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Speaker 1: Imagine for just a moment that you are walking into

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a hospital for a.

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Speaker 2: Skin right, something we all dread a bit.

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Speaker 1: Exactly, you have a suspected tumor and the doctors need

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to see exactly where it is deep it goes what

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the tissue looks like.

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Speaker 2: And normally you'd be picturing one of those massive humming

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magnetic resonance machines, right, the really clustrophobic.

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Speaker 1: Tube, Yeah, the terrifying tubes. But instead of that, you

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sit down in a chair and they use a camera

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that operates on a principle so deeply counterintuitive. It sounds like, well,

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absolute sorcery.

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Speaker 2: Sorcery's a good word for it, right.

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Speaker 1: Because they photograph the biological tissue deep inside your body

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using light. But here's the catch. The light that actually

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forms the sharp, high resolution image of your internal biology never,

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at any point physically touches you.

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Speaker 2: It's just wild to even think about.

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Speaker 1: It never goes near you and never interacts with your

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skin or the tumor at all. And if that isn't

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enough to make your head spin, imagine waking up tomorrow

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pouring yourself a hot cup of coffee, and before that

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coffee even has a chance to cool down to a

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drinkable temperature.

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Speaker 2: The computer on your desk has effortlessly solved the mathematical

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problem that would have taken our absolute most powerful supercomputers

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billions of years to crack billions of years.

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Speaker 1: It's just it's staggering.

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Speaker 2: It sounds exactly like a science fiction novel, doesn't it.

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I mean, if you described those scenarios to most people,

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they would tell you it sounds like a reality that

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is centuries away, or just.

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Speaker 1: You know, pure fantasy dreamed up by a Hollywood screenwriter.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. But the most staggering part of those two

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scenarios is that they are not fiction. They are the

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impending reality of a massive technological leap.

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Speaker 1: And we are currently standing on the absolute precipice of

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an era that will redefine human capability.

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Speaker 2: We really are.

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Speaker 1: So that is exactly why you are here with us today.

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Welcome to thrilling threads. Glad to be here, because if

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you just walked into a hospital and experienced what we

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just described, you'd probably demand to know how it was

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even physical.

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Speaker 2: Possible, right, You'd want to see the trick.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, So today we are pulling the threads on what

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is being called the second quantum Revolution.

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Speaker 2: It's such a massive topic.

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Speaker 1: It is. And to guide us through this mind bending landscape,

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we are pulling from the brilliant insights of Jim al Khalili.

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He's an emeritus professor of physics at the University.

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Speaker 2: Of Surrey, a fantastic science communicator too.

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Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely the best. We are grounding our entire exploration

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today in his extensive work, specifically diving into the mechanics

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he outlines in his Big Think video. It's perfectly titled

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the Idea So Strange Einstein thought it broke quantum physics.

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Speaker 2: Great title, right.

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Speaker 1: As well as his phenomenal book on Time.

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Speaker 2: It is the perfect soundational material for this subject because,

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as al Khalili points out, we need to take a

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step back and look at where we actually are in

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history right now?

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Speaker 1: Okay, set the stage for us.

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Speaker 2: Well, we are a quarter of the way through the

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twenty first century. We are essentially writing the coattails of

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what is arguably the most powerful, most rigorously tested scientific

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theory humanity has ever.

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Speaker 1: Devised, which is quantum mechanics.

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Speaker 2: Exactly quantum mechanics, but the stage is currently shifting. The

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universe's tiniest absolute weirdest building blocks are no longer just

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you know, chalkboard theories for theoretical physicists to debate in

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university halls.

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Speaker 1: They aren't just math problems anymore, No, not at all.

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Speaker 2: They are actively right now being harnessed to rewrite our

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technology from the ground up.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so let's unpack this because before we can jump

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into the futuristics seemingly magical technologies like the ghost cameras

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and unbreakable internets, we have to establish a baseline, right right, We.

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Speaker 2: Need to know what the first revolution was to understand.

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Speaker 1: The second exactly, What exactly is the quantum realm and

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how is it already secretly running the very device you

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are using to listen to this right now.

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Speaker 2: Well, to understand that, you have to contrast the quantum

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world with the macroscopic world you interact with every single day.

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Speaker 1: The normal world.

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Speaker 2: The normal world. Yeah, the rules you're used to are

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based on classical mechanics Newtonian physics. If you throw a

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tennis ball, you can calculate exactly where it will land

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based on its mass, the force you applied gravity all that, right.

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Speaker 1: The world makes sense. It's predictable. It's like a giant

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measurable clockwork mechanism precisely.

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Speaker 2: But when you zoom in like way way down past

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the cellular level, past the molecules, down to the level

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of individual atoms and the subatomic particles that make up

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those atoms, those sensible rules just vanish.

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Speaker 1: It's just break down completely completely.

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Speaker 2: The quantum world is not a clockwork machine. It is

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inherently fuzzy. It is completely probabilistic.

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Speaker 1: So instead of a particle acting like a solid, predictable

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little billiard ball rolling across a green felt table, it

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acts like a blur.

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Speaker 2: Yes, that's exactly it. In that realm, an electron isn't

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just sitting in one specific spot. It exists in a

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cloud of probabilities, a cloud. Yeah. Particles don't just travel

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in a straight measurable line from point eight to point b.

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They act like spread out waves, rippling out in the

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exploring multiple paths all.

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Speaker 1: At once, which just goes against everything our brains are

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wired to understand.

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Speaker 2: It really does. And because they behave like waves of probability,

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they can do things that defy our everyday logic. They

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can engage in what we call quantum tunneling.

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Speaker 1: Oh, I love this concept. Explain tunneling.

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Speaker 2: So imagine throwing that tennis ball at a solid brick wall.

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Speaker 1: Okay, it bounces off.

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Speaker 2: Normally, yes, But in the quantum realm, instead of bouncing off,

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it just effortlessly passes straight through the solid.

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Speaker 1: Barrier, exactly like a ghost passing through a wall.

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Speaker 2: Exactly like a ghost, it just appears on the other

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side without ever breaking the bricks. You would never ever

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see this in our everyday macroscopic world.

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Speaker 1: And here's where it gets really interesting to me. That ghostlike, bizarre,

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fuzzy realm isn't just some weird anomaly happening in a vacuum.

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That is our true reality.

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Speaker 2: That is the crucial philosophical shift you, as the listener,

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have to make right now to understand. Everything that follows

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is built on this. Yes, the macroscopic world, the brick walls,

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the coffee cups, the hospitals, all of that solid, sensible,

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everyday stuff is built directly on top of that fuzzy, chaotic,

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probabilistic foundation.

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Speaker 1: The universe is just weird at its core.

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Speaker 2: It is fundamentally weird. The entire universe ultimately behaves in

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a quantum way at its absolute baseline and Throughout the

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twentieth century, scientists began to figure out how to take

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those early discoveries of quantum mechanics and apply.

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Speaker 1: Them, which gave us what Al Khalili categorizes as the

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first quantum revolution, right, So, to put that into perspective

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for you, the first quantum revolution is what gave us

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the modern world. I mean, it gave us the understanding

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of energy levels in atoms that allowed us to create.

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Speaker 2: The laser, which is everywhere, Nolse.

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Speaker 1: It's everywhere. And it gave us semiconductors, which led to

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the transistor, LEDs, integrated circuits, and the microchip.

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Speaker 2: Or basically runs the entire planet.

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Speaker 1: Exactly by extension, that gave us the modern computer, the

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GPS network, smartphones, and the Internet itself. Almost all of

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the modern technology used today that relies on electronics is

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entirely thanks to our developing understanding of quantum mechanics.

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Speaker 2: It really is.

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Speaker 1: It's like the first quantum revolution was humanity figuring out

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how to strike a flint and harness the ambient heat

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of a fire. It's a great analogy, right, Like, we

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got some incredibly useful tools out of it. We managed

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to warm our hands and cook our food. But when

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you look at these truly bizarre rules of the quantum realm,

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the ghosts walking through walls, the particles acting as spread

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out waves, it feels like we were just skimming the surface.

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Speaker 2: We absolutely were. We were just playing with the side effects.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and now it feels like we are just figuring

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out how to actually build the internal combustion engine.

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Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, it forces

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a profound realization about human ingenuity. We've spent decades building

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our entire modern civilization on the superficial, macroscopic side effects

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of quantum mechanics, just the easy stuff, all the relatively

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easy stuff. Yeah, we use the collective statistical behavior of

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billions of electrons to build better light bulbs and smaller

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computer chips.

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Speaker 1: But we weren't truly tapping into the deepest, weirdest individual

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mechanics of the theory.

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Speaker 2: No, we weren't isolating single particles and manipulating their strange properties.

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That is what the second quantum revolution is.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so it's a revolution in technology based not on

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the collective side effects, but on the counterintuitive, almost uncomfortable,

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core phenomena of quantum mechanics. Exactly which brings us perfectly

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to the actual physical mechanics driving this new era. If

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the first revolution was built on basic quantum fuzziness, what

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specific brain breaking concepts are driving the second revolution.

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Speaker 2: Well, there are two main ones we need.

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Speaker 1: To talk about, right, Because if we're going to understand

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how a camera can take a picture without light touching

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the subject, we have to talk about superposition and entanglement.

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Speaker 2: Let's start with quantum superposition, Okay, laid on. The easiest

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way to conceptualize this is through the lens of the

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famous two slit experiment. This is the absolute cornerstone of

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demonstrating wave particle do out right.

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Speaker 1: This is the classic physics class experiment exactly.

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Speaker 2: So imagine you are firing tiny particles like single photons

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of light or individual electrons at a physical barrier that

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has two microscopic vertical slits cut into it.

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Speaker 1: Like a tiny little fence with two gaps.

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Speaker 2: Yes, and behind that barrier is a detector screen that

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records where the particle lands. Now in our normal, classical world,

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if you throw a bucket of paintballs at a fence

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with two gaps.

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Speaker 1: What happens, Well, the paintballs will either go through gap

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A or gap B, you'd get two distinct clusters of

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paint on the wall behind it.

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Speaker 2: Because a physical object has to choose a path, it

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cannot be in two places at once, all right, But

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in the quantum realm, when you fire a single individual

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electron at those two slits, it doesn't leave two clusters

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on the detector screen.

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Speaker 1: It does something weird.

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Speaker 2: It leaves an interference pattern, a series of alternating bright

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and dark bands on the screen.

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Speaker 1: And what does that mean? Physically?

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Speaker 2: That specific pattern is the unmistakable signature of ways crashing

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into each other. Think of ripples and a pond passing

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through two gaps and overlapping.

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Speaker 1: Oh right, where the crests amplify each other and the

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troughs cancel each other out.

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Speaker 2: Precisely. But remember we are firing single particles one at

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a time.

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Speaker 1: Wait stop, you're saying a single particle is creating a

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wave interference pattern with itself. Yes, how does a single

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bullet go through two holes and crash into itself? That

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makes no sense.

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Speaker 2: That is the exact paradox of superposition. The mathematics of

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quantum mechanics tell us that the particle is not acting

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as a tiny solid sphere. It is acting as a

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wave of probability.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so it's smeared out.

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Speaker 2: Exactly until it is measured or observed at the detector screen.

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It exists in a state of superposition. It is quite

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literally exploring all possible paths simultaneous.

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Speaker 1: So it's going through the left slit.

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Speaker 2: And the right slit, and either slit and both slits. Yeah,

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all at the exact same time. It is existing in

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multiple distinct states.

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Speaker 1: Concurrently, my brain is already hurting.

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Speaker 2: I know it's a lot, But only when it hits

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the screen does that wave of probability, as we say,

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collapse into a single defined point.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so superposition is just the warm up act though,

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because while existing in multiple states at once is strange,

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quantum entanglement is on a whole different level of strange. Oh.

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Speaker 2: Entanglement is profoundly counterintuitive, so much so that Albert Einstein,

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literally one of the greatest minds in human history, famously

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hated it.

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Speaker 1: He absolutely loathed the idea, didn't.

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Speaker 2: It He really did. When he first encountered the mathematical

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implications suggesting quantum entanglement, he rebelled against it. He derisively

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called it spooky action at a distance spooky.

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Speaker 1: Action because it implies magic exactly.

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Speaker 2: Entanglement is the phenomenon where two separated particles can somehow

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become intrinsically linked such that they share a single, unified

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quantum state, so.

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Speaker 1: Their fates are completely and permanently intertwined. Yes, okay, let's

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break down how that actually works. If I have two

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entangled particles, what happens when I look at one of.

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Speaker 2: Them, because they share a single quantum state. Whatever happens

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to one particle instantly and undeniably dictates this state of

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the other particle instantly instantly. Let's say you have two

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entangled electrons and you measure the property known as spin

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on the first one. If you find that the first

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electron is spinning up, the laws of entanglement dictate that

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the second electron was instantly be spinning down. Okay, and

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here's the part that bothered Einstein. This holds true regardless

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of the physical distance between them, meaning I could put

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them anywhere anywhere. You could separate those two electrons by

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a few feet in a laboratory, or you could place

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one on Earth and the other on the far edge

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of the Andromeda galaxy. The moment you measure the one

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on Earth, it's twin in Andromeda instantaneously collapses into the

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opposite state.

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Speaker 1: Wait, yeah, let's really look at this, because this is

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where human logic just slams into a brick wall.

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Speaker 2: It really does.

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Speaker 1: If nothing can travel faster than the speed of light,

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which is the absolute bedrock of Einstein's theory of relativity,

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how does the particle in the Andromeda galaxy know that

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its twin on Earth was just measured.

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Speaker 2: That's the billion dollar question.

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Speaker 1: Right, Is there some invisible, faster than light physical signal

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being beamed across the universe. Because if there is reality

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as we understand, it is fundamentally broken.

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Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is that your reaction, that sense of

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absolute disbelief, is exactly Einstein's reaction. He assumed there had

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to be some sort of hidden variables.

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Speaker 1: Hidden variables like a secret code they agreed on beforehand.

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Speaker 2: Basically, he thought that perhaps the particles were like a

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pair of gloves inside two boxes.

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Speaker 1: Okay, I like this analogy, right, So if you open.

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Speaker 2: A box on Earth and find a left handed glove,

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you instantly know the box in Andromeda contains the right

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handed glove because.

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Speaker 1: It had to be the right handed one all along, exactly.

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Speaker 2: No signal was sent, The properties were just decided the

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moment the gloves were originally separated.

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Speaker 1: That makes perfect sense. That's a very comfortable, classical way

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to look at it. It saves physics.

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Speaker 2: It is comfortable, yes, but it is mathematically and physically wrong.

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Speaker 1: Oh.

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Speaker 2: Decades of exhaustive experiments, specifically what we call Bell's theorem

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experiments have proven that the particles are not like a

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pair of gloves with predetermined properties.

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Speaker 1: So they don't know what they are until you.

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Speaker 2: Look right in the quantum realm, until you open the box.

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The glove isn't left handed or right handed. It is

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in the superposition of being both.

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Speaker 1: Oh wow, okay, So, to use an analogy, it's not

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like having a twin who has a pre arranged map

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of a house. No, imagine you have a twin and

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you are exploring a house that doesn't actually exist yet.

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The walls are just hazy clouds of probability.

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Speaker 2: I like where you're going with this.

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Speaker 1: But the absolute second you touch a wall in the

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living room, that wall instantly solidifies from a cloud into

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solid brick, and at that exact instantaneous fraction of a millisecond.

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The wall in the kitchen where your twin is standing

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miles away also solidifies. Yes, the layout wasn't pre planned.

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The act of you measuring your reality instantly force the

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reality to materialize with zero time delay.

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Speaker 2: That is a brilliant way to frame it. It is

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not about hidden information. It is about reality itself collapsing

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into a definitive state across vast, unbridgable distances simultaneously.

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Speaker 1: Which is just terrifying and cool.

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Speaker 2: It completely defies human common sense, but repeated, exhaustive Nobel

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Prize winning experiments have proven that this is simply the

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fundamental law of the universe.

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Speaker 1: It forces us to accept a reality that is deeply non.

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Speaker 2: Local, non local. Exactly right, The universe isn't just a

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collection of isolated, independent objects bouncing around. At the deepest,

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most fundamental level, the fabric of reality is woven together

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in ways that completely disregard physical distance in time.

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Speaker 1: It's incredibly humbling, isn't it. It makes you realize how

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little our primate brains actually come apprehend about the environment

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we live in.

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Speaker 2: We're just scratching the surface.

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Speaker 1: But what is truly staggering is that we are no

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longer just philosophizing about this over a beer. We are

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moving from these abstract chalkboard theories into actual physical engineering.

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Speaker 2: Or building the machines.

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Speaker 1: Yes, we are building machines right now that use super

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position and entanglement as functional components, which brings us back

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to that unbelievable hospital scenario.

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Speaker 2: We open the show with, Right the medical applications.

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Speaker 1: Let's talk about quantum sensing and quantum imaging.

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Speaker 2: Let's start with quantum sensing because it is a perfect

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example of technology that has already crossed from theory into reality.

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Speaker 1: It's here today.

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Speaker 2: It is because quantum states, especially entangled states, are so

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incredibly sensitive to their environment. We can use them as

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hyper sensitive detectors like how sensitive. Well, we are now

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developing instruments capable of sensing impossibly weak magnetic fields. In

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his work, Alkalili describes a device you can literally on

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your head like a hat. It looks very much like

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a high end cycling helmet, but inside it houses a

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magneto incephalography array.

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Speaker 1: Try saying that three times fast.

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Speaker 2: Right, But what it does is it utilizes the extreme

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sensitivity of quantum entanglement to measure the firing of single

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individual neurons in the human brain.

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Speaker 1: So, if I'm understanding this correctly, my instinct says, this

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is fundamentally changing neuroscience completely. We aren't just looking at broad,

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blurry zones of blood flow lighting up on an fMRI

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screen anymore. This is essentially a mind reading helmet.

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Speaker 2: It's getting very close to that.

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Speaker 1: Yes, it is reading your brain waves at a microscopic

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level of resolution that was previously unthinkable, purely by measuring

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the minute, almost imperceptible magnetic fields generated when a single

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biological brain cell fires an electrical charge exactly.

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Speaker 2: The quantum sensors are delicate enough to pick up a

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signal that would have been completely lost in the background

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noise of standard classical sensors. Wow. And then you have

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quantum imaging, which is where we get the entanglement camera

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you mentioned earlier, ghost camera. The ghost camera. This is

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perhaps the most magical sounding application of all, but its

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mechanics are purely rooted in what we just discussed.

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Speaker 1: Okay, tell us how this witchcraft actually works well.

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Speaker 2: The entire idea relies on generating and using pairs of

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light particles two photons that have been quantum entangled.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so they share a state.

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Speaker 2: Right, One of these photons is specifically tuned to the

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infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum, and its entangled twin

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is tuned to the visible light range of the spectrum.

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Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack the mechanics of this. Why use two

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different wavelengths of light? You have an infrared photon and

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a visible light photon and they share that instantaneous, spooky,

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non local connection. Yes, what is the practical application of

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linking those specific two It.

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Speaker 2: Solves a massive problem in medical and scientific imaging. You see,

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infrared light has a very specific property. It is incredibly

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good at penetrating and probing biological tissue without damaging it.

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Speaker 1: It can go deep.

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Speaker 2: It travel deep into a body and interact with anomalies

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like cancer tumors, far better than standard visible light can.

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But infrared has a major drawback, which is it has

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a longer wavelength, which makes it notoriously bad at creating sharp,

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high resolution images for a camera sensor to pick up.

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Speaker 1: Ah, So it's blurry.

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Speaker 2: Very blurry. Visible light, on the other hand, has a

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shorter wavelength and creates beautifully sharp, crisp images. But visible

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light bounces right off your skin it can't probe the

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internal tissue effectively.

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Speaker 1: So classically you were stuck. You either get a blurry

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picture of the inside or sharp picture of the outside precisely.

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Speaker 2: But the second quantum revolution offers a workaround using entanglement. Okay,

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how you take your entangled pair. You send the infrared

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light photon into the body to probe the biological tissue. Okay,

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it goes in, It travels deep down and interacts with

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the physical structure of the tumor. And because it's twin,

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the visible light photon is permanently quantum entangled with it.

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The visible photon's wave function is instantly influenced by what

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the infrared photon is physically experiencing.

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Speaker 1: And the visible photon never leaves the camera.

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Speaker 2: Right, You keep the visible light photon sitting safely outside

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the body, inside the sensor array of the camera.

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Speaker 1: Equipment, so it's just waiting there.

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Speaker 2: Yes, As the infrared photon interacts with the tissue inside

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the body, the entangled connection instantly dictates the state of

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the visible photon outside. You then use the visible light

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photon to generate a razor sharp, high resolution image of

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the internal tissue.

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Speaker 1: So the visible light photon collapses into an image state

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based entirely on the physical interactions of a tumor. It

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has literally never touched.

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Speaker 2: It's incredible.

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Speaker 1: It is bypassing the physical limitations of light, by using

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the non local connectivity of the universe itself. It's astonishing.

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Speaker 2: It really changes everything we know about imaging.

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Speaker 1: But wait, if we can link two photons to share

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complex visual information inside a single hospital room, logic dictates

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we should be able to scale that up. Oh, absolutely,

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if we can link two photons a few feet apart,

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what happens if we string them across the globe.

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Speaker 2: That exact train of thought leads us directly to the

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concept of the quantum Internet.

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Speaker 1: The quantum Internet.

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Speaker 2: Yes, and to understand how revolutionary this is, we have

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to look at how our current infrastructure works right now.

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The way you and everyone listening to this connects to

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the Internet is fundamentally classical. It's all physical tables right mostly. Yes,

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we use massive, intricate networks of optical fibers, thousands of

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miles of glass tubes laid underground and across the ocean floor.

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We send information by firing lasers through these fibers, just

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bouncing light around exactly These pulses of light represent classical

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bits of data zeros and ones linking different server nodes

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around the world.

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Speaker 1: So we are essentially just flashing flashlights down a very long,

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very clear glass pipe. I mean it's fast, but it's

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still just a physical pulse of light traveling from point

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A to point B.

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Speaker 2: Yes, that's classical communication. But the second quantum Revolution asks

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a radical question. What if we use quantum communication instead? Okay,

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what if instead of just sending normal, classical bursts of

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laser light to represent zeros and ones, we send individual

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entangle photons along those exact same optical fibers.

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Speaker 1: My instinct says that changes the entire paradigm of communication,

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because you wouldn't just be sending a message. You would

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be sending particles of light through the fiber that remain

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fundamentally quantumly entangled with other photons sitting in a server

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rack thousands of miles away in another country.

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Speaker 2: That is the core mechanism you are using quantum information

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to communicate and link the world. In a classical Internet,

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the sender and the receiver are essentially just shouting messages

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back and forth down to tube. But in a quantum Internet,

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the sender and the receiver are intrinsically instantly linked by

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the very fabric of the universe. Wow. If you have

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devices at either end that operate on quantum principles and

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they are linked via this entangled quantum information, you've created

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a true globally distributed quantum Internet.

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Speaker 1: Okay, But and I have to play Devil's advocate here.

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If we're just transmitting cat videos and emails, why go

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through the monumental engineering headache of using entangled photons. What

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is the actual practical benefit of a quantum internet over

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our current fiber optic system.

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Speaker 2: The primary earth shattering benefit lies in absolute cybersecurity. Cybersecurity,

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it fundamentally changes everything we know about data protection in

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a classical internet. If a malicious actor wants to intercept

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your data, they can theoretically tap into the optical fiber,

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siphon off some of the laser light, read the zeros

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and ones, copy the data, and send it on its

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way without you ever knowing they were there.

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Speaker 1: Right, They just skim it off the top exactly.

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Speaker 2: We rely entirely on complex mathematical encryption, passwords and algorithms

477
00:23:50,200 --> 00:23:52,680
to scramble the data so the hacker can't understand it,

478
00:23:53,319 --> 00:23:56,680
But mathematical encryption can always be broken if a computer

479
00:23:56,799 --> 00:23:57,680
is powerful enough.

480
00:23:58,440 --> 00:24:00,519
Speaker 1: So how does entanglement fl that.

481
00:24:00,960 --> 00:24:03,960
Speaker 2: It relies on a principle of quantum mechanics, that observation

482
00:24:04,119 --> 00:24:05,960
inherently destroys the quantum state.

483
00:24:06,119 --> 00:24:08,400
Speaker 1: Oh like when the wave function collapses.

484
00:24:08,519 --> 00:24:12,279
Speaker 2: Precisely, if you and I are communicating via entangled photons,

485
00:24:12,599 --> 00:24:16,279
those photons exist in a delicate state of superposition. If

486
00:24:16,319 --> 00:24:19,759
a hacker tries to intercept that optical fiber and observe

487
00:24:19,799 --> 00:24:23,079
the entangled photon to read the data, the very physical

488
00:24:23,079 --> 00:24:26,000
act of measuring it forces the wave function to collapse,

489
00:24:26,160 --> 00:24:30,440
so they break it. The entanglement is immediately and irrevocably broken.

490
00:24:30,119 --> 00:24:34,079
Speaker 1: So it's physically impossible. To eavesdrop without leaving a footprint.

491
00:24:33,759 --> 00:24:37,000
Speaker 2: Is entirely impossible. The interference is immediately known to both

492
00:24:37,000 --> 00:24:39,960
the sender and the receiver because the quantum link severs.

493
00:24:40,039 --> 00:24:41,160
Speaker 1: The line just goes dead.

494
00:24:41,359 --> 00:24:45,960
Speaker 2: Yes, the hacker gets nothing but collapsed, useless noise, and

495
00:24:46,079 --> 00:24:50,079
we instantly know the line is compromised. A quantum internet

496
00:24:50,160 --> 00:24:54,799
offers a level of absolute unbreakable security, dictated not by

497
00:24:54,799 --> 00:24:57,839
clever human encryption codes that can be cracked. But by

498
00:24:57,880 --> 00:25:00,759
the immutable physical laws of the unit, you.

499
00:25:00,759 --> 00:25:03,759
Speaker 1: Cannot violate the laws of physics to steal data.

500
00:25:03,799 --> 00:25:04,480
Speaker 2: You really can't.

501
00:25:04,640 --> 00:25:07,839
Speaker 1: That is profound. But you know, to have a quantum Internet,

502
00:25:07,880 --> 00:25:10,359
you can't just plug a standard router into the wall.

503
00:25:10,920 --> 00:25:14,200
A classical MacBook or smartphone doesn't know how to read

504
00:25:14,279 --> 00:25:15,880
or manipulate a delicate keybit.

505
00:25:16,039 --> 00:25:16,640
Speaker 2: No, it doesn't.

506
00:25:16,680 --> 00:25:18,920
Speaker 1: You need a completely new type of engine at the

507
00:25:19,000 --> 00:25:22,839
end of that fiber optic cable, capable of processing encrypted

508
00:25:22,920 --> 00:25:26,720
quantum information. And that logical necessity brings us to the

509
00:25:26,799 --> 00:25:31,079
absolute crown jewel, the poster child of this entire second quantum.

510
00:25:30,720 --> 00:25:32,160
Speaker 2: Revolution, the quantum computer.

511
00:25:32,240 --> 00:25:35,799
Speaker 1: The quantum computer. This is where the sheer computational power

512
00:25:35,839 --> 00:25:37,119
of the universe is unlocked.

513
00:25:37,400 --> 00:25:42,680
Speaker 2: Absolutely, a quantum computer famously operates on principles entirely alien

514
00:25:42,759 --> 00:25:46,400
to our current technology. A classical computer, the laptop on

515
00:25:46,440 --> 00:25:49,599
your desk, the smartphone in your pocket, even the massive,

516
00:25:49,759 --> 00:25:54,599
multimillion dollar supercomputers running global weather simulations today, they all

517
00:25:54,599 --> 00:25:57,079
rely on classical bits of information.

518
00:25:56,759 --> 00:25:58,039
Speaker 1: Right the zeros and ones.

519
00:25:58,200 --> 00:26:01,519
Speaker 2: Yes, deep down in the microchip, everything is boiled down

520
00:26:01,519 --> 00:26:04,279
to a binary state, a zero or a one. A

521
00:26:04,319 --> 00:26:06,799
switch is either physically off or physically on right.

522
00:26:06,839 --> 00:26:09,119
Speaker 1: It's a linear process. Even if a computer is doing

523
00:26:09,160 --> 00:26:12,920
billions of calculations a second, it is still doing them sequentially.

524
00:26:12,680 --> 00:26:14,279
Speaker 2: Off on, off, exactly.

525
00:26:14,440 --> 00:26:17,359
Speaker 1: But a quantum computer throws that binary system out the

526
00:26:17,359 --> 00:26:19,440
window by using quibbits. Quantum bits.

527
00:26:19,559 --> 00:26:23,079
Speaker 2: Yes, and because of the principle of superposition we discussed earlier,

528
00:26:23,359 --> 00:26:26,680
the particle acting as a wave exploring multiple paths simultaneously,

529
00:26:27,000 --> 00:26:29,839
Aquibit isn't restricted to being just a zero or just

530
00:26:29,880 --> 00:26:30,400
a one.

531
00:26:30,519 --> 00:26:31,240
Speaker 1: It can be both.

532
00:26:31,400 --> 00:26:33,799
Speaker 2: Equipment can be both zero and one at the exact

533
00:26:33,880 --> 00:26:38,240
same time. It exists in a probabilistic cloud encompassing both states.

534
00:26:38,599 --> 00:26:41,720
Speaker 1: Let's really break down how that translates to processing power,

535
00:26:41,799 --> 00:26:44,799
because that is a massive leap to make. How does

536
00:26:44,880 --> 00:26:47,839
being in two states at once actually make a computer faster?

537
00:26:48,039 --> 00:26:51,519
Speaker 2: Well, it gives us the ultimate profound form of parallel processing.

538
00:26:51,960 --> 00:26:55,240
Think you like navigating a massive complex maze.

539
00:26:55,240 --> 00:26:56,359
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm in a maze.

540
00:26:56,400 --> 00:26:59,200
Speaker 2: If you program a classical computer to find the exit

541
00:26:59,240 --> 00:27:03,319
to the maze, it has to test every single path sequentially.

542
00:27:03,759 --> 00:27:06,839
It runs down path A, hits a dead end, turns around,

543
00:27:07,200 --> 00:27:09,759
runs down path B, hits a dead end. Turns around.

544
00:27:09,920 --> 00:27:14,880
It's brute force exactly. It does this incredibly fast, but

545
00:27:15,000 --> 00:27:19,160
it is still linear. A quantum computer utilizing quibbits in

546
00:27:19,200 --> 00:27:22,440
a state of superposition doesn't do that. It floods the made.

547
00:27:22,559 --> 00:27:23,519
Speaker 1: It floods the mad.

548
00:27:23,640 --> 00:27:27,319
Speaker 2: It simultaneously explores every single possible path at the exact

549
00:27:27,319 --> 00:27:31,519
same time. It calculates vast numbers of possibilities simultaneously, and

550
00:27:31,559 --> 00:27:35,079
through quantum interference, the wrong answers cancel each other out,

551
00:27:35,200 --> 00:27:36,640
leaving only the correct path.

552
00:27:36,759 --> 00:27:39,359
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting, because the scaling of

553
00:27:39,359 --> 00:27:42,640
that power is exponential. If you add one classical bit

554
00:27:42,680 --> 00:27:46,359
to a regular computer, you increase its power incrementally.

555
00:27:45,920 --> 00:27:47,319
Speaker 2: Just a tiny bit, yes.

556
00:27:47,279 --> 00:27:51,200
Speaker 1: But if you add one entangled quibit to a quantum computer,

557
00:27:51,799 --> 00:27:55,759
you literally double its processing power. This is where we

558
00:27:55,799 --> 00:27:58,119
get back to that scenario of the computer solving a

559
00:27:58,160 --> 00:27:59,079
problem before.

560
00:27:58,880 --> 00:28:00,599
Speaker 2: Your coffee gets cold. That's true.

561
00:28:01,039 --> 00:28:05,359
Speaker 1: Jim al Kalili states quite clearly that a mature quantum

562
00:28:05,400 --> 00:28:08,720
computer will one day be able to solve algorithms in

563
00:28:08,799 --> 00:28:13,079
mere minutes. That would take the absolute most powerful supercomputers

564
00:28:13,079 --> 00:28:17,359
we have today billions of years of continuous processing to solve.

565
00:28:17,440 --> 00:28:21,000
Speaker 2: The scope for exponentially increasing the power of computation is

566
00:28:21,160 --> 00:28:23,279
just staggering.

567
00:28:22,839 --> 00:28:25,039
Speaker 1: And the applications for that kind of power are going

568
00:28:25,079 --> 00:28:29,799
to completely redefine human capability. We are talking about revolutionizing

569
00:28:29,799 --> 00:28:34,000
the fields of chemistry and biology, specifically in new drug discovery. Yes,

570
00:28:34,079 --> 00:28:37,880
this is a massive area because currently simulating the exact

571
00:28:38,079 --> 00:28:42,880
molecular interactions of complex chemicals is incredibly difficult for classical computers.

572
00:28:43,079 --> 00:28:47,200
Speaker 2: Right because molecules themselves are quantum systems. A classical computer

573
00:28:47,279 --> 00:28:50,160
has to approximate how the electrons will behave But a

574
00:28:50,240 --> 00:28:53,519
quantum computer fundamentally speaks the same language as the molecule

575
00:28:53,599 --> 00:28:56,119
it's native to it exactly. It will be able to

576
00:28:56,119 --> 00:28:59,640
map those quantum systems perfectly, allowing us to design highly

577
00:28:59,640 --> 00:29:04,160
specifi targeted drugs for diseases without decades of physical trial

578
00:29:04,160 --> 00:29:04,680
and error.

579
00:29:04,799 --> 00:29:08,680
Speaker 1: We could also build vastly better, highly accurate climate models

580
00:29:08,920 --> 00:29:12,000
by processing the millions of variables in the Earth's atmosphere

581
00:29:12,000 --> 00:29:14,559
simultaneously rather than sequentially.

582
00:29:14,960 --> 00:29:20,160
Speaker 2: We could transform complex global financial transactions, optimize power grids,

583
00:29:20,359 --> 00:29:23,799
and allow physicists to study the behavior of complex materials

584
00:29:23,799 --> 00:29:26,920
and research labs in ways we can only dream of

585
00:29:27,000 --> 00:29:27,559
right now.

586
00:29:27,680 --> 00:29:30,920
Speaker 1: The potential is nearly limitless. But of course that brings

587
00:29:31,000 --> 00:29:32,119
us to the reality of the.

588
00:29:32,079 --> 00:29:34,000
Speaker 2: Timeline, right, the tricky part.

589
00:29:34,119 --> 00:29:36,079
Speaker 1: Yes, I have to push back here because if we

590
00:29:36,119 --> 00:29:38,160
are being honest, we've known about this for a long time.

591
00:29:38,680 --> 00:29:42,599
You mentioned that the math and the theories for quantum mechanics superposition,

592
00:29:43,160 --> 00:29:47,119
wave particle duality entanglement were rigorously laid out in the

593
00:29:47,240 --> 00:29:48,119
nineteen twenties and.

594
00:29:48,039 --> 00:29:49,279
Speaker 2: Thirty one Oneless a century ago.

595
00:29:49,359 --> 00:29:51,880
Speaker 1: Yes, we've known about the theory of quantum computing since

596
00:29:51,880 --> 00:29:54,640
the nineteen eighties. So if the math is so incredibly

597
00:29:54,759 --> 00:29:58,279
solid and the potential is so world altering, why is

598
00:29:58,319 --> 00:30:01,119
it taking decades to build one? It's not easy, no,

599
00:30:01,559 --> 00:30:05,920
because you constantly see sensationalized tech headlines claiming that desktop

600
00:30:06,000 --> 00:30:09,240
quantum computers are just two or three years away. But

601
00:30:09,279 --> 00:30:11,960
al Khali pushes back on that hype pretty hard.

602
00:30:11,720 --> 00:30:13,960
Speaker 2: In his work, doesn't he He does. He's very clear

603
00:30:13,960 --> 00:30:14,359
about that.

604
00:30:14,480 --> 00:30:17,240
Speaker 1: He says, realistically, we are looking at a decade or

605
00:30:17,240 --> 00:30:21,880
two minimum before we have functional, scalable machines. So my

606
00:30:22,000 --> 00:30:27,480
question is, what is the physical roadblock? What is mechanically

607
00:30:27,480 --> 00:30:30,440
stopping us from having a quantum computer on our desks tomorrow?

608
00:30:30,720 --> 00:30:34,279
Speaker 2: That is the multi billion dollar question that every major

609
00:30:34,319 --> 00:30:37,519
tech company in university physics department on Earth is currently

610
00:30:37,519 --> 00:30:38,279
trying to answer.

611
00:30:38,480 --> 00:30:39,559
Speaker 1: So what's the issue.

612
00:30:39,960 --> 00:30:43,720
Speaker 2: The answer lies in a phenomenon called decoherence. We are

613
00:30:43,799 --> 00:30:48,440
currently fighting a massive, grueling, incredibly expensive war over hardware

614
00:30:48,839 --> 00:30:53,680
trying to solve this single monumental physical problem decoherence. Yes,

615
00:30:53,759 --> 00:30:56,200
you see, it isn't just about making one single quibit

616
00:30:56,200 --> 00:30:57,519
that could be a zero in a one at the

617
00:30:57,559 --> 00:31:01,400
same time. To do any real useful computation like Shores

618
00:31:01,480 --> 00:31:06,240
algorithm for factoring prime numbers or Grover's algorithm for searching databases,

619
00:31:06,559 --> 00:31:08,039
you have to have many e quibits.

620
00:31:07,759 --> 00:31:09,079
Speaker 1: Right, They have to work together, and.

621
00:31:09,039 --> 00:31:12,680
Speaker 2: They must all be quantum entangled together. Forming a unified

622
00:31:12,880 --> 00:31:16,839
sable quantum processor capable of executing code down in that

623
00:31:16,880 --> 00:31:17,960
fuzzy realm.

624
00:31:18,039 --> 00:31:21,960
Speaker 1: And getting hundreds of individual atoms or photons to cooperate

625
00:31:21,960 --> 00:31:23,720
and stay entangled is the hard part.

626
00:31:23,880 --> 00:31:27,279
Speaker 2: It is incredibly hard, bordering on the impossible, because the

627
00:31:27,440 --> 00:31:31,200
absolute moment you link these quibits together via entanglement, they

628
00:31:31,240 --> 00:31:36,160
become exquisitely violently sensitive to any disturbance from the outside environment.

629
00:31:36,279 --> 00:31:38,680
Speaker 1: Oh, because observation breaks it exactly.

630
00:31:38,960 --> 00:31:42,880
Speaker 2: Remember, they're existing as delicate waves of probability. If anything

631
00:31:42,920 --> 00:31:47,279
interacts with them, a microscopic fluctuation in ambient heat, a

632
00:31:47,359 --> 00:31:51,000
stray magnetic field from a nearby wire, even a minuscule

633
00:31:51,039 --> 00:31:54,400
physical vibration in the building, it acts as an observation

634
00:31:54,640 --> 00:31:59,039
and boom, the quantum wave function collapses. The entanglement shatters instantly,

635
00:31:59,160 --> 00:32:02,480
the quibits revert back to being borning classical zeros and ones.

636
00:32:02,880 --> 00:32:04,880
This sudden loss of the quantum state is what we

637
00:32:04,920 --> 00:32:06,599
call decoherence.

638
00:32:06,039 --> 00:32:09,119
Speaker 1: And once decoherence happens, your computation is ruined. It just

639
00:32:09,240 --> 00:32:13,680
falls apart. Alkalili uses a brilliant, very accessible analogy for

640
00:32:13,720 --> 00:32:15,920
this in his explanations, doesn't he Yes.

641
00:32:16,000 --> 00:32:20,319
Speaker 2: He likens maintaining a quantum state to taking a piping

642
00:32:20,400 --> 00:32:24,279
hot cup of coffee and placing it inside a subzero freezer.

643
00:32:24,920 --> 00:32:27,599
Speaker 1: The coffee is your delicate quantum state.

644
00:32:27,640 --> 00:32:31,480
Speaker 2: And the freezer is the harsh outside environment. That coffee

645
00:32:31,519 --> 00:32:33,599
is not going to stay hot for very long. The

646
00:32:33,640 --> 00:32:38,640
heat dissipates incredibly rapidly into the cold environment, seeking equilibrium,

647
00:32:38,680 --> 00:32:38,960
and in.

648
00:32:38,920 --> 00:32:40,680
Speaker 1: The quantum world, that happens fast.

649
00:32:40,839 --> 00:32:43,440
Speaker 2: In the quantum world, this loss of the quantum state.

650
00:32:43,480 --> 00:32:46,839
The heat dissipating from the coffee happens in fractions of

651
00:32:46,839 --> 00:32:47,599
a microsecond.

652
00:32:47,680 --> 00:32:50,640
Speaker 1: Fractions of a microsecond. So the biggest engineering challenge in

653
00:32:50,640 --> 00:32:53,799
modern physics right now isn't actually writing the algorithms. It

654
00:32:53,880 --> 00:32:58,119
is simply maintaining the quantumness of the physical computer long

655
00:32:58,200 --> 00:33:00,960
enough to actually finish the calculation. For the fragile state

656
00:33:01,000 --> 00:33:01,960
completely falls.

657
00:33:01,680 --> 00:33:05,759
Speaker 2: Apart exactly, And because decoherence happens so incredibly fast and

658
00:33:05,799 --> 00:33:11,440
so inevitably, it introduces the massive, mathematically terrifying headache of

659
00:33:11,720 --> 00:33:12,880
quantum error.

660
00:33:12,640 --> 00:33:15,920
Speaker 1: Correction error correction, so you're constantly fixing it as it breaks.

661
00:33:16,279 --> 00:33:20,599
Speaker 2: Essentially, yes, you simply cannot trust that your kubits will

662
00:33:20,640 --> 00:33:24,359
survive the durraating of the calculation. Therefore, you have to

663
00:33:24,440 --> 00:33:28,440
build an enormous, almost absurd amount of redundancy into the

664
00:33:28,480 --> 00:33:29,240
physical system.

665
00:33:29,359 --> 00:33:32,559
Speaker 1: Let's put some numbers to that. How much redundancy are

666
00:33:32,559 --> 00:33:33,279
we talking about.

667
00:33:33,359 --> 00:33:37,039
Speaker 2: If you have a complex mathematical calculation that theoretically requires

668
00:33:37,079 --> 00:33:40,640
one hundred perfectly stable kubits to solve, you cannot just

669
00:33:40,680 --> 00:33:44,839
build a hundred kubit machine because of the constant, unyielding

670
00:33:44,880 --> 00:33:48,519
barrage of decoherence, many of those one hundred kubets will

671
00:33:48,559 --> 00:33:53,160
experience errors or collapse almost instantly. To get a reliable,

672
00:33:53,279 --> 00:33:56,319
accurate answer, you actually need to build a physical machine

673
00:33:56,319 --> 00:34:00,000
containing perhaps one thousand, or more likely a million physical kubts,

674
00:34:00,559 --> 00:34:02,079
just to run the error correcting codes.

675
00:34:02,200 --> 00:34:03,880
Speaker 1: A million just to get one hundred to work.

676
00:34:04,119 --> 00:34:06,839
Speaker 2: Yes, just to guarantee that the core one hundred logical

677
00:34:06,880 --> 00:34:10,679
quibds function long enough to give you a collective, accurate result.

678
00:34:10,800 --> 00:34:12,920
Speaker 1: So we need a machine with a million quibts, And

679
00:34:13,000 --> 00:34:16,239
right now the biggest experimental processors only have a few hundred,

680
00:34:16,559 --> 00:34:19,000
and they are struggling to keep even those stable. It's

681
00:34:19,039 --> 00:34:22,519
a huge gap, which perfectly explains why building the actual

682
00:34:22,599 --> 00:34:26,599
physical machine is such an unprecedented nightmare. We are right

683
00:34:26,679 --> 00:34:28,760
in the middle of what you call the hardware wars.

684
00:34:29,440 --> 00:34:33,199
What is the actual substrate? What is the physical tangible

685
00:34:33,320 --> 00:34:35,440
material we use to build a quibit.

686
00:34:36,039 --> 00:34:38,119
Speaker 2: Well, that's the thing nobody knows yet.

687
00:34:37,960 --> 00:34:41,039
Speaker 1: Because my understanding is that right now nobody actually knows

688
00:34:41,039 --> 00:34:44,199
what the winning candidate will be. There are entirely different

689
00:34:44,199 --> 00:34:45,840
philosophies on how to build one.

690
00:34:46,119 --> 00:34:49,360
Speaker 2: That's right. We have four main competing options for the

691
00:34:49,360 --> 00:34:52,360
hardware architecture right now, and each one comes with its

692
00:34:52,400 --> 00:34:56,119
own monumental, sometimes paradoxical engineering challenges.

693
00:34:56,199 --> 00:34:57,599
Speaker 1: Okay, lay them out for us.

694
00:34:57,960 --> 00:35:00,800
Speaker 2: Let's look at the first candidate, super con acting circuits.

695
00:35:00,920 --> 00:35:03,760
This is the path heavily favored by massive companies like

696
00:35:03,800 --> 00:35:04,679
IBM and Google.

697
00:35:04,880 --> 00:35:05,920
Speaker 1: Okay, the big player.

698
00:35:06,039 --> 00:35:09,519
Speaker 2: Yes, they use microfabricated electrical circuits made of materials like

699
00:35:09,599 --> 00:35:12,920
niobium or aluminum. But to get them to behave quantumly,

700
00:35:13,159 --> 00:35:15,719
they must be chilled down to temperatures hovering right near

701
00:35:15,840 --> 00:35:17,079
absolute zero.

702
00:35:16,920 --> 00:35:19,920
Speaker 1: Absolute zero, So we are talking about minus two hundred

703
00:35:19,920 --> 00:35:22,960
and seventy three degrees celsius, colder than deep space.

704
00:35:23,400 --> 00:35:28,400
Speaker 2: Yes, they use incredibly complex, multi tiered dilution refrigerators that

705
00:35:28,440 --> 00:35:30,599
look like giant golden chandeliers.

706
00:35:30,719 --> 00:35:32,760
Speaker 1: I've seen pictures of those. They look amazing.

707
00:35:32,880 --> 00:35:36,199
Speaker 2: They are beautiful pieces of machinery, and at that unimaginably

708
00:35:36,239 --> 00:35:40,400
cold temperature, all thermal noise stops and a quantum effect

709
00:35:40,440 --> 00:35:43,440
called super conductivity suddenly appears.

710
00:35:43,159 --> 00:35:44,199
Speaker 1: Meaning no resistance.

711
00:35:44,440 --> 00:35:47,559
Speaker 2: The electrical resistance of the material drops to absolute zero,

712
00:35:47,880 --> 00:35:51,760
allowing electrical currents to flow through the circuits endlessly without

713
00:35:51,800 --> 00:35:54,719
losing any energy to heat. We can use these super

714
00:35:54,719 --> 00:35:59,280
cooled frictionless currents to carry out quantum computations. The circuits

715
00:35:59,320 --> 00:36:02,039
themselves be as artificial macroscopic quibits.

716
00:36:02,119 --> 00:36:06,320
Speaker 1: Okay, So if electrical resistance creates heat and heat causes decoherence,

717
00:36:06,800 --> 00:36:09,760
we have to freeze the superconducting circuits and these massive,

718
00:36:10,239 --> 00:36:14,280
multimillion dollar golden chandeliers. Right, But my instinct says, keeping

719
00:36:14,320 --> 00:36:17,400
a massive machine your absolute zero is a logistical nightmare

720
00:36:17,440 --> 00:36:19,719
that will never fit on a desktop. So what if

721
00:36:19,760 --> 00:36:22,119
we just didn't use electricity? What if we used a

722
00:36:22,119 --> 00:36:25,280
particle that doesn't care about ambient heat or electrical resistance,

723
00:36:25,440 --> 00:36:28,039
like light? Could we just build a processor out of photons?

724
00:36:28,239 --> 00:36:33,239
Speaker 2: Precisely That logical leap brings us to the second major candidate,

725
00:36:33,599 --> 00:36:37,159
building a quantum computer entirely out of light. This is

726
00:36:37,199 --> 00:36:41,920
known as photonic quantum computing. Okay, Instead of chilled electrical circuits,

727
00:36:42,360 --> 00:36:46,719
you use individual photons of light traveling through complex microscopic

728
00:36:46,800 --> 00:36:51,119
networks of optical fibers and silic and wave guides. Photons

729
00:36:51,159 --> 00:36:54,360
are excellent because they don't interact with each other very easily,

730
00:36:54,800 --> 00:36:58,239
which means they are highly resistant decoherence from the environment.

731
00:36:58,639 --> 00:37:00,079
They don't care if the room is well.

732
00:37:00,280 --> 00:37:02,079
Speaker 1: That seems perfect. What's the catch.

733
00:37:02,159 --> 00:37:04,679
Speaker 2: The catch is exactly what makes them great. They don't

734
00:37:04,679 --> 00:37:05,960
interact with each other easily.

735
00:37:06,119 --> 00:37:06,599
Speaker 1: Oh right.

736
00:37:06,679 --> 00:37:09,320
Speaker 2: To do quantum computation, you need your quibits to interact

737
00:37:09,360 --> 00:37:12,719
so you can entangle them and perform logic gates. Forcing

738
00:37:12,760 --> 00:37:16,400
two independent photons to meaningfully interact and entangle inside a

739
00:37:16,440 --> 00:37:21,800
waveguide requires wildly complex probabilistic optical components. It is incredible.

740
00:37:21,800 --> 00:37:24,559
You take a vacuum chamber, inject a gas of neutral

741
00:37:24,559 --> 00:37:28,079
atoms like rubidium, and then you use powerful intersecting magnetic

742
00:37:28,079 --> 00:37:31,480
fields and highly calibrated laser beams to trap them in

743
00:37:31,519 --> 00:37:31,920
mid air.

744
00:37:32,000 --> 00:37:34,519
Speaker 1: Wait, I stop you there. We are trying to cool

745
00:37:34,559 --> 00:37:38,159
things down to absolute zero to prevent decoherence. But you

746
00:37:38,199 --> 00:37:41,039
just said you hit them with lasers. Lasers are concentrated

747
00:37:41,079 --> 00:37:44,400
light energy, They burn things, they cut metal. How in

748
00:37:44,440 --> 00:37:47,199
the world does blasting an atom with a high energy

749
00:37:47,239 --> 00:37:48,440
laser cool it down?

750
00:37:48,599 --> 00:37:51,360
Speaker 2: This is one of the most brilliant counterintuitive tricks in

751
00:37:51,360 --> 00:37:54,280
modern physics, and it's essential to understand the mechanics here.

752
00:37:54,440 --> 00:37:56,559
You have to remember what temperature actually is at the

753
00:37:56,599 --> 00:37:57,599
microscopic level.

754
00:37:57,639 --> 00:37:58,480
Speaker 1: Okay, what is it.

755
00:37:58,599 --> 00:38:01,400
Speaker 2: Temperature is simply the kinetic energy of the atoms, how

756
00:38:01,440 --> 00:38:04,559
fast they are moving or vibrating. Hot atoms move fast,

757
00:38:04,880 --> 00:38:08,440
cold atoms move slow. Absolute zero is this stay where

758
00:38:08,440 --> 00:38:11,719
an atom is completely entirely motionless.

759
00:38:11,920 --> 00:38:13,840
Speaker 1: Okay, So to cool an atom down, you essentially just

760
00:38:13,880 --> 00:38:17,199
have to act as a break and slow its physical momentum.

761
00:38:16,639 --> 00:38:21,199
Speaker 2: Exactly, and light, despite having no mass, has momentum. When

762
00:38:21,199 --> 00:38:24,559
a photon hits an atom and is absorbed, it imports

763
00:38:24,599 --> 00:38:29,559
a tiny physical push. So physicists tune a laser to

764
00:38:29,679 --> 00:38:31,840
a very specific precise frequency.

765
00:38:31,880 --> 00:38:32,920
Speaker 1: I see where this is going.

766
00:38:33,039 --> 00:38:35,519
Speaker 2: If an atom is moving towards the laser beam, it

767
00:38:35,559 --> 00:38:38,840
absorbs the photon, and the photon's momentum pushes against the

768
00:38:38,880 --> 00:38:42,119
atom's direction of travel, slowing it down. If you surround

769
00:38:42,119 --> 00:38:46,960
the atom with six lasers pointing inward from all directions up, down, left, right, forward, back,

770
00:38:47,119 --> 00:38:49,000
no matter which way the atom tries to move, it

771
00:38:49,000 --> 00:38:51,280
gets hit by a photon pushing it in the opposite direction.

772
00:38:51,360 --> 00:38:52,320
Speaker 1: Like get stuck in mud.

773
00:38:52,599 --> 00:38:55,719
Speaker 2: It becomes trapped in what physicists call optical molasses. Its

774
00:38:55,800 --> 00:38:58,559
kinetic energy is drained away by the photons until it

775
00:38:58,599 --> 00:38:59,800
is virtually motionless.

776
00:39:00,119 --> 00:39:02,599
Speaker 1: That is absolutely mind blowing. We use the momentum of

777
00:39:02,719 --> 00:39:05,679
light to physically pummel an atom until it stops moving,

778
00:39:05,880 --> 00:39:08,039
dropping its temperature to near absolute zero.

779
00:39:08,280 --> 00:39:10,880
Speaker 2: And once they are chilled and trapped in a perfect

780
00:39:10,960 --> 00:39:14,719
grid by these lasers, they become incredibly stable. You then

781
00:39:14,800 --> 00:39:17,719
pump them with highly controlled bursts of energy from other

782
00:39:18,159 --> 00:39:22,159
specifically tuned lasers, forcing the outer electron of the atom

783
00:39:22,440 --> 00:39:25,880
into a highly excited state, pushing the entire atom into

784
00:39:25,920 --> 00:39:27,360
a quantum superposition.

785
00:39:27,519 --> 00:39:28,519
Speaker 1: And those are the kubits.

786
00:39:28,880 --> 00:39:33,360
Speaker 2: These trapped laser manipulated atoms become your physical quibbits.

787
00:39:33,719 --> 00:39:36,440
Speaker 1: That is incredibly elegant. But again you still need a

788
00:39:36,519 --> 00:39:40,119
lab full of massive lasers and vacuum chambers. And there

789
00:39:40,199 --> 00:39:42,760
is a fourth major candidate too, right, Trapped.

790
00:39:42,400 --> 00:39:45,639
Speaker 2: Ions, Yes, trapped ion quantum computing is historically one of

791
00:39:45,679 --> 00:39:49,559
the most successful and developed architectures. Instead of using neutral atoms,

792
00:39:49,719 --> 00:39:50,960
you use strings of ions.

793
00:39:51,079 --> 00:39:51,760
Speaker 1: What's the difference.

794
00:39:51,880 --> 00:39:54,119
Speaker 2: An ion is simply an atom that has had an

795
00:39:54,119 --> 00:39:56,760
electron stripped away or an extra one added, giving it

796
00:39:56,800 --> 00:39:59,599
a net positive or negative electrical charge. Because they have

797
00:39:59,639 --> 00:40:03,320
an election charge, you don't need complex optical molasses to

798
00:40:03,360 --> 00:40:06,280
hold them you can manipulate and pin them firmly in

799
00:40:06,280 --> 00:40:11,639
place in a vacuum using standard, carefully controlled oscillating electromagnetic fields.

800
00:40:11,639 --> 00:40:13,039
Speaker 1: So you just hold them with magnets.

801
00:40:13,360 --> 00:40:16,320
Speaker 2: Basically, Yes, they line up in a perfect glowing string,

802
00:40:17,039 --> 00:40:20,760
and you interact with them using lasers to induce superposition

803
00:40:21,079 --> 00:40:21,880
and entanglement.

804
00:40:22,039 --> 00:40:25,760
Speaker 1: So we have super cooled superconducting circuits, non interacting photons

805
00:40:25,800 --> 00:40:30,880
of light, laser pummeled cold neutral atoms, and electromagnetically trapped

806
00:40:31,000 --> 00:40:36,360
charged ions for completely different physical paradigms. Yes, all competing,

807
00:40:36,480 --> 00:40:40,119
and the global scientific community, despite billions of dollars of funding,

808
00:40:40,480 --> 00:40:42,760
does not yet know which one will ultimately prove to

809
00:40:42,800 --> 00:40:46,599
be the most viable, stable, and capable of scaling to

810
00:40:46,679 --> 00:40:49,079
that magic one million cobit mark.

811
00:40:49,199 --> 00:40:52,199
Speaker 2: And here is the hidden secondary challenge. Even if we

812
00:40:52,239 --> 00:40:57,440
perfectly solve the hardware, say tomorrow a laboratory builds the ultimate,

813
00:40:57,559 --> 00:41:02,239
perfectly stable, decoherence free million quibot machine using trapped ions,

814
00:41:02,719 --> 00:41:04,119
we still have a massive hurdle.

815
00:41:04,199 --> 00:41:05,119
Speaker 1: We have to actually use it.

816
00:41:05,159 --> 00:41:06,679
Speaker 2: We have to figure out how to write the software.

817
00:41:06,719 --> 00:41:09,519
You cannot simply install a standard operating system like Windows

818
00:41:09,559 --> 00:41:13,119
or iOS on a machine that exists in multiple dimensions

819
00:41:13,119 --> 00:41:17,599
of probability at once. A quantum computer doesn't read standard code.

820
00:41:17,639 --> 00:41:20,039
What code do you write to carry out a computation

821
00:41:20,280 --> 00:41:22,960
where the variables are both true and false simultaneously.

822
00:41:23,159 --> 00:41:27,079
Speaker 1: Right, Because standard logic gates N and D or not,

823
00:41:27,840 --> 00:41:30,239
they rely on definitive classical states.

824
00:41:30,760 --> 00:41:34,599
Speaker 2: Exactly, we are actively having to invent an entirely new

825
00:41:34,679 --> 00:41:37,639
landscape of computer science. Right now. We have a few

826
00:41:37,679 --> 00:41:42,480
foundational quantum algorithms already theoretically proven, like which ones Well,

827
00:41:42,719 --> 00:41:46,039
there is Grover's algorithm, which allows a quantum computer to

828
00:41:46,119 --> 00:41:49,639
search an unsorted database exponentially faster than a classical computer.

829
00:41:49,960 --> 00:41:53,840
And there is Shores algorithm, named after the mathematician Peter Shore,

830
00:41:54,000 --> 00:41:56,239
which is the algorithm that can find the prime factors

831
00:41:56,239 --> 00:41:57,000
of massive numbers.

832
00:41:57,159 --> 00:41:59,639
Speaker 1: Wait, isn't that the exact mathematical process that will break

833
00:41:59,639 --> 00:42:01,079
all more Internet encryption?

834
00:42:01,400 --> 00:42:05,599
Speaker 2: Yes, which necessitates the unbreakable quantum Internet we discussed earlier.

835
00:42:05,840 --> 00:42:09,719
But beyond those we need a vastly larger library of software.

836
00:42:09,920 --> 00:42:12,800
There is a massive amount of theoretical work dedicated to

837
00:42:12,920 --> 00:42:15,639
ensuring that when the hardware finally matures, we have the

838
00:42:15,719 --> 00:42:18,079
quantum code ready to actually do it justice.

839
00:42:18,239 --> 00:42:20,800
Speaker 1: If we connect this to the bigger picture, the irony

840
00:42:20,840 --> 00:42:24,559
of this entire endeavor is just profoundly beautiful. Think about it.

841
00:42:24,639 --> 00:42:25,519
Speaker 2: Oh, it really is.

842
00:42:25,719 --> 00:42:30,440
Speaker 1: To harness the deepest, most fundamental natural power of the universe,

843
00:42:31,199 --> 00:42:35,199
the quantum mechanics that literally build reality. Human beings are

844
00:42:35,239 --> 00:42:39,599
being forced to engineer the absolute most artificial, isolated, coldest,

845
00:42:39,880 --> 00:42:42,679
and most pristine environments ever conceived.

846
00:42:42,840 --> 00:42:44,679
Speaker 2: We have to completely separate it from the world.

847
00:42:44,880 --> 00:42:49,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, we are building massive golden dilution refrigerators colder than

848
00:42:49,360 --> 00:42:54,239
deep space and perfectly calibrated magnetic vacuums just to coax

849
00:42:54,280 --> 00:42:56,960
a handful of atoms into doing math for us without

850
00:42:56,960 --> 00:42:59,400
being disturbed by the ambient heat of a room.

851
00:42:59,559 --> 00:43:02,559
Speaker 2: It is a stunning, justtaposition. We are trying to isolate

852
00:43:02,679 --> 00:43:05,480
nature from itself in order to use it and naturally.

853
00:43:05,480 --> 00:43:07,960
When you start talking about building machines that exploit the

854
00:43:08,000 --> 00:43:10,960
deepest fabric of reality, it leads people to wonder about

855
00:43:10,960 --> 00:43:12,800
the broader philosophical implications.

856
00:43:12,880 --> 00:43:13,639
Speaker 1: Are we going too far?

857
00:43:14,039 --> 00:43:17,559
Speaker 2: Exactly? Are we treading into territory we shouldn't. Are we

858
00:43:17,679 --> 00:43:22,360
essentially playing god by developing technologies that are so utterly outlandish?

859
00:43:22,800 --> 00:43:26,440
So far beyond anything we experience in the macroscopic natural

860
00:43:26,440 --> 00:43:30,760
world that we cannot possibly fathom the long term ramifications.

861
00:43:31,239 --> 00:43:34,159
Speaker 1: Alkalilely addresses that exact sentiment in his work, and he

862
00:43:34,280 --> 00:43:38,960
answers it with a definitive, scientifically grounded no. He argues

863
00:43:39,000 --> 00:43:42,760
that humanity has always developed technologies based on our evolving

864
00:43:42,840 --> 00:43:45,199
understanding of how the physical universe works.

865
00:43:45,239 --> 00:43:46,920
Speaker 2: That's what we do, right, from.

866
00:43:46,760 --> 00:43:49,519
Speaker 1: Striking flint to build a fire, to smelting iron to

867
00:43:49,599 --> 00:43:53,039
splitting the atom. We leverage the fundamental laws of physics

868
00:43:53,039 --> 00:43:56,480
to build better tools for survival and advancement. Building a

869
00:43:56,559 --> 00:43:59,840
quantum computer is philosophically no different than building a windmill.

870
00:44:00,039 --> 00:44:02,800
It is just harnessing a more complex law of physics.

871
00:44:02,840 --> 00:44:03,639
Speaker 2: It's just a tool.

872
00:44:03,920 --> 00:44:06,639
Speaker 1: But here's where he introduces the ultimate plot twist of

873
00:44:06,679 --> 00:44:09,119
the second quantum Revolution, And I have to be honest,

874
00:44:09,199 --> 00:44:11,639
this is the part of his work that completely rewired

875
00:44:11,679 --> 00:44:12,079
my brain.

876
00:44:12,280 --> 00:44:13,400
Speaker 2: Biology side.

877
00:44:13,559 --> 00:44:16,719
Speaker 1: Yes, we just spent the last twenty minutes talking about

878
00:44:17,039 --> 00:44:21,719
billion dollar absolute zero freezers and laser cooling apparatuses needed

879
00:44:21,719 --> 00:44:25,480
to fight off decoherence and keep delicate quantum states alive

880
00:44:25,599 --> 00:44:28,840
for just a fraction of a microsecond. But What if

881
00:44:28,840 --> 00:44:32,400
our assumption that quantum mechanics can only survive in a pristine,

882
00:44:32,480 --> 00:44:36,679
frozen vacuum is completely wrong? What if nature already solved

883
00:44:36,719 --> 00:44:38,239
the problem of decoherence.

884
00:44:38,599 --> 00:44:41,880
Speaker 2: This brings us to a cutting edge, absolutely astonishing, and

885
00:44:42,000 --> 00:44:47,239
highly controversial new area of interdisciplinary science known as quantum biology.

886
00:44:47,320 --> 00:44:48,639
Speaker 1: It sounds like an oxymoron.

887
00:44:48,880 --> 00:44:51,199
Speaker 2: It does. It is exactly what it sounds like, though.

888
00:44:51,320 --> 00:44:53,679
It is the study of how the counterintuitive laws of

889
00:44:53,760 --> 00:45:00,039
quantum physics superposition, tunneling, entanglement applied directly inside living biological selves.

890
00:44:59,719 --> 00:45:03,239
Speaker 1: Which it feels contradictory, right because earlier we establish that biology,

891
00:45:03,519 --> 00:45:06,480
the macroscopic world of cells and tissue, is built on

892
00:45:06,519 --> 00:45:09,880
top of the quantum role but operates on sensible, classical rules.

893
00:45:09,960 --> 00:45:11,920
Speaker 2: That was the assumption for decades. But we have to

894
00:45:11,960 --> 00:45:14,440
remember that biological life has been evolving on this planet

895
00:45:14,480 --> 00:45:17,840
for nearly four billion years, and evolution by natural selection

896
00:45:17,960 --> 00:45:20,920
is the ultimate ruthless optimizer exactly.

897
00:45:21,239 --> 00:45:26,239
Speaker 1: The premise is simple, but utterly revolutionary. Quantum mechanics isn't

898
00:45:26,280 --> 00:45:28,880
some dark magic. It is just a set of available

899
00:45:28,920 --> 00:45:32,840
physical laws, right, And if biological life, over the course

900
00:45:32,880 --> 00:45:35,920
of billions of years of random genetic mutations, and trial

901
00:45:35,960 --> 00:45:40,719
and error inadvertently discovered that utilizing a quantum process gives

902
00:45:40,719 --> 00:45:45,000
an organism a slight survival advantage. It will absolutely lock

903
00:45:45,079 --> 00:45:46,920
in and utilize that quantum process.

904
00:45:46,960 --> 00:45:48,840
Speaker 2: Survival of the fittest applies to physics too.

905
00:45:49,119 --> 00:45:52,400
Speaker 1: Yeah. If quantum tunneling, having an electron ghost its way

906
00:45:52,440 --> 00:45:54,960
through a solid chemical barrier from point A to point

907
00:45:54,960 --> 00:45:58,559
B is fundamentally more energy efficient than forcing a classical

908
00:45:58,599 --> 00:46:02,280
particle over that barrier, biological life will evolve the cellular

909
00:46:02,400 --> 00:46:05,960
machinery to utilize quantum tunneling. It's not magic, it's just

910
00:46:06,000 --> 00:46:07,159
efficient biology.

911
00:46:07,360 --> 00:46:10,199
Speaker 2: And we are moving past the theoretical phase of this idea.

912
00:46:10,360 --> 00:46:13,599
We are beginning to observe concrete hints of this happening

913
00:46:13,679 --> 00:46:14,159
in nature.

914
00:46:14,239 --> 00:46:15,199
Speaker 1: Where are we seeing it.

915
00:46:15,400 --> 00:46:18,280
Speaker 2: One of the most rigorously studied and compelling areas of

916
00:46:18,360 --> 00:46:23,159
quantum biology right now is photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is the foundational

917
00:46:23,199 --> 00:46:28,199
process by which plants, algae, and certain bacteria turn raw sunlight, water,

918
00:46:28,280 --> 00:46:32,400
and carbon dioxide into chemical energy. It is the basis

919
00:46:32,440 --> 00:46:34,280
for almost all life on Earth.

920
00:46:34,719 --> 00:46:37,679
Speaker 1: Let's break down the mechanics of how quantum physics plays

921
00:46:37,719 --> 00:46:41,039
into a leaf. What is actually happening when sunlight hits

922
00:46:41,039 --> 00:46:41,559
a plant.

923
00:46:41,800 --> 00:46:44,559
Speaker 2: When a photon of sunlight strikes the surface of a leaf,

924
00:46:45,199 --> 00:46:48,400
it is absorbed by a light gathering molecule, creating a

925
00:46:48,440 --> 00:46:52,159
localized packet of energy called an excitant. An excitant, yes,

926
00:46:52,599 --> 00:46:54,800
this excitement needs to travel from the outer edge of

927
00:46:54,800 --> 00:46:56,960
the plant structure, deep into the heart of the cell,

928
00:46:57,199 --> 00:47:00,239
to a specific location called the reaction center, where the

929
00:47:00,280 --> 00:47:02,679
actual chemical conversion into energy takes place.

930
00:47:02,760 --> 00:47:05,320
Speaker 1: Okay, so the energy packet has to navigate a maze

931
00:47:05,360 --> 00:47:07,960
through the complex protein structures of the cell to get

932
00:47:08,000 --> 00:47:08,559
to the factor.

933
00:47:08,679 --> 00:47:11,920
Speaker 2: Exactly now, under classical Newtonian rules, this excitement would bounce

934
00:47:11,960 --> 00:47:15,480
around randomly like a pinball. You'd hit protein, bounce left,

935
00:47:15,480 --> 00:47:18,760
in another, bounce right, slowly working its way toward the

936
00:47:18,760 --> 00:47:20,400
reaction center through a random.

937
00:47:20,119 --> 00:47:21,440
Speaker 1: Walk, which seems slow.

938
00:47:21,679 --> 00:47:24,079
Speaker 2: It is, and if it did that, it would lose

939
00:47:24,119 --> 00:47:26,800
a massive amount of energy as heat along the way.

940
00:47:26,840 --> 00:47:30,840
It would be highly inefficient. Yet when we measure photosynthesis

941
00:47:30,840 --> 00:47:35,159
in nature, the transfer of energy is shockingly almost perfectly efficient.

942
00:47:35,880 --> 00:47:39,159
Nearly one hundred percent of the energy absorbed reaches the

943
00:47:39,239 --> 00:47:43,519
reaction center. Classical physics struggles to explain how it navigates

944
00:47:43,599 --> 00:47:46,320
the maze so perfectly without losing energy.

945
00:47:46,800 --> 00:47:48,719
Speaker 1: So what is the quantum explanation?

946
00:47:49,039 --> 00:47:52,119
Speaker 2: The growing consensus in quantumbiology is that the excitement isn't

947
00:47:52,119 --> 00:47:55,840
bouncing around like a classical pinball. Instead, it enters a

948
00:47:55,840 --> 00:47:57,559
state of quantum superposition.

949
00:47:57,840 --> 00:47:59,840
Speaker 1: Oh like the maze we talked about earlier.

950
00:47:59,519 --> 00:48:02,480
Speaker 2: Exactly behaves like a wave of probability. Just like the

951
00:48:02,559 --> 00:48:06,199
quantum computer exploring the maze, the energy packet explores every

952
00:48:06,239 --> 00:48:09,440
single possible pathway through the protein matrix to the reaction

953
00:48:09,559 --> 00:48:13,280
center simultaneously. It tests all routes at the exact same time,

954
00:48:13,559 --> 00:48:17,599
and through quantum interference, it immediately collapses into the absolute fastest,

955
00:48:17,679 --> 00:48:19,199
most efficient path possible.

956
00:48:19,440 --> 00:48:21,719
Speaker 1: Okay, stop and think about the sheer implications of that

957
00:48:21,800 --> 00:48:25,719
for a second. Our greatest, most highly funded physicists and

958
00:48:25,760 --> 00:48:29,320
engineers are currently struggling to keep a single isolated quibit

959
00:48:29,480 --> 00:48:33,000
stable for a fraction of a second inside a multimillion

960
00:48:33,039 --> 00:48:38,679
dollar super cooled, magnetically shielded vacuum chamber. But a living cell,

961
00:48:39,119 --> 00:48:41,400
a green leaf on an oak tree outside your window

962
00:48:41,719 --> 00:48:46,880
is a warm, hot, messy, wet, incredibly noisy environment. There

963
00:48:46,920 --> 00:48:50,960
are thousands of chaotic classical chemical reactions taking place constantly.

964
00:48:51,320 --> 00:48:55,960
The thermal vibrations alone should shatter any delicate quantum state instantly.

965
00:48:56,480 --> 00:49:00,000
It is the exact polar opposite of a pristine quantum lab.

966
00:49:00,239 --> 00:49:02,760
Speaker 2: And yet, if the models of quantum biology are correct,

967
00:49:03,239 --> 00:49:07,199
biological life has somehow evolved the intricate molecular trecks necessary

968
00:49:07,360 --> 00:49:08,679
to stave off decoherence.

969
00:49:08,960 --> 00:49:10,079
Speaker 1: It's doing what we can't do.

970
00:49:10,480 --> 00:49:12,800
Speaker 2: It has figured out how to structurally shield and maintain

971
00:49:12,920 --> 00:49:16,760
delicate quantum coherence inside that hot, chaotic cellular soup for

972
00:49:16,920 --> 00:49:19,280
just long enough to carry out a vital biological function.

973
00:49:19,800 --> 00:49:21,960
It manages to hold the environment at bay for that

974
00:49:22,000 --> 00:49:24,480
crucial microsecond for the quantum magic to happen.

975
00:49:24,719 --> 00:49:27,800
Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? If a simple plant

976
00:49:27,880 --> 00:49:33,079
can harness superposition to process energy, what about higher order organisms?

977
00:49:33,360 --> 00:49:36,159
What about us? Does that mean our brains, with their

978
00:49:36,199 --> 00:49:40,480
billions of firing neurons, are just giant, wet quantum computers,

979
00:49:40,760 --> 00:49:44,280
are human beings just walking quantum processors? And is that

980
00:49:44,320 --> 00:49:45,800
where consciousness comes from?

981
00:49:46,320 --> 00:49:50,639
Speaker 2: This raises an incredibly important and deeply philosophical question. But

982
00:49:50,679 --> 00:49:53,880
we have to pull back firmly here. Jim al Khalilely

983
00:49:54,000 --> 00:49:57,159
is very explicit and vocal about this warning in his work,

984
00:49:57,280 --> 00:49:58,559
and we must heed it.

985
00:49:59,079 --> 00:50:00,679
Speaker 1: Okay, so we shouldn't that leap.

986
00:50:00,719 --> 00:50:03,840
Speaker 2: We must not make that leap. He argues passionately that

987
00:50:03,920 --> 00:50:06,679
suggesting the human brain is a quantum computer, or that

988
00:50:06,760 --> 00:50:10,159
consciousness is a quantum phenomenon, is going much too far

989
00:50:10,280 --> 00:50:11,280
based on current evidence.

990
00:50:11,320 --> 00:50:13,239
Speaker 1: Why is that such a dangerous leap to make?

991
00:50:13,400 --> 00:50:15,800
Speaker 2: Because it falls into a logical trap. The reality is,

992
00:50:15,840 --> 00:50:19,159
we don't even fully understand the fundamental, biological or classical

993
00:50:19,199 --> 00:50:22,159
nature of consciousness, yet it remains one of the greatest,

994
00:50:22,239 --> 00:50:24,840
most profound mysteries in all of science. We don't know

995
00:50:24,880 --> 00:50:26,800
how meat generates subjective experience.

996
00:50:26,880 --> 00:50:28,480
Speaker 1: That's a good point. We don't know how the normal

997
00:50:28,519 --> 00:50:29,280
stuff works.

998
00:50:29,079 --> 00:50:32,280
Speaker 2: Yet, right, And quantum mechanics is also deeply mysterious and

999
00:50:32,320 --> 00:50:35,360
poorly understood by the general public. There is a temptation

1000
00:50:35,559 --> 00:50:38,960
to take one massive mystery consciousness and explain it by

1001
00:50:38,960 --> 00:50:42,599
simply slapping another massive mystery, quantum mechanics, on top of it.

1002
00:50:42,840 --> 00:50:44,960
Speaker 1: Ah explaining a mystery with a mystery.

1003
00:50:45,119 --> 00:50:49,760
Speaker 2: Yes, Al Khalili warrens that haphazardly throwing the spooky mysteries

1004
00:50:49,800 --> 00:50:53,639
of quantum mechanics into the already unsolved muddy debate of

1005
00:50:53,679 --> 00:50:58,840
consciousness is profoundly unhelpful and scientifically lazy. We need to

1006
00:50:58,840 --> 00:51:02,440
stick to the biology. We can actually observe, measure, and test,

1007
00:51:02,840 --> 00:51:07,920
like the specific molecular processes of photosynthesis or even avian navigation.

1008
00:51:08,320 --> 00:51:11,159
Speaker 1: Fair enough, that is a very grounded perspective. We will

1009
00:51:11,239 --> 00:51:13,719
keep the quantum ghosts out of human consciousness for now.

1010
00:51:14,079 --> 00:51:16,840
But the sheer observable fact that a puddle of algae

1011
00:51:16,920 --> 00:51:19,920
or a blade of grass might be successfully using superposition

1012
00:51:20,000 --> 00:51:22,840
to optimize its survival is wild enough on its own.

1013
00:51:22,920 --> 00:51:25,880
It really is, because if biological life really has figured

1014
00:51:25,880 --> 00:51:28,360
out the structural tricks to fight decoherence that we are

1015
00:51:28,360 --> 00:51:31,559
currently spending billions of dollars trying to solve with giant freezers,

1016
00:51:32,119 --> 00:51:34,639
it changes our entire engineering approach. We don't have to

1017
00:51:34,679 --> 00:51:36,119
reinvent the wheel from scratch.

1018
00:51:36,400 --> 00:51:40,800
Speaker 2: That is precisely the most thrilling prospect of this interdisciplinary convergence.

1019
00:51:41,480 --> 00:51:45,000
If life has had nearly four billion years of an

1020
00:51:45,039 --> 00:51:49,800
evolutionary headstart to figure out how to maintain quantum coherence

1021
00:51:49,840 --> 00:51:52,559
in a messy room temperature environment, we don't need to

1022
00:51:52,639 --> 00:51:54,679
guess how to build a better quantum computer.

1023
00:51:54,920 --> 00:51:55,920
Speaker 1: We can just copy it.

1024
00:51:55,960 --> 00:51:58,920
Speaker 2: We can simply observe nature. We can study the protein

1025
00:51:58,960 --> 00:52:02,280
scaffolds in a leaf, understand how they shield the excitement

1026
00:52:02,280 --> 00:52:06,800
from thermal noise, shortcut our own clumsy engineering process, and

1027
00:52:06,920 --> 00:52:10,599
just biomimic what life has already perfected. The ultimate room

1028
00:52:10,639 --> 00:52:13,519
temperature quantum computer might not look like a golden chandelier.

1029
00:52:13,559 --> 00:52:15,760
It might look like a vat of synthetic biology.

1030
00:52:15,880 --> 00:52:18,239
Speaker 1: It truly feels like we are standing at the absolute

1031
00:52:18,320 --> 00:52:23,159
conversions of two massive historical title waves. We constantly hear

1032
00:52:23,199 --> 00:52:26,960
today about the classical revolution and artificial intelligence, how large

1033
00:52:27,039 --> 00:52:30,360
language models and machine learning are rapidly reshaping everything from

1034
00:52:30,480 --> 00:52:33,960
art to medicine to the economy. It dominates the headlines,

1035
00:52:34,000 --> 00:52:37,320
it does. But this second quantum revolution is rising silently

1036
00:52:37,440 --> 00:52:39,840
right alongside it, and it is going to be just

1037
00:52:39,880 --> 00:52:43,760
as important and just as deeply fundamentally impactful on the

1038
00:52:43,800 --> 00:52:45,480
trajectory of human history.

1039
00:52:45,840 --> 00:52:49,639
Speaker 2: And the true ultimate final frontier is what happens when

1040
00:52:49,679 --> 00:52:53,760
those two technological waves eventually crash into each other and merge.

1041
00:52:54,280 --> 00:52:56,559
As Jim Al Khalelei notes with a sense of profound,

1042
00:52:56,679 --> 00:53:00,119
almost cautious wonder, never mind, when quantum technologies merge with

1043
00:53:00,199 --> 00:53:03,280
artificial intelligence than Wow, who knows what will come?

1044
00:53:03,440 --> 00:53:03,719
Speaker 1: Yeah?

1045
00:53:03,800 --> 00:53:07,559
Speaker 2: Who knows? Think about it. We're currently using classical computers

1046
00:53:07,559 --> 00:53:11,280
to build the ultimate analytical reasoning mind in AI, and

1047
00:53:11,360 --> 00:53:14,559
simultaneously we are about to hand that nason AI the

1048
00:53:14,679 --> 00:53:19,119
ultimate fundamentally omnipotent computational engine of a quantum processor. The

1049
00:53:19,159 --> 00:53:21,840
feedback loop of discovery that will generate is beyond our

1050
00:53:21,880 --> 00:53:23,119
current capacity to predict.

1051
00:53:23,480 --> 00:53:26,320
Speaker 1: It is a staggering amount of information to take in.

1052
00:53:26,599 --> 00:53:30,119
We have journeyed all the way from the fuzzy, probabilistic,

1053
00:53:30,239 --> 00:53:35,119
wavelike foundations of the universe, past Einstein's deep stubborn skepticism

1054
00:53:35,159 --> 00:53:39,280
of spooky entanglement, all the way to ghost cameras photographing

1055
00:53:39,440 --> 00:53:44,079
unseen tumors and unbreakable global Internet bound by the laws

1056
00:53:44,119 --> 00:53:48,000
of physics, and clouds of absolute zero atoms trapped by

1057
00:53:48,079 --> 00:53:51,400
lasers doing impossible math. It's a lot to process, and

1058
00:53:51,440 --> 00:53:54,599
we've even looked at the very real paradigm shifting possibility

1059
00:53:54,599 --> 00:53:56,840
that the simple green leaf sitting on the tree outside

1060
00:53:56,880 --> 00:54:01,440
your window is currently performing complex quantum calculations in the messy,

1061
00:54:01,800 --> 00:54:03,719
noisy soup of biological life.

1062
00:54:03,840 --> 00:54:06,639
Speaker 2: The ultimate goal of acquiring this knowledge of diving this

1063
00:54:06,760 --> 00:54:09,639
deep into the mechanics of reality isn't just to memorize

1064
00:54:09,679 --> 00:54:12,000
a few cool facts to sound smart at a dinner party.

1065
00:54:12,400 --> 00:54:15,239
It is to fundamentally alter how you perceive the world

1066
00:54:15,320 --> 00:54:18,280
around you. When you look at your reality today, will

1067
00:54:18,320 --> 00:54:20,320
you touch a solid wall, or look at a plant,

1068
00:54:20,599 --> 00:54:22,960
or drop a pen. You should look at it knowing

1069
00:54:23,000 --> 00:54:27,559
that the strange, counterintuitive, seemingly magical quantum realm isn't just

1070
00:54:27,599 --> 00:54:31,360
an abstract mathematical equation locked away on a university chalkboard.

1071
00:54:31,880 --> 00:54:36,320
It is the actual, tangible, buzzing fabric of your physical reality.

1072
00:54:36,400 --> 00:54:37,320
Speaker 1: It's all around us.

1073
00:54:37,639 --> 00:54:40,920
Speaker 2: It is the operating system of the universe, and humanity,

1074
00:54:41,000 --> 00:54:43,840
after a century of theory, is finally reaching out to

1075
00:54:43,880 --> 00:54:46,480
pull those threads and write our own code.

1076
00:54:46,880 --> 00:54:49,519
Speaker 1: And so as we wrap up this exploration on thrilling threads,

1077
00:54:49,559 --> 00:54:51,920
we turn it over to you. If evolution has already

1078
00:54:51,960 --> 00:54:54,840
spent billions of years playing with quantum mechanics in the chaotic,

1079
00:54:54,960 --> 00:54:58,159
messy environment of living cells to optimize survival, and we

1080
00:54:58,199 --> 00:55:00,599
as a species are finally learning how to program that

1081
00:55:00,679 --> 00:55:04,559
exact same foundational code, what is the first app or

1082
00:55:04,639 --> 00:55:07,800
solution you hope humanity builds with it. If you're handed

1083
00:55:07,840 --> 00:55:10,719
the keys to a mature, fully stable quantum computer that

1084
00:55:10,760 --> 00:55:13,679
could effortlessly solve a billion year problem in five minutes,

1085
00:55:14,239 --> 00:55:16,639
what is the very first question you're asking it? What

1086
00:55:16,800 --> 00:55:18,920
is the first mystery you are commanding.

1087
00:55:18,559 --> 00:55:19,119
Speaker 2: It to solve?

1088
00:55:19,519 --> 00:55:20,960
Speaker 1: Let us know your thoughts in the comments.