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Speaker 1: So imagine for a second that you possess a button,

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just a literal, physical, heavy red button, sitting right there

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on your desk. Okay, I'm picturing it, And every time

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you press this button, you can compress time. And I

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don't mean, you know, skipping a boring meeting or fast

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forwarding through a commercial break. I mean compressing twenty years

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of grueling, sweat equity laboratory research. Oh wow, Yeah, the

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failed hypotheses, the broken test tubes, the funding dry spells.

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Shrinking all of that down into a single week.

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Speaker 2: I mean it sounds like the premise of a sci

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fi novel or maybe some kind of superhero origin story,

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honestly exactly.

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Speaker 1: But let's actually play this out for a minute. If

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you could take the trial and error of two decades,

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that slow, incremental creeping of progress that usually defines how

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science works, and shrink it down to seven days, what

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would the world actually look like? Like? How fast would

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we cure diseases or how quickly would we solve the

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global energy crisis?

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Speaker 2: Well, if innovation actually moved at that kind of speed,

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the world wouldn't just look different, it would be entirely unrecognizable.

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Within a calendar year, you'd essentially be compressing centuries of

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human progress into a single decade.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to thrilling Threads. I'm your host, And today we

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really aren't talking about science fiction. We aren't talking about

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some distant you know, maybe in fifty years promise of technology.

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We are talking about right now. We are talking about

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a list, a massive, verified list of fifteen revolutionary discoveries

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that have already.

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Speaker 2: Happened, right And that's the key distinction for today's deep dive.

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Usually when people talk about this topic, quantum computing, it's

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all theoretical. It's all one day or potentially, which, I'll

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be honest drives me a little crazy.

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Speaker 1: H The hype cycle is real, it is.

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Speaker 2: But the source stack we are looking at today proves

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that the era of potentially is over. These are fifteen specific,

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quantified breakthroughs. We're talking everything from creating entirely new states

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of matter to legitimately fixing the global battery shortage.

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Speaker 1: It is a massive list too. We've got sorts from

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the field referencing everything from Microsoft and Google to national laboratories,

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and our mission today is pretty straightforward. We are going

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to connect the dots between subatomic physics, which let's be fair,

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can be a little intimidating to dive into very intimidating. Yeah,

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we're connecting that to your daily life. We're talking about

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the battery in your pocket, the medicine sitting in your cabinet,

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and literally the security of your bank account.

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Speaker 2: Because it's really about that transition from scientific curiosity to

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engineering reality. We're finally moving from the chalkboard to the

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factory floor.

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Speaker 1: So let's start with that time compression idea I mentioned

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at the top, because discovery number fifteen on our list

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is literally about buying back time. It's the battery revolution. Now.

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I think we all generally know the problem.

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Speaker 2: Here, right, the lithium bottleneck exactly. We all want electric vehicles,

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we want grid storage for our solar panels and wind turbines.

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But current lithium ion batteries are incredibly resource heavy, they

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can be all and mining the lithium itself is a

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geopolitical and environmental nightmare. We desperately need a new recipe.

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Speaker 1: Enter Microsoft as your quantum and the Pacific Northwest National

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Laboratory or PNNL. They teamed up to find a new

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material for a battery electrolyte, but they didn't do it

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the old fashioned way.

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Speaker 2: No, they didn't. Historically, material science is a lot of

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well it's shaken bake. You have an idea, you mix

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the chemicals, you test it, it fails, you wash the beaker,

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and you try again. It's incredibly inefficient.

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Speaker 1: So how did they bypass all that? How did they

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cheat the system?

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Speaker 2: Well, they didn't cheat, They just vastly optimized it. They

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used Azure Quantum Elements, which is a platform that combines

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high performance computing with artificial intelligence. They started with the

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database of thirty two point six million possible inorganic materials.

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Speaker 1: Thirty two point six million. Just let that number sink in.

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If a human team had to screen those using traditional

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density functional theory, which is correct me if I'm wrong.

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Basically the math we used to simular electron behavior.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good way to put it. It models

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the electronic structure of many body systems.

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Speaker 1: Right, So how long would that have taken humans.

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Speaker 2: To do If you were doing the high fidelities simulations

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for all of them, you're looking at about twenty years.

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Speaker 1: And there's the twenty year's number, right.

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Speaker 2: But they used AI models trained on quantum data to

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filter this massive list They didn't just pick random ones, obviously,

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They filtered for specific things like stability, connectivity, and cost.

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They narrowed those thirty two million down to five hundred thousand,

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then to eight hundred, and finally down to eighteen top candidates.

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Speaker 1: And they did all this in how long roughly one week? Okay,

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I have to play Devil's advocate here for a second,

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because speed is great, but AI can hallucinate. We've all

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seen AI write terrible poetry or makeup facts. We definitely

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don't want it designing a battery that explodes in your driveway.

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Do they just blindly trust the computer or is there

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some kind of check in place?

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Speaker 2: That is the crucial question. No, you can't just trust

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the AI. Once the AI identified those top eighteen candidates,

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the researchers switched back to hard physics. They used density

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functional theory DFT to verify the AI's homework. DFT is

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computationally expensive. It takes a ton of processing power, but

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it's incredibly accurate. Because they only had to run it

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on eighteen materials instead of thirty two million, they could

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easily afford the computational costs.

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Speaker 1: Got it, So the AI acts as the scout running

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ahead and finding the path, and the physics engine acts

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as the surveyor, coming in behind to make sure the

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ground is actually solid.

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Speaker 2: Precisely, and the result wasn't just some theoretical PDF file

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P and and L scientists actually synthesized one of the

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candidates in the real world. It's a solid state electrolyte

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that uses roughly seventy percent less lithium than current standards.

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It replaces all that lithium with sodium, which is dirt

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cheap and available literally everywhere.

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Speaker 1: Seventy percent less lissium, I mean that changes the economics

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of an EV completely. But let's zoom out a bit.

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You mentioned scouting materials. This brings us right into discovery

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number ten, which is like the industrial scale version of

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what Microsoft just did. We're talking about Google DeepMind and

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their genomesisty.

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Speaker 2: Oh yes, GENOIME graph networks for materials exploration graph networks.

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Speaker 1: That honestly sounds more like social media analysis than quantum physics.

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Speaker 2: It's actually a very similar concept mathematically. In a social network,

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you map how people are connected to predict who knows

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who or who might buy a certain product. In a

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crystal structure, GENOIME maps how atoms bond and interact to

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predict which structures will hold together.

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Speaker 1: And the scale here is just absurd. The reports say

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Genome generated two point two million crystal structure predictions. But again,

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my skeptical brain has to ask, are these just pretty

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computer pictures of molecules or they real things.

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Speaker 2: That's exactly the skepticism we need, and it's what the

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scientific community demanded. DeepMind claimed they found three hundred and

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eighty thousand materials that are thermodynamically stable, and stability is

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the hard part. You can force atoms together for a

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split second in a simulation, but will they stay that

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way sitting on a shelf?

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Speaker 1: Right, I don't want to build a bridge out of

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a material that disintegrates if the wind blows on it.

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Speaker 2: Exactly so, to prove these predictions were valid, independent researchers

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and autonomous labs have already physically synthesized seven hundred and

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thirty six of these materials.

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Speaker 1: Wait, back up, autonomous labs, you mean robots? Yes.

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Speaker 2: The source specifically highlights a robotic laboratory at Berkeley Lab.

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It's called the A Lab. There are no humans in

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white coats pouring beakers there. It's all robotic arms. They

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mix the powders, bake them in furnaces, and analyze the

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results with X rays.

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Speaker 1: That seriously sounds like science fiction. Again, the robots are

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doing the actual science.

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Speaker 2: They are doing the synthesis. Yeah, the A lab synthesized

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forty one out of fifty eight targeted materials in just

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seventeen days. That's seventy one percent success rate.

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Speaker 1: Forty one brand new materials in two weeks.

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Speaker 2: To put that in perspective for you, autonomous labs are

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now producing more than two new materials per day. Think

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about the history of humanity for a second. We had

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the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the Silicon Age. We

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usually discover one major material clause every few centuries or

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maybe decades if we're lucky. Now we are discovering two specific,

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stable new compounds every twenty four hours.

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Speaker 1: That is staggering. It completely shifts the bottleneck of human progress.

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It used to be well, we can't find the right material.

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Now it's we have too many materials, which one do

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we even bother.

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Speaker 2: To build exactly. We were entering the era of computational design.

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We decide what properties we want, super hard, superconductive, heat, resistant,

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and the computer tells us exactly how to build it.

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Atom by Adam.

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Speaker 1: Speaking, is super hard. Let's talk about discovery number eleven,

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because this one challenges a rule I'm pretty sure I

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learned in elementary school, the rule that diamond is the

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hardest material on Earth.

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Speaker 2: It was the rule, but rules are meant to be

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broken by quantum supercomputers. This discovery focuses on a specific

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phase of carbon called BC eight.

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Speaker 1: BC eight what does that actually stand for?

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Speaker 2: Body centered cubic carbon. So, in a normal diamond, and

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each carbon atom is bonded to fur neighbors in this

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tetrahedral shape, it's an incredibly strong structure. But BC eight

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is a slightly different arrangement that allows for even tighter

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atomic packing under immense pressure, and.

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Speaker 1: The simulation says this stuff is harder than a.

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Speaker 2: Diamond, significantly harder. Large scale simulations on the Frontier supercomputer,

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which used machine learning models trained to absolute quantum accuracy,

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predicted is thirty percent more resistant to compression than diamond.

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Speaker 1: Thirty percent harder. That implies a good cut of diamond

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the same way a diamond cuts glass.

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Speaker 2: Theoretically, yes, and it's stable. The simulation suggests it remains

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stable above ten million atmospheres of pressure.

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Speaker 1: Ten million atmospheres. That's I can't even fathom that that's

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deep planet pressure. It is.

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Speaker 2: In fact, astronomers think this BCE eight super diamond might

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naturally exist right now in the centers of carbon ridge exoplanets.

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Speaker 1: So we basically found a material that exists on alien planets,

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but we found it inside our computer. Can we actually

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make it here on Earth?

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Speaker 2: That is the ultimate challenge. The recipe, according to the

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quantum simulation, involves taking a regular diamond melting it, which,

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by the way, is incredibly difficult because diamond usually just

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turns into graphite.

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Speaker 1: Before it melts, right pencil lead.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So you have to melt it and then shot

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compress it to twelve million atmospheres while simultaneously heating it

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to five thousand kelvin.

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Speaker 1: Oh with that all, So, just melt a diamond, scratch

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it with the weight of an entire planet, and heat

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it to the temperature of the surface of the Sun. Easy.

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Speaker 2: Not easy at all. But the point is, now we

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have the map, we know it's physically possible. That's the

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real insight here. Quantum modeling allows us to see these

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islands of stability that nature hides under extreme conditions. We

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aren't blindly smashing things together hoping for the best anymore.

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We have a distinct target.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so we've got better batteries, infinite robotic materials, and

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super diamonds. That covers the stuff we can hold in

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our hands. But I want to pivot to part two

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of our deep dive quantum healing, because this is where

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the whole time compression thing gets deeply personal. If we

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can fast forward drug discovery, we literally save lives absolutely.

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Speaker 2: And to understand how this works, we have to stop

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thinking of biology as just cells and organs and tissue.

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At the fundamental rock bottom level, biology is just chemistry,

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and chemistry is just quantum mechanics.

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Speaker 1: Right, It's all just electrons dancing around nuclei when.

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Speaker 2: You zoom in far enough exactly. And that brings us

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to discovery number thirteen Foundations for simulating human drug metabolism.

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Speaker 1: Enzymes drug metabolism. That basically just means how my body

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breaks down a pill after I swallow it.

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Speaker 2: Yes, when you take a drug, say a painkiller or

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a new heart medication, your body has to process it,

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and the heavy lifting for that process is done by

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enzymes in your liver, specifically a family called cytochrome P

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four fifty.

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Speaker 1: Cytochrome P four fifty. Why is that specific family so crucial.

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Speaker 2: Because they metabolize about seventy to eighty percent of all

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drugs in clinical use today. If you want to know

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if a drug is going to be toxic or if

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it will actually work the way you want it to,

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you have to know exactly how it interacts with cytochrome

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P four fifty.

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Speaker 1: And I assume simulating that interaction is notoriously hard.

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Speaker 2: It's incredibly difficult. These enzymes contain a heme group with

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an iron atom right at the center. The electrons in

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that iron atom are what we call strongly correlated.

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Speaker 1: Strongly correlated. Unpack that for us. What does that mean?

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Speaker 2: It basically means the electrons interact with each other so

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intensely and intimately that you can't just calculate the position

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of one without knowing the position of all the other simultaneously.

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Classical computers absolutely hate this. They have to use rough

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approximations to get through the math, which naturally leads to errors.

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Speaker 1: So we guess how the drug works, and sometimes we

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guess wrong, and then the drug fails in late stage.

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Speaker 2: Clinical trials exactly, and failures in late stage trials cost

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pharmaceutical companies billions of dollars and waste years of time.

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But in this discovery, researchers used quantum algorithms on photonic hardware,

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which are computers that actually use light instead of electricity

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to calculate these electronic structures. They reported speed ups of

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two high hundred and thirty four times and two hundred

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and seventy eight times compared to classical.

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Speaker 1: Methods, nearly three hundred times faster. That's massive, and.

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Speaker 2: That's just for the specific calculation piece. Separate quantum informed

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AI tools simulated systems with up to a million atoms

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over nanosecond time scales. Some of those tasks ran a

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thousand times.

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Speaker 1: Faster, a thousand times faster. This means we can actually

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watch the movie of the drug interacting with the enzyme

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in real time rather than looking at a blurry polaroid

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photo from a classical computer.

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Speaker 2: That is a perfect analogy. And speaking of watching the movie,

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let's talk about discovery number twelve, because this one targets

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something that has been an absolute villain in oncology for decades.

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The Kris protein KRS.

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Speaker 1: I've heard this described in the medical community as undruggable.

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Why is that? Is it just bulletproof?

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Speaker 2: Not bulletproof, No, it's just smooth. It's a protein that

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when it mutates, signals cells to divide uncontrollably. It drives

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a huge percentage of lung, colon and pancreatic cancers. But

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structurally it's essentially a smooth sphere. Traditional drugs work by

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sticking to a pocket on a protein, sort of like

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a key fitting into a lock. KRIS didn't seem to

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have a lock.

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Speaker 1: So how did the quantum approach manage to find a

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lock on a completely smooth sphere.

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Speaker 2: They used a hybrid quantum classical pipeline. They started with

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this massive funnel generating over one million candidate molecules that

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theoretically might stick to KRIS a million candidates, and through

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high speed quantum filtering simulating the atomic interactions, they narrowed

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that million down to just fifteen.

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Speaker 1: From a million down to fifteen.

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Speaker 2: And critically, some of those fifteen were then experimentally validated

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in the lab to bind to KRIS. They actually found

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the pocket. They found a way to stick a wedge

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into the gears of the cancer cell.

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Speaker 1: That is profound. It really moves medicine from discovery, where

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we basically wander around the jungle looking for a healing plan. Yeah,

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to pure engineering. We are custom building the key to

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fit the exact low we need.

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Speaker 2: It shrinks the search space. That's the recurring theme you'll

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see across all these discoveries, whether it's batteries or cancer drugs.

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Quantum computing allows us to ignore the billion wrong answers instantly,

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so we can focus all our energy on the ten

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right ones.

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Speaker 1: Okay, let's scale up again. We went from the microscopic

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cancer cells. Now let's go to the power of the

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sun itself. Part three of our deep dive is about

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solving the simulation crisis in physics. Infusion fusion energy.

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Speaker 2: It's the holy grail, right, clean infinite energy, effectively bottling

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a star here on Earth, and.

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Speaker 1: We've been hearing fusion is thirty years away for the

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last fifty years. It's the running joke of the physics community.

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Speaker 2: At this point, the joke is getting a bit stale. Thankfully.

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Discovery number fourteen suggests that the timeline is drastically compressing

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the problem with fusion isn't just building the massive superconducting

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magnets to hold it. It's predicting what the plasma will

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actually do once you turn it on.

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Speaker 1: Plasma being the super high gas inside the reactor.

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Speaker 2: Right, Yes, it is millions of degrees, incredibly turbulent and

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wildly chaotic. Simulating it is a nightmare. Classical three D

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inertial confinement fusion models can take millions of CPU hours

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to process. A single run can take thirty days to complete.

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Speaker 1: Thirty days, so if I have an idea for a

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slightly better reactor design, I tweak the code, I hit enter,

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and I literally have to wait a month to see

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if my reactor just blew up.

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Speaker 2: Pretty much, imagine trying to learn how to play the piano,

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but every time you hit a key you don't hear

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the note until a month later. You'd never learn. Innovation

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completely stalls.

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Speaker 1: So what's the fix? How did quantum change this?

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Speaker 2: Researchers developed a quantum partial differential equation algorithm. Now I

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know that's a mouthful.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, quantum partial differential equation there definitely sounds like a

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class I would fail on the first day of college.

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Speaker 2: Basically, differential equations are just the math we use to

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describe how things change over time, fluid flow, heat transfer,

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plasma turbulence. The new algorithm provides what they call a

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quadratic speed up.

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Speaker 1: Translate quadratic speed up for me. In practical terms, it.

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Speaker 2: Means that as the problem gets harder and the system

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gets bigger, the quantum computer gets exponentially more efficient at

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solving it compared to a classical computer. It scales beautifully.

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National lab collaborations have shown that key plasma interactions can

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now be modeled efficiently. We aren't just guessing in the

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dark anymore, so.

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Speaker 1: We can fail faster. We can run one hundred fusion

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simulations in the time it used to take to run

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just one.

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Speaker 2: Exactly, and simulation speed directly determines research speed.

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Speaker 1: This connects directly to discovery number five, doesn't it? Simulating

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magnetic materials. This brings up a name that everyone in

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physics essentially worships, Richard Feynman.

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Speaker 2: Oh the legend. Feinemann famously said in the early eighties,

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and I love this quote. Nature isn't classical, damn it.

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And if you want to make a simulation of nature,

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you'd better make it quantum mechanical.

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Speaker 1: He's basically saying, stop trying to use an abacus to

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model a galaxy. Use the tools that match the reality, right.

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Speaker 2: And discovery number five is the definitive proof that he

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was right all along. Quantinuum, which is a major player

359
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in this space, digitally simulated a fifty two quibit system.

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They created a seven x eight lattice to study something

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called pre thermalization in a two D spin system.

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Speaker 1: Okay, pre thermalization. My eyes are starting to glaze over

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just a bit. Why does this matter to the average person?

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Speaker 2: Stick with me, I promise it matters. Pre Thermalization is

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a weird state where a quantum system doesn't settle down

366
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into equilibrium immediately, it holds a specific pattern for a while.

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Quantinuum extracted a very specific number from this simulation, a

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diffusion constant of zero point three to.

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Speaker 1: Eight zero point three eight.

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Speaker 2: The number itself isn't the headline here. The headline is

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that they got this highly specific number directly from the

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quantum data, and it matched theoretical predictions perfectly. This wasn't

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some abstract math problem. This was a controlled simulation of

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magnetic dynamics that classical supercomputers physically cannot scale. To handle.

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Speaker 1: So it's the ultimate proof of concept. The tool actually

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works the way Finemen dreamed it would.

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Speaker 2: It proves we can simulate complex magnetic materials with perfect fidelity,

378
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and that impacts everything from how we build hard drives

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to the magnet spinning inside electric motors.

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Speaker 1: But here's the elephant in the room. With all of this,

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all these amazing simulations, the batteries, the cancer drugs, the

382
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fusion reactors, they all rely on the computer being right.

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And for a long long time, quantum computers were well flaky.

384
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They were noisy, They made a ton of.

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Speaker 2: Mistakes, they were incredibly fragile. A stray photon, a microscopic

386
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change in room temperature, literally a vibration from a delivery

387
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truck driving by outside the lab, poof the calculation is ruined.

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Speaker 1: This brings us to part four, the backbone of the future,

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security and reliability. Discovery number nine is all about error correction.

390
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I've heard this called the gatekeeper, because if we can't

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fix the errors, these machines are just very expensive, very

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cold paper weights.

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Speaker 2: That's the brutal truth of the industry. But Discovery number

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nine is a massive leap forward. It involves the critical

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difference between physical quibets and logical quibits.

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Speaker 1: Explain that distinction for us. What is the difference.

397
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Speaker 2: Think of a physical quibit like a noisy, easily distracted toddler.

398
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It tries to hold on to the information you give it,

399
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but it gets distracted or bumps into something and drops it.

400
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A logical quibbit is like a team of toddlers, but

401
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they are closely monitored by a teacher. If one toddler

402
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drops the ball, the others catch it. The group holds

403
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the information securely, even if the individual parts are unreliable.

404
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Speaker 1: Safety in numbers basically redundancy exactly.

405
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Speaker 2: Quantinuum used thirty physical quibits to create four completely stable

406
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logical quibits, and the result of that experiment was stunning.

407
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The error rate was about eight hundred times lower than

408
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the physical quibits.

409
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Speaker 1: Alone, eight hundred times better. That's a staggering improvement.

410
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Speaker 2: It went from roughly one error in every hundred operations

411
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to just one error in one hundred thousand. They successfully

412
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ran fourteen thousand individual experiments without a single uncorrected.

413
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Speaker 1: That feels like the turning point. That feels like the

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moment we cross the line from a finicky prototype to

415
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an actual deployable product.

416
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Speaker 2: It absolutely is, And interestingly enough, what they found was

417
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that simpler logical encodings actually outperformed the incredibly complex theoretical

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ones people had been working on for years. We are

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finally learning how to build these machines by actually getting

420
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our hands dirty and building them, not just theorizing on whiteboards.

421
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Speaker 1: Now, let's talk about the flip side of that security,

422
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because it's a double edged sword. If these computers are

423
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so unbelievably powerful, can't they just crack all our codes,

424
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bank passwords, government secrets, all of it?

425
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Speaker 2: Eventually? Yes, Shor's algorithm proved that theoretically a long time ago.

426
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That's exactly why we need quantum encryption right now, which

427
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leads to discovery number eight true quantum randomness.

428
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Speaker 1: Randomness sounds a bit boring at first glance. Pick a

429
00:21:51,160 --> 00:21:53,079
number between one and ten. Who cares?

430
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Speaker 2: Your bank cares deeply. Every single time you send a

431
00:21:56,400 --> 00:21:59,480
credit card number over the internet or log into your email,

432
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it is ENCRYPTID using a key generated by random numbers.

433
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But here's the secret. Classical computers aren't truly random. They're

434
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what we call pseudorandom. They use an algorithm, So if

435
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a hacker knows the algorithm and the starting seed number,

436
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they can predict the next number.

437
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Speaker 1: So it's like a really really complex pattern, but at

438
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the end of the day, it's still a pattern that

439
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can be unraveled correct.

440
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Speaker 2: Quantum randomness is entirely different. It relies on intrinsic quantum noise,

441
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the fundamental mathematical uncertainty of the universe itself. It is

442
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physically fundamentally impossible to predict.

443
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Speaker 1: So what's the breakthrough here? Haven't we known about quantum

444
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noise for a while now?

445
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Speaker 2: The breakthrough is the speed. They built a photonic chip

446
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that produced more than twenty gigabits per second of completely

447
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secure random numbers.

448
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Speaker 1: Twenty gigabits per second, just spitting out pure chaos exactly.

449
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Speaker 2: The previous best was around two point nine gigabits, so

450
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this is a massive leap. It means we can generate

451
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unbreakable encryption keys at the speed of the global Internet backbone.

452
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Speaker 1: So we are basically building an unbreakable shield before someone

453
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else can build the quantum sword that can break our

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current encryption.

455
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Speaker 2: Hopefully. Yes, it's an arms race, but this is a

456
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huge defensive victory let's.

457
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Speaker 1: Talk about discovery number seven. This is the verified quantum advantage.

458
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This is the moment the student finally surpassed the master.

459
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Speaker 2: This is Google's quantum echoes experiment. They measured something called

460
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out of time order correlators or otocs.

461
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Speaker 1: Out of time order correlators. Okay, that sounds like a

462
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piece of equipment from doctor? Who break that down for me?

463
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Speaker 2: Think of the butterfly effect. A butterfly flaps its wings

464
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in Brazil and a week later there's a tornado in Texas.

465
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Chaos in a classical system, if you scramble information is

466
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just gone. It's like scrambling an egg. You can't unscramble it, right,

467
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an egg is an egg. But in quantum mechanics, information

468
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is never truly lost. Otocs are a mathematical way of

469
00:23:52,200 --> 00:23:56,000
measuring how information spreads or scrambles through a system and

470
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effectively checking if you can reverse the butterfly effect to

471
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see exactly where the initial flap happened.

472
00:24:01,880 --> 00:24:05,240
Speaker 1: That is just mind bending. But why was this specific

473
00:24:05,319 --> 00:24:07,440
experiment considered an advantage?

474
00:24:07,720 --> 00:24:12,559
Speaker 2: Because calculating this scrambling is computationally devastating for a classical computer.

475
00:24:13,119 --> 00:24:16,519
Google ran this on one hundred and five quibits to

476
00:24:16,599 --> 00:24:20,119
measure a specific property of this scrambling the Frontier supercomputer,

477
00:24:20,519 --> 00:24:23,599
which remember is one of the fastest classical machines on Earth,

478
00:24:23,759 --> 00:24:26,880
would have taken three point two years per data point.

479
00:24:26,960 --> 00:24:30,440
Speaker 1: Three point two years for one single dot on a graph.

480
00:24:30,559 --> 00:24:33,279
Speaker 2: Yes, and on the quantum hardware it took about two.

481
00:24:33,079 --> 00:24:36,000
Speaker 1: Hours three point two years versus two hours. That's a

482
00:24:36,000 --> 00:24:38,319
speed up of roughly thirteen thousand times.

483
00:24:38,640 --> 00:24:41,039
Speaker 2: And this wasn't just a toy benchmark designed to make

484
00:24:41,079 --> 00:24:45,240
the quantum computer look good. It involved measuring real magnetization properties.

485
00:24:45,480 --> 00:24:49,759
It is definitive, undeniable proof that quantum has overtaken classical

486
00:24:49,759 --> 00:24:53,400
computing in specific meaningful physics problems.

487
00:24:53,519 --> 00:24:56,759
Speaker 1: We've crossed the rubicon. There's really no going back now,

488
00:24:57,279 --> 00:25:00,279
and now that we actually have these working machines seeing

489
00:25:00,359 --> 00:25:03,319
things we never even expect it, which leads us perfectly

490
00:25:03,319 --> 00:25:08,160
into Part five, The Weird Physics New phases and States

491
00:25:08,200 --> 00:25:08,640
of matter.

492
00:25:08,759 --> 00:25:10,640
Speaker 2: This is where things genuinely get trippy.

493
00:25:10,759 --> 00:25:15,279
Speaker 1: Discovery number six dynamical phase transitions. Now, I think I

494
00:25:15,319 --> 00:25:18,559
know what a normal phase transition is. Ice melts into water,

495
00:25:18,920 --> 00:25:20,319
water boils into steam.

496
00:25:20,519 --> 00:25:23,839
Speaker 2: Right, those are thermal phase transitions driven by temperature, but

497
00:25:23,960 --> 00:25:28,640
inside a quantum processor, researchers observed noise driven phase transitions.

498
00:25:28,720 --> 00:25:31,200
Speaker 1: Noise driven. How does noise change the state of matter?

499
00:25:31,319 --> 00:25:34,039
Speaker 2: Well, imagine a room full of people trying to have

500
00:25:34,119 --> 00:25:38,920
a perfectly synchronized conversation. That's entanglement. Now imagine the background

501
00:25:38,920 --> 00:25:40,319
noise in the room gets a little louder and a

502
00:25:40,319 --> 00:25:42,359
little louder. At a certain point, the conversation doesn't just

503
00:25:42,400 --> 00:25:45,200
get difficult, it breaks down completely all at once. The

504
00:25:45,240 --> 00:25:48,599
system snaps from one state highly entangled, to another state

505
00:25:48,720 --> 00:25:49,880
completely disordered.

506
00:25:49,920 --> 00:25:52,839
Speaker 1: So the computer itself, the information inside it goes through

507
00:25:52,880 --> 00:25:56,519
a phase change like freezing or boiling, but based purely

508
00:25:56,559 --> 00:25:57,839
on interference and noise.

509
00:25:58,319 --> 00:26:01,640
Speaker 2: Exactly we are learning the weather patterns of quantum information.

510
00:26:02,240 --> 00:26:06,400
It completely reframes how we understand stability in these complex systems.

511
00:26:06,680 --> 00:26:11,200
Speaker 1: That is wild. And speaking of wild discovery, number four

512
00:26:12,359 --> 00:26:17,480
forbidden material states. I'd to say forbidden sounds very ominous,

513
00:26:17,599 --> 00:26:19,119
like we opened a door we shouldn't have.

514
00:26:19,359 --> 00:26:22,400
Speaker 2: In physics, forbidden usually just means we were absolutely certain

515
00:26:22,440 --> 00:26:24,279
this was impossible until yesterday.

516
00:26:24,400 --> 00:26:25,759
Speaker 1: Fair enough? What did they find?

517
00:26:26,119 --> 00:26:29,400
Speaker 2: They were looking at a material called rhombus stacked five

518
00:26:29,480 --> 00:26:30,359
layer graphene.

519
00:26:30,519 --> 00:26:33,599
Speaker 1: Graphene, that' said, super material, just a single flat layer

520
00:26:33,640 --> 00:26:35,160
of carbon atoms, right, yes.

521
00:26:35,119 --> 00:26:36,960
Speaker 2: But if you take five of them and stack them

522
00:26:36,960 --> 00:26:40,720
in a very specific rhombus pattern, things get incredibly weird.

523
00:26:41,119 --> 00:26:44,559
They observed what are called fractional quantum anomalous Hall states.

524
00:26:44,599 --> 00:26:46,680
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm going to need you to translate that into English.

525
00:26:46,759 --> 00:26:50,480
Speaker 2: Two impossible things happened. First, electrons float along the edges

526
00:26:50,519 --> 00:26:53,200
of the device with absolute zero resistance.

527
00:26:52,880 --> 00:26:56,440
Speaker 1: Zero like perfect perpetual flow, no heat loss.

528
00:26:56,319 --> 00:26:59,559
Speaker 2: Perfect flow. Usually you need a massive, super cooled external

529
00:26:59,559 --> 00:27:02,599
magnetic field to force electrons to do that, but here,

530
00:27:03,279 --> 00:27:04,720
no magnetic field whatsoever.

531
00:27:05,039 --> 00:27:07,559
Speaker 1: Look, ma, no magnets exactly.

532
00:27:07,759 --> 00:27:11,160
Speaker 2: And the second thing was even weirder. The conductance values

533
00:27:11,200 --> 00:27:15,319
they measured were fractions of an electron charge five ninths

534
00:27:15,319 --> 00:27:16,480
and five elevenths.

535
00:27:16,799 --> 00:27:19,920
Speaker 1: Wait, fractions of a charge. I thought an electron was

536
00:27:20,359 --> 00:27:23,559
an electron. It's a fundamental particle, one unit. You can't

537
00:27:23,640 --> 00:27:25,720
just slice an electron in a half with a tiny knight.

538
00:27:25,839 --> 00:27:28,920
Speaker 2: You can't cut it now. But in these incredibly complex

539
00:27:29,000 --> 00:27:32,759
quantum states, the electrons dance together in such a highly

540
00:27:32,839 --> 00:27:36,160
coordinated way that the collective behaves as if it split.

541
00:27:36,519 --> 00:27:39,400
They form what we call quasi particles that actually carry

542
00:27:39,400 --> 00:27:42,720
a fractional charge. It challenges everything we fundamentally know about

543
00:27:42,720 --> 00:27:44,640
how matter organizes itself.

544
00:27:44,720 --> 00:27:47,359
Speaker 1: It's like discovering a new primary color. You thought you

545
00:27:47,400 --> 00:27:49,400
had the whole box of crayons, and suddenly there's a

546
00:27:49,400 --> 00:27:49,720
new one.

547
00:27:49,720 --> 00:27:51,799
Speaker 2: That's a great way to look at it. And Discovery

548
00:27:51,839 --> 00:27:55,200
number three adds to this new visual palette high res

549
00:27:55,200 --> 00:27:57,519
mapping of quantumizing magnetism.

550
00:27:57,640 --> 00:27:59,839
Speaker 1: This honestly sounds like a photography project.

551
00:28:00,119 --> 00:28:02,599
Speaker 2: It kind of is. At the atomic level. They used

552
00:28:02,640 --> 00:28:06,400
a two hundred and fifty six atom programmable quantum simulator

553
00:28:06,759 --> 00:28:09,480
and they used it to track how magnetic domains for

554
00:28:09,799 --> 00:28:12,319
how they evolve and how they collapse in real time.

555
00:28:12,599 --> 00:28:14,799
Speaker 1: So instead of guessing how magnets work down at the

556
00:28:14,799 --> 00:28:18,119
atomic level, we're looking at a static before and after photo.

557
00:28:18,400 --> 00:28:20,599
We're actually watching the movie play out.

558
00:28:20,799 --> 00:28:25,000
Speaker 2: Frame by frame. We are seeing non equilibrium quantum magnetism

559
00:28:25,079 --> 00:28:29,279
at scales that classical computers simply cannot resolve. We're looking

560
00:28:29,319 --> 00:28:31,680
directly through the experimental.

561
00:28:31,000 --> 00:28:35,680
Speaker 1: Window, which brings us to Discovery number two. New topological phases.

562
00:28:35,920 --> 00:28:40,839
Speaker 2: This one used programmable atom arrays, specifically Rideberg atom systems.

563
00:28:41,359 --> 00:28:45,960
They demonstrated exotic phases with names like stripe and plaquette orders.

564
00:28:46,160 --> 00:28:49,920
Speaker 1: Stripe and plaquette sounds like we're discussing interior design trends

565
00:28:49,920 --> 00:28:50,680
for a living room.

566
00:28:50,960 --> 00:28:53,799
Speaker 2: They are designs, but they're designs of nature. These are

567
00:28:53,880 --> 00:28:59,039
topologically ordered phases. They break traditional symmetry descriptions. It's about

568
00:28:59,039 --> 00:29:02,279
discovering entirely new organizational principles of matter.

569
00:29:02,480 --> 00:29:04,839
Speaker 1: So we aren't just taking old materials and tweaking them

570
00:29:04,880 --> 00:29:07,680
slightly to make them better. We are finding the hidden

571
00:29:08,079 --> 00:29:10,079
underlying rules of the universe.

572
00:29:09,920 --> 00:29:13,279
Speaker 2: Which brings us perfectly to the grand finale discovery number one,

573
00:29:13,880 --> 00:29:16,160
the fifty year mystery that was finally solved.

574
00:29:16,319 --> 00:29:18,799
Speaker 1: This is the big one, the quantum spin liquid.

575
00:29:19,000 --> 00:29:21,160
Speaker 2: This story actually starts all the way back in the

576
00:29:21,240 --> 00:29:26,559
nineteen seventies. A physicist named Philip Anderson, an absolute giant

577
00:29:26,640 --> 00:29:30,559
in the field, predicted a profoundly weird state of matter.

578
00:29:31,279 --> 00:29:33,599
He called it a quantum spin liquid.

579
00:29:33,920 --> 00:29:37,240
Speaker 1: Liquid like water. Again, are we melting something.

580
00:29:37,119 --> 00:29:40,359
Speaker 2: Not quite in a normal magnetic material? All the spins.

581
00:29:40,599 --> 00:29:42,799
Think of them as tiny little compass needles on the

582
00:29:42,839 --> 00:29:46,359
atom's line up as it gets cold north south, north south,

583
00:29:46,440 --> 00:29:49,680
they get perfectly ordered, like soldiers standing in a row.

584
00:29:49,799 --> 00:29:52,119
Speaker 1: Okay, I could picture that they freeze in place.

585
00:29:51,880 --> 00:29:55,519
Speaker 2: But in a spin liquid, the magnetic moments remain entirely disoldered.

586
00:29:55,640 --> 00:29:58,640
They are constantly fluctuating, shifting around. Even if you take

587
00:29:58,680 --> 00:30:01,200
them all the way down to absolute zones zero. They

588
00:30:01,319 --> 00:30:03,640
are in physics terms, frustrated.

589
00:30:03,759 --> 00:30:05,559
Speaker 1: Frustrated that's the actual technical term.

590
00:30:05,680 --> 00:30:10,359
Speaker 2: That is the technical term geometric frustration. Imagine a triangle

591
00:30:10,440 --> 00:30:12,720
of three atoms. If the first two want to point

592
00:30:12,759 --> 00:30:15,640
in opposite directions because of their magnetic forces, the third

593
00:30:15,720 --> 00:30:17,559
one doesn't know which way to point. It wants to

594
00:30:17,559 --> 00:30:21,559
oppose both, but it can't. It's frustrated. So in a

595
00:30:21,599 --> 00:30:25,799
spin liquid, this macroscopic frustration prevents the atoms from ever

596
00:30:25,920 --> 00:30:29,640
freezing into a solid pattern. They remain liquid like because

597
00:30:29,680 --> 00:30:32,400
of intense long range quantum entanglement.

598
00:30:32,319 --> 00:30:35,000
Speaker 1: So they are intimately linked to each other but remaining

599
00:30:35,279 --> 00:30:36,200
totally chaotic.

600
00:30:36,359 --> 00:30:39,559
Speaker 2: Yes, and for fifty years this was just a theory,

601
00:30:39,680 --> 00:30:43,359
a really elegant math problem on a chalkboard. But recently

602
00:30:43,400 --> 00:30:46,799
researchers reported in the journal Science that they used a

603
00:30:46,839 --> 00:30:50,160
two hundred and nineteen atom cogome array, which is a

604
00:30:50,279 --> 00:30:53,440
very specific star like lattice shape to directly measure this

605
00:30:53,519 --> 00:30:54,400
topological order.

606
00:30:54,440 --> 00:30:55,200
Speaker 1: They actually found it.

607
00:30:55,240 --> 00:30:58,000
Speaker 2: They didn't just find it, they created it. They confirmed

608
00:30:58,039 --> 00:31:01,279
the phase definitively exists. This is a fundamentally new state

609
00:31:01,319 --> 00:31:01,640
of matter.

610
00:31:01,759 --> 00:31:03,400
Speaker 1: So why is this number one? I mean, why does

611
00:31:03,440 --> 00:31:07,680
finding a new weird magnet state beat curing cancer or

612
00:31:07,720 --> 00:31:09,640
solving the battery cressis.

613
00:31:09,519 --> 00:31:12,319
Speaker 2: Because it proves that we can engineer matter into states

614
00:31:12,319 --> 00:31:15,880
that previously only existed on paper. It confirms that our

615
00:31:15,920 --> 00:31:19,240
theoretical understanding of quantum mechanics isn't just a nice model

616
00:31:19,240 --> 00:31:22,799
we use to do math. It's the literal instruction manual

617
00:31:22,880 --> 00:31:27,960
for reality. And practically speaking, quantum spin liquids might be

618
00:31:28,039 --> 00:31:32,000
the ultimate key to building topological quippets, which is the

619
00:31:32,200 --> 00:31:36,200
absolute holy grail of totally error free quantum computing.

620
00:31:36,279 --> 00:31:39,200
Speaker 1: It's the ultimate validation of everything we've been doing. It is,

621
00:31:39,279 --> 00:31:41,880
so let's take a collective breath here, because that was

622
00:31:41,880 --> 00:31:45,440
a lot. We've gone from batteries that use seventy percent

623
00:31:45,519 --> 00:31:50,559
les lithium, to autonomous robots making materials, to plaquette orders

624
00:31:50,640 --> 00:31:51,519
and spin liquids.

625
00:31:51,640 --> 00:31:54,480
Speaker 2: It really is a journey from the immediately practical to

626
00:31:54,519 --> 00:31:55,559
the deeply profound.

627
00:31:55,640 --> 00:31:57,720
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what I love about this source deck.

628
00:31:57,799 --> 00:32:00,200
It's not just hey, here's a slightly faster can copewter

629
00:32:00,279 --> 00:32:03,559
chip for your phone. It's here's a potential cure for cancer.

630
00:32:03,839 --> 00:32:06,480
Here's a massive step toward fusion energy. And here's the

631
00:32:06,559 --> 00:32:09,799
completely new way electrons behave that we didn't think was possible.

632
00:32:09,920 --> 00:32:14,559
Speaker 2: We are standing right on a precipice. Biology, physics, computer science.

633
00:32:14,559 --> 00:32:18,599
They are all merging into one unified discipline. The computational

634
00:32:18,640 --> 00:32:22,279
tools of one are suddenly solving the fifty year mysteries

635
00:32:22,319 --> 00:32:22,720
of the other.

636
00:32:23,200 --> 00:32:26,000
Speaker 1: So if we distill all of this down, what does

637
00:32:26,000 --> 00:32:29,519
this actually mean for you the listener right now today?

638
00:32:29,839 --> 00:32:33,160
Speaker 2: It means the fundamental bottlenecks of human progress are breaking.

639
00:32:33,599 --> 00:32:36,759
The bottleneck for the last century used to be discovery.

640
00:32:37,200 --> 00:32:39,559
We don't know what material to use, we don't know

641
00:32:39,599 --> 00:32:43,079
how the molecule folds. But now with systems like Genome

642
00:32:43,279 --> 00:32:47,640
and Azure quantum elements, the discovery part is becoming almost instantaneous,

643
00:32:47,920 --> 00:32:49,559
compressing twenty years into a week.

644
00:32:49,759 --> 00:32:52,200
Speaker 1: So the bottleneck is shifting entirely to implementation.

645
00:32:52,440 --> 00:32:55,359
Speaker 2: Exactly can we physically build the factories fast enough? Can

646
00:32:55,400 --> 00:32:58,200
we run the FDA clinical trials fast enough? Can we

647
00:32:58,279 --> 00:33:01,000
mine the sodium and integrate the new batteries into cars?

648
00:33:01,200 --> 00:33:04,359
The signus is suddenly moving exponentially faster than our physical

649
00:33:04,359 --> 00:33:05,559
infrastructure can handle.

650
00:33:05,880 --> 00:33:08,920
Speaker 1: That is the thrilling and honestly slightly terrifying thought.

651
00:33:09,319 --> 00:33:14,200
Speaker 2: It is a bit daunting, but mostly it's thrilling. Faster cures, cleaner,

652
00:33:14,359 --> 00:33:19,759
limitless energy, unbreakable digital security. These aren't sci fi dreams anymore.

653
00:33:19,799 --> 00:33:23,359
They are literally engineering tickets sitting in a queue waiting

654
00:33:23,359 --> 00:33:23,960
to be built.

655
00:33:24,079 --> 00:33:26,119
Speaker 1: I want to leave you with a provocative thought to

656
00:33:26,240 --> 00:33:29,960
mull over. If we can truly simulate twenty years of

657
00:33:30,039 --> 00:33:34,039
grueling research in a single week, what happens to the

658
00:33:34,160 --> 00:33:37,799
very concept of human progress. We are so used to

659
00:33:37,839 --> 00:33:41,200
progress being a slow generational thing. My kids will have

660
00:33:41,240 --> 00:33:44,640
better tech than me, But now progress might be weekly.

661
00:33:45,279 --> 00:33:48,319
Are we as a society actually ready for a world

662
00:33:48,359 --> 00:33:50,920
where a limit isn't what we can discover, but how

663
00:33:51,000 --> 00:33:53,559
fast our brains can adapt to handling the truth?

664
00:33:53,720 --> 00:33:55,759
Speaker 2: That is the defining question of the century.

665
00:33:55,920 --> 00:33:57,799
Speaker 1: We really want to hear from you on this. Which

666
00:33:57,799 --> 00:33:59,960
of these fifteen discoveries do you think will impact your

667
00:34:00,079 --> 00:34:02,279
daily life. First, is it going to be the battery

668
00:34:02,279 --> 00:34:05,359
in your pocket, the targeted cancer medicine in your cabinet,

669
00:34:05,839 --> 00:34:08,760
or maybe the quantum encryption protecting your life savings.

670
00:34:08,880 --> 00:34:11,480
Speaker 2: I'm personally betting on the materials. The batteries will hit

671
00:34:11,480 --> 00:34:12,159
the market first.

672
00:34:12,440 --> 00:34:15,400
Speaker 1: I'm holding out hope for the medicine. We'd love to

673
00:34:15,400 --> 00:34:17,599
know what you think. Leave a comment down below and

674
00:34:17,719 --> 00:34:20,760
let us know your stance. And thank you so much

675
00:34:20,800 --> 00:34:23,440
for unraveling these thrilling threads with us today.

676
00:34:23,679 --> 00:34:26,800
Speaker 2: Until next time, keep questioning everything see on the

677
00:34:26,800 --> 00:34:27,519
Speaker 1: Next deep dive.