Speaker 1: Imagine for just a moment that you are walking into
a hospital for a.
Speaker 2: Skin right, something we all dread a bit.
Speaker 1: Exactly, you have a suspected tumor and the doctors need
to see exactly where it is deep it goes what
the tissue looks like.
Speaker 2: And normally you'd be picturing one of those massive humming
magnetic resonance machines, right, the really clustrophobic.
Speaker 1: Tube, Yeah, the terrifying tubes. But instead of that, you
sit down in a chair and they use a camera
that operates on a principle so deeply counterintuitive. It sounds like, well,
absolute sorcery.
Speaker 2: Sorcery's a good word for it, right.
Speaker 1: Because they photograph the biological tissue deep inside your body
using light. But here's the catch. The light that actually
forms the sharp, high resolution image of your internal biology never,
at any point physically touches you.
Speaker 2: It's just wild to even think about.
Speaker 1: It never goes near you and never interacts with your
skin or the tumor at all. And if that isn't
enough to make your head spin, imagine waking up tomorrow
pouring yourself a hot cup of coffee, and before that
coffee even has a chance to cool down to a
drinkable temperature.
Speaker 2: The computer on your desk has effortlessly solved the mathematical
problem that would have taken our absolute most powerful supercomputers
billions of years to crack billions of years.
Speaker 1: It's just it's staggering.
Speaker 2: It sounds exactly like a science fiction novel, doesn't it.
I mean, if you described those scenarios to most people,
they would tell you it sounds like a reality that
is centuries away, or just.
Speaker 1: You know, pure fantasy dreamed up by a Hollywood screenwriter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. But the most staggering part of those two
scenarios is that they are not fiction. They are the
impending reality of a massive technological leap.
Speaker 1: And we are currently standing on the absolute precipice of
an era that will redefine human capability.
Speaker 2: We really are.
Speaker 1: So that is exactly why you are here with us today.
Welcome to thrilling threads. Glad to be here, because if
you just walked into a hospital and experienced what we
just described, you'd probably demand to know how it was
even physical.
Speaker 2: Possible, right, You'd want to see the trick.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So today we are pulling the threads on what
is being called the second quantum Revolution.
Speaker 2: It's such a massive topic.
Speaker 1: It is. And to guide us through this mind bending landscape,
we are pulling from the brilliant insights of Jim al Khalili.
He's an emeritus professor of physics at the University.
Speaker 2: Of Surrey, a fantastic science communicator too.
Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely the best. We are grounding our entire exploration
today in his extensive work, specifically diving into the mechanics
he outlines in his Big Think video. It's perfectly titled
the Idea So Strange Einstein thought it broke quantum physics.
Speaker 2: Great title, right.
Speaker 1: As well as his phenomenal book on Time.
Speaker 2: It is the perfect soundational material for this subject because,
as al Khalili points out, we need to take a
step back and look at where we actually are in
history right now?
Speaker 1: Okay, set the stage for us.
Speaker 2: Well, we are a quarter of the way through the
twenty first century. We are essentially writing the coattails of
what is arguably the most powerful, most rigorously tested scientific
theory humanity has ever.
Speaker 1: Devised, which is quantum mechanics.
Speaker 2: Exactly quantum mechanics, but the stage is currently shifting. The
universe's tiniest absolute weirdest building blocks are no longer just
you know, chalkboard theories for theoretical physicists to debate in
university halls.
Speaker 1: They aren't just math problems anymore, No, not at all.
Speaker 2: They are actively right now being harnessed to rewrite our
technology from the ground up.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's unpack this because before we can jump
into the futuristics seemingly magical technologies like the ghost cameras
and unbreakable internets, we have to establish a baseline, right right, We.
Speaker 2: Need to know what the first revolution was to understand.
Speaker 1: The second exactly, What exactly is the quantum realm and
how is it already secretly running the very device you
are using to listen to this right now.
Speaker 2: Well, to understand that, you have to contrast the quantum
world with the macroscopic world you interact with every single day.
Speaker 1: The normal world.
Speaker 2: The normal world. Yeah, the rules you're used to are
based on classical mechanics Newtonian physics. If you throw a
tennis ball, you can calculate exactly where it will land
based on its mass, the force you applied gravity all that, right.
Speaker 1: The world makes sense. It's predictable. It's like a giant
measurable clockwork mechanism precisely.
Speaker 2: But when you zoom in like way way down past
the cellular level, past the molecules, down to the level
of individual atoms and the subatomic particles that make up
those atoms, those sensible rules just vanish.
Speaker 1: It's just break down completely completely.
Speaker 2: The quantum world is not a clockwork machine. It is
inherently fuzzy. It is completely probabilistic.
Speaker 1: So instead of a particle acting like a solid, predictable
little billiard ball rolling across a green felt table, it
acts like a blur.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's exactly it. In that realm, an electron isn't
just sitting in one specific spot. It exists in a
cloud of probabilities, a cloud. Yeah. Particles don't just travel
in a straight measurable line from point eight to point b.
They act like spread out waves, rippling out in the
exploring multiple paths all.
Speaker 1: At once, which just goes against everything our brains are
wired to understand.
Speaker 2: It really does. And because they behave like waves of probability,
they can do things that defy our everyday logic. They
can engage in what we call quantum tunneling.
Speaker 1: Oh, I love this concept. Explain tunneling.
Speaker 2: So imagine throwing that tennis ball at a solid brick wall.
Speaker 1: Okay, it bounces off.
Speaker 2: Normally, yes, But in the quantum realm, instead of bouncing off,
it just effortlessly passes straight through the solid.
Speaker 1: Barrier, exactly like a ghost passing through a wall.
Speaker 2: Exactly like a ghost, it just appears on the other
side without ever breaking the bricks. You would never ever
see this in our everyday macroscopic world.
Speaker 1: And here's where it gets really interesting to me. That ghostlike, bizarre,
fuzzy realm isn't just some weird anomaly happening in a vacuum.
That is our true reality.
Speaker 2: That is the crucial philosophical shift you, as the listener,
have to make right now to understand. Everything that follows
is built on this. Yes, the macroscopic world, the brick walls,
the coffee cups, the hospitals, all of that solid, sensible,
everyday stuff is built directly on top of that fuzzy, chaotic,
probabilistic foundation.
Speaker 1: The universe is just weird at its core.
Speaker 2: It is fundamentally weird. The entire universe ultimately behaves in
a quantum way at its absolute baseline and Throughout the
twentieth century, scientists began to figure out how to take
those early discoveries of quantum mechanics and apply.
Speaker 1: Them, which gave us what Al Khalili categorizes as the
first quantum revolution, right, So, to put that into perspective
for you, the first quantum revolution is what gave us
the modern world. I mean, it gave us the understanding
of energy levels in atoms that allowed us to create.
Speaker 2: The laser, which is everywhere, Nolse.
Speaker 1: It's everywhere. And it gave us semiconductors, which led to
the transistor, LEDs, integrated circuits, and the microchip.
Speaker 2: Or basically runs the entire planet.
Speaker 1: Exactly by extension, that gave us the modern computer, the
GPS network, smartphones, and the Internet itself. Almost all of
the modern technology used today that relies on electronics is
entirely thanks to our developing understanding of quantum mechanics.
Speaker 2: It really is.
Speaker 1: It's like the first quantum revolution was humanity figuring out
how to strike a flint and harness the ambient heat
of a fire. It's a great analogy, right, Like, we
got some incredibly useful tools out of it. We managed
to warm our hands and cook our food. But when
you look at these truly bizarre rules of the quantum realm,
the ghosts walking through walls, the particles acting as spread
out waves, it feels like we were just skimming the surface.
Speaker 2: We absolutely were. We were just playing with the side effects.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and now it feels like we are just figuring
out how to actually build the internal combustion engine.
Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, it forces
a profound realization about human ingenuity. We've spent decades building
our entire modern civilization on the superficial, macroscopic side effects
of quantum mechanics, just the easy stuff, all the relatively
easy stuff. Yeah, we use the collective statistical behavior of
billions of electrons to build better light bulbs and smaller
computer chips.
Speaker 1: But we weren't truly tapping into the deepest, weirdest individual
mechanics of the theory.
Speaker 2: No, we weren't isolating single particles and manipulating their strange properties.
That is what the second quantum revolution is.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it's a revolution in technology based not on
the collective side effects, but on the counterintuitive, almost uncomfortable,
core phenomena of quantum mechanics. Exactly which brings us perfectly
to the actual physical mechanics driving this new era. If
the first revolution was built on basic quantum fuzziness, what
specific brain breaking concepts are driving the second revolution.
Speaker 2: Well, there are two main ones we need.
Speaker 1: To talk about, right, Because if we're going to understand
how a camera can take a picture without light touching
the subject, we have to talk about superposition and entanglement.
Speaker 2: Let's start with quantum superposition, Okay, laid on. The easiest
way to conceptualize this is through the lens of the
famous two slit experiment. This is the absolute cornerstone of
demonstrating wave particle do out right.
Speaker 1: This is the classic physics class experiment exactly.
Speaker 2: So imagine you are firing tiny particles like single photons
of light or individual electrons at a physical barrier that
has two microscopic vertical slits cut into it.
Speaker 1: Like a tiny little fence with two gaps.
Speaker 2: Yes, and behind that barrier is a detector screen that
records where the particle lands. Now in our normal, classical world,
if you throw a bucket of paintballs at a fence
with two gaps.
Speaker 1: What happens, Well, the paintballs will either go through gap
A or gap B, you'd get two distinct clusters of
paint on the wall behind it.
Speaker 2: Because a physical object has to choose a path, it
cannot be in two places at once, all right, But
in the quantum realm, when you fire a single individual
electron at those two slits, it doesn't leave two clusters
on the detector screen.
Speaker 1: It does something weird.
Speaker 2: It leaves an interference pattern, a series of alternating bright
and dark bands on the screen.
Speaker 1: And what does that mean? Physically?
Speaker 2: That specific pattern is the unmistakable signature of ways crashing
into each other. Think of ripples and a pond passing
through two gaps and overlapping.
Speaker 1: Oh right, where the crests amplify each other and the
troughs cancel each other out.
Speaker 2: Precisely. But remember we are firing single particles one at
a time.
Speaker 1: Wait stop, you're saying a single particle is creating a
wave interference pattern with itself. Yes, how does a single
bullet go through two holes and crash into itself? That
makes no sense.
Speaker 2: That is the exact paradox of superposition. The mathematics of
quantum mechanics tell us that the particle is not acting
as a tiny solid sphere. It is acting as a
wave of probability.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it's smeared out.
Speaker 2: Exactly until it is measured or observed at the detector screen.
It exists in a state of superposition. It is quite
literally exploring all possible paths simultaneous.
Speaker 1: So it's going through the left slit.
Speaker 2: And the right slit, and either slit and both slits. Yeah,
all at the exact same time. It is existing in
multiple distinct states.
Speaker 1: Concurrently, my brain is already hurting.
Speaker 2: I know it's a lot, But only when it hits
the screen does that wave of probability, as we say,
collapse into a single defined point.
Speaker 1: Okay, so superposition is just the warm up act though,
because while existing in multiple states at once is strange,
quantum entanglement is on a whole different level of strange. Oh.
Speaker 2: Entanglement is profoundly counterintuitive, so much so that Albert Einstein,
literally one of the greatest minds in human history, famously
hated it.
Speaker 1: He absolutely loathed the idea, didn't.
Speaker 2: It He really did. When he first encountered the mathematical
implications suggesting quantum entanglement, he rebelled against it. He derisively
called it spooky action at a distance spooky.
Speaker 1: Action because it implies magic exactly.
Speaker 2: Entanglement is the phenomenon where two separated particles can somehow
become intrinsically linked such that they share a single, unified
quantum state, so.
Speaker 1: Their fates are completely and permanently intertwined. Yes, okay, let's
break down how that actually works. If I have two
entangled particles, what happens when I look at one of.
Speaker 2: Them, because they share a single quantum state. Whatever happens
to one particle instantly and undeniably dictates this state of
the other particle instantly instantly. Let's say you have two
entangled electrons and you measure the property known as spin
on the first one. If you find that the first
electron is spinning up, the laws of entanglement dictate that
the second electron was instantly be spinning down. Okay, and
here's the part that bothered Einstein. This holds true regardless
of the physical distance between them, meaning I could put
them anywhere anywhere. You could separate those two electrons by
a few feet in a laboratory, or you could place
one on Earth and the other on the far edge
of the Andromeda galaxy. The moment you measure the one
on Earth, it's twin in Andromeda instantaneously collapses into the
opposite state.
Speaker 1: Wait, yeah, let's really look at this, because this is
where human logic just slams into a brick wall.
Speaker 2: It really does.
Speaker 1: If nothing can travel faster than the speed of light,
which is the absolute bedrock of Einstein's theory of relativity,
how does the particle in the Andromeda galaxy know that
its twin on Earth was just measured.
Speaker 2: That's the billion dollar question.
Speaker 1: Right, Is there some invisible, faster than light physical signal
being beamed across the universe. Because if there is reality
as we understand, it is fundamentally broken.
Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is that your reaction, that sense of
absolute disbelief, is exactly Einstein's reaction. He assumed there had
to be some sort of hidden variables.
Speaker 1: Hidden variables like a secret code they agreed on beforehand.
Speaker 2: Basically, he thought that perhaps the particles were like a
pair of gloves inside two boxes.
Speaker 1: Okay, I like this analogy, right, So if you open.
Speaker 2: A box on Earth and find a left handed glove,
you instantly know the box in Andromeda contains the right
handed glove because.
Speaker 1: It had to be the right handed one all along, exactly.
Speaker 2: No signal was sent, The properties were just decided the
moment the gloves were originally separated.
Speaker 1: That makes perfect sense. That's a very comfortable, classical way
to look at it. It saves physics.
Speaker 2: It is comfortable, yes, but it is mathematically and physically wrong.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 2: Decades of exhaustive experiments, specifically what we call Bell's theorem
experiments have proven that the particles are not like a
pair of gloves with predetermined properties.
Speaker 1: So they don't know what they are until you.
Speaker 2: Look right in the quantum realm, until you open the box.
The glove isn't left handed or right handed. It is
in the superposition of being both.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, okay, So, to use an analogy, it's not
like having a twin who has a pre arranged map
of a house. No, imagine you have a twin and
you are exploring a house that doesn't actually exist yet.
The walls are just hazy clouds of probability.
Speaker 2: I like where you're going with this.
Speaker 1: But the absolute second you touch a wall in the
living room, that wall instantly solidifies from a cloud into
solid brick, and at that exact instantaneous fraction of a millisecond.
The wall in the kitchen where your twin is standing
miles away also solidifies. Yes, the layout wasn't pre planned.
The act of you measuring your reality instantly force the
reality to materialize with zero time delay.
Speaker 2: That is a brilliant way to frame it. It is
not about hidden information. It is about reality itself collapsing
into a definitive state across vast, unbridgable distances simultaneously.
Speaker 1: Which is just terrifying and cool.
Speaker 2: It completely defies human common sense, but repeated, exhaustive Nobel
Prize winning experiments have proven that this is simply the
fundamental law of the universe.
Speaker 1: It forces us to accept a reality that is deeply non.
Speaker 2: Local, non local. Exactly right, The universe isn't just a
collection of isolated, independent objects bouncing around. At the deepest,
most fundamental level, the fabric of reality is woven together
in ways that completely disregard physical distance in time.
Speaker 1: It's incredibly humbling, isn't it. It makes you realize how
little our primate brains actually come apprehend about the environment
we live in.
Speaker 2: We're just scratching the surface.
Speaker 1: But what is truly staggering is that we are no
longer just philosophizing about this over a beer. We are
moving from these abstract chalkboard theories into actual physical engineering.
Speaker 2: Or building the machines.
Speaker 1: Yes, we are building machines right now that use super
position and entanglement as functional components, which brings us back
to that unbelievable hospital scenario.
Speaker 2: We open the show with, Right the medical applications.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about quantum sensing and quantum imaging.
Speaker 2: Let's start with quantum sensing because it is a perfect
example of technology that has already crossed from theory into reality.
Speaker 1: It's here today.
Speaker 2: It is because quantum states, especially entangled states, are so
incredibly sensitive to their environment. We can use them as
hyper sensitive detectors like how sensitive. Well, we are now
developing instruments capable of sensing impossibly weak magnetic fields. In
his work, Alkalili describes a device you can literally on
your head like a hat. It looks very much like
a high end cycling helmet, but inside it houses a
magneto incephalography array.
Speaker 1: Try saying that three times fast.
Speaker 2: Right, But what it does is it utilizes the extreme
sensitivity of quantum entanglement to measure the firing of single
individual neurons in the human brain.
Speaker 1: So, if I'm understanding this correctly, my instinct says, this
is fundamentally changing neuroscience completely. We aren't just looking at broad,
blurry zones of blood flow lighting up on an fMRI
screen anymore. This is essentially a mind reading helmet.
Speaker 2: It's getting very close to that.
Speaker 1: Yes, it is reading your brain waves at a microscopic
level of resolution that was previously unthinkable, purely by measuring
the minute, almost imperceptible magnetic fields generated when a single
biological brain cell fires an electrical charge exactly.
Speaker 2: The quantum sensors are delicate enough to pick up a
signal that would have been completely lost in the background
noise of standard classical sensors. Wow. And then you have
quantum imaging, which is where we get the entanglement camera
you mentioned earlier, ghost camera. The ghost camera. This is
perhaps the most magical sounding application of all, but its
mechanics are purely rooted in what we just discussed.
Speaker 1: Okay, tell us how this witchcraft actually works well.
Speaker 2: The entire idea relies on generating and using pairs of
light particles two photons that have been quantum entangled.
Speaker 1: Okay, so they share a state.
Speaker 2: Right, One of these photons is specifically tuned to the
infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum, and its entangled twin
is tuned to the visible light range of the spectrum.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack the mechanics of this. Why use two
different wavelengths of light? You have an infrared photon and
a visible light photon and they share that instantaneous, spooky,
non local connection. Yes, what is the practical application of
linking those specific two It.
Speaker 2: Solves a massive problem in medical and scientific imaging. You see,
infrared light has a very specific property. It is incredibly
good at penetrating and probing biological tissue without damaging it.
Speaker 1: It can go deep.
Speaker 2: It travel deep into a body and interact with anomalies
like cancer tumors, far better than standard visible light can.
But infrared has a major drawback, which is it has
a longer wavelength, which makes it notoriously bad at creating sharp,
high resolution images for a camera sensor to pick up.
Speaker 1: Ah, So it's blurry.
Speaker 2: Very blurry. Visible light, on the other hand, has a
shorter wavelength and creates beautifully sharp, crisp images. But visible
light bounces right off your skin it can't probe the
internal tissue effectively.
Speaker 1: So classically you were stuck. You either get a blurry
picture of the inside or sharp picture of the outside precisely.
Speaker 2: But the second quantum revolution offers a workaround using entanglement. Okay,
how you take your entangled pair. You send the infrared
light photon into the body to probe the biological tissue. Okay,
it goes in, It travels deep down and interacts with
the physical structure of the tumor. And because it's twin,
the visible light photon is permanently quantum entangled with it.
The visible photon's wave function is instantly influenced by what
the infrared photon is physically experiencing.
Speaker 1: And the visible photon never leaves the camera.
Speaker 2: Right, You keep the visible light photon sitting safely outside
the body, inside the sensor array of the camera.
Speaker 1: Equipment, so it's just waiting there.
Speaker 2: Yes, As the infrared photon interacts with the tissue inside
the body, the entangled connection instantly dictates the state of
the visible photon outside. You then use the visible light
photon to generate a razor sharp, high resolution image of
the internal tissue.
Speaker 1: So the visible light photon collapses into an image state
based entirely on the physical interactions of a tumor. It
has literally never touched.
Speaker 2: It's incredible.
Speaker 1: It is bypassing the physical limitations of light, by using
the non local connectivity of the universe itself. It's astonishing.
Speaker 2: It really changes everything we know about imaging.
Speaker 1: But wait, if we can link two photons to share
complex visual information inside a single hospital room, logic dictates
we should be able to scale that up. Oh, absolutely,
if we can link two photons a few feet apart,
what happens if we string them across the globe.
Speaker 2: That exact train of thought leads us directly to the
concept of the quantum Internet.
Speaker 1: The quantum Internet.
Speaker 2: Yes, and to understand how revolutionary this is, we have
to look at how our current infrastructure works right now.
The way you and everyone listening to this connects to
the Internet is fundamentally classical. It's all physical tables right mostly. Yes,
we use massive, intricate networks of optical fibers, thousands of
miles of glass tubes laid underground and across the ocean floor.
We send information by firing lasers through these fibers, just
bouncing light around exactly These pulses of light represent classical
bits of data zeros and ones linking different server nodes
around the world.
Speaker 1: So we are essentially just flashing flashlights down a very long,
very clear glass pipe. I mean it's fast, but it's
still just a physical pulse of light traveling from point
A to point B.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's classical communication. But the second quantum Revolution asks
a radical question. What if we use quantum communication instead? Okay,
what if instead of just sending normal, classical bursts of
laser light to represent zeros and ones, we send individual
entangle photons along those exact same optical fibers.
Speaker 1: My instinct says that changes the entire paradigm of communication,
because you wouldn't just be sending a message. You would
be sending particles of light through the fiber that remain
fundamentally quantumly entangled with other photons sitting in a server
rack thousands of miles away in another country.
Speaker 2: That is the core mechanism you are using quantum information
to communicate and link the world. In a classical Internet,
the sender and the receiver are essentially just shouting messages
back and forth down to tube. But in a quantum Internet,
the sender and the receiver are intrinsically instantly linked by
the very fabric of the universe. Wow. If you have
devices at either end that operate on quantum principles and
they are linked via this entangled quantum information, you've created
a true globally distributed quantum Internet.
Speaker 1: Okay, But and I have to play Devil's advocate here.
If we're just transmitting cat videos and emails, why go
through the monumental engineering headache of using entangled photons. What
is the actual practical benefit of a quantum internet over
our current fiber optic system.
Speaker 2: The primary earth shattering benefit lies in absolute cybersecurity. Cybersecurity,
it fundamentally changes everything we know about data protection in
a classical internet. If a malicious actor wants to intercept
your data, they can theoretically tap into the optical fiber,
siphon off some of the laser light, read the zeros
and ones, copy the data, and send it on its
way without you ever knowing they were there.
Speaker 1: Right, They just skim it off the top exactly.
Speaker 2: We rely entirely on complex mathematical encryption, passwords and algorithms
to scramble the data so the hacker can't understand it,
But mathematical encryption can always be broken if a computer
is powerful enough.
Speaker 1: So how does entanglement fl that.
Speaker 2: It relies on a principle of quantum mechanics, that observation
inherently destroys the quantum state.
Speaker 1: Oh like when the wave function collapses.
Speaker 2: Precisely, if you and I are communicating via entangled photons,
those photons exist in a delicate state of superposition. If
a hacker tries to intercept that optical fiber and observe
the entangled photon to read the data, the very physical
act of measuring it forces the wave function to collapse,
so they break it. The entanglement is immediately and irrevocably broken.
Speaker 1: So it's physically impossible. To eavesdrop without leaving a footprint.
Speaker 2: Is entirely impossible. The interference is immediately known to both
the sender and the receiver because the quantum link severs.
Speaker 1: The line just goes dead.
Speaker 2: Yes, the hacker gets nothing but collapsed, useless noise, and
we instantly know the line is compromised. A quantum internet
offers a level of absolute unbreakable security, dictated not by
clever human encryption codes that can be cracked. But by
the immutable physical laws of the unit, you.
Speaker 1: Cannot violate the laws of physics to steal data.
Speaker 2: You really can't.
Speaker 1: That is profound. But you know, to have a quantum Internet,
you can't just plug a standard router into the wall.
A classical MacBook or smartphone doesn't know how to read
or manipulate a delicate keybit.
Speaker 2: No, it doesn't.
Speaker 1: You need a completely new type of engine at the
end of that fiber optic cable, capable of processing encrypted
quantum information. And that logical necessity brings us to the
absolute crown jewel, the poster child of this entire second quantum.
Speaker 2: Revolution, the quantum computer.
Speaker 1: The quantum computer. This is where the sheer computational power
of the universe is unlocked.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, a quantum computer famously operates on principles entirely alien
to our current technology. A classical computer, the laptop on
your desk, the smartphone in your pocket, even the massive,
multimillion dollar supercomputers running global weather simulations today, they all
rely on classical bits of information.
Speaker 1: Right the zeros and ones.
Speaker 2: Yes, deep down in the microchip, everything is boiled down
to a binary state, a zero or a one. A
switch is either physically off or physically on right.
Speaker 1: It's a linear process. Even if a computer is doing
billions of calculations a second, it is still doing them sequentially.
Speaker 2: Off on, off, exactly.
Speaker 1: But a quantum computer throws that binary system out the
window by using quibbits. Quantum bits.
Speaker 2: Yes, and because of the principle of superposition we discussed earlier,
the particle acting as a wave exploring multiple paths simultaneously,
Aquibit isn't restricted to being just a zero or just
a one.
Speaker 1: It can be both.
Speaker 2: Equipment can be both zero and one at the exact
same time. It exists in a probabilistic cloud encompassing both states.
Speaker 1: Let's really break down how that translates to processing power,
because that is a massive leap to make. How does
being in two states at once actually make a computer faster?
Speaker 2: Well, it gives us the ultimate profound form of parallel processing.
Think you like navigating a massive complex maze.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm in a maze.
Speaker 2: If you program a classical computer to find the exit
to the maze, it has to test every single path sequentially.
It runs down path A, hits a dead end, turns around,
runs down path B, hits a dead end. Turns around.
It's brute force exactly. It does this incredibly fast, but
it is still linear. A quantum computer utilizing quibbits in
a state of superposition doesn't do that. It floods the made.
Speaker 1: It floods the mad.
Speaker 2: It simultaneously explores every single possible path at the exact
same time. It calculates vast numbers of possibilities simultaneously, and
through quantum interference, the wrong answers cancel each other out,
leaving only the correct path.
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting, because the scaling of
that power is exponential. If you add one classical bit
to a regular computer, you increase its power incrementally.
Speaker 2: Just a tiny bit, yes.
Speaker 1: But if you add one entangled quibit to a quantum computer,
you literally double its processing power. This is where we
get back to that scenario of the computer solving a
problem before.
Speaker 2: Your coffee gets cold. That's true.
Speaker 1: Jim al Kalili states quite clearly that a mature quantum
computer will one day be able to solve algorithms in
mere minutes. That would take the absolute most powerful supercomputers
we have today billions of years of continuous processing to solve.
Speaker 2: The scope for exponentially increasing the power of computation is
just staggering.
Speaker 1: And the applications for that kind of power are going
to completely redefine human capability. We are talking about revolutionizing
the fields of chemistry and biology, specifically in new drug discovery. Yes,
this is a massive area because currently simulating the exact
molecular interactions of complex chemicals is incredibly difficult for classical computers.
Speaker 2: Right because molecules themselves are quantum systems. A classical computer
has to approximate how the electrons will behave But a
quantum computer fundamentally speaks the same language as the molecule
it's native to it exactly. It will be able to
map those quantum systems perfectly, allowing us to design highly
specifi targeted drugs for diseases without decades of physical trial
and error.
Speaker 1: We could also build vastly better, highly accurate climate models
by processing the millions of variables in the Earth's atmosphere
simultaneously rather than sequentially.
Speaker 2: We could transform complex global financial transactions, optimize power grids,
and allow physicists to study the behavior of complex materials
and research labs in ways we can only dream of
right now.
Speaker 1: The potential is nearly limitless. But of course that brings
us to the reality of the.
Speaker 2: Timeline, right, the tricky part.
Speaker 1: Yes, I have to push back here because if we
are being honest, we've known about this for a long time.
You mentioned that the math and the theories for quantum mechanics superposition,
wave particle duality entanglement were rigorously laid out in the
nineteen twenties and.
Speaker 2: Thirty one Oneless a century ago.
Speaker 1: Yes, we've known about the theory of quantum computing since
the nineteen eighties. So if the math is so incredibly
solid and the potential is so world altering, why is
it taking decades to build one? It's not easy, no,
because you constantly see sensationalized tech headlines claiming that desktop
quantum computers are just two or three years away. But
al Khali pushes back on that hype pretty hard.
Speaker 2: In his work, doesn't he He does. He's very clear
about that.
Speaker 1: He says, realistically, we are looking at a decade or
two minimum before we have functional, scalable machines. So my
question is, what is the physical roadblock? What is mechanically
stopping us from having a quantum computer on our desks tomorrow?
Speaker 2: That is the multi billion dollar question that every major
tech company in university physics department on Earth is currently
trying to answer.
Speaker 1: So what's the issue.
Speaker 2: The answer lies in a phenomenon called decoherence. We are
currently fighting a massive, grueling, incredibly expensive war over hardware
trying to solve this single monumental physical problem decoherence. Yes,
you see, it isn't just about making one single quibit
that could be a zero in a one at the
same time. To do any real useful computation like Shores
algorithm for factoring prime numbers or Grover's algorithm for searching databases,
you have to have many e quibits.
Speaker 1: Right, They have to work together, and.
Speaker 2: They must all be quantum entangled together. Forming a unified
sable quantum processor capable of executing code down in that
fuzzy realm.
Speaker 1: And getting hundreds of individual atoms or photons to cooperate
and stay entangled is the hard part.
Speaker 2: It is incredibly hard, bordering on the impossible, because the
absolute moment you link these quibits together via entanglement, they
become exquisitely violently sensitive to any disturbance from the outside environment.
Speaker 1: Oh, because observation breaks it exactly.
Speaker 2: Remember, they're existing as delicate waves of probability. If anything
interacts with them, a microscopic fluctuation in ambient heat, a
stray magnetic field from a nearby wire, even a minuscule
physical vibration in the building, it acts as an observation
and boom, the quantum wave function collapses. The entanglement shatters instantly,
the quibits revert back to being borning classical zeros and ones.
This sudden loss of the quantum state is what we
call decoherence.
Speaker 1: And once decoherence happens, your computation is ruined. It just
falls apart. Alkalili uses a brilliant, very accessible analogy for
this in his explanations, doesn't he Yes.
Speaker 2: He likens maintaining a quantum state to taking a piping
hot cup of coffee and placing it inside a subzero freezer.
Speaker 1: The coffee is your delicate quantum state.
Speaker 2: And the freezer is the harsh outside environment. That coffee
is not going to stay hot for very long. The
heat dissipates incredibly rapidly into the cold environment, seeking equilibrium,
and in.
Speaker 1: The quantum world, that happens fast.
Speaker 2: In the quantum world, this loss of the quantum state.
The heat dissipating from the coffee happens in fractions of
a microsecond.
Speaker 1: Fractions of a microsecond. So the biggest engineering challenge in
modern physics right now isn't actually writing the algorithms. It
is simply maintaining the quantumness of the physical computer long
enough to actually finish the calculation. For the fragile state
completely falls.
Speaker 2: Apart exactly, And because decoherence happens so incredibly fast and
so inevitably, it introduces the massive, mathematically terrifying headache of
quantum error.
Speaker 1: Correction error correction, so you're constantly fixing it as it breaks.
Speaker 2: Essentially, yes, you simply cannot trust that your kubits will
survive the durraating of the calculation. Therefore, you have to
build an enormous, almost absurd amount of redundancy into the
physical system.
Speaker 1: Let's put some numbers to that. How much redundancy are
we talking about.
Speaker 2: If you have a complex mathematical calculation that theoretically requires
one hundred perfectly stable kubits to solve, you cannot just
build a hundred kubit machine because of the constant, unyielding
barrage of decoherence, many of those one hundred kubets will
experience errors or collapse almost instantly. To get a reliable,
accurate answer, you actually need to build a physical machine
containing perhaps one thousand, or more likely a million physical kubts,
just to run the error correcting codes.
Speaker 1: A million just to get one hundred to work.
Speaker 2: Yes, just to guarantee that the core one hundred logical
quibds function long enough to give you a collective, accurate result.
Speaker 1: So we need a machine with a million quibts, And
right now the biggest experimental processors only have a few hundred,
and they are struggling to keep even those stable. It's
a huge gap, which perfectly explains why building the actual
physical machine is such an unprecedented nightmare. We are right
in the middle of what you call the hardware wars.
What is the actual substrate? What is the physical tangible
material we use to build a quibit.
Speaker 2: Well, that's the thing nobody knows yet.
Speaker 1: Because my understanding is that right now nobody actually knows
what the winning candidate will be. There are entirely different
philosophies on how to build one.
Speaker 2: That's right. We have four main competing options for the
hardware architecture right now, and each one comes with its
own monumental, sometimes paradoxical engineering challenges.
Speaker 1: Okay, lay them out for us.
Speaker 2: Let's look at the first candidate, super con acting circuits.
This is the path heavily favored by massive companies like
IBM and Google.
Speaker 1: Okay, the big player.
Speaker 2: Yes, they use microfabricated electrical circuits made of materials like
niobium or aluminum. But to get them to behave quantumly,
they must be chilled down to temperatures hovering right near
absolute zero.
Speaker 1: Absolute zero, So we are talking about minus two hundred
and seventy three degrees celsius, colder than deep space.
Speaker 2: Yes, they use incredibly complex, multi tiered dilution refrigerators that
look like giant golden chandeliers.
Speaker 1: I've seen pictures of those. They look amazing.
Speaker 2: They are beautiful pieces of machinery, and at that unimaginably
cold temperature, all thermal noise stops and a quantum effect
called super conductivity suddenly appears.
Speaker 1: Meaning no resistance.
Speaker 2: The electrical resistance of the material drops to absolute zero,
allowing electrical currents to flow through the circuits endlessly without
losing any energy to heat. We can use these super
cooled frictionless currents to carry out quantum computations. The circuits
themselves be as artificial macroscopic quibits.
Speaker 1: Okay, So if electrical resistance creates heat and heat causes decoherence,
we have to freeze the superconducting circuits and these massive,
multimillion dollar golden chandeliers. Right, But my instinct says, keeping
a massive machine your absolute zero is a logistical nightmare
that will never fit on a desktop. So what if
we just didn't use electricity? What if we used a
particle that doesn't care about ambient heat or electrical resistance,
like light? Could we just build a processor out of photons?
Speaker 2: Precisely That logical leap brings us to the second major candidate,
building a quantum computer entirely out of light. This is
known as photonic quantum computing. Okay, Instead of chilled electrical circuits,
you use individual photons of light traveling through complex microscopic
networks of optical fibers and silic and wave guides. Photons
are excellent because they don't interact with each other very easily,
which means they are highly resistant decoherence from the environment.
They don't care if the room is well.
Speaker 1: That seems perfect. What's the catch.
Speaker 2: The catch is exactly what makes them great. They don't
interact with each other easily.
Speaker 1: Oh right.
Speaker 2: To do quantum computation, you need your quibits to interact
so you can entangle them and perform logic gates. Forcing
two independent photons to meaningfully interact and entangle inside a
waveguide requires wildly complex probabilistic optical components. It is incredible.
You take a vacuum chamber, inject a gas of neutral
atoms like rubidium, and then you use powerful intersecting magnetic
fields and highly calibrated laser beams to trap them in
mid air.
Speaker 1: Wait, I stop you there. We are trying to cool
things down to absolute zero to prevent decoherence. But you
just said you hit them with lasers. Lasers are concentrated
light energy, They burn things, they cut metal. How in
the world does blasting an atom with a high energy
laser cool it down?
Speaker 2: This is one of the most brilliant counterintuitive tricks in
modern physics, and it's essential to understand the mechanics here.
You have to remember what temperature actually is at the
microscopic level.
Speaker 1: Okay, what is it.
Speaker 2: Temperature is simply the kinetic energy of the atoms, how
fast they are moving or vibrating. Hot atoms move fast,
cold atoms move slow. Absolute zero is this stay where
an atom is completely entirely motionless.
Speaker 1: Okay, So to cool an atom down, you essentially just
have to act as a break and slow its physical momentum.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and light, despite having no mass, has momentum. When
a photon hits an atom and is absorbed, it imports
a tiny physical push. So physicists tune a laser to
a very specific precise frequency.
Speaker 1: I see where this is going.
Speaker 2: If an atom is moving towards the laser beam, it
absorbs the photon, and the photon's momentum pushes against the
atom's direction of travel, slowing it down. If you surround
the atom with six lasers pointing inward from all directions up, down, left, right, forward, back,
no matter which way the atom tries to move, it
gets hit by a photon pushing it in the opposite direction.
Speaker 1: Like get stuck in mud.
Speaker 2: It becomes trapped in what physicists call optical molasses. Its
kinetic energy is drained away by the photons until it
is virtually motionless.
Speaker 1: That is absolutely mind blowing. We use the momentum of
light to physically pummel an atom until it stops moving,
dropping its temperature to near absolute zero.
Speaker 2: And once they are chilled and trapped in a perfect
grid by these lasers, they become incredibly stable. You then
pump them with highly controlled bursts of energy from other
specifically tuned lasers, forcing the outer electron of the atom
into a highly excited state, pushing the entire atom into
a quantum superposition.
Speaker 1: And those are the kubits.
Speaker 2: These trapped laser manipulated atoms become your physical quibbits.
Speaker 1: That is incredibly elegant. But again you still need a
lab full of massive lasers and vacuum chambers. And there
is a fourth major candidate too, right, Trapped.
Speaker 2: Ions, Yes, trapped ion quantum computing is historically one of
the most successful and developed architectures. Instead of using neutral atoms,
you use strings of ions.
Speaker 1: What's the difference.
Speaker 2: An ion is simply an atom that has had an
electron stripped away or an extra one added, giving it
a net positive or negative electrical charge. Because they have
an election charge, you don't need complex optical molasses to
hold them you can manipulate and pin them firmly in
place in a vacuum using standard, carefully controlled oscillating electromagnetic fields.
Speaker 1: So you just hold them with magnets.
Speaker 2: Basically, Yes, they line up in a perfect glowing string,
and you interact with them using lasers to induce superposition
and entanglement.
Speaker 1: So we have super cooled superconducting circuits, non interacting photons
of light, laser pummeled cold neutral atoms, and electromagnetically trapped
charged ions for completely different physical paradigms. Yes, all competing,
and the global scientific community, despite billions of dollars of funding,
does not yet know which one will ultimately prove to
be the most viable, stable, and capable of scaling to
that magic one million cobit mark.
Speaker 2: And here is the hidden secondary challenge. Even if we
perfectly solve the hardware, say tomorrow a laboratory builds the ultimate,
perfectly stable, decoherence free million quibot machine using trapped ions,
we still have a massive hurdle.
Speaker 1: We have to actually use it.
Speaker 2: We have to figure out how to write the software.
You cannot simply install a standard operating system like Windows
or iOS on a machine that exists in multiple dimensions
of probability at once. A quantum computer doesn't read standard code.
What code do you write to carry out a computation
where the variables are both true and false simultaneously.
Speaker 1: Right, Because standard logic gates N and D or not,
they rely on definitive classical states.
Speaker 2: Exactly, we are actively having to invent an entirely new
landscape of computer science. Right now. We have a few
foundational quantum algorithms already theoretically proven, like which ones Well,
there is Grover's algorithm, which allows a quantum computer to
search an unsorted database exponentially faster than a classical computer.
And there is Shores algorithm, named after the mathematician Peter Shore,
which is the algorithm that can find the prime factors
of massive numbers.
Speaker 1: Wait, isn't that the exact mathematical process that will break
all more Internet encryption?
Speaker 2: Yes, which necessitates the unbreakable quantum Internet we discussed earlier.
But beyond those we need a vastly larger library of software.
There is a massive amount of theoretical work dedicated to
ensuring that when the hardware finally matures, we have the
quantum code ready to actually do it justice.
Speaker 1: If we connect this to the bigger picture, the irony
of this entire endeavor is just profoundly beautiful. Think about it.
Speaker 2: Oh, it really is.
Speaker 1: To harness the deepest, most fundamental natural power of the universe,
the quantum mechanics that literally build reality. Human beings are
being forced to engineer the absolute most artificial, isolated, coldest,
and most pristine environments ever conceived.
Speaker 2: We have to completely separate it from the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we are building massive golden dilution refrigerators colder than
deep space and perfectly calibrated magnetic vacuums just to coax
a handful of atoms into doing math for us without
being disturbed by the ambient heat of a room.
Speaker 2: It is a stunning, justtaposition. We are trying to isolate
nature from itself in order to use it and naturally.
When you start talking about building machines that exploit the
deepest fabric of reality, it leads people to wonder about
the broader philosophical implications.
Speaker 1: Are we going too far?
Speaker 2: Exactly? Are we treading into territory we shouldn't. Are we
essentially playing god by developing technologies that are so utterly outlandish?
So far beyond anything we experience in the macroscopic natural
world that we cannot possibly fathom the long term ramifications.
Speaker 1: Alkalilely addresses that exact sentiment in his work, and he
answers it with a definitive, scientifically grounded no. He argues
that humanity has always developed technologies based on our evolving
understanding of how the physical universe works.
Speaker 2: That's what we do, right, from.
Speaker 1: Striking flint to build a fire, to smelting iron to
splitting the atom. We leverage the fundamental laws of physics
to build better tools for survival and advancement. Building a
quantum computer is philosophically no different than building a windmill.
It is just harnessing a more complex law of physics.
Speaker 2: It's just a tool.
Speaker 1: But here's where he introduces the ultimate plot twist of
the second quantum Revolution, And I have to be honest,
this is the part of his work that completely rewired
my brain.
Speaker 2: Biology side.
Speaker 1: Yes, we just spent the last twenty minutes talking about
billion dollar absolute zero freezers and laser cooling apparatuses needed
to fight off decoherence and keep delicate quantum states alive
for just a fraction of a microsecond. But What if
our assumption that quantum mechanics can only survive in a pristine,
frozen vacuum is completely wrong? What if nature already solved
the problem of decoherence.
Speaker 2: This brings us to a cutting edge, absolutely astonishing, and
highly controversial new area of interdisciplinary science known as quantum biology.
Speaker 1: It sounds like an oxymoron.
Speaker 2: It does. It is exactly what it sounds like, though.
It is the study of how the counterintuitive laws of
quantum physics superposition, tunneling, entanglement applied directly inside living biological selves.
Speaker 1: Which it feels contradictory, right because earlier we establish that biology,
the macroscopic world of cells and tissue, is built on
top of the quantum role but operates on sensible, classical rules.
Speaker 2: That was the assumption for decades. But we have to
remember that biological life has been evolving on this planet
for nearly four billion years, and evolution by natural selection
is the ultimate ruthless optimizer exactly.
Speaker 1: The premise is simple, but utterly revolutionary. Quantum mechanics isn't
some dark magic. It is just a set of available
physical laws, right, And if biological life, over the course
of billions of years of random genetic mutations, and trial
and error inadvertently discovered that utilizing a quantum process gives
an organism a slight survival advantage. It will absolutely lock
in and utilize that quantum process.
Speaker 2: Survival of the fittest applies to physics too.
Speaker 1: Yeah. If quantum tunneling, having an electron ghost its way
through a solid chemical barrier from point A to point
B is fundamentally more energy efficient than forcing a classical
particle over that barrier, biological life will evolve the cellular
machinery to utilize quantum tunneling. It's not magic, it's just
efficient biology.
Speaker 2: And we are moving past the theoretical phase of this idea.
We are beginning to observe concrete hints of this happening
in nature.
Speaker 1: Where are we seeing it.
Speaker 2: One of the most rigorously studied and compelling areas of
quantum biology right now is photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is the foundational
process by which plants, algae, and certain bacteria turn raw sunlight, water,
and carbon dioxide into chemical energy. It is the basis
for almost all life on Earth.
Speaker 1: Let's break down the mechanics of how quantum physics plays
into a leaf. What is actually happening when sunlight hits
a plant.
Speaker 2: When a photon of sunlight strikes the surface of a leaf,
it is absorbed by a light gathering molecule, creating a
localized packet of energy called an excitant. An excitant, yes,
this excitement needs to travel from the outer edge of
the plant structure, deep into the heart of the cell,
to a specific location called the reaction center, where the
actual chemical conversion into energy takes place.
Speaker 1: Okay, so the energy packet has to navigate a maze
through the complex protein structures of the cell to get
to the factor.
Speaker 2: Exactly now, under classical Newtonian rules, this excitement would bounce
around randomly like a pinball. You'd hit protein, bounce left,
in another, bounce right, slowly working its way toward the
reaction center through a random.
Speaker 1: Walk, which seems slow.
Speaker 2: It is, and if it did that, it would lose
a massive amount of energy as heat along the way.
It would be highly inefficient. Yet when we measure photosynthesis
in nature, the transfer of energy is shockingly almost perfectly efficient.
Nearly one hundred percent of the energy absorbed reaches the
reaction center. Classical physics struggles to explain how it navigates
the maze so perfectly without losing energy.
Speaker 1: So what is the quantum explanation?
Speaker 2: The growing consensus in quantumbiology is that the excitement isn't
bouncing around like a classical pinball. Instead, it enters a
state of quantum superposition.
Speaker 1: Oh like the maze we talked about earlier.
Speaker 2: Exactly behaves like a wave of probability. Just like the
quantum computer exploring the maze, the energy packet explores every
single possible pathway through the protein matrix to the reaction
center simultaneously. It tests all routes at the exact same time,
and through quantum interference, it immediately collapses into the absolute fastest,
most efficient path possible.
Speaker 1: Okay, stop and think about the sheer implications of that
for a second. Our greatest, most highly funded physicists and
engineers are currently struggling to keep a single isolated quibit
stable for a fraction of a second inside a multimillion
dollar super cooled, magnetically shielded vacuum chamber. But a living cell,
a green leaf on an oak tree outside your window
is a warm, hot, messy, wet, incredibly noisy environment. There
are thousands of chaotic classical chemical reactions taking place constantly.
The thermal vibrations alone should shatter any delicate quantum state instantly.
It is the exact polar opposite of a pristine quantum lab.
Speaker 2: And yet, if the models of quantum biology are correct,
biological life has somehow evolved the intricate molecular trecks necessary
to stave off decoherence.
Speaker 1: It's doing what we can't do.
Speaker 2: It has figured out how to structurally shield and maintain
delicate quantum coherence inside that hot, chaotic cellular soup for
just long enough to carry out a vital biological function.
It manages to hold the environment at bay for that
crucial microsecond for the quantum magic to happen.
Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? If a simple plant
can harness superposition to process energy, what about higher order organisms?
What about us? Does that mean our brains, with their
billions of firing neurons, are just giant, wet quantum computers,
are human beings just walking quantum processors? And is that
where consciousness comes from?
Speaker 2: This raises an incredibly important and deeply philosophical question. But
we have to pull back firmly here. Jim al Khalilely
is very explicit and vocal about this warning in his work,
and we must heed it.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we shouldn't that leap.
Speaker 2: We must not make that leap. He argues passionately that
suggesting the human brain is a quantum computer, or that
consciousness is a quantum phenomenon, is going much too far
based on current evidence.
Speaker 1: Why is that such a dangerous leap to make?
Speaker 2: Because it falls into a logical trap. The reality is,
we don't even fully understand the fundamental, biological or classical
nature of consciousness, yet it remains one of the greatest,
most profound mysteries in all of science. We don't know
how meat generates subjective experience.
Speaker 1: That's a good point. We don't know how the normal
stuff works.
Speaker 2: Yet, right, And quantum mechanics is also deeply mysterious and
poorly understood by the general public. There is a temptation
to take one massive mystery consciousness and explain it by
simply slapping another massive mystery, quantum mechanics, on top of it.
Speaker 1: Ah explaining a mystery with a mystery.
Speaker 2: Yes, Al Khalili warrens that haphazardly throwing the spooky mysteries
of quantum mechanics into the already unsolved muddy debate of
consciousness is profoundly unhelpful and scientifically lazy. We need to
stick to the biology. We can actually observe, measure, and test,
like the specific molecular processes of photosynthesis or even avian navigation.
Speaker 1: Fair enough, that is a very grounded perspective. We will
keep the quantum ghosts out of human consciousness for now.
But the sheer observable fact that a puddle of algae
or a blade of grass might be successfully using superposition
to optimize its survival is wild enough on its own.
It really is, because if biological life really has figured
out the structural tricks to fight decoherence that we are
currently spending billions of dollars trying to solve with giant freezers,
it changes our entire engineering approach. We don't have to
reinvent the wheel from scratch.
Speaker 2: That is precisely the most thrilling prospect of this interdisciplinary convergence.
If life has had nearly four billion years of an
evolutionary headstart to figure out how to maintain quantum coherence
in a messy room temperature environment, we don't need to
guess how to build a better quantum computer.
Speaker 1: We can just copy it.
Speaker 2: We can simply observe nature. We can study the protein
scaffolds in a leaf, understand how they shield the excitement
from thermal noise, shortcut our own clumsy engineering process, and
just biomimic what life has already perfected. The ultimate room
temperature quantum computer might not look like a golden chandelier.
It might look like a vat of synthetic biology.
Speaker 1: It truly feels like we are standing at the absolute
conversions of two massive historical title waves. We constantly hear
today about the classical revolution and artificial intelligence, how large
language models and machine learning are rapidly reshaping everything from
art to medicine to the economy. It dominates the headlines,
it does. But this second quantum revolution is rising silently
right alongside it, and it is going to be just
as important and just as deeply fundamentally impactful on the
trajectory of human history.
Speaker 2: And the true ultimate final frontier is what happens when
those two technological waves eventually crash into each other and merge.
As Jim Al Khalelei notes with a sense of profound,
almost cautious wonder, never mind, when quantum technologies merge with
artificial intelligence than Wow, who knows what will come?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Who knows? Think about it. We're currently using classical computers
to build the ultimate analytical reasoning mind in AI, and
simultaneously we are about to hand that nason AI the
ultimate fundamentally omnipotent computational engine of a quantum processor. The
feedback loop of discovery that will generate is beyond our
current capacity to predict.
Speaker 1: It is a staggering amount of information to take in.
We have journeyed all the way from the fuzzy, probabilistic,
wavelike foundations of the universe, past Einstein's deep stubborn skepticism
of spooky entanglement, all the way to ghost cameras photographing
unseen tumors and unbreakable global Internet bound by the laws
of physics, and clouds of absolute zero atoms trapped by
lasers doing impossible math. It's a lot to process, and
we've even looked at the very real paradigm shifting possibility
that the simple green leaf sitting on the tree outside
your window is currently performing complex quantum calculations in the messy,
noisy soup of biological life.
Speaker 2: The ultimate goal of acquiring this knowledge of diving this
deep into the mechanics of reality isn't just to memorize
a few cool facts to sound smart at a dinner party.
It is to fundamentally alter how you perceive the world
around you. When you look at your reality today, will
you touch a solid wall, or look at a plant,
or drop a pen. You should look at it knowing
that the strange, counterintuitive, seemingly magical quantum realm isn't just
an abstract mathematical equation locked away on a university chalkboard.
It is the actual, tangible, buzzing fabric of your physical reality.
Speaker 1: It's all around us.
Speaker 2: It is the operating system of the universe, and humanity,
after a century of theory, is finally reaching out to
pull those threads and write our own code.
Speaker 1: And so as we wrap up this exploration on thrilling threads,
we turn it over to you. If evolution has already
spent billions of years playing with quantum mechanics in the chaotic,
messy environment of living cells to optimize survival, and we
as a species are finally learning how to program that
exact same foundational code, what is the first app or
solution you hope humanity builds with it. If you're handed
the keys to a mature, fully stable quantum computer that
could effortlessly solve a billion year problem in five minutes,
what is the very first question you're asking it? What
is the first mystery you are commanding.
Speaker 2: It to solve?
Speaker 1: Let us know your thoughts in the comments.