BioShock Infinite vs. Quantum Mechanics: The Real Science of BioShock Infinite (SPOILERS)

back in the year 1912 the world of science was on the verge of a revolution and that Revolution was quantum mechanics which is a kind of physics that deals with really weird things and BioShock Infinite is also full of really weird things coincidence no at the start of the 20th century a German scientist called Max plank figured out that all energy comes in tiny little packets and that's where a Quantum mechanic starts and that justifies the expense of an all but forgotten Physics degree totally worth it Mom and Dad anyway there time little packets are called Quantum which is why they call it quantum theory and they mean that at a very small scale the universe is made of Canter inuitive weirdness you alter Reality by observing it woo this electron is a wave and a particle at the same time uh you need quantum theory to understand everyday ordinary things like microchips and lasers but out of that bubbling cauldron of quantum weirdness we also get some Bizarro phenomena not totally unlike what we see in B shck infinite I did get around to the game you came here to six [Applause] rosalin Lutes is the prim lady physicist in BioShock Infinite they well at least she invented the technology that allows the city to float giant balloons Quantum particles suspended in SpaceTime at a fixed height so not giant balloons The Way Columbia hovers at a fixed distance above the sod and Below looks a lot like a Quantum phenomenon called flux pinning influx pinning a superconductor hovers is pinned in space above a magnet um by the bits of of magnetic field passing through it flux pinning is also known as quantum levitation but rosing Lutes doesn't like that term colleagues called my Lutes field quantum levitation but in fact it was nothing of the sort magicians levitate my atom simply failed to fall but you say tomato I say tomato quantum levitation Quantum atoms so I'm going to call this a case of interdimensional semantics it's quantum levitation technically to make it work you would need Columbia to be on a giant superconducting plate Maybe and America would have to install magnetic tracks all over the continent uh and everything would have to be in a giant liquid nitrogen bath to keep it cool but otherwise the theory is sound one of the ways to understand the quantum nature of the universe is called many worlds interpretation uh which says there are many worlds uh maybe even an infinite number of worlds in this interpretation we live in one Universe among many many universes each one creat by uh branching off at the alternative outcome for a Quantum event or to put it symbolically you flip a coin in this universe and it comes up heads and you flip it in Another Universe and it came up Tails that's one idiot and in one Universe when you flip the coin a 100 times it came up heads 100 times told you H I never find that as satisfying as I had imagined CH up there's always next time I suppose there is in BioShock Infinite it looks like Elizabeth can use her Quantum superpower to reach into other universes parallel to her own the body's gone it was never here it's another Colombia different colia the same Co a different perspective and then at the end of the game she can see along all the branching paths to all possible outcomes um in all possible worlds what are all these lighthouses why are we who are worlds all different all similar constants invariable the many world interpretation was popularized in the' 60s and we have it to thank for all kinds of classic science fiction and also sliders I love you Jerry before we had the many worlds interpretation in the 60s back in the 20s we had the Copenhagen interpretation which was based on the work of guys like Heisenberg and bour the Copenhagen interpretation says that a Quantum particle doesn't exist objectively in one state or another um but it exists in all possible States as a set of probabilities and then when you observe that particle all of those possible potential States collapse into one actual real measured State the Schrodinger cat thought experiment extrapolates from that tiny Quantum scale uh into an everyday scale size of a cat in 1935 an Austrian physicist called schinger said Hey what if I made a cat death machine no wait hear me out I put my cat in a box where he's killed or not killed he might be totally fine by poison depending on whether or not a trigger mechanism is tripped by a process which is governed by these quantum mechanics until I crack the machine open the cat is both dead and alive because he exists in both possible States at the same time Bak infinite plays with this concept when Elizabeth nips into the universe next door and encounters some people that Booker already killed in the original Universe these men I killed them they were dead not in this BR somehow Elizabeth messing with the natural Order of Things causes them to exist in a super position of States both dead and alive at the same time like Shing his cat it also looks like BHO infinite is toying with the same idea with the uh infusion bottle pickups um which exist as a superposition of Health Salt and shield Until You observe it um by picking one of those things in 1935 Einstein and his two bu Podolski and Rosen uh were also thinking about quantum mechanics according to the theory they said you should be able to take two particles and make them interact in such a way that when you separate them their Quantum states are entangled so that however far you separate them even if you fly one of them to the other end of the Galaxy or whatever um they still influence each other the signal between the two particles travels really really fast maybe even reaching the other particle instantaneously which would mean travel faster than the speed of light this seemed to contradict Rel relativity which says that nothing can go faster than the speed of light Einstein came up with relativity so he was all like NOP still quantum entanglement is real it's a real thing you can do real experiments with it and not just imaginary experiments with dead cats in BioShock Infinite rosin Lutes uses quantum entanglement to communicate with her Multiverse twin Robert the Lutes field entangled my Quantum atom with waves of light allowing for safe measurement sound familiar brother that's because you were measuring precisely the same Atom from a neighboring world we used the universe as a telegraph switching the field on or off became dots and dashes dreadfully slow but now you and I could whisper through the wall there we go all the big science from B shck infinite we about time travel okay time travel BHO infinite um kind of conflates the idea of time travel and interdimensional travel which is fine uh because Rapture isn't around in 1912 but hey it's it's there in the game our best science match here is probably wormholes which Einstein probably would approve of because they pop out of the theory of relativity rather than quantum mechanics again they're theoretical tunnels Bridges if you like in space time that link one point in space and time to another point in space and time so you could use them for time travel in theory but no one's ever seen a wormhole still Elizabeth tears could also be wormholes and that's how they use them for traveling through time okay yeah all right there you go that's the mind-blowing science of bi infinite that also is kind of real science in the real world or something I and um what Jane is this is this the right is this correct science

Channel: outsidexbox

Views: 210,166

Keywords: bioshock infinite, science, quantum mechanics, QM, quantum theory, quantum entanglement, entanglement, quantum levitation, quantum atoms, floating, columbia, physics, quantum physics, many-worlds, wormholes, parallel universe, explanation, wtf, explained, schrodinger's cat, einstein, bohr, heisenberg, schrodinger, planck, copenhagen, interpretation, funny, relativity, flux pinning, science fiction, jane douglas, mike channell, andy farrant, how does columbia float, sci-fi

Id: EfdfBF1Covw

Length: 8min 0sec (480 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 12 2013