation, like
Speaker 1: a regional limitation on physical events and their consequences. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, locality would tell us that an event
Speaker 1: in one part of the world could not possibly affect
Speaker 1: something very far away instantaneously, because that would violate locality.
Speaker 1: You know, if I were to sneeze right now and
Speaker 1: then a tree where to fall over in the Philippines,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't say those two things were immediately connected because
Speaker 1: that violates locality. There's no there's no causal, uh agent
Speaker 1: there to make that happen, right to to go from
Speaker 1: my sneeze to the tree falling over in the same
Speaker 1: instant to make that makes sense. So this is a
Speaker 1: little different. Actually, it's a lot different from the classic
Speaker 1: butterfly effect. That is another concept that doesn't violate low cality.
Speaker 1: So the butterfly effect is a way to describe aspects
Speaker 1: of chaos theory, and in the butterfly effect, a small
Speaker 1: change in a variable or a state can lead to
Speaker 1: a much larger change in a later state. So a
Speaker 1: classic example is a butterfly flaps its wings on one day,
Speaker 1: and that little disturbance in the air ultimately contributes to
Speaker 1: potentially provides the necessary impetus for a tornado that happens
Speaker 1: several weeks later. Or you might hear another version of
Speaker 1: this where a butterfly flaps its wings in South America
Speaker 1: and that contributes to a tsunami that later hits Southeast Asia.
Speaker 1: That kind of thing. The idea that little things can
Speaker 1: be the changing factor that determines whether or not a
Speaker 1: larger thing in the future happens or doesn't. Right, But
Speaker 1: this doesn't violate locality because you have that aspect of
Speaker 1: time that allows something to develop further from an initial event.
Speaker 1: With the quantum entanglement, the idea is that these things
Speaker 1: are happening instantaneously. There is no time between event one
Speaker 1: an event too. You have event one, an event two
Speaker 1: is a consequence of event one, even if those two
Speaker 1: events are happening on opposite sides of the world. That
Speaker 1: is what Einstein had a problem with, you know, because
Speaker 1: he wanted to try and figure out how can you
Speaker 1: describe event one making event to possible if they're not
Speaker 1: in the same locality, and quantum mechanics said that does happen,
Speaker 1: and Einstein was like, no, that that can't be the
Speaker 1: way it works. It has to be that there are
Speaker 1: local events, local variables, perhaps hidden variables, that explain why
Speaker 1: these things happen. And it looks like there's some sort
Speaker 1: of correlation or perhaps cause relationship between these events to us.
Speaker 1: But that's because we're misinterpreting things. We're not looking at
Speaker 1: the actual cause. That's what Einstein was saying. He was
Speaker 1: just not able to make a jump to understanding quantum entanglement.
Speaker 1: You can understand why, right, because this idea that something
Speaker 1: happens in one place and that can cause a reaction
Speaker 1: that is literally a world away at the very same time.
Speaker 1: That flies in the phase of our own experience. Right
Speaker 1: if you were to drop a piece of pizza and
Speaker 1: you saw it hit the floor, you would be shocked
Speaker 1: to learn that you caused an earthquake on the other
Speaker 1: side of the world at that exact same moment, like
Speaker 1: pizza hits the floor, earthquake across the world from you,
Speaker 1: and that you were somehow the cause of it. That
Speaker 1: wouldn't make sense. Even if somehow vibrations from the pizza
Speaker 1: hitting the floor managed to travel all the way through
Speaker 1: the Earth to the other side, it would take time
Speaker 1: for the vibrations to go through the entire planet. It
Speaker 1: would take the speed of sound through that various media
Speaker 1: for it to get there, and then, you know, who
Speaker 1: knows what happens once it hits the core. We'd have
Speaker 1: to watch a lot of science fiction and horror movies
Speaker 1: to figure that out. So maybe your whale of anguish
Speaker 1: also would contribute. You know, you just lost a piece
Speaker 1: of pizza, so obviously you're going to have a grieving period.
Speaker 1: But we're still limited to the speed of sound here.
Speaker 1: It takes time for sound to make its way anywhere.
Speaker 1: So even if it were somehow able to go through
Speaker 1: the entire Earth and cause this earthquake, it would take
Speaker 1: a lot of time. It would not be an instantaneous reaction.
Speaker 1: This really gets to one of the big obstacles when
Speaker 1: it comes to understanding or explaining quantum effects. Because the
Speaker 1: quantum level, the quantum world obeys a different set of
Speaker 1: rules from the classical realm stuff that is impossible in
Speaker 1: our day to day existence is commonplace and quantum systems.
Speaker 1: So let me give you another example. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle
Speaker 1: explains that we have a emit when it comes to
Speaker 1: describing particles, and we're really talking about like quantum particles,
Speaker 1: sub atomic particles, that kind of thing. So the classic
Speaker 1: example is describing a particle's position and its momentum based
Speaker 1: on initial conditions. So Heisenberg hypothesized that the more we
Speaker 1: know about one of these two conditions i e. Its
Speaker 1: position or its momentum, well, the less then we can
Speaker 1: know about the other one. So if we had perfect
Speaker 1: knowledge of a particle's position, we would know nothing about
Speaker 1: its momentum. We would be unable to describe where and
Speaker 1: at what speed this particle was moving, so it'd be
Speaker 1: kind of like a snapshot, Like a perfect snapshot, we
Speaker 1: could see the position of the particle at that moment
Speaker 1: in time, but we would know nothing else about it. Likewise,
Speaker 1: if we had perfect knowledge of the particle's momentum, we
Speaker 1: would be unable to describe its position at all. So
Speaker 1: because of this limitation, we cannot know with certainty both
Speaker 1: pieces of information. So we typically will describe particles like
Speaker 1: these as existing within a range or zone of potential
Speaker 1: positions at any given time. You can think of it
Speaker 1: almost like a cloud that this particle could exist within UH,
Speaker 1: and it could be anywhere within that cloud at any
Speaker 1: given time that you could take the the opportunity to
Speaker 1: detect it, and in that instant detect where the particle is.
Speaker 1: Then all those possibilities collapse into one fixed position. But
Speaker 1: before you look, it could be anywhere in that cloud.
Speaker 1: So there are regions within that cloud where the particle
Speaker 1: is more likely to be found in a given moment,
Speaker 1: but there's at least the possibility that it could be
Speaker 1: at any point within the cloud at any specific time. Now,
Speaker 1: not only is this different from what we experience in
Speaker 1: our day to day life, where we can explain with
Speaker 1: decent confidence a person's position and momentum, it can lead
Speaker 1: to other weird quantum effects that really make a difference
Speaker 1: in technology, such as quantum tunneling. So this has a
Speaker 1: real effect on electronics and circuits, particularly with things like
Speaker 1: UH processors computer processors. So when we're talking about electronics,
Speaker 1: you can think of electronics at a very very very
Speaker 1: basic level as being all about controlling where the flow
Speaker 1: of electrons can go and what work the electrons will
Speaker 1: have to do along the way as they make their
Speaker 1: way to their destination, which is typically a positive terminal.
Speaker 1: You know, electrons are negatively charged, and so opposites attract
Speaker 1: it wants to go to the positively charged terminal. Electrons
Speaker 1: are subatomic particles and they behave according to the quantum
Speaker 1: effects described by folks like Heisenberg. So if we wanted
Speaker 1: to focus on a single electron within a circuit, we
Speaker 1: would have to describe its location as existing within a
Speaker 1: sort of zone or field. We can't point to the
Speaker 1: specific location as the electron moves through the system, but
Speaker 1: we can describe an area of probabilities where the electron
Speaker 1: could be well. One of the most important components in
Speaker 1: circuitry is the transistor, which acts like a gate. The
Speaker 1: gate can allow electrons to go through or it can
Speaker 1: prevent them from going through, So it's really a switch, right.
Speaker 1: It forms the basis of much more complicated systems, but
Speaker 1: it only works if you know it can actually keep
Speaker 1: electrons from going through. Well, it's possible that a zone
Speaker 1: of probabilities of an electron's position can actually overlap a gate.
Speaker 1: So if the gate is very very thin, it's possible
Speaker 1: for the zone to extend to the other side of
Speaker 1: a closed gate. This means that it's technically possible for
Speaker 1: an electron to exist on the other side of the
Speaker 1: closed gate, even though the electron would otherwise have been
Speaker 1: prevented from passing through because again the gate is closed. Well,
Speaker 1: if something is possible, that means that sometimes it happens. Right,
Speaker 1: even if you think, well, the electron didn't physically move
Speaker 1: through the gate, that the fact that there's a chance
Speaker 1: for it to be on the other side means that
Speaker 1: sometimes it is on the other side. So in a
Speaker 1: system like this, an electron can sometimes be on the
Speaker 1: opposite side of a closed gate and then keep on going.
Speaker 1: This is not good if your goal is to control
Speaker 1: the flow of electrons, because the whole purpose of the
Speaker 1: gate is to stop them from going. So this means
Speaker 1: you're gonna start getting errors, and that that's because electrons
Speaker 1: are going through parts of your system that they're supposed
Speaker 1: to not be able to go through. So let's imagine
Speaker 1: what this would look like in our day to day existence, Like,
Speaker 1: if this same effect happened in our world, what would
Speaker 1: that be like. Well, we would not exist in fixed positions.
Speaker 1: We would exist in a world of possibilities from moment
Speaker 1: to moment, and we would only be in a specific
Speaker 1: position when someone was actually looking at us. So this
Speaker 1: means that sometimes we're in one spot as opposed to another.
Speaker 1: Maybe you walk up to a door and in the
Speaker 1: next moment you're on the other side of the door,
Speaker 1: even though you never opened the door. You didn't physically
Speaker 1: pass through the door. You're just now on the other
Speaker 1: side of the door. Now, you wouldn't want this because
Speaker 1: like imagine writing in a car and then suddenly you're
Speaker 1: not in the car, you're next to the car while
Speaker 1: going down the highway. That would be bad, right, So
Speaker 1: we don't want the quantum effects in our classical system,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't have happened in our experience. But this
Speaker 1: does happen at the quantum level, and we know it
Speaker 1: does because we've seen the results as chip manufacturers have
Speaker 1: made chips with smaller and smaller components. If you just
Speaker 1: keep doing that, you start to see errors because you
Speaker 1: got you have this issue with quantum tunneling. So this
Speaker 1: requires computer manufacturing. Chip manufacturing companies to change the architecture
Speaker 1: and the materials they're working with when they're creating circuits
Speaker 1: in an effort to mitigate or prevent this from happening. Um.
Speaker 1: It's one of the reasons why people say there is
Speaker 1: an ultimate limit to scaling down individual components on chips,
Speaker 1: because you start run up against quantum effects and they
Speaker 1: become harder and harder to manage. All Right, we're just
Speaker 1: getting started, but let's take a quick break. Okay, So
Speaker 1: quantum systems behave in ways that are hard for most
Speaker 1: of us, myself included, who have limited exposure to the
Speaker 1: subject matter to really understand. I fully admit this, like,
Speaker 1: I quote unquote no about these quantum effects, but I
Speaker 1: by no means understand them. I have looked into them
Speaker 1: and read about them extensively, and at the end of it,
Speaker 1: I feel like like I understand that these things happen,
Speaker 1: but I don't understand why they do. It's just it's
Speaker 1: beyond me. It is a level of mastery with mathematics
Speaker 1: and science that I lack. It feels like science fiction tunneling. Definitely,
Speaker 1: it seems weird. Well, so does entanglement. Getting back to
Speaker 1: that spooky action at a distance. Einstein himself was particularly
Speaker 1: weirded out by this concept. See Einstein was looking over
Speaker 1: quantum hypotheses back in the nineteen thirties and pointed out
Speaker 1: that according to the math, the proposals would mean that
Speaker 1: it would be possible for quantum particles to sort of
Speaker 1: pair up in a way. And in this pairing, one
Speaker 1: particles features would depend upon the other particle, and vice versa.
Speaker 1: They would complement one another, and not in the oh
Speaker 1: you look nice today kind of way. They would compliment
Speaker 1: one another, and that one uh, one feature of one
Speaker 1: particle would be the opposite of another feature of the
Speaker 1: same feature of another particle, I should say. So, here's
Speaker 1: an example. We can describe electrons as having a certain
Speaker 1: spin that she has to do with magnetic polls. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to go into the whole thing, but yeah,
Speaker 1: electrons have a spin. They actually have three inherent properties.
Speaker 1: They have a mass, they have a charge, and they
Speaker 1: have spin. The spin describes how the electron spins around
Speaker 1: its own axis, and we can describe the spin as
Speaker 1: having an up or a down direction. So a pair
Speaker 1: of entangled electrons, this is from a very oversimplified approach,
Speaker 1: A pair of entangled electrons would have one electron with
Speaker 1: a spin of up, and the other electron has a
Speaker 1: spin of down. And should anything change the spin of
Speaker 1: one electron, the spin of the other electron would change instantly.
Speaker 1: So if electron one went from up to down, then
Speaker 1: electron two would go from down to up at that
Speaker 1: same moment. No matter how far apart they were. You
Speaker 1: could move them across the universe and this would remain
Speaker 1: the same until the system collapses and entanglement is severed. Uh,
Speaker 1: and the bit about you know, disturbing the system really
Speaker 1: gets to be important, Like this idea of the system collapsing.
Speaker 1: Quantum systems are extremely delicate things. Yes, you can separate
Speaker 1: these entangled particles and move them across the universe from
Speaker 1: one another and the entanglement will persist. But if you
Speaker 1: disturb the system at any given point, it collapses and
Speaker 1: that entanglement no longer exists. So they can collapse with
Speaker 1: the tiniest kinds of disturbances. Observing the system is enough
Speaker 1: to do that, and we call this the observer effect,
Speaker 1: that the act of observing changes the phenomenon we're trying
Speaker 1: to observe. Now, this idea, this is one of those
Speaker 1: quantum ideas that I think we can actually kind of
Speaker 1: grab onto if we look at it from a different perspective. Right,
Speaker 1: the idea that just by observing something or measuring something
Speaker 1: have changed it. I think that this is something we
Speaker 1: can understand if we take that idea into a totally
Speaker 1: different context. So, for example, let's say that we've set
Speaker 1: up a social experiment, and our experiment consists of an
Speaker 1: empty room. You know, maybe there's like a chair and
Speaker 1: a table there, but that's it. And we bring into
Speaker 1: this room a test subject. Uh, maybe we've got one
Speaker 1: group of test subjects and we tell them nothing about
Speaker 1: the experiment. We literally just bring them into the room
Speaker 1: and leave them there, and then we tell them, like,
Speaker 1: you know, you're just gonna wait here. We'll be back.
Speaker 1: That's it. But let's say we have a second group
Speaker 1: and we're doing the same thing with them. We bring
Speaker 1: them into the room and we tell them they're gonna
Speaker 1: wait there. But we also mentioned that the room is
Speaker 1: under constant observation that there are hidden cameras that you
Speaker 1: can't see. They're hidden so well you cannot see them
Speaker 1: in the room, but they will be recording everything, and
Speaker 1: people will be reviewing the footage and even watching a
Speaker 1: live feed but just sit there, weight will be back. Well,
Speaker 1: you can easily imagine that if you have a group
Speaker 1: where you didn't say anything about the room being under surveillance,
Speaker 1: you're gonna observe some behaviors that you're likely not gonna
Speaker 1: see in the other group, where people are thinking they're
Speaker 1: being watched the whole time. Now, knowing that you're being
Speaker 1: observed is enough to influence you so that you don't
Speaker 1: get too wacky while killing time waiting for whatever is
Speaker 1: supposed to happen next. Now, obviously, quantum particles aren't shy
Speaker 1: or embarrassed or feel shame when we observe them. That's
Speaker 1: not what's going on. They don't yell out cheese it.
Speaker 1: It's the heat when we observe them. But when we
Speaker 1: do observe them, all the possible quantum states they inhabit
Speaker 1: collapse down into just one state, so we get a
Speaker 1: defined outcome as opposed to all possible outcomes. All right,
Speaker 1: let's get back to entangle. In nineteen sixty four, a
Speaker 1: physicist named John Stewart Bell presented a theorem that provided
Speaker 1: a testable means for this entanglement hypothesis, and he showed
Speaker 1: that quantum mechanics could explain correlations between distant quantum events
Speaker 1: better than any sort of local theory could, so unthinkably
Speaker 1: to the Einstein's of the world. Bell's theorem passed Ockham's razor,
Speaker 1: and yes, I brought up Okam's razor, just so I
Speaker 1: could explain what that is. Let's say you've got something
Speaker 1: weird going on. You've come up with some potential explanations
Speaker 1: that caused the weird stuff. In fact, let's get specific.
Speaker 1: Let's say that the weird thing is that you found
Speaker 1: a particularly cold spot in your basement, and when you
Speaker 1: walk through it, you get that unsettling feeling that you've
Speaker 1: passed through something strange. Now, let's say you come up
Speaker 1: with a couple of potential explanations for this cold spot,
Speaker 1: and in one you suggest that the basement is haunted
Speaker 1: and the cold spot represents a ghost, so you passed
Speaker 1: through some spectral form of a spirit. But your other
Speaker 1: explanation is that it's winter and the spot you pass
Speaker 1: through is both far from most hating events, and the
Speaker 1: one that is closest is a bit clogged up and
Speaker 1: needs to be cleaned out. Well. Explanation one that there's
Speaker 1: a ghost requires first that you prove the existence of ghosts,
Speaker 1: because you can't say it's something that hasn't been proven
Speaker 1: to exist, right, You have to prove that first. And
Speaker 1: if ghosts do exist, why do they exist? What are they?
Speaker 1: How are they formed? How do they get here? What
Speaker 1: keeps them here? All that kind of stuff. For the
Speaker 1: answer to be ghosts, we actually need to be able
Speaker 1: to understand a lot of unanswered and potentially unanswerable questions,
Speaker 1: whereas the second explanation far more straightforward and it's testable,
Speaker 1: So the second explanation is actually the simplest. From that perspective,
Speaker 1: we could also go with Mr. Spocks philosophy. When you
Speaker 1: eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
Speaker 1: That one's tricky though, because sometimes something that we believe
Speaker 1: to be impossible turns out to act really be possible.
Speaker 1: It's just that we don't understand what's going on yet,
Speaker 1: or we have, you know, uh, the wrong point of
Speaker 1: view when we're looking at the thing, and so we're
Speaker 1: focusing on something that appears to be impossible, when if
Speaker 1: we had a different perspective we would realize what's really
Speaker 1: going on. So Mr Spock I gotta pick some bones
Speaker 1: with you on that one. Well, Bell's theorem showed that,
Speaker 1: as weird as the concept of quantum entanglement is, it
Speaker 1: was a far simpler explanation than trying to jump through
Speaker 1: hoops to explain apparent correlation strictly through locality. It became
Speaker 1: easier to explain these apparently connected events are at a
Speaker 1: distance are happening through entanglement than trying to invent scenarios
Speaker 1: in which two separate and unconnected local events produced results
Speaker 1: that only appear to be connected. Bell showed that this
Speaker 1: spooky action at a distance appeared to be a valid thing.
Speaker 1: Now here's the kicker. As soon as you attempt to
Speaker 1: measure an entangled particle, that connection, that interdependence between the
Speaker 1: two particles severs. So if one electron is spinning up
Speaker 1: and the entangled electron is spinning down, which is something
Speaker 1: that we don't know yet, we haven't measured it, and
Speaker 1: then we measure electron one, we see that it's spinning up.
Speaker 1: We know at that moment of measurement that electron two
Speaker 1: was spinning down, But we also know that this connection
Speaker 1: has been severed. It doesn't exist anymore. Now they're going
Speaker 1: to spin independently of one another. So measuring the spin
Speaker 1: of electron one again will give you no information about
Speaker 1: electron two. They're no longer connected. You cannot draw any conclusions.
Speaker 1: Same thing. If you measure electron two, you don't know
Speaker 1: anything about electron one. You only know at the moment
Speaker 1: of that that measurement, when the two were still entangled.
Speaker 1: This is an oversimplification, obviously. Bills there explains how experimental
Speaker 1: results should show that metrics prove correlations above what you
Speaker 1: would exspect if locality and local hidden variables were the
Speaker 1: only factors. So, in other words, practical experiments would prove
Speaker 1: that correlation happens beyond what can be explained if locality
Speaker 1: is a firm, in escapable element, and experiments have shown
Speaker 1: that we do in fact see correlation beyond what we
Speaker 1: can explain by locality. So this might be spooky action
Speaker 1: at a distance, but the point is it's real. We
Speaker 1: have observed the effects. Now, this isn't to say that
Speaker 1: there is universal agreement and acceptance of Bell's theorem, or
Speaker 1: rather the interpretations of Bell's theorem. This is still an
Speaker 1: ongoing area of research and experimentation, but at the very
Speaker 1: least the investigations show that locality, at least the way
Speaker 1: we understand it now, is not a factor, or at
Speaker 1: least not the only factor. Okay, we've got some more spooky,
Speaker 1: complicated quantum things to get through in a moment. But
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break. Okay, let's talk about a
Speaker 1: related quantum effect. In fact, it's very closely related to
Speaker 1: some of the other ones we've chatted about already. You know,
Speaker 1: Quantum tunneling shows us that when we're looking at quantum systems,
Speaker 1: we need to think in probabilities as opposed to fixed values.
Speaker 1: And electron has a probability of existing at a certain
Speaker 1: point within a region that it could exist within, right,
Speaker 1: We don't know for sure until we measure it, so
Speaker 1: we can just say there's a probability that it exists
Speaker 1: within this region. Uh So, that's one example of this,
Speaker 1: But we can extend that to lots of different quantum states,
Speaker 1: where a quantum system could potentially inhabit any one of
Speaker 1: those quantum states at any in time, and it's not
Speaker 1: until we measure that it collapses down into a fixed value. Well,
Speaker 1: there's a related concept called superposition, and in superposition, the
Speaker 1: ability of a quantum system is to exist in multiple states,
Speaker 1: all at the same time until the system collapses again,
Speaker 1: until we measure it. So instead of saying there's a
Speaker 1: probability of the system existing at any given state at
Speaker 1: any given time, we instead say, with superposition, that exists
Speaker 1: in all states at the same time until we measure it,
Speaker 1: at which point it collapses into a single one. Now, again,
Speaker 1: this is really hard for us to imagine compared to
Speaker 1: our day to day you know experiences. Things are either
Speaker 1: one way or another in our world, right, I mean
Speaker 1: they can't be always. Uh Like, Like take a classic
Speaker 1: light switch. Your your little light switch that flips up
Speaker 1: or down, so that shows it has two positions, right,
Speaker 1: it has off and it has on. So the light
Speaker 1: switches either off or it's on. It cannot be both.
Speaker 1: You know, you might be able to position the switch
Speaker 1: so it's precariously balanced between the two, but it's not
Speaker 1: actually off and on at the same time. It's one
Speaker 1: or the other. Either the circuit is open or it's closed.
Speaker 1: But in quantum systems, we can have a system occupy
Speaker 1: all possible states simultaneously until measured. They can be in superposition.
Speaker 1: It's also something that really got Irwin Schrodinger in a tizzy. Specifically,
Speaker 1: Schrodinger was responding to what is called the Copenhagen interpretation
Speaker 1: of quantum mechanics. We're not gonna dive down too far
Speaker 1: into the different interpretations. That is a matter for a
Speaker 1: different episode, but I do want to talk about Schrodinger
Speaker 1: for a second. He wanted to illustrate the absurdity and
Speaker 1: paradox of superposition, and so he presented a thought experiment. Imagine,
Speaker 1: by the way, this is a thought experiment that has
Speaker 1: animal cruel t in it. So fun times, but yeah,
Speaker 1: that's kind of how these things go. So imagine you've
Speaker 1: got a box and inside this box you have a
Speaker 1: kitty cat. Also in the box is a sealed flask
Speaker 1: of poison. There's also some radioactive material in there that
Speaker 1: will eventually decay, that will atoms will decay from this
Speaker 1: radioactive material. You've also included in the box a Geiger counter,
Speaker 1: and it's connected to a circuit so that if the
Speaker 1: Geiger counter detects a decaying atom, it'll send a signal
Speaker 1: through the circuit that will cause the flask to shatter
Speaker 1: and the poor kitty cat will be poisoned and die. Now,
Speaker 1: here's the thing. We don't know exactly when an atom
Speaker 1: will decay. You know. Again, we know a range of
Speaker 1: when the atom will decay, but we don't know precisely
Speaker 1: when that might happen. So you've got your kitty cat
Speaker 1: in this box, you leave it alone for a few hours,
Speaker 1: and you come back to the experiment. Well, there's a
Speaker 1: chance that an adam has decayed in that time, and
Speaker 1: if that happened, that means the Geiger counter would have
Speaker 1: gone off, caused the flask to break, and would have
Speaker 1: killed the cat. However, there's also a chance that that
Speaker 1: has not happened yet. That would mean the cat would
Speaker 1: just be bored, but otherwise unharmed. So, according to superposition,
Speaker 1: before you open the box, the cat is both alive
Speaker 1: and dead at the same time. It's only when you
Speaker 1: open the box and observe i. E. When you measure
Speaker 1: the system, that the possibilities collapse into a single reality
Speaker 1: and you either have a lively kitty cat or you
Speaker 1: have a kitty corpse that you're going to have to
Speaker 1: clean up. Schrodinger was really illustrating how this idea is weird,
Speaker 1: and it brings up the question at what point precisely
Speaker 1: would a quantum system in superposition collapsed down into a
Speaker 1: single state. Now there are other interpretations of quantum mechanics
Speaker 1: besides the Copenhagen one, and these take into account other
Speaker 1: factors besides observation and measurement. But again it gets super complicated,
Speaker 1: and honestly, I would just mess it up if I
Speaker 1: were to attempt to even explain them, because they require
Speaker 1: a level of understanding that I just don't have. But
Speaker 1: this is where we get that Schrodinger's cat scenario. So
Speaker 1: if you've ever heard of Shrodinger's Cat, that's what this
Speaker 1: comes from. It was really a critique on this interpretation
Speaker 1: of superposition. Shrodinger was saying, isn't this inherently absurd? Based
Speaker 1: upon our experience, superposition is one of the aspects of
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics that we can actually exploit using quantum computers.
Speaker 1: You've probably heard me talk about quantum computers that they
Speaker 1: rely on cubits. That's q u, b I T s.
Speaker 1: That is the basic unit of information for a quantum computer.
Speaker 1: So in classic computers we have bits, and in quantum
Speaker 1: computers we have que bits. So a bit is a
Speaker 1: single unit of digital information. It is the smallest unit
Speaker 1: that we can have, and we typically represent a bit
Speaker 1: is having a value of either zero or one. So
Speaker 1: this gets back to our light switch, right. You can
Speaker 1: think of it as being off or on. It can
Speaker 1: have one of two values, and that is it. That's
Speaker 1: as far down as you can get when you break
Speaker 1: down digital information. Cubits, on the other hand, get more complicated.
Speaker 1: A cubit, thanks to superposition, can both be a zero
Speaker 1: and a one simultaneously. Technically, it can be all values
Speaker 1: in between zero and one, sort of like balancing that
Speaker 1: light switch between off and on. But what good does
Speaker 1: this do for you to have a unit of information
Speaker 1: that can be both zero and one at the same time. Well,
Speaker 1: let's say we've got a computer problem we need to
Speaker 1: solve that has a lot of potential pathways to a solution,
Speaker 1: but we don't yet know which pathway is the best,
Speaker 1: the one that represents the quote un quote right answer.
Speaker 1: With a classic computer, you have to evaluate each pathway individually,
Speaker 1: and then at the end you have to compare all
Speaker 1: the results against one another to determine which one is
Speaker 1: the right one. If there are lots of pathways, this
Speaker 1: can mean a ton of computational work has to be
Speaker 1: put into the effort, and potentially that the amount of
Speaker 1: time required to complete the calculation is longer than the
Speaker 1: age of the universe, meaning it's practical for all intents
Speaker 1: and purposes, it's impossible will be extinct before the computer
Speaker 1: finishes the problem. So let's take this approach to the
Speaker 1: way we encrypt things the modern cryptography, and we're going
Speaker 1: to keep this at a very high level. Essentially, your
Speaker 1: typical encryption method takes two very large prime numbers. Remember
Speaker 1: a prime number is a number that's only divisible by itself.
Speaker 1: It takes these two large prime numbers, then multiplies those
Speaker 1: two prime numbers together and this creates a product which
Speaker 1: then we can use to encrypt data in some way.
Speaker 1: And the only way to decrypt the data to reverse
Speaker 1: the process of encryption is to have the correct very
Speaker 1: large prime number factors that we were used to make
Speaker 1: that product. So if you don't know the prime numbers,
Speaker 1: you can't reverse this process. Well, a classic computer would
Speaker 1: need to go through all possible prime numbers in an
Speaker 1: effort to find the right ones that were used to
Speaker 1: make this product. It's a process called prime factorization. So
Speaker 1: a number might be the product of just two prime numbers.
Speaker 1: So the number ten, for example, is the product of
Speaker 1: two and five. Two tomes five is ten. Well, two
Speaker 1: and five are both prime numbers. But larger numbers might
Speaker 1: break into multiple prime factors, like the number one thousand three. Well,
Speaker 1: that can be broken down to the primes of two, two, again,
Speaker 1: thirty one, and one thousand nineteen. You multiply all those together,
Speaker 1: you get one twenty six thousand, three fifty six. Computers
Speaker 1: are pretty darn good at multiplying numbers and getting a result.
Speaker 1: They are not as efficient when they take a result
Speaker 1: and work backward to determine the factors used to produce
Speaker 1: that product, and that's the secret sauce behind modern cryptography.
Speaker 1: A classic computer could take logger than the age of
Speaker 1: the universe to solve a particularly difficult prime factorization problem,
Speaker 1: but a quantum computer with sufficient cubits and the right
Speaker 1: algorithm could theoretically solve for all possible factors to create
Speaker 1: a particular product. The cubits are able to serve both
Speaker 1: as zeros and ones at the same time, so if
Speaker 1: you've got enough cubits that are all in superposition, you're
Speaker 1: essentially working out all possible solutions in parallel simultaneously, you'd
Speaker 1: actually get results that would have probabilities assigned to them.
Speaker 1: So again, once you get your results, it's not that
Speaker 1: you have, you know, the one and only answer, but
Speaker 1: you have various potential answers that are assigned probabilities. Typically
Speaker 1: you're looking at you know, the highest probability is likely
Speaker 1: to be right, because you know, once we get quantum
Speaker 1: computers that have these these reliable cubits and superposition and
Speaker 1: the right algorithms. Uh, this is you know, just a
Speaker 1: matter of time before it happens, then it will require
Speaker 1: us to shift to an entirely different kind of cryptography
Speaker 1: because once you do have these sufficiently powerful computers, it
Speaker 1: becomes uh an easy task to reverse the cryptographic process,
Speaker 1: and you just end up having essentially a skeleton key
Speaker 1: to all encrypted information. It's trivial how how easy it
Speaker 1: is at that point, assuming that you have a a
Speaker 1: properly powerful quantum computer and the appropriate algorithm to reverse
Speaker 1: the process. So that's why there's so much work being
Speaker 1: put into quantum cryptography, a process that would make it
Speaker 1: more difficult for a quantum computer to crack a cryptographic scheme,
Speaker 1: so that way we could maintain secret information. Otherwise there's
Speaker 1: no chance of having secrecy through digital transfer. Now let's
Speaker 1: get to a science fiction e element of the quantum
Speaker 1: world that people have talked about. So, in quantum systems
Speaker 1: we can have entanglement, and that entanglement can exist even
Speaker 1: if you were to separate to sub atomic or quantum particles. Uh,
Speaker 1: two opposite ends of a universe. Does that mean we
Speaker 1: could have a system and which we have one entangled
Speaker 1: system and say a spaceship on the opposite side of
Speaker 1: the galaxy from us, and the other entangled system is
Speaker 1: here on Earth, and then we could have instantaneous communication
Speaker 1: between the two. Right, we get to have these two
Speaker 1: systems and because they're entangled with one another, we could
Speaker 1: send information back and forth. Wouldn't that mean we'd be
Speaker 1: violating Einstein's theory that nothing can go faster than the
Speaker 1: speed of light, And doesn't in fact mean we could
Speaker 1: violate causality? Could we actually end up getting an effect
Speaker 1: before the cause? Well, the simple answer is no, So
Speaker 1: that's a relief, right, But why Well, measuring an entangled
Speaker 1: particle in one location will cause the entanglement to sever,
Speaker 1: but you can't actually send any useful information. That way,
Speaker 1: it becomes a local measurement. Now it's a local measurement
Speaker 1: that's in two separate locations that are millions of light
Speaker 1: years apart. And you could say, well, be because of
Speaker 1: the state of this system. We know what the state
Speaker 1: of the system on the other side of the the universe was,
Speaker 1: but it was only at that moment of measurement. We
Speaker 1: don't know what state that systems in now because the
Speaker 1: entanglement has been severed. So you haven't actually sent any
Speaker 1: useful information. Uh, So there's no way to communicate. There's
Speaker 1: no way to do that. If you were to try
Speaker 1: and communicate, your communication would be in the form of
Speaker 1: classic bits style communication, which means you would be limited
Speaker 1: to the speed of light. So entanglement might be spooky.
Speaker 1: It cannot bright the laws of physics, Captain, so uh
Speaker 1: that I'm happy to report because otherwise we would have
Speaker 1: some really tricky things ahead of us. Because if you
Speaker 1: can violate causality, and there's all sorts of things from
Speaker 1: time travel to the whole concept of like multi verses
Speaker 1: and stuff, it gets really wibbly wobbly. Timmy, why me,
Speaker 1: as the doctor would say, So, I'm thankful that as
Speaker 1: far as we understand it now, that's a that's a
Speaker 1: non starter. But that doesn't mean that our understanding of
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics is by any measure complete. It definitely is not,
Speaker 1: and that we may learn other ways that we can
Speaker 1: exploit quantum systems to our benefit. That is really interesting stuff.
Speaker 1: And like I said, I understand the end result stuff, right,
Speaker 1: I can get my mind wrapped around that. I don't
Speaker 1: understand the how at all. Um. I remember when I
Speaker 1: was looking into something tangentially related to this, which was
Speaker 1: string theory. I was writing an article about how string
Speaker 1: theory works for how stuff works years ago, and I was,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a good thing. I'm already balked because
Speaker 1: I was ready to tear my hair out, but that
Speaker 1: would require reversing nature's whims and I am not able
Speaker 1: to do that. But yeah, I was ready to tear
Speaker 1: my hair out because I was doing a deep dive.
Speaker 1: I was looking at interviews with uh physicists and scientists
Speaker 1: and mathematicians, and I remember there was a point where
Speaker 1: one of them was asked, point blank, do you understand
Speaker 1: string theory? And his response was, I have dedicated my
Speaker 1: life to the study of this. But if you want
Speaker 1: the real raw answer, no, Like, I understand what the
Speaker 1: math tells me, and I understand why we need to
Speaker 1: account for things like multiple dimensions, for example, but I
Speaker 1: don't understand the theory at that granular level. And my
Speaker 1: reaction was, well, if the people doing the groundbreaking research
Speaker 1: into this field don't understand it, what chance do I have.
Speaker 1: So to me, the quantum world in general, not just
Speaker 1: string theory, but quantum mechanics in general, is this kind
Speaker 1: of spooky world because things behave in ways that seem
Speaker 1: counterintuitive to me because it is very different from the
Speaker 1: experience we have in the macro world. But yeah, fascinating stuff,
Speaker 1: and as I said, it actually does affect our our
Speaker 1: electronics and technology today. I've talked to in the past
Speaker 1: about other things that are related to this, this high
Speaker 1: level understanding of physics where we know it's true because
Speaker 1: we've experienced the consequences things like relativity, which we know
Speaker 1: to be true, because if relativity weren't true, then our
Speaker 1: satellites would behave totally differently than the way they do.
Speaker 1: But because we know we have measurable outcomes with our
Speaker 1: our satellite systems, that uh, uh, confirm relativity. We understand
Speaker 1: that's a real thing. I think that's amazing. I'm sure
Speaker 1: it's some thing that Einstein himself, while he may have
Speaker 1: suspected would one day become true, would have delighted in
Speaker 1: seeing that there would be actual ways to experimentally prove
Speaker 1: his theory. That would have been phenomenal. I'm sure. All right,
Speaker 1: that's it. I hope you have a happy Halloween. Be safe,
Speaker 1: be spooky, enjoy yourselves. If you have suggestions for future
Speaker 1: topics of tech stuff, I invite you to trick or
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