Decoding the Universe: Quantum | Full Documentary | NOVA | PBS
B2
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the following Nova program contains
scenes of quantum physics which is known
to cause confusion anxiety and even
heartbreak please see your physicist if
symptoms
persist quantum physics it's the science
of the very small but it punches far
above its weight quantum physics has not
just been important it's been
revolutionary it's the most successful
scientific theory of the last 100 years
quantum mechanics already permeates
everything we
do everything from your computer or cell
phone to how we keep time depends on our
understanding of the quantum world we
could say now that we live in a Quantum
age and it's behind one of the greatest
discoveries in the history of
science gravitation
waves tiny ripples in the fabric of
SpaceTime itself gravitational waves
give us a whole new way to look at the
universe and yet beyond the
mathematics quantum physics makes a
shocking
claim that at its deepest level reality
plays like a game of
chance probabilities are not a measure
of what we don't know they're just in
intrinsic to the quantum theory with
mindboggling behaviors like
superposition and entanglement this is
weird it's strange what quantum physics
really means remains deeply mysterious
but it's created the world we live in
today quantum physics actually governs
everything around us there not some
weird outposted physics that's far away
it's completely changed the way we used
to live into the way we live now
decoding the universe Quant
right now on
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December 12th
1970 NASA launches a scout B
rocket from a former oil drilling
platform off Kenya's
Coast its payload is a small satellite
named uru a Swahili word meaning
freedom uru is the first Space Telescope
dedicated to observing
x-rays high energy light waves invisible
to our
eyes powerful sources of x-rays
constantly bombard Earth but our
atmosphere blocks
them with this groundbreaking telescope
a new Vista for exploration opens
but buried in the data collected from
uru is something
ominous in
1971 scientists revealed that the
constellation signis the
swan contains what until then was more
of a mythical mathematical
Beast a black
hole black holes are the most mysterious
objects in the
universe also like the most
violent even Einstein didn't think
nature would allow such a crazy
object black holes are fearsome
monsters capable of devouring whole
planets whole
stars and even each other
a black hole is created when
gravitational forces bring together
enough Mass to put a rip into the fabric
of
SpaceTime some of them are genuinely
monstrous I mean millions billions maybe
even 10 billion times the mass of our
own Sun we don't actually have lot of
physics to predict what's going to
happen to us when we go in hopefully
none of us will experience it anytime
soon
in the decade since the first sighting
science has learned a lot about these
menacing and mysterious objects of
Destruction they aren't that
rare super massive black holes sit at
the center of most large
galaxies we have one in
ours but it turns out these Cosmic
behemoths Also may have an Achilles heel
first predicted by Steven Hawking in
1974 scientists thought of a black hole
as a one-way trip to
Oblivion that past its Event Horizon
nothing could
Escape but Hawking
disagreed he theorized something did
escape from these Mighty
Giants
radiation ironically the end result of
physics at the tiniest of
scales quantum
physics Clifford Johnson is a
non-fiction graphic author and also a
theoretical
physicist one of the key things that was
discovered in quantum physics is that
empty space itself itself is not empty
it's seething with
possibility instead of having empty
space
here a particle in its antiparticle can
appear dance around a little bit and
then annihilate back into empty
space now imagine that happening near a
black hole Horizon which we're told is a
one-way door what if one of those
particles Falls in and now the partner
doesn't have anything to annihilate with
so it will actually fly off
and a distant Observer will see that
particle as radiation coming from the
black
hole without consuming more matter if it
emits radiation it will gradually shrink
in
size the black hole actually begins to
evaporate now this is a completely
stunning
Revelation known as Hawking radiation
its existence is still only a theory but
perhaps given enough time and it is a
very very very long time for many black
Halls longer than the current age of the
universe even a super massive black hole
like the one at the heart of the Milky
Way May evaporate and
disappear
vanquished by the quantum world and the
physics of the very
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small the quantum world is often cast as
weird and it sure can look that way in
the movies you're sending a signal down
to the quantum
realm where are we
but what is quantum
physics it arose as the solution to a
problem science during the 19th century
had investigated smaller and smaller
amounts of matter and energy but by the
first two decades of the 20th century
the existing line between the physics of
particles and the physics of waves had
grown murky
especially when trying to understand the
fundamental nature of
light sometimes it really is important
to describe light as a wave as an
extended object that sort of waves in
space and travels over time analogously
to a ocean wave in the water other times
as people like Albert Einstein and
others began to to find they really
really had to describe aspects of light
as if it was a collection of particles
that traveled almost like miniature
billiard
balls ultimately the answer was a new
kind of physics quantum
mechanics which included an amalgam of
ideas about both particles and
waves its earliest formulation dates
back roughly 100
years this 1927 conference in Brussels
is where the world's leading physicists
met to discuss the new formed
Theory and there was a lot to
discuss because quantum mechanics
represented a radical departure from the
previous Paradigm of physics what we
call today classical
physics in classical physics handed down
by Newton we had determinism we had the
Clockwork universe so if you throw a
ball that's a classical object with the
same Force the same speed the same angle
it's always going to go go to the same
place right in principle if you knew
exactly the state of the whole world all
at once and you knew the laws of physics
you could exactly predict what
everything was going to do arbitrarily
far in the future and into the
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past in classical physics even events
that we think of as random aren't
really there are things that appear
random in our everyday lives like
rolling dice it looked random right but
actually it's a
deterministic set of events which leads
to whatever outcome the dice shows if I
told you exactly how I was going to roll
the dice you could predict based on that
initial throw what the final outcome is
going to be it's a very hard
mathematical problem but it's not
intractable Quantum mechanically that's
not the
case quantum mechanics tossed out the
certainty of the classical Clockwork
universe
for one that only allowed for
probabilistic predictions about
potential
observations probability in quantum
physics is different because even if we
have the most complete description that
the laws of physics will allow us to
have typically we're unable to predict
precisely what we'll see when we observe
a Quantum system quantum mechanics say
we can know everything there is to know
about the setup right now and still when
we want to make a measurement of it in
the future the best we can do is say
there's a 50% chance of getting this
outcome 30% chance of that 20% chance of
that in the quantum theory probabilities
are not a measure of what we don't know
they're just intrinsic to the quantum
theory we cannot get around them that is
impossible some physicists raised on
determinism had trouble accepting this
New probabilistic
View Albert Einstein famously said that
he didn't believe God plays dice with
the
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universe but there is another related
even stranger aspect to quantum
mechanics in classical physics external
reality is independent of the
Observer looking at the moon doesn't
change the the
moon and if you look away the
deterministic laws of physics continue
to guide the moon on its
path but in quantum mechanics things are
weirder the basic idea of quantum
mechanics the thing that we really
struggle with to get our heads around
even as professional physicists is that
unlike any other version of physics
quantum mechanics separates what happens
in a system when we're not observing it
from what we see when we measure
it a few rare exceptions aside quantum
mechanics says that we can't know the
position of a particle like an electron
when we're not observing
it at best it can only be described
mathematically as a wave its exact
position given in probability
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but at the moment that the particle is
observed the probabilistic wave function
collapses to one specific
location to The Observer who never sees
this wav likee
quality it is like the particle was a
particle all
along that opens up a whole world of
questions you know what happens to the
observational outcomes that are not
observed what picks out which outcome is
going to happen this is still what we're
thinking about
today during that mysterious period when
the particle is considered neither here
nor
there it is said to be in superp
position in a sense a combination of all
the possible
outcomes but what does that really
mean is the electron everywhere at the
same time is it nowhere at all is it at
one place and we just don't know all of
those questions are actually outside of
what quantum theory itself actually can
answer it's not part of the theory at
all so if you ask me your guess is as
good as mine unfortunately that's the
best I can
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do for most people quantum mechanics
remains deeply
unintuitive and yet it has proven itself
again and again by making predictions
with uncanny
accuracy in Practical terms it is the
most successful Theory science has ever
produced and it has shaped our Modern
Life quantum physics has not just been
important it's been revolutionary it's
completely changed the way we used to
live into the way we live
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now take our sense of time
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perhaps there is no better illustration
of our intimate relationship with it
than music and
dance the underlying movement of Tango
is reliant on the beat which is reliant
on timing which creates synchronization
to create a truly smooth dance it's not
enough to just be synchronized on the
beat it's also the
synchronicity between the Beats that's
important that's a real Beauty in it in
finding that connection through
stretching out that
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second Tara forier is a Tango
professional and a physicist deeply
involved in the science of time so we
have a number of systems in this lab she
works here these systems are used to
characterize atomic clocks and also
compare atomic clocks at the Boulder
Colorado Laboratories of the National
Institute of Standards and technology or
nist home to some of the atomic clocks
that help set the official time for the
country over the centuries we've tracked
time a variety of ways by the sun's
movement
the swing of
pendulums the oscillations of Springs
and in the 20th century the vibrations
of quartz
crystals but since the
1960s time has been officially
determined using atomic clocks and the
quantum characteristics of
atoms and the idea is that the laws of
physics are unchanging unlike something
like the rotation of the earth the
rotation of the Earth itself can change
because of plate tectonics because the
Moon is moving away from the earth it
physics is not truly
fundamental the reason why we love
atomic clock it's a universally defined
time no matter who does the experiment
no matter where you do the experiment in
principle once you corrected for the all
systematic effects it should produce the
same time no matter
where the consistency of atomic clocks
arises from the very nature of atoms
atomic clocks depend crucially on the
quantum physics of atoms you have a
nucleus around which there are electrons
in certain energy levels and these
energy levels are possible energy states
that the electron can have inside the
atom since an electron can only be at
certain energy levels and not in between
to get to a higher level it needs to
encounter a very specific helping
hand such as a particular
Photon so if it were to absorb an
incoming Photon it would have to be of
just the right energy to jump from one
level to a higher
level that special relationship between
the electrons of a particular atom and a
photon of a specific energy level is a
unique signature for that atom it's
called a resonant
frequency so this characteristic
signature of this atom gives us a very
specific frequency standard that we can
use to build a timekeeping
device atomic clocks work in different
ways but they all use a specific type of
atom or molecule as a reference to lock
in the frequency of an electromagnetic
wave whose oscillations provide the
ticking of the
clock today a second is officially
defined by counting the oscillations of
the primary resonant frequency of a
cesium 133
atom that's over 9 billion oscillations
per
second and you interact with that time
reference more than you might think for
example through the global positioning
system
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GPS turn left I think the GPS is
actually kind of crazy when you think
about it how do we do anything before
GPS the us-based GPS system uses over 30
dedicated orbiting satellites each with
multiple atomic clocks when you use the
GPS on your cell
phone its receiver checks the signals
from four or more satellites the signal
contains information about the
satellite's position and the time it
sent the
signal that timestamp is
critical your phone uses it to calculate
how long it took to receive the signal
and from that knows the distance to the
satellite with that information from
multiple satellites it is possible to
triangulate the phone's position within
a few
yards but the whole system depends on
knowing the
time in the end I find it amazing how
strongly we're committed and tied to
atomic clocks and how much we take it
for granted even though I built atomic
clocks but when I'm driving being Guided
by this GPS service you don't really
become aware of how much atomic clock
technology has permeated everywhere in
Modern
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Life have you had a chance to look at
more systematically varying the VZ June
ye is a physicist with joint
appointments with nist the University of
Colorado Boulder and their Joint
Institute Gilla what if you lock exactly
on top of each other and see whether
that Peak disappears completely he works
on the new generation of atomic clocks
known as Optical atomic
clocks while cesium clocks use
microwaves Optical clocks use lasers
which run at higher
frequencies that also means using a
different atom instead of cesium Junes
work mostly uses strontium
atoms along with the laser carefully
tuned to one of strontium's resonant
frequencies it puts one of the strontium
electrons into super position so it is
both excited and unexcited at the same
time creating what June calls a Quantum
pendulum this pendulum is swinging at a
speed of nearly 1 million billion cycles
per second it's going back and forth
back and forth and this superp position
creates this Quantum pendulum and when
it comes to accuracy more swings or
higher
frequency equals more
Precision if you think of swings as
marks on a ruler the more marks you have
the more exactly you can
measure so compared to a cesium clock
June's strontium clock is around 100,000
times more precise
and that much sensitivity makes all the
more apparent some of the stranger
aspects of time including one first
predicted by
Einstein gravitational time
dilation in the movie
Interstellar part of the crew of a
spaceship descends in a shuttle to a
planet orbiting a super massive black
hole when the shuttle returns those on
the mission feel they've only been gone
for 3 hours but not the crew member who
remained in orbit hello
Rob I've waited years 23 years 4 months
8 Days the difference in time is another
effect of the black hole's warping of
the fabric of
SpaceTime the warping not only means
gravity gets stronger closer to the
black hole but time gets slower too
and you don't need a black hole to be
able to measure
it even on Earth gravity varies and so
does time based on the distance from the
planet's
Center so a person at the top of the
Empire State Building experiences weaker
gravity and time going faster than a
person at street level where gravity is
stronger but all that happens
imperceptibly our wrist watches just
aren't accurate enough to show the
difference but June's Optical clocks are
so accurate that even a small difference
in elevation between two clocks will
reveal the
discrepancy in the passage of
time when the clock changes its
elevation by few hundred microns
basically size of a human hair you will
start to be able to see the time is
actually running differently still takes
it a lot easier with that much accuracy
a clock transforms into something more
than a Time piece it becomes a new
window into the nature of the
universe making a clock is much more
than just a piece to keep time it is a
sensor to explore fundamental physics to
expand our curiosity to build new
technologies that can connect to Quantum
Computing Quantum information processing
and
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communication Central to making June's
Precision atomic clocks work are Ultra
stable
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lasers which themselves are also a
Quantum
technology they date back to the 19
1960s you are looking at an industrial
laser which emits an extraordinary light
not to be found in nature I will show
you this scene from 1964's Goldfinger is
said to be one of the first popular
depictions of this new Cutting Edge Tech
I think you've made your point
Goldfinger thank you for the
demonstration today lasers are
everywhere there are medical lasers to
correct
vision lasers at the checkout counter
lasers for cutting communicating
entertaining cats and of
course for light
shows which encourage us all to trip the
light fantastic
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which may be
why experimental physicist ra aikari is
laser focused on
lasers when I talk about how how
beautiful a laser is as an instrument I
don't want to gush about it too much
like I'm in love with lasers I don't
know I feel like a weirdo fanatic or
something like that but there just
there's something about them to
understand what makes laser light so
special it makes sense to look at an
ordinary light bulb the oldfashioned
kind with a Tungsten filament it
produces light through thermal
radiation an electric current passing
through the filament Heats it up it's t
atoms become excited and vibrate at
different
speeds which causes them to emit photons
in all directions across a variety of
wavelengths compared to a laser this is
chaos the way you should think about a
light bulb is something like they're
just a mob of people all singing a
different pitch so it's like a rock
concert audience
[Applause]
but a laser a laser is more like if you
go to juliard or Berkeley School of
Music and you go to a
concert it's like a choir of people who
have got Perfect Pitch but it's a choir
of something like a million trillion
people singing at the same time the same
tone that's because laser light is
generated in an entirely different way a
fact hidden in its name stimulated IM
let's say we have inside an atom an
electron that's at some excited state
some higher energy level and now a
photon of just the right frequency
passes by the atom it triggers the atom
to do something interesting the electron
loses energy and goes to the lower
energy and
emits a photon of precisely the same
frequency as the one that came in it's
going in the same direction and it has
the same phase so what we have there is
a quantum mechanical amplification
process if we place a group of those
same excited atoms inside a chamber with
mirrors at both ends the emitted photons
will bounce back and
forth continuing to stimulate the
emission of more
photons which in turn stimulate even
more
photons one of the mirrors is only
partially
reflected it allows some of the light to
escape now that light's very special
it's composed of photons that are all
the same frequency so the same color and
they're all the same phase and all going
in the same direction so you have this
intense pure beam of light and that's
the
laser lasers have proven to be an
extremely versatile tool
including for measuring
distance R work with stable
highfrequency lasers takes that to an
extreme when you use them you're in a
whole different realm of measurement
than anything else that has to do with
rulers and any of that other stuff
anybody who's like a real Pro knows that
the only thing that you ever measure is
frequency if you're measuring anything
else you're kind of an
amateur thanks to the fixed speed of
light the beam of a highfrequency laser
has an incredibly short
wavelength perfect for measuring
extremely small changes in
distance since 1996 Ron has been part of
a project that uses laser light to
measure something incredibly
unimaginably small and
weird tiny fluctuations in the fabric of
space and time
itself space and time uh Ripple they're
not fixed things and so the distance
between my two hands is not always going
to be this if I hold them
steady the idea like so many goes back
to
Einstein in the early 20th century his
work led to the merging of space and
time into one concept
SpaceTime and he theorized that gravity
was was the warping of that space-time
fabric by the mass of
objects but that carried a startling
implication that the acceleration of
objects with mass would create ripples
in space time that spread at the speed
of
light gravitational
waves gravitational waves were first
projected by Einstein and he didn't
believe it at first so he went back and
forth through I believe the
mid-30s but his first prediction was
they were too minute to ever be
detected by the 1980s that sentiment had
changed and ligo the laser
interferometer gravitational wave
Observatory was founded as a joint
Caltech and MIT
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project part of R's work at Caltech has
been to continuously improve the
essential art of ligo laser
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interferometry this is the where it all
begins uh I'm going to show you the
whole laser andrometer in here that's a
prototype of the Lio system the basic
design is easy to understand the ligo
interferometer has two arms at right
angles to each other a very stable
infrared laser feeds into a beam split
which directs half the beam down each
arm half of the light goes one way and
half goes the other way and then you
have mirrors at the ends and they
reflect the light
back the phase of one arm of the laser
is the reverse of the other if all is
normal when recombined they will cancel
each other out resulting in no
signal but if a gravitational wave
passes through distorting SpaceTime
the length of each arm will change
Shifting the phase of the two
beams for a brief moment the equipment
will register a
signal instead of having exact
cancellation and destructive
interference you have a little bit of
light leaking out and that little bit of
light that leaks out is what we
detect but there is a key difference
between Ra's working test bed and the
real deal
size this is one of two Lio
installations in the United
States while the arms of the caltac
instrument are about 44 yd long the ones
here cover about 2 and A2 miles
each costing hundreds of millions of
dollars Lio was a huge gamble on an
unproven
idea that paid
off in 2015 a signal was
detected and it was a
doy the first event that ligo detected
was the most powerful event human beings
had recorded since the Big Bang itself
more power came out of that Collision of
those two black holes then was emanated
by all the stars in the universe
combined
all of that power came out in the
ringing of the drum of
SpaceTime since the original event ligo
has confirmed the detection of more than
80
others it is hard to overstate the
significance of the
discovery ligo is massive Albert
Einstein predicted that gravitational
waves should exist and now we measure
them this is the most direct direct
observation of black holes that we've
ever had this is a complete revolution
in
science and it's all possible because of
that Quantum technology that has become
completely embedded in our
lives the
laser the more stable your laser is the
more things in the universe you can
measure and there's no limit to it so
every year when we get lasers better and
better we'll be able to see further out
into the universe and see tinier things
in the microscopic nature of reality
matter space and time anything like that
you just have to keep working on this
one tool and make it better and
better arguably the most important
change in quantum physics in recent
decades is a deeper understanding of a
special kind of shared State called
quantum
entanglement imagine a machine that
spits out pairs of coins
which on the surface look like ordinary
coins if you flip one it comes up heads
or tails about 50% of the time nothing
strange
there but using a pair of coins fresh
out of the machine you flip one it comes
up heads and then the other it also
comes up
heads that could just be
locked so then you do the same thing
with another fresh pair
this time the first coin is Tails and so
is the second agreement
again so you flip another
pair and then
another and
another and
another pair after pair the two coins
always agree on the first
flip what's going
on maybe the first flipped coin once it
comes comes up heads or tails is somehow
telling the other coin how to
behave to make sure that can't happen
you separate the coins by flying one to
the moon and flip them at the same time
so no message could possibly travel
between them still they come up in
agreement it all sounds too strange to
be true but particles really can behave
like those
coins in quantum physics it's called
entanglement entanglement is really just
a stubborn stubborn exciting Andor
frustrating fact that takes a long time
to try to get our heads around
entanglement is certainly the most
interesting and the most confusing
aspect of quantum it's one of these
things we don't see you know naively in
the world around us but it is taking
place deep in the materials that exist
around us every
day and while you probably won't come
across a coin entangler anytime
soon in the lab scientists routinely
generate pairs of entangled particles
that share a Quantum state so fully they
can be thought of as one Quantum
object you simply can't differentiate
between them it's just one pure State
it's as though you have a single entity
that's spatially separated without a
physical
connection entangled particles remain
connected even when they're separated by
hundreds of
miles likely far
more so does that mean it can go between
here and Andromeda probably the
equations give us no reason to think it
wouldn't entanglement sounds
bizarre Einstein derided the idea as
spooky action at a
distance but since the
1970s experiment after experiment has
confirmed entanglement is a real Quantum
phenomenon now of course many many
decades later we know that entanglement
is undeniably a part of the world it's
how the world works at the quantum
mechanical level we better get used to
that and now see what can we do with it
because it's powerful let's try to use
it to become this new tool be able to
create and control it might be arguably
thought of as one of the biggest
scientific and Engineering developments
of the 21st
century and that's happening on several
fronts entanglement has been put to work
in Quantum
cryptography and Quantum
Communication in atomic clocks and in
continuing improvements to ligo but
perhaps with the greatest
Fanfare in Quantum
Computing and that starts with
this the
Cubit the Cubit gets its name from its
cousin in classical Computing the binary
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bit like its name suggests a binary bit
can only be set to zero or
one but from such humble beginnings much
has
flowed more or less all the computer
that makes up the modern
world all calculations all emails
whether you're talking to your friend or
whether you are a NASA scientist doing
some rocket calculation all of that can
boil down to just zeros and ones
switching inside your computer which is
kind of amazing that it's that
Universal despite it many successes the
binary bit is the equivalent of a light
switch on or off
the Cubit is far more subtle the special
thing about a cubit is that it operates
by the laws of quantum mechanics it
doesn't have to be just in the zero
state or just in the one state it can be
a superposition of
both that superposition creates a
mathematical space often represented by
a
sphere where a classical bit can only
sit on the South Pole or the North Pole
a Quantum BD can be anywhere on the
surface of this sphere it opens up a
whole new array of possibilities of
mathematical
operations but a single Cubit will only
take you so far in Computing one cubit
by itself is not a computer or it would
be the world's smallest most useless
computer but when you combine them it
can provide enough computation and
calculations that you can get some
something on the other
end using several cubits together opens
up the power of entanglement and
unleashes mindboggling levels of
complexity if I wanted to give a
complete description of what's happening
with just a few hundred qits very highly
entangled with one another I would have
to write down more bits than the number
of atoms in the visible universe and
it's that extravagance of the quantum
language that we wish to exploit in a
quantum
computer beyond the work being done at
universities there are about a 100
companies developing cubits and Quantum
Computing
Hardware major players include Google
Microsoft Amazon and
IBM its Hardware development effort is
centered
here at the Thomas J Watson research
Center in Yorktown Heights outside New
York
City okay let me introduce you to our
IBM Quantum system 2 actually inside
here is three Quantum processes and the
team is working on how you investigate
algorithms that use multiple different
processes IBM's cubits employs small
Loops of superconducting
metal since superconductors require cold
temperatures to operate the center
section of the computer is a
refrigeration
unit in fact the cooling unit of a
quantum computer can look so cool it's
often confused for the star of the
show so this is a dilution refrigerator
a lot of people think this entire cool
shiny machine here is a quantum computer
but that's actually not the case this is
not a quantum computer this is a quantum
computer this tiny little chip down here
this is a freezer basically but you
can't deny that it is amazing looking
all of these fancy shiny parts are just
plumbing parts and cables designed to
keep the quantum computer insanely cold
I mean it's likeus 400 something de F
like there's absolute zero we are
.015 above that it has to be so insanely
cold because we use superconductors to
make our cubits and then furthermore we
want to remove any type of noise for
thermal excitations which can disturb
the cubits and make them behave in ways
that we don't
like since 2016 IBM has made its quantum
computers accessible to the public over
the
Internet anyone can come up with a
Quantum algorithm akin to a classical
computer program and submit it to be run
since we first put it on the cloud
people have run over three trillion jobs
on the quantum
computers running an algorithm on a
quantum computer involves setting the
initial state of the
cubits and then manipulating them in a
series of
steps to do that on its systems IBM uses
microwave
pulses these microwave pulses
essentially either flip the Cubit create
it in a superposition or measure it
after all the manipulation the cubits
are red collapsing their Quantum State
into either a zero or
one but there's a catch on a quantum
computer the chip can spontaneously
Decay from the excited state or the one
state into the zero State when we don't
want it to and this can occur you know
about every millisecond or so these
errors are basically inherent to the
quantum need nature of the device
correcting these errors is one of the
built-in challenges of quantum
Computing the current generation of
quantum computers are not yet able to do
it themselves so there's one final
step the information then comes back out
then it gets sent over to a computer
where we do things like error mitigation
post-process the results correct for any
extra noise and then we send it back
through the cloud
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it is easy to imagine that Quantum
Computing is the next phase of classical
Computing that soon you'll see a box
that says new cubid chip
inside the most common question people
always ask me which is like when will I
be able to play Minecraft when will I be
able to play Doom on my quantum computer
quantum computers are not good for
everything in the future there won't be
Quantum PowerPoint there won't be
Quantum words we don't need to do that
because we have classical computers and
Xboxes that are perfectly suitable for
those types of
applications quantum computers function
very differently and are aimed at very
different
tasks experts see a role for quantum
computers in areas like simulation of
quantum behaviors in chemistry and
materials or optimization of complex
systems ranging from energy distribution
to database searches
in any case the future of quantum
Computing is far from
written so because things are really
speeding up all over the world I think
we're going to very quickly see a
demonstration of a task that's been done
with a quantum computer that just is
well well outside the capability of
current computers and that'll probably
happen within the next 5 to 10 years I
would say the future of computing is
going to have classical accelerators
it's going to have ai accelerators and
it's going to have Quantum computering
accelerators all working together and
for me that's one of the most exciting
things is how do we actually take
advantage of all these different
accelerators I think that a well
functioning quantum computer will be
able to do certain things much much
faster but number one we don't know for
sure and number two it might turn out
the pessimistic view of this that those
problems are kind of limited that
they're very very special ized but
that's all exciting fun work in progress
that's what makes it
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interesting the roots of quantum physics
go back 100
years but only in recent decades have we
started to gain control over the quantum
realm and that has already transformed
the way we
live there has been astonishing change
in the kinds of quantum systems we can
build and manipulate quantum mechanics
itself already permeates everything we
do there part of how we manipulate the
world they're part of every transistor
and every computer it's about how things
interact on a fundamental level but it
turns out we need to know how things
interact on a fundamental level to do
big things as well there's still deep
Mysteries to puzzle with that part
hasn't gone away what's increased in a
way that I still find remarkable
is that these same curious mindboggling
Quantum features are now built into how
people navigate the world every single
day but what about the
future what will Quantum technology
offer in the coming decades just like we
can tell our kids oh yeah you know I was
born before the internet and I was born
before smartphones 50 years from now
people are going to be telling stories
about technologies that are normal that
today we can't even F I believe 50 years
from now people growing up won't think
twice about entanglement
superposition I think that will be
common place one of the things I love
about quantum mechanics is that it seems
non-intuitive to us that tells us that
there's something Beyond just what we
think we understand we can't always rely
on our intuition we have to rely on our
understanding to make progress and
quantum mechanics just shows us that so
clearly
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