Speaker 1: Welcome to the Core side Quantum Physics podcast, an exploration
Speaker 1: of the fundamental structure of reality, where quantum laws govern matter, energy,
Speaker 1: and information. Here, uncertainty is a feature, not a flaw,
Speaker 1: and understanding begins at the smallest scales.
Speaker 2: I want you to.
Speaker 3: Imagine something for a second. Picture a clock sitting on
Speaker 3: the desk right in front of you.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm picturing it right.
Speaker 3: So you were watching the second hand tick forward, tick tick.
Speaker 2: Tick, Just a normal clock exactly.
Speaker 3: But now I want you to imagine that exact same
Speaker 3: clock sitting in the exact same spot, but the second
Speaker 3: hand is moving at a well, a completely different speed.
Speaker 3: Wait what Yeah, it is ticking faster, and at the
Speaker 3: exact same moment, it is also ticking slower.
Speaker 2: That is I mean, that's incredibly hard to even visualize, right.
Speaker 3: It entirely defines everything you know about how reality is
Speaker 3: supposed to work. You are looking at a single object
Speaker 3: experiencing two completely different timelines literally at the same time.
Speaker 2: It sounds like a riddle honestly, or maybe like a
Speaker 2: broken piece of machinery, but it is actually the absolute
Speaker 2: bleeding edge of modern physics.
Speaker 3: Which is just wild. So what we're doing today is
Speaker 3: figuring out how physicists are attempting to combine the flexible,
Speaker 3: bendable nature of time from Einstein's relativity with the absolutely
Speaker 3: bizarre multi state nature of quantum mechanics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, colliding two totally different rule books exactly.
Speaker 3: And the ultimate goal here is to prove that time
Speaker 3: itself can exist in a quantum superposition. Okay, let's unpack
Speaker 3: this because to understand how a single clock can ticket
Speaker 3: two different speeds simultaneously, we kind of have to look
Speaker 3: at the underlying mechanics governing reality, and.
Speaker 2: That conflict between those mechanics is exactly where modern physics
Speaker 2: is currently stuck. I mean, time plays very very different
Speaker 2: roles depending on which rule book you are reading.
Speaker 3: From, like relativity versus quantum theory.
Speaker 2: Right in Einstein's relativity, time is a physical malleable fabric.
Speaker 2: It bends, its stretches, it reacts to gravity, press, yeah, gravity, speed,
Speaker 2: all of that. But then you look at quantum theory,
Speaker 2: which is the rule book governing the tiniest building blocks
Speaker 2: of our universe, and time is completely rigid.
Speaker 3: Just a background ticker exactly.
Speaker 2: It acts as the static background metronome that just ticks
Speaker 2: away steadily. While particles do all sorts of strange things.
Speaker 2: So forcing these two fundamentally opposed concepts together is what
Speaker 2: reveals these hidden quantum signatures of time flow that classical
Speaker 2: physics simply cannot explain.
Speaker 3: We already know from macroscopic relativity that time bends with speed, right,
Speaker 3: and we know from quantum mechanics that particles can exist
Speaker 3: in superpositions.
Speaker 2: Right like Schrodinger's cat exactly, the.
Speaker 3: Cat is alive and dead at the same time. But
Speaker 3: what happens when you smash those two realities together. Because
Speaker 3: when I was trying to wrap my head around Einstein's relativity,
Speaker 3: I realized it is kind of like a personalized algorithm.
Speaker 2: Oh, I like where this is going.
Speaker 3: Yeah, think of it like a Spotify rapped but for time.
Speaker 2: A Spotify rapped for time.
Speaker 3: Yeah. You don't just log into like a universal music
Speaker 3: stream that everyone on Earth listens to. You get a
Speaker 3: completely customized experience based on your specific behaviors, right, your speed,
Speaker 3: your location in a gravity.
Speaker 2: Well, that is a remarkably good analogy.
Speaker 3: Thanks, So every single object in the universe is basically
Speaker 3: experiencing its own, unique, personalized flow of time. But to
Speaker 3: really grasp the mechanics of why that happens. You almost
Speaker 3: have to picture space time as a dense medium, like
Speaker 3: a fluid.
Speaker 2: And that fluid analogy actually works perfectly for the mechanics
Speaker 2: of time dilation. So well, think about it. If you
Speaker 2: are moving through a dense fluid, the faster you move,
Speaker 2: the more resistance are like drag you.
Speaker 3: Encounter, right, it's harder to push through.
Speaker 2: Exactly. In physics, as an object moves faster through the
Speaker 2: fluid of space time, the internal mechanisms of that object,
Speaker 2: it's atoms, it's chemical reactions, biological aging, all of it
Speaker 2: literally encounter a form of temporal drag. Temporal drag, Yeah,
Speaker 2: they slow down relative to an object that is just
Speaker 2: standing still. So you sitting there listening to this right now,
Speaker 2: are experiencing a slightly different flow of time than someone's
Speaker 2: standing on top of Mount Everest.
Speaker 3: Because of the distance from Earth's gravity.
Speaker 2: Exactly. The difference is completely microscopic in our daily lives,
Speaker 2: but it is entirely real and it's measurable.
Speaker 3: I mean, don't GPS satellites have to account for this?
Speaker 2: They absolutely do. The satellites orbiting the Earth have to
Speaker 2: constantly adjust their internal clocks because they are further away
Speaker 2: from Earth's gravity. Well, and they're moving at orbital speeds.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: If they didn't mathematically account for that temporal drag, the
Speaker 2: navigation app on your phone would literally have you driving
Speaker 2: into a lake within a single afternoon.
Speaker 3: That is terrifying but also amazing. But okay, to measure
Speaker 3: a time difference that minute. To actually observe this happening
Speaker 3: in the laboratory, you can't just use a rolex, right,
Speaker 3: or even a standard digital clock.
Speaker 2: No, definitely not.
Speaker 3: You would need a clock that operates on the scale
Speaker 3: of individual atoms, which naturally forces us right down into
Speaker 3: the quantum realm. Right, So take the classic twin paradox.
Speaker 3: Usually the story goes one twin stays on Earth, the
Speaker 3: other travels at near light speed and comes back younger.
Speaker 2: The standard thought experiment, Right.
Speaker 3: The math checks out. Yeah, but let's look at the
Speaker 3: staggering subtlety of this at lower speeds. If you had
Speaker 3: a clock moving at just ten meters per.
Speaker 2: Second, which is what like twenty miles an hour, Yeah.
Speaker 3: About twenty two miles per hour, essentially just a casual
Speaker 3: drive through a suburban neighborhood. If it kept moving at
Speaker 3: that speed, for fifty seven million years, fifty seven million,
Speaker 3: fifty seven million years, it would fall exactly one second
Speaker 3: behind a stationary clock that.
Speaker 2: Is just fifty seven million years just to lose a
Speaker 2: single second. It is a fantastic demonstration of how incredibly
Speaker 2: subtle the warping of time is at everyday human speeds.
Speaker 3: It's almost imperceptible, but not quite.
Speaker 2: Scientists have actually confirmed effects exactly like this using highly
Speaker 2: precise aluminum ion clocks. But what's fascinating here is what
Speaker 2: happens when we push this macroscopic paradox into the quantum domain.
Speaker 3: Okay, brace yourselves, right.
Speaker 2: Because instead of two separate clocks moving at different speeds,
Speaker 2: we take a single clock and put it into a
Speaker 2: quantum superposition.
Speaker 3: So we force the clock itself into a state where
Speaker 3: it is simultaneously moving and not moving exacts. So it
Speaker 3: becomes its own twin.
Speaker 2: It becomes its own twin. According to the mathematics of
Speaker 2: quantum theory, that single clock must simultaneously experience two entirely
Speaker 2: different rates of time.
Speaker 3: That is so weird.
Speaker 2: It is aging at two different speeds, occupying the exact
Speaker 2: same space.
Speaker 3: Okay, but wait, if this is a natural consequence of
Speaker 3: combining quantum mechanics and relativity. Physicists must have known about
Speaker 3: this theoretical lostibility for.
Speaker 2: A while, right, Oh, absolutely, Physicists like Igor Pikowsky propose
Speaker 2: the math for this idea over a decade ago.
Speaker 3: So why are we only talking about physically testing this
Speaker 3: in a laboratory right now? Like what shifted in the
Speaker 3: landscape of physics that allows us to finally move this
Speaker 3: from a whiteboard into the real world?
Speaker 2: Well, simply put, our technology finally caught up to our theories. Okay,
Speaker 2: to measure an effect this unbelievably subtle, where a single
Speaker 2: particle is experiencing a microscopic time dilation while in a superposition,
Speaker 2: you need the most precise measuring tools in the history
Speaker 2: of human civilization, no pressure, right, And that brings us
Speaker 2: to the work of experimental teams like those led by
Speaker 2: Christian Center at Colorado State University and Dietrich lb Fred
Speaker 2: at NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Speaker 3: What are they building over there?
Speaker 2: They have developed ultra cold ion clocks. We are talking
Speaker 2: about trapping a single atom of aluminium or ter bum
Speaker 2: using intersecting lasers, single atom, a single atom, and then
Speaker 2: they cool that single atom down to temperatures hovering billionths
Speaker 2: of a degree above absolute zero.
Speaker 3: Okay, wait, I got to push back here for a second,
Speaker 3: or at least ask for a sanity each other on
Speaker 3: the mechanics sure come bad because if I remember my
Speaker 3: high school chemistry correctly, temperature is essentially just a measurement
Speaker 3: of kinetic energy. Right. Heat is movement, That's right. So
Speaker 3: if you cool a single atom down to absolute zero
Speaker 3: or functionally near absolute zero, that means all thermal movement stops.
Speaker 3: Is the theoretical ground state of the universe.
Speaker 2: Correct.
Speaker 3: If the atom is completely frozen in place, how can
Speaker 3: it function as a clock? I mean, how does an
Speaker 3: atom tick or measure time if there is zero energy
Speaker 3: for movement.
Speaker 2: That is a highly logical objection, and it gets to
Speaker 2: the very heart of why quantum mechanics is so wonderfully weird.
Speaker 3: Okay, lay it on me.
Speaker 2: In classical physics, your high school chemistry definitely holds up
Speaker 2: at absolute zero, all thermal energy is gone and the
Speaker 2: system basically freezes completely solid. But an atomic clock doesn't
Speaker 2: use gears or physical pendulums to tick. It uses the
Speaker 2: internal energy states of the atom itself. Oh interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 2: and these ultracold clocks. A laser fires at the tra
Speaker 2: The electron orbiting that ion will only jump to a
Speaker 2: higher energy level if the laser hits it with an
Speaker 2: incredibly precise frequency of light.
Speaker 3: How precise are we talking.
Speaker 2: We are talking about a frequency of over a quadrillion
Speaker 2: oscillations per second.
Speaker 3: A quadrillion, that's a million billion.
Speaker 2: Exactly, And that precise frequency required to make the electron jump.
Speaker 2: That is the actual tick of the clot ah.
Speaker 3: So the atom doesn't need to be physically bouncing around
Speaker 3: the room to measure time. The ticking is happening inside
Speaker 3: the architecture of the atom itself exactly.
Speaker 2: But there is an additional quantum layer.
Speaker 3: Here, of course, there is.
Speaker 2: Even when you remove all the heat, reaching that absolute
Speaker 2: zero ground state where thermal movement stops, there is a
Speaker 2: fundamental rule. Nothing in the universe can ever be completely still.
Speaker 3: No, even at absolute zero.
Speaker 2: Not even then. There are microscopic inescapable vibrations, called quantum fluctuations.
Speaker 2: They are basically the inherent jitter of the universe, bubbling
Speaker 2: up from the quantum vacuum itself.
Speaker 3: The inherent jitter of the universe. I love that phrasing
Speaker 3: it's true.
Speaker 2: Gabriel Sourcey, a researcher at the Stevens Institute of Technology,
Speaker 2: points out that atomic clocks have become so incomprehensibly sensitive
Speaker 2: that their internal ticking rate is actually affected by these
Speaker 2: inherent quantum fluctuations. Wow, it is like a faint hum
Speaker 2: in the fabric of space time that you can never
Speaker 2: quite turn off, and the clock feels it.
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets really interesting, because the scientists aren't
Speaker 3: just trapping an atom, freezing it and passively listening to
Speaker 3: that quantum hum rung.
Speaker 2: Oh. No, they are way more active than that, right.
Speaker 3: They're actively manipulating the vacuum of space around the atom
Speaker 3: to create something called squeeze. States Yes, and if we
Speaker 3: are manipulating uncertainty, we are basically forcing the atom to
Speaker 3: forget its exact speed. And if it doesn't have a
Speaker 3: single defined speed, relativity dictates it can't have a single
Speaker 3: defined timeline either. Am I tracking the logic? There?
Speaker 2: You are tracking it perfectly. It relies on a fundamental
Speaker 2: quirk of nature, which is in the quantum world, you
Speaker 2: can never know both the exact position and the exact
Speaker 2: velocity of a particle. With perfect precisions simultaneously.
Speaker 3: Right Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.
Speaker 2: Exactly, it is a strict physical impossibility, So a squeezed
Speaker 2: state is essentially a physic sloophole. The researchers use lasers
Speaker 2: to intentionally squeeze the uncertainty of the ion's position, making
Speaker 2: it extremely like unnaturally precise in space. They pin it down,
Speaker 2: they do, but nature demands balance to compensate for knowing
Speaker 2: exactly where the ion is. The ion's velocity becomes wildly uncertain.
Speaker 3: It freaks out.
Speaker 2: Basically, it doesn't just become unknown to us. The velocity
Speaker 2: literally smears out. The atom enters a superposition of moving
Speaker 2: at multiple different speeds at the exact same time.
Speaker 3: Let me just anchor the scale of this for a second,
Speaker 3: because it is staggering. We were talking about a single
Speaker 3: solitary ion. It is less than a nanometer across kiny.
Speaker 3: It is trapped in a cage of pure light, cool
Speaker 3: to a fraction of a degree above the absolute zero
Speaker 3: floor of the universe, and by squeezing its physical position,
Speaker 3: we force it to travel at multiple speeds simultaneously. Yes,
Speaker 3: and because as we established earlier, speed governs the flow
Speaker 3: of time due to temporal drag, while the clock must
Speaker 3: be experiencing multiple time flows.
Speaker 2: The clock becomes entangled with its own velocity because the
Speaker 2: ion is in a superposition of moving and not moving.
Speaker 2: The internal ticking of the clock, the passage of time
Speaker 2: experienced by that electron jumping between energy levels, becomes intimately
Speaker 2: tied to that uncertain motion that is mind bending. The
Speaker 2: result is a single physical object aging at two distinct
Speaker 2: rates at the exact same moment. The clock is literally
Speaker 2: both older and younger than itself.
Speaker 3: And this isn't just a mathematical thought experiment anymore. As
Speaker 3: Christian Saner or Kloro State pointed out, we now actually
Speaker 3: possess the laboratory technology to generate that required squeezing.
Speaker 2: We do. We have a clear engineering path right now
Speaker 2: to reach the clock precision needed to observe these effects
Speaker 2: in the real world. For the very first time, we.
Speaker 3: Are standing on the precipice of watching time literally split
Speaker 3: into two simultaneous realities in a physical laboratory.
Speaker 2: And if we connect this to the bigger picture, it
Speaker 2: becomes clearer why thousands of hours and millions of dollars
Speaker 2: are being poured into trapping single ions.
Speaker 3: It's not just a parlor trick.
Speaker 2: Proving time superposition is definitely not just about winning a
Speaker 2: Nobel prize for making a microscopic clock act weird. These
Speaker 2: incredibly sensitive quantum technologies are forging new tools to solve
Speaker 2: the absolute deepest mysteries of the universe.
Speaker 3: We are building the scaffolding for the next great revolution
Speaker 3: in physics. Absolutely, and the biggest mystery of them all,
Speaker 3: like this stubborn outlier in all the physics, is gravity.
Speaker 2: Gravity is the big one. In the standard model of
Speaker 2: particle physics, we have beautifully identified the fundamental particles that
Speaker 2: carry almost all the forces of nature. We know that
Speaker 2: photons carry electromagnetism. We have gluons for the strong nuclear
Speaker 2: force and w and z boses for the weak nuclear force.
Speaker 2: We can measure them, we can predict them. They fit
Speaker 2: perfectly into the quantum rule book.
Speaker 3: But gravity refuses to cooperate.
Speaker 2: It refuses. Einstein described gravity as the smooth, continuous warping
Speaker 2: of space time, but quantum mechanics demands that everything is chunky, discrete,
Speaker 2: and quantized. We have never been able to prove how
Speaker 2: gravity works at the quantum.
Speaker 3: Level, but theoretically there must be a discrete particle that
Speaker 3: carries the force of gravity right exactly, the graviton, the
Speaker 3: elusive white whale of modern physics.
Speaker 2: It remains completely hypothetical, but Igor Pokofski's work has shown
Speaker 2: that these exact same quantum technologies, these ultra coold entangled
Speaker 2: squeeze state clocks, might be the key to finally seeing it.
Speaker 3: Wait, really, how well?
Speaker 2: If we can prove that time can exist in a superposition,
Speaker 2: we prove that the fabric of relativity can operate by
Speaker 2: quantum rules, we prove that space time itself can be chunky. Oh,
Speaker 2: I see a clock sensitive enough to measure a superposition
Speaker 2: of time could theoretically be sensitive enough to detect the
Speaker 2: minuscule discrete kick of a single graviton passing by or
Speaker 2: interacting with the atoms mass.
Speaker 3: So if space time can play by quantum rules, then
Speaker 3: gravity must play by quantum rules.
Speaker 2: Too, exactly. It's the missing link.
Speaker 3: It is the ultimate bridge between the two rule books.
Speaker 3: I mean, we started with Einstein's flexible, personalized fluid of time.
Speaker 3: We moved into the microscopic world of atoms existing in
Speaker 3: multiple states simultaneously yep, and we ended up with ultra
Speaker 3: coold laser trapped ions at the absolute zero floor of
Speaker 3: the universe, manipulating the vacuum itself to squeeze uncertainty. It's
Speaker 3: a journey, all of this just to prove that a
Speaker 3: single clock can exist in two different timelines simultaneously, which
Speaker 3: might just give us the tools to finally uncover the
Speaker 3: particle that holds the entire cosmos together.
Speaker 2: It is a profound reminder that knowledge is most valuable
Speaker 2: when it forces us to question our deepest assumptions about reality.
Speaker 2: You know, we take the forward, steady universal march of
Speaker 2: time as an absolute given.
Speaker 3: I really do.
Speaker 2: This isn't just abstract math happening on a whiteboard somewhere.
Speaker 2: This is the fundamental fabric of the reality you were
Speaker 2: sitting in right now. The mechanics that govern the universe
Speaker 2: are so much stranger and more intricately connected than our
Speaker 2: everyday human perception allows us to see.
Speaker 3: So what does this all mean? We know that our
Speaker 3: bodies are brains. The very neurons firing as you listen
Speaker 3: to this right now are made up of the exact
Speaker 3: same quantum particles we've been talking about.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: They're governed by the same rules of uncertainty and relativity.
Speaker 3: So I want to leave you with the thought to
Speaker 3: chew on.
Speaker 2: Let's hear it.
Speaker 3: If time can flow at different simultaneous rates for a
Speaker 3: single quantum particle, well, what does that mean for human consciousness?
Speaker 3: What does it mean for our perception of the present moment?
Speaker 2: That's a deep question.
Speaker 3: If the particles inside us are constantly shifting through these
Speaker 3: microscopic superpositions of time dictated by their own chaotic quantum velocities,
Speaker 3: are we truly experiencing a single, unified reality, or, as
Speaker 3: our human experience, our deeply held feeling of right now
Speaker 3: simply the clumsy, smooth out average of countless different quantum
Speaker 3: time flows, all happening at once inside our own bodies,