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Speaker 1: I want you to do something for me right now, like, seriously,

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wherever you.

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Speaker 2: Are, Yeah, play along with us for a second.

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Speaker 1: Right, whether you're commuting or sitting at your desk or

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just relaxing at home. I want you to physically reach

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out and touch something, tap.

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Speaker 2: The screen of the device you're listening on.

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Speaker 1: Or you know, if you're sitting down, just knock on

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the arm of the chair, press your hand against the

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nearest wall. Yeah, it feels definitively solid, like it physically

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pushes back against your hand.

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Speaker 2: It has weight, It has permanence.

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Speaker 1: Exactly, It has this very clear, defining presence in your reality.

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You don't have to worry about your hand of suddenly

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melting through it.

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Speaker 2: Or the chair just blinking out of existence entirely.

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Speaker 1: Right. But what if I told you that this solidity,

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this absolute concrete certainty you feel beneath your fingertips, is

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just a complete and utter.

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Speaker 2: Illusion, a total fabrication.

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Speaker 1: What if the universe is like fundamentally this alien, shifting

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cloud of probabilities, and that chair you are sitting on

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only decide to be solid because you, simply by existing

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and interacting with it, basically forced it to.

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Speaker 2: It is without a doubt the ultimate rug pull of

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human existence. It really is, because I mean, we evolved

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over millions of years to trust our senses. On a

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macroscopic scale, We're wired to believe that a rock is

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a rock, a tree is a tree, and the empty

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space between us and the stars is exactly that empty, right,

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just empty. We are biologically hardwired for classical mechanics. But

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the closer we look, the more we isolate the fundamental

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building blocks of everything around you, the more that comforting,

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intuitive version of reality completely unravels.

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Speaker 1: It unravels into something that honestly borders on magic.

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Speaker 2: It really does.

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Speaker 1: So Welcome to Thrilling Threads. This is the show where

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we take a stack of fascinating scientific sources, cutting edge research,

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historical transcripts, and we completely unravel them to find the

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most mind bending insights.

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Speaker 2: We aren't here to just read off a list of facts,

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you know.

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Speaker 1: No, definitely not looking for the cheat codes to the

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reality we live in. We want to explore the very

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mechanics of existence, even if we have absolutely no idea

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what kind of game we're actually trapped inside. Well said, thanks, So,

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today we are exploring twelve quantum mysteries that science still

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cannot fully explain. And because you were listening to this,

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I know you already understand the basics. You know the

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cliff notes of the double slit experiment.

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Speaker 2: You've heard the buzzword quantum thrown around in sci fi movies.

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Speaker 1: Right exactly. But today we are going way past the

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surface level. We're going to look at the actual machinery,

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the history, the math, and the deeply unsettling philosophy of

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the quantum realm.

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Speaker 2: And to truly set the stage for how bizarre this

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machinery is, I think we need to briefly anchor ourselves

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in the world. We thought we lived in the classical world,

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right for centuries. Classical physics, so the physics of Isaac Newton,

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James Clark, Maxwell Galileo. It told us a very specific,

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highly comforting story about the.

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Speaker 1: Universe, a very neat and tidy story exactly.

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Speaker 2: It told us the universe was a cold, logical, predictable,

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mechanical machine, like a clockwork cosmos.

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Speaker 1: Right where cause and effect are locked in this perfect,

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unbreakable chain.

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Speaker 2: Yes, Pierre Simon Laplace famously proposed this area called Laplie's.

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Speaker 1: Demon Oh I love this concept.

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Speaker 2: It's fascinating, right. It's the idea that if a super intellect,

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a demon knew the precise location and momentum of every

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single atom in the universe right now, like every single one,

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every single one, if it knew all that data, it

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could perfectly predict the future and perfectly reconstruct the entire past.

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Speaker 1: Because everything is deterministic.

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Speaker 2: Everything. If you throw a baseball, you can calculate its

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exact arc. There is a place for everything, and everything

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is in its place.

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Speaker 1: But then the twentieth century happens.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Max Plank, Albert Einstein, Niels bor Werner, Heisenberg. They

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didn't just tweak that classical model.

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Speaker 1: They took a sledgehammer to it.

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Speaker 2: They absolutely shattered it. They proved that at the fundamental level,

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determinism is debt completely dead.

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Speaker 1: So in this de dive today, we are going to

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journey through the absolute breakdown of matter, the profound lie

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of empty.

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Speaker 2: Space, the physical illusion of distance, extreme.

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Speaker 1: Malleability of time, and finally, the terrifying universe altering power

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of your own observation. It's a lot to cover, it is,

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so let's start at the very bottom, the absolute foundation

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to understand just how weird the universe actually is. We

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have to completely redefine what stuff even is.

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Speaker 2: The breakdown of matter itself, right, and.

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Speaker 1: This brings us straight into the historical nightmare of wave

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particle duell.

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Speaker 2: Oh the classic argument.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, now, you and I and everyone listening know the

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basic concept light and matter can act like both a

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wave and a particle. But what always strikes me when

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diving into the source material is the sheer historical whiplash

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of this discovery.

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Speaker 2: Because for hundreds of years physicists fought bitterly over this.

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Speaker 1: They really did. Like Newton insisted light was made of

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corpuscles little bullets, and.

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Speaker 2: Christian Houygen said no, well, it's a wave.

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Speaker 1: And then Thomas Young does his double sled experiment in

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eighteen oh one proves it's a wave, and everyone settles down.

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Everyone's happy. But then nineteen oh five happens.

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Speaker 2: Yes, Einstein's Anismerabulus, his miracle year. He just ruins the piece,

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he really does. Einstein looks at the photoelectric effect, which

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is essentially how light knocks electrons off a piece of metal. Now,

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if light were purely a continuous wave shining a really bright,

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low frequency light should eventually build up enough energy to

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knock an electron loose.

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Speaker 1: Like weights crashing against a wall until.

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Speaker 2: It breaks exactly, but it doesn't do that. Einstein proved

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that light must be arriving in discrete, indivisible packets of

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energy quanta photons.

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Speaker 1: So he brings the bullet theory back from the den.

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Speaker 2: He brings it back to explain this phenomenon, which.

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Speaker 1: Completely breaks our brains, because you know, you can't have both.

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In our everyday macroscopic world, things are fundamentally divided.

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Speaker 2: They fall into neat categories.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you cannot throw a rock and have a diffract

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and ripple through a chain link fence. You cannot touch

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a wave of ocean water as if it were a

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solid stone. The categories are mutually exclusive.

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Speaker 2: And this is where the human brain really starts to misfire.

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When you strip away the macroscopic world and you peer

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down at a single electron, or a photon of light,

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or even an entire molecule like a buckey.

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Speaker 1: Ball, it just completely refuses to obey those categories.

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Speaker 2: It does. An electron is not a little spinning sphere.

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It is something completely alien to human experience.

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Speaker 1: And the sources are very careful to point out that

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It's not just a matter of our instruments being confused.

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Speaker 2: No, No, the math dictates its reality.

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Speaker 1: It's almost like a chameleon, but like a chameleon on

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a foundational mathematical level. Instead of just changing its color

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to match a leaf for a branch, this quantum chameleon

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fundamentally changes its entire species depending on how you interrogate it.

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Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it, because if.

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Speaker 1: You set up an experiment like the photoelectric effect to

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measure an electron as a solid particle, it obliges. It

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acts like a microsc topic billiard ball, bouncing off detectors,

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leaving a very distinct, localized impact.

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Speaker 2: But if you take that exact same entity and you

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force it through a diffraction grating, changing your measuring device

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to look for a wave.

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Speaker 1: It suddenly behaves exactly like a ripple of water.

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Speaker 2: It interface with itself. And what is so crucial here,

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what most pop science summaries tend to gloss over is

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the mathematics of the wave.

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Speaker 1: Function right or when Schrodinger.

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Speaker 2: Formulated in nineteen twenty six. The wave function, often denoted

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by the Greek letter CI, is not a physical wave

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of matter like a sound wave, in the air.

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Speaker 1: So what is it.

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Speaker 2: It is a mathematical probability cloud that exists in a

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realm of complex numbers, numbers involving the square root of

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negative one.

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Speaker 1: So it's imaginary math, well, complex math.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a wave of probability.

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Speaker 1: Max Burne was the one to figure that out. Yeah,

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the Born rule exactly.

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Speaker 2: He realized that if you take the square of the

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absolute value of Schrodinger's wave function, it gives you the

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exact probability of finding the particle in a specific location

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if you were to look for it.

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Speaker 1: That is just wild to me. We are literally constructed

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from mathematics that we cannot touch. Yes, the chair you

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are sitting in right now, the device you are holding,

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they are entirely made of these ghostly vibrating probabilities.

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Speaker 2: Which perfectly brings us to the concept of superposition, because

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if an unmeasured particle is just a wave of probability,

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it means that until you make that measurement, it doesn't

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have a single definitive.

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Speaker 1: State, hasn't made up its mind, right.

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Speaker 2: It exists in a linear combination of all possible states simultaneously.

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Speaker 1: It's doing everything everywhere, all at once.

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Speaker 2: Precisely. If an electron has the option to spin clockwise

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or counterclockwise and you haven't checked it, it is doing

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both at the same time, at the exact same time.

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A photon traveling toward a half silvered mirror is both

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passing through it and reflecting off it at the exact

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same moment. The mathematics absolutely demand that the particle is

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physically smeared across a spectrum of contradictory reality.

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Speaker 1: And I want to pause here and dig into Schrodinger's cat,

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because the common cultural understanding of this thought experiment is

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completely backward.

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Speaker 2: Oh entirely.

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Speaker 1: People use it to say, look, how cool and weird

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quantum mechanics is. A cat can be alive and dead.

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But when you read Erwin Schrodinger's original nineteen thirty five paper,

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he wasn't celebrating this.

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Speaker 2: He was mocking it.

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Speaker 1: He was being incredibly sarcastic.

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Speaker 2: He really was. Schrodinger created the cat in a box

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scenario to show his colleagues how utterly absurd their Copenhaggen

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interpretation was when you scale it up to macroscopic life.

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He basically said, Okay, let's link the life of a

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cat inside a sealed steel chamber to the random decay

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of a radioactive atom, and if that atom is in

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a superposition of both decayed and not decayed, the math

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of quantum mechanics insists that the macroscopic cat must also

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become entangled with the atom, So.

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Speaker 1: The cat enters a superposition.

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Speaker 2: Exactly, it is simultaneously physically alive and dead until a

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human opens the box to check.

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Speaker 1: And Shorting was basically shouting, do you see how ridiculous

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your math becomes if we apply it to everyday objects?

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Speaker 2: Yes, he thought it was a flaw in the theory, and.

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Speaker 1: This leads us to the giant elephant in the room

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of modern physics. The measurement props a big one because

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I have to push back a little on the standard

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physics narrative here. Modern physicists talk a lot about decoherence.

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Speaker 2: Yes they do.

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Speaker 1: They explain that the environment is messy, the air, molecules,

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the thermal radiation, cosmic rays, they are all constantly bumping

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into objects, effectively measuring them and stripping away these superpositions

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before they can get to the size of a cat.

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Speaker 2: Right, the wave function gets tangled up with the environment.

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Speaker 1: But to me that feels like a dodge. I mean,

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it explains how a superposition leaks into the environment, but

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it doesn't explain the fundamental why.

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Speaker 2: The actual mechanism of collapse exactly.

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Speaker 1: Why does the universe tolerate impossible overlapping realities when things

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are isolated and tiny, but forces a definitive classical choice

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when things get big? What actually constitutes a measurement? That

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is the question does it require a conscious mind or

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just a rock bumping into it?

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Speaker 2: You've just hit on the deepest, darkest open debate in

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all of science. Decoherence, as you correctly pointed out, only

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explains how the quantum interference gets scrambled, does not explain

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the actual collapse of the wave function into a single

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localized reality.

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Speaker 1: It just sweeps it under the rug kind of.

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Speaker 2: We have the Shreddinger equation, which perfectly predicts how the

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superposition evolves over time in a smooth, deterministic way.

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Speaker 1: It's a nice, clean wave But the.

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Speaker 2: Moment a measurement happens, that smooth evolution violently breaks. The

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wave function collapses, and the transition from a probability cloud

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to a single point in space is a complete mathematical mystery.

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Speaker 1: Wait, there's no math for it.

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Speaker 2: There is no equation for the collapse itself none. It's

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an ad hoc rule we had to staple onto the

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math to make it match our everyday reality.

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Speaker 1: Wow, it's like the universe has two completely separate rule books,

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one for the ghostly quantum realm and one for the

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solid classical realm. And we have absolutely no idea where

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the boundary line is drawn or why it exists.

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Speaker 2: We really don't.

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Speaker 1: But speaking of breaking the rules, we have to talk

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about how these probability clouds interact with solid objects. Let's

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look at quantum tunneling.

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Speaker 2: Oh, this is a fun one because.

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Speaker 1: If matter doesn't have hard edges, it means it doesn't

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really care about walls.

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Speaker 2: Exactly in classical mechanics, if you walk up to a

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brick wall and try to push your hand through it,

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the electromagnetic repulsion between the atoms in your hand and

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the atoms in the wall pushes back. You are stopped.

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Speaker 1: It's a physical barrier.

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Speaker 2: If you roll a marble up a hill and it

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doesn't have enough kinetic energy to reach the top, it

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rolls back down. It doesn't matter if you roll it

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a billion times. Classical physics says it will never magically

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appear on the other side of the hill.

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Speaker 1: But in the quantum realm, walls and hills are apparently

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just suggestions.

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Speaker 2: More than suggestions. They are probabilistic hurdles in quantum mechanics

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because the particles disc buy that wave function we talked about.

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The wave doesn't just abruptly stop when it.

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Speaker 1: Hits a barrier, It bleeds into it.

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Speaker 2: Yes, the mathematics show that the wave function decays exponentially

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inside the barrier, But if the barrier's thin enough, the

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wave function doesn't reach zero before it gets to the

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other side, which means.

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Speaker 1: There is a non zero probability that the particle just

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completely bypasses the wall.

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Speaker 2: Yes, the particle disappears from one side of the impenetrable

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wall and instantaneously reappears on the other side. It tunnels

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through the impossible. That is wild and what's truly fascinating.

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What really grounds this for you and me is that

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this specific quantum glitch is the only reason we are

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alive to have this conversation.

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Speaker 1: The Sun.

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Speaker 2: The Sun. Think about what is happening deep inside the

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core of our star. The temperature is around fifteen million

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degrees celsius, the pressure is incomprehensible.

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Speaker 1: It sounds hot enough to do anything you'd think.

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Speaker 2: So protons are being smashed together to create nuclear fusion,

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which releases the immense light and heat that sustains all

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life on Earth. But in the nineteen twenties physicists realized

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there was a massive problem with the classical math.

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Speaker 1: Fifteen million degrees isn't hot enough.

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Speaker 2: It is nowhere near hot enough. Wait, really, really, protons

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have a positive electric charge. Like magnets with the same poles,

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They repel each other violently.

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Speaker 1: They push each other away.

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Speaker 2: To get them to fuse, they have to overcome that

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mutual electromagnetic repulsion, which is called the cooloam barrier. At

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fifteen million degrees, the protons simply do not possess enough

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kinetic energy to breach that barrier.

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Speaker 1: So they should just bounce off each other exactly.

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Speaker 2: By all the strict laws of classical thermodynamics, the Sun

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should not be able to shine. It should just be

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a cold, dark, inert ball of pressurized hydrogen gas.

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Speaker 1: So the fact that the sun is shining outside your

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window right now is essentially a cosmic physics glitch.

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Speaker 2: It is entirely relying on quantum tunneling. Because those protons

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are quantum wave functions, a tiny minuscule portion of their

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probability cloud literally leaks past that impact netrible kooloom barrier.

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Speaker 1: They cheat, they do.

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Speaker 2: The probability is incredibly low. I mean, any given proton

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might only tunnel once every billion years. But because the

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Sun has such an unimaginably massive number of protons, enough

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of them are tunneling at any given second to sustain

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the nuclear chain reaction.

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Speaker 1: That's incredible. The existence of our entire solar system, the

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creation of all complex elements like the carbon in your DNA,

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relies on matter occasionally ignoring its own physical boundaries.

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Speaker 2: It's beautiful. Really.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so we've established that the solid matter making up

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your body, the chair you're sitting in, and the stars

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in the sky is actually just a shivering ghost of

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mathematical probability that routinely teleports through solid walls, right, which

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is unsettling enough. But what if we zoom out from

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the matter itself. What if we look at the empty

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space between the matter.

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Speaker 2: Ah, the void?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, if I take a box and I pump out

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all this weird probabilistic quantum stuff, the empty space left

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behind is just normal, boring, classical nothingness naturally assumes.

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Speaker 2: So if you evacuate a chamber of all atoms, pump

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out every molecule of gas, remove all the photons of light,

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and perfectly shield it from all magnetic and gravitational fields,

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you would think you have achieved a perfect vacuum.

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Speaker 1: Absolute nothingness, a completely dead stage waiting for actors to arrive.

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Speaker 2: But the universe absolutely forbids true emptiness. The void is

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not empty, which brings us to the Casimir.

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Speaker 1: Effect, the idea that empty space is.

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Speaker 2: A lie, a profound mathematical lie. In nineteen forty eight,

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a Dutch physicist named Hendrik Casimir was studying colloidal solutions,

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but his mathematics led him to propose something that sounded

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like absolute magic.

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Speaker 1: What did he propose?

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Speaker 2: He suggested that a perfect vacuum, pure nothingness, actually contains

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measurable energy, and that it exerts a physical force.

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Speaker 1: From nothing from nothing.

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Speaker 2: It took decades for our precision instruments to catch up

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to his math, but in nineteen ninety seven experiments conclusively

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proved him right.

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Speaker 1: Okay, let's break this down, because on its face it

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makes absolutely no sense. How can thing exert a physical force?

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Where is the energy coming from?

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Speaker 2: It comes from the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

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Speaker 1: Wait, well, you usually apply that to particles right position

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00:17:08,720 --> 00:17:10,079
in momentum.

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Speaker 2: Exactly, but it also applies to the fundamental fields of

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the universe. The uncertainty principle states that you cannot perfectly

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know both the energy of a system and the exact

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time interval. Okay, the equation is delta E times delta

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T must be greater than or equal to planks constant

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divided by four pi. Because of this baked in uncertainty,

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a field can never sit perfectly at zero energy.

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Speaker 1: Why not.

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Speaker 2: If it did, it would have a precise energy which

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is zero for a precise amount of time, which violates

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the quantum speed limit.

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Speaker 1: So to satisfy the math, the vacuum has to constantly fluctuate.

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Speaker 2: Yes, the fabric of space is boiling, boiling, we call

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it quantum foam. It is violently churning with virtual particles,

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pairs of matter and antimatter, like an electron and a

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positron that literally tear themselves out of the void, borrowing

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energy from the future.

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Speaker 1: Borrowing from the future. That sounds like a sci fi movie,

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it does.

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Speaker 2: But it's real. They exist for a billionth of a

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trillionth of a second, and then they annihilate each other,

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returning the energy to the vacuum. They pop in and

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00:18:10,759 --> 00:18:13,279
out of existence so fast they can't be directly seen,

383
00:18:13,839 --> 00:18:17,799
but their aggregate energy, the zero point energy, is very real.

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Speaker 1: So the darkest, quietest, emptiest void in deep intergalactic space

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is actually a roaring ocean of phantom matter. It is.

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That is a terrifying concept.

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Speaker 2: And Casimir figured out how to measure the pressure of

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this phantom ocean. Scientists took two incredibly tiny, perfectly flat

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metal plates and place the microscopic distances apart. We're talking

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nanometers inside a perfect vacuum.

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Speaker 1: Now, why do they have to be so incredibly close together.

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Speaker 2: Because of the wave nature of these virtual particles, the

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gap between the plates acts like a resonant cavity, kind

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of like a guitar string. Okay, only virtual particles with

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specific wavelengths that fit perfectly between the plates can physically

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pop into existence in that gap. The longer wave links

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are mathematically suppressed. They are forbidden from existing in that

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tiny space.

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Speaker 1: It's like trying to fit a huge ocean swell into

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00:19:08,559 --> 00:19:12,160
a tiny bathtub. It just physically cannot form precisely.

401
00:19:12,359 --> 00:19:15,000
Speaker 2: But outside the plates and the rest of the vacuum chamber,

402
00:19:15,119 --> 00:19:19,079
the full infinite spectrum of phantom particles is allowed to

403
00:19:19,160 --> 00:19:22,160
boil and crash against the outer surfaces.

404
00:19:21,640 --> 00:19:23,440
Speaker 1: Of the metal Oh I see where this is going.

405
00:19:23,559 --> 00:19:27,039
Speaker 2: This creates a literal pressure differential. There are more virtual

406
00:19:27,079 --> 00:19:29,000
particles pushing on the outside of the plates than there

407
00:19:29,039 --> 00:19:29,799
are pushing.

408
00:19:29,559 --> 00:19:31,359
Speaker 1: From the inside, so they get pushed together.

409
00:19:31,640 --> 00:19:36,160
Speaker 2: The chaotic, invisible ocean of nothingness physically pushes the two

410
00:19:36,200 --> 00:19:40,960
metal plates together. The vacuum crushes them. Emptiness contains real,

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measurable kinetic energy.

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Speaker 1: Wow. So right now, wherever you are listening to this,

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the empty air around you is completely submerged in this

414
00:19:50,440 --> 00:19:53,759
boiling sea of mathematical phantom, every inch of it. And

415
00:19:53,839 --> 00:19:56,680
if that wasn't enough to make you feel completely untethered

416
00:19:56,720 --> 00:20:00,960
from classical reality, let's talk about how this unz mathematical

417
00:20:01,000 --> 00:20:04,079
world reaches out and touches the physical world. Let's look

418
00:20:04,119 --> 00:20:05,279
at the Aharnau Bom effect.

419
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Speaker 2: This one is brilliant because it is a profound philosophical

420
00:20:08,759 --> 00:20:13,200
shift disguised as a dry physics experiment well. In classical

421
00:20:13,200 --> 00:20:18,839
electro dynamics, causality requires contact. Faraday and Maxwell establish that

422
00:20:19,000 --> 00:20:21,480
if a magnetic field is going to alter the path

423
00:20:21,519 --> 00:20:24,319
of a piece of metal or an electron, the object

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00:20:24,480 --> 00:20:27,759
must physically pass through the magnetic field. You have to

425
00:20:27,799 --> 00:20:30,000
experience the force to be moved by it.

426
00:20:30,400 --> 00:20:34,039
Speaker 1: Right, It's basic logic. If a hurricane is raging in

427
00:20:34,079 --> 00:20:37,759
Florida and you are standing in a sealed bunker in Nevada,

428
00:20:38,319 --> 00:20:41,720
the hurricane cannot blow you over exactly. You cannot be

429
00:20:41,720 --> 00:20:44,400
moved by a storm. You never encounter cause and effect.

430
00:20:44,559 --> 00:20:48,160
Speaker 2: But in nineteen fifty nine, physicists Yakir Arnoff and David

431
00:20:48,200 --> 00:20:51,920
Baum proposed a scenario where this logic is completely bypassed,

432
00:20:52,440 --> 00:20:54,160
and when it was finally tested in the lab, it

433
00:20:54,160 --> 00:20:56,799
shipped the foundations of how we view the underlying math

434
00:20:56,839 --> 00:20:57,519
of the universe.

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00:20:57,599 --> 00:20:58,079
Speaker 1: What do they do?

436
00:20:58,480 --> 00:21:01,039
Speaker 2: They set up an experiment where they fired electrons through

437
00:21:01,039 --> 00:21:03,880
a vacuum tube. Inside the tube, they placed a tightly

438
00:21:03,880 --> 00:21:07,319
wound magnetic coil, the solenoid. But here is the critical part.

439
00:21:07,559 --> 00:21:10,960
They heavily shielded the magnetic coil so that absolutely zero

440
00:21:11,079 --> 00:21:12,960
magnetic field leaked into the path.

441
00:21:12,759 --> 00:21:14,440
Speaker 1: Of the electrons zero leaks.

442
00:21:14,559 --> 00:21:17,759
Speaker 2: The magnetic field was completely contained inside the shielding.

443
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Speaker 1: So the electrons are flying down a perfectly clean highway.

444
00:21:20,960 --> 00:21:23,920
There is no magnetic storm, there is no physical force

445
00:21:23,960 --> 00:21:27,440
touching them whatsoever. They are completely isolated.

446
00:21:26,960 --> 00:21:30,759
Speaker 2: Completely isolated. Yet as the electrons passed by the heavily

447
00:21:30,799 --> 00:21:35,400
shielded magnet, their wave function underwent a measurable phase shift.

448
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Their physical interference pattern on the detector screen changed.

449
00:21:40,079 --> 00:21:41,480
Speaker 1: Wait, really, yes.

450
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Speaker 2: They were measurably influenced by a force they never touched.

451
00:21:45,039 --> 00:21:48,920
Speaker 1: Okay, so if it wasn't the magnetic field itself, what

452
00:21:49,039 --> 00:21:53,599
reached through the impenetrable shielding, What actually touched the electrons?

453
00:21:53,640 --> 00:21:56,240
Speaker 2: The vector potential of the field, The vector potential?

454
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Speaker 1: What is that?

455
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Speaker 2: In classical physics, electromagnetic potentials were considered just theoretical accounting tricks,

456
00:22:01,799 --> 00:22:04,640
abstract mathematical numbers on a chalkboard used to make the

457
00:22:04,640 --> 00:22:08,160
equations easier to solve. We thought only the resulting electric

458
00:22:08,319 --> 00:22:12,200
or magnetic fields were physically real, just numbers on a page, right,

459
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But quantum mechanics forces us to accept that these purely

460
00:22:16,000 --> 00:22:20,920
mathematical potentials carry actual physical reality. The wave function of

461
00:22:20,920 --> 00:22:24,440
the electronics stends through space, and its phase is directly

462
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altered by the vector potential. Even in regions where the

463
00:22:27,720 --> 00:22:29,640
magnetic field is mathematically zero.

464
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Speaker 1: The math itself has an invisible hand that reaches through

465
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physical barriers.

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Speaker 2: It does.

467
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Speaker 1: We are literally ruled by the unseen. Okay, let's synthesize this.

468
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Solid matter is a shifting probability cloud. Empty space is

469
00:22:43,160 --> 00:22:47,440
a roaring ocean of boiling phantom math and mathematical potentials

470
00:22:47,480 --> 00:22:50,960
can reach through solid lead to physically alter matter.

471
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Speaker 2: It's a lot to take in.

472
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Speaker 1: Yeah, it really is. If all of this is true,

473
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it completely begs the question what does physical distance even

474
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mean to the universe? If unseen math connects things, what

475
00:23:02,319 --> 00:23:03,319
are the limits of space?

476
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Speaker 2: If we follow that thread, we discover then in the

477
00:23:05,799 --> 00:23:09,000
quantum realm, physical distance might be a complete fabrication, a

478
00:23:09,039 --> 00:23:12,279
persistent illusion, which brings us to quantum entanglement.

479
00:23:12,400 --> 00:23:16,759
Speaker 1: Ah. Yes, the phenomenon that Albert Einstein famously and bitterly

480
00:23:16,799 --> 00:23:19,759
referred to as spooky action at a distance.

481
00:23:20,000 --> 00:23:23,720
Speaker 2: Einstein was deeply troubled by it, and honestly for good reason.

482
00:23:23,839 --> 00:23:27,319
It violated everything his theory of relativity stood for.

483
00:23:27,559 --> 00:23:28,319
Speaker 1: How does it work?

484
00:23:28,519 --> 00:23:32,279
Speaker 2: Quantum entanglement happens when two particles interact in such a

485
00:23:32,319 --> 00:23:35,599
way that their wave functions merge. They become a single

486
00:23:35,640 --> 00:23:39,359
mathematical entity, no matter how far apart they are. The

487
00:23:39,400 --> 00:23:42,200
bizarre part is what happens when you separate them. You

488
00:23:42,240 --> 00:23:44,480
can take one entangled electron and keep it in a

489
00:23:44,559 --> 00:23:47,799
lab here on Earth, and take its entangled partner and

490
00:23:47,880 --> 00:23:51,240
send it to the Andromeda galaxy, millions of light years.

491
00:23:51,079 --> 00:23:53,720
Speaker 1: Away, so far that it would take light, the absolute

492
00:23:53,720 --> 00:23:57,440
speed limit of causality in the universe, millions of years

493
00:23:57,480 --> 00:23:58,279
to cross the gap.

494
00:23:58,440 --> 00:24:01,160
Speaker 2: Yes, but if you measure the spin of the electron

495
00:24:01,200 --> 00:24:04,119
on Earth, forcing its probability cloud to collapse into a

496
00:24:04,119 --> 00:24:06,880
definitive state, Let's say it randomly collapses to spin up,

497
00:24:07,519 --> 00:24:11,400
the entangled electron millions of light years away, will, instantaneously,

498
00:24:11,519 --> 00:24:14,799
in that exact same plank length of time, snap into

499
00:24:14,839 --> 00:24:17,400
the exact opposite state, spinning.

500
00:24:17,079 --> 00:24:21,200
Speaker 1: Down instantaneously, not a delayed reaction, zero time delay.

501
00:24:21,319 --> 00:24:24,799
Speaker 2: Zero time delay. It happens faster than the speed of light,

502
00:24:24,960 --> 00:24:28,960
entirely defying the absolute cosmic speed limits set by relativity.

503
00:24:29,640 --> 00:24:33,759
It implies that the two particles are somehow communicating instantaneously

504
00:24:33,880 --> 00:24:35,000
across the cosmos.

505
00:24:35,200 --> 00:24:37,680
Speaker 1: Now, I want to really dig into Einstein's objection here,

506
00:24:38,160 --> 00:24:40,640
because he wasn't just being stubborn. He had a very

507
00:24:40,720 --> 00:24:42,079
logical counter argument.

508
00:24:42,200 --> 00:24:47,240
Speaker 2: The nineteen thirty five EPR paper Einstein, Podolski and Rosen right.

509
00:24:47,839 --> 00:24:51,319
Speaker 1: They argue that quantum mechanics had to be incomplete. Einstein

510
00:24:51,359 --> 00:24:55,000
refused to believe in faster than light communication. He believed

511
00:24:55,000 --> 00:24:57,640
that the particles must have secretly agreed on their states

512
00:24:57,920 --> 00:24:59,039
before they were separated.

513
00:24:59,119 --> 00:25:03,200
Speaker 2: He called these hidden variables, and honestly, from a macroscopic

514
00:25:03,279 --> 00:25:06,400
human perspective, it makes total sense. Think of the classic analogy.

515
00:25:06,480 --> 00:25:08,279
Imagine I have a pair of gloves, one left and

516
00:25:08,279 --> 00:25:10,839
one right. I put them in separate identical boxes. I

517
00:25:10,880 --> 00:25:12,599
give one box to you, and you take it to Mars.

518
00:25:12,680 --> 00:25:15,160
I keep my box here on Earth. If I open

519
00:25:15,200 --> 00:25:18,559
my box and find the left glove, I instantaneously know

520
00:25:18,640 --> 00:25:19,240
that you have the.

521
00:25:19,240 --> 00:25:20,799
Speaker 1: Right glove right, because they are a pair.

522
00:25:21,160 --> 00:25:24,920
Speaker 2: Exactly. No faster than light communication happened. The state of

523
00:25:24,960 --> 00:25:27,799
the gloves was hidden, but it was predetermined the moment

524
00:25:27,839 --> 00:25:31,480
they were packed. Einstein essentially said, the particles are like

525
00:25:31,519 --> 00:25:34,240
the gloves. They are carrying hidden data we just can't

526
00:25:34,279 --> 00:25:35,720
see it that.

527
00:25:35,720 --> 00:25:40,599
Speaker 1: Feels incredibly logical. It restores local realism, it restores our sanity.

528
00:25:40,720 --> 00:25:41,119
Speaker 2: It does.

529
00:25:41,519 --> 00:25:44,759
Speaker 1: But then comes an Irish physicist named John Stuart Bell

530
00:25:45,240 --> 00:25:49,640
in nineteen sixty four, and Bell ruins the glove analogy forever.

531
00:25:49,920 --> 00:25:53,400
Speaker 2: Bell's theorem is arguably one of the most profound mathematical

532
00:25:53,440 --> 00:25:56,400
discoveries in the history of science. Bell figured out a

533
00:25:56,400 --> 00:25:59,240
way to actually test Einstein's hidden variables.

534
00:25:58,839 --> 00:26:00,680
Speaker 1: Idea, how do you test something hidden?

535
00:26:00,839 --> 00:26:03,880
Speaker 2: He created a mathematical inequality. He proved that if the

536
00:26:03,960 --> 00:26:07,680
universe was run by these secret predetermined agreements, if local

537
00:26:07,720 --> 00:26:12,200
realism were true, the statistical correlations between separated particles measured

538
00:26:12,240 --> 00:26:15,759
at various different angles could only reach a certain maximum limit.

539
00:26:15,839 --> 00:26:18,720
Speaker 1: He essentially said, a mathematical speed limit for how synchronized

540
00:26:18,720 --> 00:26:20,960
the particles could be if they were acting like classical

541
00:26:20,960 --> 00:26:21,920
clubs exactly.

542
00:26:21,960 --> 00:26:24,319
Speaker 2: And for decades it was just a math equation, but

543
00:26:24,359 --> 00:26:25,880
eventually our technology caught up.

544
00:26:25,960 --> 00:26:27,839
Speaker 1: Starting the nineteen eighty tra Yes.

545
00:26:28,279 --> 00:26:31,200
Speaker 2: With a Laine aspect and continuing with John Clauser and

546
00:26:31,200 --> 00:26:34,599
Anton Zilinger. They all won the twenty twenty two Nobel

547
00:26:34,640 --> 00:26:38,000
Prize in Physics for this work. By the way, scientists

548
00:26:38,079 --> 00:26:42,079
built the machines to test bells inequality. They separated entangled

549
00:26:42,079 --> 00:26:46,559
photons and measured their polarization at incredibly fast speeds, closing

550
00:26:46,640 --> 00:26:48,880
every possible experimental.

551
00:26:48,240 --> 00:26:51,720
Speaker 1: Loophole, the locality loophole, the fair sampling loophole. They shut

552
00:26:51,759 --> 00:26:53,160
them all down, every single one.

553
00:26:53,200 --> 00:26:56,720
Speaker 2: And the result nature broke the math limit. The universe

554
00:26:56,920 --> 00:27:02,200
actively repeatedly violated bells inequality. The experiments proved definitively and

555
00:27:02,279 --> 00:27:05,119
permanently that hidden variables do not exist.

556
00:27:05,200 --> 00:27:05,480
Speaker 1: Wow.

557
00:27:05,519 --> 00:27:08,880
Speaker 2: The particles truly do not have a predetermined state before measurement,

558
00:27:09,119 --> 00:27:13,039
yet they still instantaneously coordinate across the cosmos. The glove

559
00:27:13,079 --> 00:27:14,000
analogy is dead.

560
00:27:14,279 --> 00:27:16,200
Speaker 1: So let's look at the fall out of this. If

561
00:27:16,200 --> 00:27:19,559
we throw out Einstein's hidden variables, the sources outline that

562
00:27:19,599 --> 00:27:22,640
we are left with two terrifying choices regarding the fabric

563
00:27:22,680 --> 00:27:23,359
of our reality.

564
00:27:23,519 --> 00:27:24,279
Speaker 2: Two nightmares.

565
00:27:24,480 --> 00:27:27,960
Speaker 1: Yeah. Either objective reality simply does not exist before we

566
00:27:28,039 --> 00:27:30,799
measure it, meaning the physical properties of the universe are

567
00:27:30,799 --> 00:27:35,799
not real until interrogated, or the universe is entirely non local,

568
00:27:36,680 --> 00:27:41,240
meaning everything everywhere is instantaneously connected to everything else, and

569
00:27:41,279 --> 00:27:45,039
the entire concept of physical three D distance in space

570
00:27:45,440 --> 00:27:48,279
is just a convincing interface. I have to ask you,

571
00:27:48,319 --> 00:27:52,039
as someone who studies this, which existential nightmare is worse,

572
00:27:52,400 --> 00:27:53,039
oh Man?

573
00:27:53,160 --> 00:27:56,599
Speaker 2: From a human perspective, they both strip away our fundamental

574
00:27:56,680 --> 00:28:01,160
understanding of existence. If reality is an objective, until measured,

575
00:28:01,480 --> 00:28:04,240
we are unmoored from the physical universe, which is flood.

576
00:28:04,519 --> 00:28:07,680
But if the universe is strictly non local, it implies

577
00:28:07,720 --> 00:28:11,680
that space itself is essentially a holographic illusion, a graphical

578
00:28:11,759 --> 00:28:15,680
user interface hiding a deeply interconnected matrix where here and

579
00:28:15,759 --> 00:28:19,039
there simply do not exist. At the foundational level of reality,

580
00:28:19,319 --> 00:28:23,000
the particles aren't communicating across space mathematically, they are still

581
00:28:23,039 --> 00:28:26,359
occupying the exact same point in the quantum configuration.

582
00:28:25,920 --> 00:28:29,119
Speaker 1: Space, which makes the reality of quantum teleportation suddenly make

583
00:28:29,160 --> 00:28:31,960
a lot more sense and also seems significantly more horrifying.

584
00:28:32,079 --> 00:28:35,160
It really does, because when we talk about quantum teleportation,

585
00:28:35,920 --> 00:28:38,759
we are talking about beaming Captain Kirk down to a

586
00:28:38,799 --> 00:28:40,000
planet in a flash of light.

587
00:28:40,200 --> 00:28:43,240
Speaker 2: Not at all. We are talking about transferring the pure

588
00:28:43,319 --> 00:28:46,960
quantum state of a particle to another location using that

589
00:28:47,160 --> 00:28:50,640
very entanglement we just discussed. Scientists have already done this

590
00:28:50,720 --> 00:28:55,279
over massive distances, beaming quantum states between ground stations and

591
00:28:55,319 --> 00:28:57,000
the imacious satellite in orbit.

592
00:28:57,440 --> 00:28:58,799
Speaker 1: But I want to be clear on how they do

593
00:28:58,839 --> 00:29:00,480
this because it involve the no.

594
00:29:00,480 --> 00:29:04,480
Speaker 2: Cloning theorem exactly. The universe strictly forbids you from making

595
00:29:04,519 --> 00:29:08,799
a perfect independent copy of an unknown quantum state. You

596
00:29:08,880 --> 00:29:10,680
cannot hit copy and paste.

597
00:29:10,759 --> 00:29:12,319
Speaker 1: You can only cut and paste right.

598
00:29:12,839 --> 00:29:15,720
Speaker 2: To teleport the data of a particle, say particle A,

599
00:29:16,000 --> 00:29:18,720
from Alice to Bob, Alice has to perform a joint

600
00:29:18,799 --> 00:29:21,240
Bell state measurement on particle A and her half of

601
00:29:21,279 --> 00:29:23,160
an entangled pair she shares.

602
00:29:22,880 --> 00:29:24,799
Speaker 1: With Bob, and that measurement is violent.

603
00:29:25,039 --> 00:29:28,599
Speaker 2: It completely destroys the original quantum state of particle A.

604
00:29:29,000 --> 00:29:32,559
The original particle is utterly erased from reality, reduced to

605
00:29:32,640 --> 00:29:33,559
a scrambled mess.

606
00:29:33,599 --> 00:29:34,119
Speaker 1: It's gone.

607
00:29:34,279 --> 00:29:37,240
Speaker 2: Then Alice sends two classical bits of information over a

608
00:29:37,240 --> 00:29:40,839
normal channel to Bob. Bob uses that classical data to

609
00:29:40,880 --> 00:29:44,960
apply a specific mathematical operation, a polygate, to his half

610
00:29:44,960 --> 00:29:48,839
of the entangled pair, and instantly Bob's particle transforms to

611
00:29:48,839 --> 00:29:51,440
perfectly match the original state of particle A.

612
00:29:51,880 --> 00:29:55,480
Speaker 1: To the universe, Bob's distant particle is now the original one.

613
00:29:55,640 --> 00:29:58,880
The information is teleported. This immediately brings up the ship

614
00:29:58,880 --> 00:29:59,920
of theseus thought expair.

615
00:30:00,319 --> 00:30:01,160
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely.

616
00:30:01,400 --> 00:30:03,480
Speaker 1: If you replace every plank of wood on a ship

617
00:30:03,559 --> 00:30:06,680
over time, is it the same ship? But here it's

618
00:30:06,680 --> 00:30:09,720
so much more extreme. Let's scale this up to human terms.

619
00:30:10,400 --> 00:30:13,799
If all of your quantum information is perfectly scanned, completely

620
00:30:13,799 --> 00:30:17,440
erased from reality in New York and perfectly rewritten onto

621
00:30:17,440 --> 00:30:20,240
a pile of blank carbon and oxygen atoms in London,

622
00:30:21,039 --> 00:30:22,119
are you the same person?

623
00:30:22,279 --> 00:30:23,079
Speaker 2: That's the question?

624
00:30:23,319 --> 00:30:26,079
Speaker 1: Does your consciousness transfer or did you just die into

625
00:30:26,160 --> 00:30:28,079
York while a perfect clone woke up in London.

626
00:30:28,160 --> 00:30:31,799
Speaker 2: According to quantum mechanics, the universe treats the new entity

627
00:30:31,920 --> 00:30:36,319
as if it is the absolute original. Because particles are indistinguishable.

628
00:30:36,920 --> 00:30:39,720
An electron in New York is completely identical to an

629
00:30:39,759 --> 00:30:43,400
electron in London. The only thing that differentiates them is

630
00:30:43,440 --> 00:30:47,039
their quantum state their information. So matter is secondary, which

631
00:30:47,079 --> 00:30:51,880
strongly suggests that matter itself is entirely secondary. The physical carbon,

632
00:30:51,960 --> 00:30:55,319
the hydrogen. There are just blank canvaes the pure information.

633
00:30:55,559 --> 00:30:59,200
The quantum digital code is all that truly exists.

634
00:30:59,400 --> 00:31:03,279
Speaker 1: We are just massive localized strings of code running on

635
00:31:03,319 --> 00:31:05,559
a cosmic substrate. That is incredible.

636
00:31:05,599 --> 00:31:06,359
Speaker 2: It's a matrix.

637
00:31:06,440 --> 00:31:09,720
Speaker 1: Okay, we have dismantled the solidity of matter. We have

638
00:31:09,799 --> 00:31:13,200
dismantled the emptiness of space, we have dismantled the physical

639
00:31:13,240 --> 00:31:16,759
reality of distance. Now let's look at how the quantum

640
00:31:16,759 --> 00:31:20,559
realm completely breaks our understanding of time and, more importantly,

641
00:31:21,039 --> 00:31:23,359
what we are fundamentally allowed to know about the universe.

642
00:31:23,759 --> 00:31:26,079
Let's talk about Heisenberg's uncertainty.

643
00:31:25,599 --> 00:31:29,720
Speaker 2: Principle, formulated in nineteen twenty seven by Werner Heisenberg. The

644
00:31:29,759 --> 00:31:33,640
principle states that it is fundamentally mathematically impossible to know

645
00:31:33,720 --> 00:31:36,960
both the exact position and the exact momentum of a

646
00:31:36,960 --> 00:31:40,559
particle at the same time. The more precisely you measure one,

647
00:31:40,880 --> 00:31:42,599
the less precise the other becomes.

648
00:31:42,920 --> 00:31:46,880
Speaker 1: We desperately need to clear up a massive public misconception here,

649
00:31:47,400 --> 00:31:49,519
because when I first learned about this in high school,

650
00:31:49,759 --> 00:31:52,000
I thought it was just an observer effect caused by

651
00:31:52,079 --> 00:31:53,440
clumsy humans.

652
00:31:53,119 --> 00:31:54,119
Speaker 2: A lot of people do.

653
00:31:54,319 --> 00:31:56,559
Speaker 1: I thought, Oh, electrons are so tiny that if I

654
00:31:56,599 --> 00:31:59,640
try to look at one under a microscope, the photon

655
00:31:59,640 --> 00:32:02,880
of l life from my microscope physically bumps into the electron,

656
00:32:03,319 --> 00:32:07,039
knocks it off course, and changes its momentum like using

657
00:32:07,079 --> 00:32:09,359
a bowling ball to measure the position of a marble.

658
00:32:09,400 --> 00:32:12,559
Speaker 2: That is exactly how most people rationalize it. Even Heisenberg

659
00:32:12,640 --> 00:32:15,000
used that analogy early on to explain to lay people,

660
00:32:15,559 --> 00:32:19,319
but it has caused a century of misunderstanding. People think

661
00:32:19,359 --> 00:32:22,039
it preserves the classical idea that the particle does have

662
00:32:22,119 --> 00:32:25,400
a specific hidden location and speed. We just are too

663
00:32:25,480 --> 00:32:27,319
clumsy to measure it without messing it up.

664
00:32:27,400 --> 00:32:28,559
Speaker 1: Right, But that's false.

665
00:32:28,880 --> 00:32:30,240
Speaker 2: That is fundamentally false.

666
00:32:30,319 --> 00:32:34,400
Speaker 1: Right the game would crash. The universe seemingly only allocates

667
00:32:34,440 --> 00:32:37,920
so much resolution or information bandwidth to a given piece

668
00:32:37,960 --> 00:32:40,960
of matter. If you force the universe to zoom in

669
00:32:41,160 --> 00:32:44,759
and give you the absolute precise, high definition position of

670
00:32:44,799 --> 00:32:48,319
an electron, it literally runs out of processing power for

671
00:32:48,359 --> 00:32:53,160
the momentum. The momentum smears out into infinite, unknowable static.

672
00:32:53,319 --> 00:32:56,759
Speaker 2: That is a remarkably apt analogy. The universe has a

673
00:32:56,799 --> 00:33:01,440
built in information limit. It actively censors itself. It refuses

674
00:33:01,480 --> 00:33:04,559
to let you see the deepest mechanical workings of nature

675
00:33:04,599 --> 00:33:05,839
with absolute precision.

676
00:33:06,000 --> 00:33:08,759
Speaker 1: And if that rendering engine analogy holds up, then the

677
00:33:08,839 --> 00:33:11,279
quantum Zeno effect is like finding the cheat code to

678
00:33:11,359 --> 00:33:12,839
hit the pause button on reality.

679
00:33:12,960 --> 00:33:13,519
Speaker 2: It really is.

680
00:33:13,599 --> 00:33:16,240
Speaker 1: This is the concept that observation literally halts the flow

681
00:33:16,279 --> 00:33:16,680
of time.

682
00:33:17,160 --> 00:33:19,759
Speaker 2: We all know the old psychological idiom A watched pot

683
00:33:19,799 --> 00:33:22,359
never boils, time drags when you're staring at the clock.

684
00:33:22,799 --> 00:33:25,839
But in the quantum realm, the quantum Zeno effect, named

685
00:33:25,839 --> 00:33:28,680
after the Greek philosopher Zeno of Valea, proves this is

686
00:33:28,680 --> 00:33:33,480
a literal physical law. Continuous observation freezes a quantum system

687
00:33:33,519 --> 00:33:34,200
in its tracks.

688
00:33:34,279 --> 00:33:35,799
Speaker 1: How is that mechanically possible?

689
00:33:36,079 --> 00:33:40,519
Speaker 2: Think about a radioactive atom left alone. It naturally exists

690
00:33:40,559 --> 00:33:44,880
in a smooth superposition of two states, decayed and not decayed.

691
00:33:45,160 --> 00:33:48,839
As time marches forward, the Schrodinger equation dictates that the

692
00:33:48,880 --> 00:33:53,400
probability that it will decay smoothly increases. At short time scales.

693
00:33:53,440 --> 00:33:57,079
The probability of transition grows nonlinearly proportional to the square

694
00:33:57,079 --> 00:34:00,440
of time. Okay, but, as we established early with the

695
00:34:00,440 --> 00:34:04,759
measurement problem, the moment you interrogate the system, you force

696
00:34:04,880 --> 00:34:07,960
the wave function to collapse into a single, definite state.

697
00:34:08,199 --> 00:34:10,280
Speaker 1: The chameleon is forced to pick a color.

698
00:34:10,199 --> 00:34:12,599
Speaker 2: Exactly, So if you measure the atom and find it

699
00:34:12,599 --> 00:34:15,360
hasn't kayed yet, you collapse the wave function back to

700
00:34:15,400 --> 00:34:19,880
the absolute starting point. The clock completely resets, the probability

701
00:34:19,920 --> 00:34:23,519
of decay drops back down to zero. So what physicists

702
00:34:23,519 --> 00:34:25,840
did in the lab is they took an unstable system,

703
00:34:26,000 --> 00:34:30,159
say beryllium ions, and they began rapidly and continuously checking

704
00:34:30,159 --> 00:34:34,320
their status. They blasted them with incredibly brief laser pulses

705
00:34:34,519 --> 00:34:35,800
millions of times a second.

706
00:34:35,880 --> 00:34:38,679
Speaker 1: They just kept bombarding them with measurements, asking did you

707
00:34:38,760 --> 00:34:40,440
change yet? How about now? How about now?

708
00:34:40,719 --> 00:34:44,960
Speaker 2: And by constantly forcing the system to answer by continuously

709
00:34:45,000 --> 00:34:48,719
collapsing its wave function back to the initial unchanged state

710
00:34:49,079 --> 00:34:52,519
before the probability had time to grow, they trapped the particle.

711
00:34:52,800 --> 00:34:56,840
They completely suppressed its ability to evolve. The mere act

712
00:34:56,960 --> 00:35:00,719
of rapid continuous measurement acts as a f physical break

713
00:35:00,760 --> 00:35:02,800
on the progression of time for that particle.

714
00:35:03,199 --> 00:35:06,079
Speaker 1: We can halt the fundamental processes of nature just by

715
00:35:06,079 --> 00:35:07,440
refusing to look away.

716
00:35:07,679 --> 00:35:08,599
Speaker 2: Just by looking at it.

717
00:35:08,679 --> 00:35:13,400
Speaker 1: But if observation can freeze the present, can it reach backward?

718
00:35:13,760 --> 00:35:17,239
Can it alter the past? Because this brings us to

719
00:35:17,280 --> 00:35:20,320
what I consider the most staggering brain breaking experiment on

720
00:35:20,320 --> 00:35:21,320
our entire outline.

721
00:35:21,400 --> 00:35:22,480
Speaker 2: I know where you're going with this.

722
00:35:22,719 --> 00:35:26,440
Speaker 1: The delayed choice quantum eraser John Archibald Wheeler proposed the

723
00:35:26,480 --> 00:35:29,239
cosmic Thought experiment for this in nineteen seventy eight, and

724
00:35:29,280 --> 00:35:31,920
a team led by Eunho Kim actually pulled off the

725
00:35:32,000 --> 00:35:35,159
lab version in nineteen ninety nine. Can actions in the

726
00:35:35,199 --> 00:35:38,239
present retroactively rewrite the history of a particle.

727
00:35:38,559 --> 00:35:41,119
Speaker 2: To understand the sheer gravity of this, we have to

728
00:35:41,159 --> 00:35:43,880
look deeply at the mechanics of the setup. It builds

729
00:35:43,880 --> 00:35:46,360
on firing particles through an interferometer maze.

730
00:35:46,400 --> 00:35:47,360
Speaker 1: Okay, walk us through it.

731
00:35:47,639 --> 00:35:50,119
Speaker 2: The scientists take a single photon and fire it through

732
00:35:50,159 --> 00:35:53,039
a double slit, But immediately after the slits they put

733
00:35:53,079 --> 00:35:56,360
a BBO crystal, a beta barium worate crystal.

734
00:35:56,559 --> 00:35:57,599
Speaker 1: What does the crystal do?

735
00:35:57,920 --> 00:36:02,320
Speaker 2: This crystal takes the photon and undergoes spontaneous parametric down conversion.

736
00:36:02,840 --> 00:36:05,800
It perfectly splits the photon into an entangled pair of

737
00:36:05,880 --> 00:36:08,760
lower energy photons. We will call them the signal photon

738
00:36:08,920 --> 00:36:10,199
and the idler photon.

739
00:36:10,280 --> 00:36:11,719
Speaker 1: Okay, so we have twins. Yes.

740
00:36:12,199 --> 00:36:15,639
Speaker 2: The signal photon heads straight toward a primary detector screen

741
00:36:15,679 --> 00:36:18,760
to register a hit. The idler photon is sent into

742
00:36:18,760 --> 00:36:22,800
a massive complex maze of beam splitters and mirrors. The

743
00:36:22,920 --> 00:36:25,400
entire purpose of this intricate maze is to figure out

744
00:36:25,440 --> 00:36:28,159
which of the two slits the original photon passed through.

745
00:36:28,480 --> 00:36:31,400
Speaker 1: So we are gathering the witch path information. And as

746
00:36:31,440 --> 00:36:34,159
we know from the basic rules of quantum mechanics, if

747
00:36:34,199 --> 00:36:37,400
the universe knows we are tracking its exact path, the

748
00:36:37,440 --> 00:36:41,199
photon loses its superposition. It acts like a solid little

749
00:36:41,199 --> 00:36:43,639
bullet and creates a clump pattern on the screen not

750
00:36:43,719 --> 00:36:44,559
a Woife pattern.

751
00:36:44,840 --> 00:36:48,119
Speaker 2: Correct. But here is the genius and the absolute horror

752
00:36:48,239 --> 00:36:52,079
of the delayed choice eraser. They design the physical distances

753
00:36:52,079 --> 00:36:54,440
in the labs so that the signal photon hits the

754
00:36:54,480 --> 00:36:59,519
primary detector screen first. Its impact is definitively recorded. It

755
00:36:59,559 --> 00:37:02,559
acts like a classical bullet, But after it has already

756
00:37:02,599 --> 00:37:06,119
hit the screen its entangled twin the idler photon is

757
00:37:06,159 --> 00:37:08,960
still flying through the mirror maze. At the very end

758
00:37:08,960 --> 00:37:12,320
of the maze, the idler photon encounters a semi silvered mirror,

759
00:37:12,679 --> 00:37:16,159
a beam splitter. This acts as a random quantum switch.

760
00:37:16,760 --> 00:37:19,119
It has a fifty to fifty chance of reflecting the

761
00:37:19,119 --> 00:37:22,000
photon into a detector that reveals the witch path data,

762
00:37:22,559 --> 00:37:25,519
or transmitting it into a detector that completely scrambles and

763
00:37:25,559 --> 00:37:27,079
erases the witch path data.

764
00:37:27,639 --> 00:37:30,320
Speaker 1: I want to emphasize the timeline here for everyone listening. Yeah,

765
00:37:30,360 --> 00:37:33,679
the first photon has already completed its journey. It is dead.

766
00:37:34,039 --> 00:37:37,119
Its history is already permanently recorded on the screen. The

767
00:37:37,159 --> 00:37:40,679
decision to erase the data of its twin happens microseconds later.

768
00:37:40,719 --> 00:37:43,480
Speaker 2: But the results defy our understanding of time. When they

769
00:37:43,559 --> 00:37:46,199
run the experiment thousands of times and look at the data,

770
00:37:46,239 --> 00:37:47,599
they find something impossible.

771
00:37:47,639 --> 00:37:48,159
Speaker 1: Are they find?

772
00:37:48,400 --> 00:37:52,599
Speaker 2: For the Idler photons, whose witch path data was preserved,

773
00:37:52,760 --> 00:37:55,960
their signal twins formed a clumped bullet pattern on the screen.

774
00:37:56,639 --> 00:37:59,719
But for the Idler photons, whose data was randomly erased

775
00:37:59,719 --> 00:38:02,639
by the team splitter in the future, their signal twins,

776
00:38:02,639 --> 00:38:04,960
who had already hit the screen in the past, somehow

777
00:38:05,079 --> 00:38:07,280
formed an interference wave pattern.

778
00:38:07,559 --> 00:38:10,679
Speaker 1: Wait, really, the photon that already hit the screen seemingly

779
00:38:10,719 --> 00:38:13,119
knew that its twins information was going to be erased

780
00:38:13,159 --> 00:38:15,800
in the future, so it retroactively went back in time

781
00:38:15,840 --> 00:38:17,760
and behaved like a wave instead of a bullet.

782
00:38:17,920 --> 00:38:18,960
Speaker 2: It seems that way.

783
00:38:19,239 --> 00:38:21,840
Speaker 1: That completely breaks the arrow of time. Cause and effect

784
00:38:21,840 --> 00:38:22,760
are running backward.

785
00:38:23,239 --> 00:38:26,960
Speaker 2: Now. Physicists will strictly, almost desperately assure us that no

786
00:38:27,239 --> 00:38:31,280
actual usable communication is traveling backward in time. You cannot

787
00:38:31,360 --> 00:38:33,840
use this to send lottery numbers to yesterday because the

788
00:38:33,840 --> 00:38:37,239
wave pattern only emerges when you compare the coincidence counter

789
00:38:37,320 --> 00:38:41,440
data after the fact, so classical causality is technically mathematically

790
00:38:41,519 --> 00:38:46,079
preserved philosophically philosophically, what this absolutely proves is that the

791
00:38:46,119 --> 00:38:49,320
physical concept of the path the particle took in the

792
00:38:49,360 --> 00:38:53,679
past has absolutely zero physical meaning until the entire measurement

793
00:38:53,719 --> 00:38:56,360
of the entangled system is fully complete in the present,

794
00:38:56,719 --> 00:38:58,320
regardless of time delays.

795
00:38:58,599 --> 00:39:02,400
Speaker 1: The past is not a solid, fixed objective history waiting

796
00:39:02,440 --> 00:39:05,320
to be uncovered in an archive. The past is a

797
00:39:05,360 --> 00:39:09,119
malleable probability cloud. The history of that particle is only

798
00:39:09,159 --> 00:39:12,280
definitively written at the exact moment the present demands it

799
00:39:12,320 --> 00:39:15,559
to be known exactly. It's exactly like the rendering engine again,

800
00:39:16,039 --> 00:39:18,920
the universe doesn't bother rendering the historical footprints of a

801
00:39:18,920 --> 00:39:22,360
digital character until the player actively turns the camera around

802
00:39:22,360 --> 00:39:25,280
to look at them. Until you look the footprints both

803
00:39:25,320 --> 00:39:27,000
exist and don't exist.

804
00:39:26,719 --> 00:39:29,559
Speaker 2: Which brings us perfectly to our final overarging theme. The

805
00:39:29,599 --> 00:39:32,960
thread that ties this entire deep dive together. The ultimate

806
00:39:33,000 --> 00:39:38,000
mystery observer the observer because every single bizarre phenomenon we

807
00:39:38,000 --> 00:39:41,719
have unpacked today, from matter teleporting through the Sun's core,

808
00:39:41,880 --> 00:39:45,400
to the vacuum boiling with energy, to space acting like

809
00:39:45,480 --> 00:39:48,639
a non local illusion, to time and history acting like

810
00:39:48,760 --> 00:39:52,679
unrendered digital code, every single one of these traces its

811
00:39:52,679 --> 00:39:56,840
lineage back to one core terrifying truth about our relationship

812
00:39:56,840 --> 00:39:58,119
with the cosmos.

813
00:39:57,880 --> 00:40:02,000
Speaker 1: The double slit experiment and daddy of them all. Richard Feyman,

814
00:40:02,079 --> 00:40:04,239
one of the most brilliant physicists of the twentieth century,

815
00:40:04,360 --> 00:40:07,039
famously said that this experiment doesn't just contain a mystery

816
00:40:07,039 --> 00:40:10,000
of quantum mechanics. He said, it contains the only mystery.

817
00:40:10,119 --> 00:40:12,480
Speaker 2: It is the beating heart of the quantum enigma.

818
00:40:12,519 --> 00:40:13,079
Speaker 1: He really is.

819
00:40:13,199 --> 00:40:16,079
Speaker 2: It is the simplest demonstration of everything we've talked about.

820
00:40:16,440 --> 00:40:19,880
As our listeners know, firing solitary electrons one by one

821
00:40:20,000 --> 00:40:23,559
through two slits builds up an interference wave pattern over time.

822
00:40:23,880 --> 00:40:27,920
Each individual electron passes through both slits, simultaneously interfering with

823
00:40:27,960 --> 00:40:30,960
its own probability ghost and deciding where to land on

824
00:40:31,000 --> 00:40:33,320
the screen based purely on the Schrodinger wave math.

825
00:40:33,519 --> 00:40:35,719
Speaker 1: But the moment you place a detector at the slits.

826
00:40:36,440 --> 00:40:40,280
The moment human curiosity demands to know the precise mechanics

827
00:40:40,280 --> 00:40:43,159
of the universe, the universe changes its rules.

828
00:40:43,280 --> 00:40:45,360
Speaker 2: The interference pattern completely vanishes.

829
00:40:45,519 --> 00:40:48,519
Speaker 1: It's gone. The electrons drop the wave act entirely, and

830
00:40:48,559 --> 00:40:51,320
they hit the screen in two solid, distinct bands.

831
00:40:51,400 --> 00:40:53,679
Speaker 2: We don't block the slits, We don't interfere with the

832
00:40:53,719 --> 00:40:57,440
flight path. The energy of the system remains identical. We

833
00:40:57,559 --> 00:41:01,920
simply extract information, and the unit knows. The universe senses

834
00:41:01,920 --> 00:41:05,639
the active measurement, the extraction of knowledge, and it frantically

835
00:41:05,679 --> 00:41:09,079
alters the fundamental behavior of matter to hide its true

836
00:41:09,239 --> 00:41:11,039
superpositional machinery from us.

837
00:41:11,480 --> 00:41:14,599
Speaker 1: And as we've discussed with Wigner's friend thought experiments, the

838
00:41:14,679 --> 00:41:19,000
von Mooyman chain of measurement, where does the collapse actually happen.

839
00:41:19,119 --> 00:41:21,679
Does it happen at the detector in the computer hard

840
00:41:21,719 --> 00:41:24,280
drive recording the data, or does it only happen when

841
00:41:24,320 --> 00:41:26,960
the photons from the computer monitor hit a conscious human

842
00:41:27,000 --> 00:41:28,960
retina and enter a conscious mind.

843
00:41:29,199 --> 00:41:32,639
Speaker 2: What fascinates me most about this is the stark contrast

844
00:41:32,719 --> 00:41:37,280
between our mathematical mastery and our absolute philosophical ignorance. The

845
00:41:37,320 --> 00:41:43,039
equations work with staggering, unprecedented precision. Quantum electrodynamics is the

846
00:41:43,039 --> 00:41:46,360
most precisely tested theory in the history of human science.

847
00:41:46,480 --> 00:41:48,480
Speaker 1: We have the math down perfectly, perfectly.

848
00:41:48,599 --> 00:41:52,519
Speaker 2: We can calculate the probabilities perfectly. We can build lasers,

849
00:41:52,719 --> 00:41:56,679
MRI machines, and quantum computers based on these principles. But

850
00:41:56,840 --> 00:41:59,960
no scientists on Earth can tell you why. Why does

851
00:42:00,119 --> 00:42:03,880
the act of extracting information force reality to crystallize?

852
00:42:04,079 --> 00:42:06,519
Speaker 1: We hold the mathematical cheat codes to the cosmos, but

853
00:42:06,559 --> 00:42:09,760
we have absolutely no idea what they mean. John Archibald

854
00:42:09,760 --> 00:42:13,239
Wheeler argued for a participatory universe. He believed we are

855
00:42:13,280 --> 00:42:16,559
not passive observers sitting in a dead, mechanical universe watching

856
00:42:16,599 --> 00:42:18,480
it tick like a clock behind safety glass.

857
00:42:18,639 --> 00:42:20,599
Speaker 2: No, we are active participants.

858
00:42:20,639 --> 00:42:25,360
Speaker 1: Our gaze, our extraction of data, has physical universe altering weight.

859
00:42:25,800 --> 00:42:29,440
Reality is participation game. We are actively forcing the universe

860
00:42:29,440 --> 00:42:32,800
to crystallize just by existing, by measuring, by looking at it.

861
00:42:32,800 --> 00:42:36,599
Speaker 2: It fundamentally dismantles the Cartesian divide between the observer and

862
00:42:36,639 --> 00:42:39,920
the observed. You cannot separate yourself from the universe you

863
00:42:39,960 --> 00:42:43,079
are measuring. You are entwined in the outcome. The act

864
00:42:43,119 --> 00:42:45,440
of looking changes the thing being looked at.

865
00:42:45,840 --> 00:42:48,960
Speaker 1: Okay, let's take a deep breath and recap the unbelievable

866
00:42:49,000 --> 00:42:52,400
journey we've been on today here on Thrilling Threads. We

867
00:42:52,440 --> 00:42:55,599
started with a comforting universe of solid objects, empty space,

868
00:42:55,639 --> 00:43:00,199
and ticking clocks, and we've completely systematically dismantled it.

869
00:43:00,400 --> 00:43:01,280
Speaker 2: Piece by piece.

870
00:43:01,639 --> 00:43:04,119
Speaker 1: We've learned that the dark void of space is actually

871
00:43:04,199 --> 00:43:08,079
violently boiling with phantom energy. We've seen that solid matter

872
00:43:08,199 --> 00:43:12,760
is a shifting, probabilistic ghost that can teleport through impenetrable barriers.

873
00:43:13,239 --> 00:43:16,559
We've discovered that physical distance is a massive illusion hiding

874
00:43:16,599 --> 00:43:20,119
a deeply interconnected, non local matrix, that the flow of

875
00:43:20,119 --> 00:43:23,000
time can be frozen by rapid observation, and that the

876
00:43:23,039 --> 00:43:26,039
history of the past can be retroactively rewritten by our

877
00:43:26,119 --> 00:43:26,960
choices in the present.

878
00:43:27,320 --> 00:43:30,119
Speaker 2: And tying it all together is the staggering realization that

879
00:43:30,239 --> 00:43:33,679
reality itself only seems to bother existing in a definitive

880
00:43:33,800 --> 00:43:37,559
congreat state when we force it to through observation and interaction.

881
00:43:38,000 --> 00:43:40,039
We are swimming in an ocean of probabilities.

882
00:43:40,280 --> 00:43:44,280
Speaker 1: It is deeply humbling and honestly a little vertigo inducing.

883
00:43:44,960 --> 00:43:47,360
But as we wrap up this discussion on the quantum realm.

884
00:43:47,639 --> 00:43:50,159
We want to leave you, the listener, with one final

885
00:43:50,280 --> 00:43:54,159
provocative thought that builds on everything we've just discussed, especially

886
00:43:54,199 --> 00:43:55,159
the observer effect.

887
00:43:55,280 --> 00:44:00,519
Speaker 2: Right, if the universe fundamentally requires observation, if it mathematically

888
00:44:00,559 --> 00:44:05,360
requires a measurement to collapse the infinite chaotic probability a

889
00:44:05,440 --> 00:44:09,000
cloud into a single, concrete reality that can be experienced.

890
00:44:09,719 --> 00:44:12,920
Does the universe fundamentally need consciousness to exist?

891
00:44:13,119 --> 00:44:13,760
Speaker 1: Oh man?

892
00:44:14,159 --> 00:44:17,760
Speaker 2: Did the universe exist in a hazy, undefined superposition of

893
00:44:17,800 --> 00:44:21,639
all possible histories until the very first conscious organism opened

894
00:44:21,679 --> 00:44:24,400
its eyes and forced the cosmos to pick a timeline.

895
00:44:24,440 --> 00:44:27,199
Speaker 1: That is the million dollar existential question, and that is

896
00:44:27,239 --> 00:44:29,320
exactly what we want to know from you. Think about

897
00:44:29,320 --> 00:44:31,159
the room you are sitting in right now. Think about

898
00:44:31,159 --> 00:44:34,119
the walls behind you that you can't currently see. If

899
00:44:34,199 --> 00:44:38,000
reality only solidifies when it is measured or observed, what

900
00:44:38,079 --> 00:44:40,920
do you think happens to the universe when every conscious

901
00:44:40,960 --> 00:44:42,159
being closes their eyes.

902
00:44:42,639 --> 00:44:45,280
Speaker 2: Is the moon still physically there when absolutely nobody is

903
00:44:45,280 --> 00:44:48,199
looking at it? Or does it dissolve back into a

904
00:44:48,239 --> 00:44:49,599
wave of probability.

905
00:44:49,880 --> 00:44:52,679
Speaker 1: We want to hear your theories, drop your thoughts, your

906
00:44:52,719 --> 00:44:56,320
existential crises and your quantum interpretations in the comments, and

907
00:44:56,400 --> 00:45:00,719
let's keep unraveling this incredible, impossible universe together. Thank you

908
00:45:00,760 --> 00:45:02,960
for joining us on Thrilling Threads. We will see you

909
00:45:03,000 --> 00:45:06,000
next time, assuming the universe decides to keep rendering itself

910
00:45:06,000 --> 00:45:06,320
for us