How the Quantum Computer Revolution Will Change Everything with Michio Kaku & Neil deGrasse Tyson

foreign [Music] this is Star Talk Neil deGrasse Tyson here your personal astrophysicist and today is a cosmic queries Edition on a subject I know we've all been thinking about maybe not all the time but sometime because we've heard it in the news we've heard people talk about it it's Quantum Computing got with me my coach Chuck Nice Chuck hey hey hey what's happening yeah you're gonna help me get through this right um yeah I don't know help is the the right word yeah yeah yeah so we had to we had to dig for some expertise here and we we found an old old friend of Star Talk Professor Michio kako micho welcome back to StarTalk yes glad to be on the show it's been too long it's been too long you've got a new book out this year 2023 let me get the right title Quantum Supremacy blood spilled okay uh however quantum computer Revolution will change everything so micho this is a cosmic queries where we solicit have already solicited questions from our our patrons through our patreon portal and but I want to just warm up a little bit and just could you just give us in one sentence what no no yeah yeah exactly I'll give you a little more than that so tell us what we should know what com Quantum Computing will do differently from regular old computing well computers have gone through three stages uh the first stage was analog computers when we computed on sticks levers gears we returned the cranky to a calculation with the Abacus was one of those too right the Abacus a mechanics that's right yeah slide rules right then comes electricity so and the transistor so all of a sudden everything becomes a matter of zeros and ones zeros and ones in digital and that's the computer revolution of today now we are beginning to enter the third stage in the evolution of the computer no longer Computing on transistors competing on atoms this is the ultimate computer you can't do better than that Computing on atoms and that's what the quantum computer is all about they exist already they are millions of times more powerful than our most powerful digital computer on certain tasks so there's a race a race between China between IBM Google Microsoft a race to see who can get the first all-purpose quantum computer to put on the marketplace which will change everything the CIA is interested in this all the big uh commercial uh banks are interested in this Aerospace energy you name it um everyone is interested in who is going to be first to to bring out a commercialized quantum computer that could outrace any normal computer by a factor of a million so by the way this race uh you know scientists among them but certainly the military were early out of the box in regular Computing right so and then that regular Computing that finally sort of Spilled Out of the military and Science and Engineering communities and made it to people's desktop and then their laptop and then their pockets and that clearly changed everything so so should we fear this change relative to any other I think that other change was quite welcomed by people was it because it was slow and we got used to it or because we saw what it could do and understood what it can do how would you how would you characterize this shift compared to the one we've all entered and it's the military uh looking for this for the same reason they did the first computers that that we talked about in the second stage Chuck what do you think what do you think want to grow flowers with it well I mean we're talking about the U.S pentagon dude I guess so God that's that's that's frightening to meet you where are you there well first of all everyone's interested in the the CIA is very much concerned about it because it they are so powerful these quantum computers can crack any known digital code oh so this means that crown jewels the crown jewels of Any Nation with all their top secrets about the military and defense posture all of that can be broken into by an advanced quantitative computer but of course everybody else The Sciences in The Sciences are to say because this means better cars Rockets food energy we're talking about uh unveiling unveiling the secrets of the Big Bang the understanding of black holes neutron stars in other words everything is going to be affected when we can multiply the power of digital computer by a factor of millions to billions so we're talking about a new era in computation that'll change everything you know it'll change okay so and one last question before we go to our and you got the questions lined up Chuck all right they're sitting right they're sitting right here I'm scared to ask I know I don't even want to ask him at this point so so one last question uh we've all heard of uh Quantum bits of zeros and ones all right this is the binary nature of classical Computing let's call it that so could you tell us I've heard the term Cubit could you tell us how a qubit differs from a bit well think of a spinning top like an electron that can spin up or spin down this is one this is zero and that's how electricity can be used to calculate zeros and ones zeros and ones now let that spinning type spin in all directions simultaneously so not just up or down not just up or down but in between simultaneously with all positions how much more powerful is that than an ordinary digital computer here and infinitely more powerful paradigm shift and these electrons compute in parallel universes because these electrons are simultaneously rotating in all possible directions now you cannot be two places at the same time but electrons can do that and this is powerful right that's right electrons can be two places at the same time and a quantum computer they are in all orientations at the same time that's why they are infinitely more powerful than a traditional digital computer and who uses this mother nature because that's the nature of atoms that's the nature of atoms and flowers and enzymes of the body and cancer and Alzheimer's all that stuff is at the quantum mechanical level which is beyond the reach of digital computers that's one reason why we don't have a cure for cancer for example digital computers cannot model cancer quantum computers we think can so check out just to be clear uh Michio kept sticking his right thumb in the air do you see that yeah okay so there's something called the right hand rule in physics which was completely implicit in what michio's gestures were okay so I just gotta untangle that Michio before we so if you put your thumb up right right and curl your fingers okay all right so if you if your fingers are curling in the direction an object is spinning right then your thumb is pointing up right I mean in the in like the North Pole for that object but if you stick your thumb down then your fingers are curling in the opposite direction right that's right that's right so that's how we in the decide which way things are rotating for everything in the universe is it rotating with its with if it had a thumb this is thumb pointing up I was going to say yeah yeah it's a good thing pigeons didn't discover this yeah who knows what that rule we call it the different rules I mean it's a completely different rule yeah thumbless creatures what what kind of physics did they invent meet you all right so Chuck so let's start off with some questions here all right here we go plenty of curious people here on the patreon portal sending us their questions and we will start with our old friend Violetta uh Violetta cool says hello Uncle Neil Uncle Chuck excellent she says this is Violetta here uh Violet Aurora 14 and a half year old astrophysics from Washington DC I'm keeping it simple this week quantum computers are said to harness the laws of quantum mechanics to perform certain calculations exponentially faster than today's super computers what are those calculations and what could their technical applications B2 and here's the rub specifically astrophysics okay well I got into this Quantum Computing game because I work in something called String Theory which we think is the theory of everything including the Big Bang but string theory is so complicated and so complex no human has been able to use the mind to solve it now when we look at a proton how do we solve the mechanics of a proton by hand no by computers lattice case Theory allows us to solve the properties of a proton we use computers at the fundamental level so I think that for the Big Bang they calculate what happens at the center of the Big Bang the center of a wormhole whether or not time travel is possible whether or not parallel universes can be visited all these questions can be solved using a quantum computer rather than a digital computer which computes on zeros and ones and zeros and ones and that's how I got into it because I think it instrument Basics there's so many problems that cannot be solved with a digital computer for example we know that the sun explodes sometimes it releases a Corona Mass discharge in 1859 it just wiped out Telegraph wires throughout North America the Carrington event quantum computers may be able to model that event so we can predict the next Carrington event when the Sun goes berserk and shoots a tremendous Corona Mass discharge at the planet Earth and wipes out all Communications causing at least two trillion dollars in property damage everything that's floating above us satellites and all that crap will just get wiped out including power plants on the surface of the Earth we're talking about a blackout a planetary blackout we've never had that before a planetary blackout where every single nation on the planet Earth has its power wiped out simultaneously therefore there's no rescue crews no ambulances because there are two right the entire Earth is the infrastructure electrical infrastructure is wiped out by another Carrington event and we're helpless and that's our show people I know much it's your ass goodbye right so so so meet you I I'm reminded that you're like the king of disaster scenarios I just I've forgotten thanks for reminding me about that so so a couple of things uh let me just sort of put some further punctuation on what you just said the sun is a roiling mass of plasma with free electrons roaming among mostly hydrogen and some helium and some other Trace elements and there's a magnetic field coursing through it that's getting dragged around the surface because the sun is not rotating as a solid object so the magnetic field is embedded in the plasma that Menard field is getting stretched in all directions and then there's a point where it snaps its flings material with it and all we could do is watch and meet show if we could calculate all the stuff that's happening there what a boon that would be to solar physics so now is that is that the is that different than a solar flare or just bigger than a solar flare this is much bigger than a software this is the mother the mother of all solar flares capable of wiping out all power supplies in on the surface and in outer space surrounding the planet Earth we're talking about shutting down civilization as we know it wow so it's a matter of scale of energy it's energy yes right and so and we have evidence in relatively recent past right 160 years ago where this actually Carrington event right that's what was called Michio that's right even before that 700 A.D 800 A.D this has happened before again thousands of years ago but we can now track these Carrington events even into the past wait their their Computing didn't collapse seven in 700 A.D what what evidence do you have well how do you think we got got back to this point this is all this time we've just been working back to this back to back back to ad7 how do you know it happened in ad700 uh because several things the radiation uh affected tree uh tree rings it also affected the Arctic uh ice course Arctic Ice cores oh of course they're looking at ice cores and tree rings you can see there was a disturbance in 700 and 800 A.D wow and of course there was no electricity back then right so there was no blackouts but if they were to happen again it would paralyze the Earth we would be thrown back 200 years into the past think about it for a moment no electricity no power plants food riots no Refrigeration people riding in the streets uh scrounging for any scrap of food they can find right it'd be a horrible mess and we're powerless but we do know it happened in the past and that's where quantum computers can calculate we hope calculate some of these disasters we need a backup plan to to have civil civilization and restart itself such as what we how we lived before there was electricity right that's right we are with my good friend and colleague Michio Kaku professor of physics of the City University of New York and we're talking about Quantum Computing as described in his current book what'd you call it Misha Quantum disaster oh Quantum Supremacy okay yeah that was coined by a physicist at Caltech all right it's his word we'll get back to that when we return on start talk we're back StarTalk Cosmic queries Quantum Computing is the subject and we've got a man who wrote the book A book on Quantum Computing uh Michio you call it quantum Supremacy and just before the break you said that that's you're quoting someone who called it that who was that yeah Joe preschill at Caltech you see people used to think that quantum computers could never never rival a digital computer so Quantum Supremacy is the point at which a quantum computer can beat a digital computer on certain tasks two years ago the Chinese and also Google built quantum computers that were millions of times who are powerful than a standard computer for a specific task the next step is to make an all-purpose quantum computer that can outrace a general computer on all possible tasks that's the race it's a horse race and right now the Chinese and um IBM are some of the leaders in the horse race but IBM is in it I mean also Google is in the race um Microsoft uh Honeywell everybody realizes that whoever wins this race will dominate the world economy oh man I'm sorry but this sounds this sounds very Third Reich I'm just saying it's like we got this race it's Supremacy you know leading to a Master race it's crazy it's a little nuts but but Chuck is a Computing race okay all right as long as it's it's kind of it's that's right it's Computing Supremacy that's right so Michio I actually overlapped with uh preschool at the University of Texas before they they snapped him up over at Caltech uh he was one who coined the concept and we we actually made it two years ago and now we're going for the next step which is to create an all-purpose quantum computer that can handle ordinary problems problems of medicine problems of global warming problems of food production all the problems that cannot be cannot be solved today using digital computers or they could be solved but they would take a thousand years to run the program regular digital computer to model the electron wave function of a molecule okay but that's what quantum computers can do you know I forgot I forgot about that we I think we perfectly modeled the hydrogen atom but after that we just have to approximate because the atoms are too complicated exactly with all the protons and the electrons and what orbitals they occupy and and where what the shape is I'd forgotten that Michio because in the universe we're mostly hydrogen so I I naively saw we got hydrogen so surely you physicists have the rest of these atoms completely calculated but you don't because Chuck hydrogen has only one proton proton and one electron right and it's it's 90 of the atoms in the universe yeah we're good I never I never pause to appreciate what you have to go through Michio is a physicist so let me ask you this it sounds to me like something this powerful um could easily achieve intelligence and then could very possibly achieve sentience so you know just because you achieve intelligence doesn't mean you're sentient but if you're that powerful and that capable it's very possible that you could become sentient and now isn't that the scariest damn thing that's ever happened since the world has been created and Chuck that's a different show okay all right that's that's all right okay forget it yeah that's what that is a different cell you're right that's a that's an AI show all right so Chuck okay so this is uh Andre cebrew who says I'm sorry sir boo who says hello my dear brain smoothie makers um he says as a vampire non-eternal friend Andre from Romania I've been trying to understand and put quantum computers to good use in the following hypothesis wait did you say non-eternal or non-nocternal no on Eternal he says how do you be oh oh so he's a vampire that does die yes because Romania is the original vampires I think I believe it is just catch I'm slow I'm slowly no you hit it you got it got it okay go ahead then he says will come to will quantum computers be able to map out and transport our existential information as entities so that we can live eternally inside them and travel at the speed of light between them so like the transporter yeah beam your brain so Mitchell we all know the complexities of the brain and how many neurosynaptic uh combinations there are and that's always been kind of an intractable intractable problem this question suggests via a question that the power of quantum Computing can simply map our brain with perfect Precision is that in the future uh well there is a program to digitize the brain and there is a program to map all the neurons of the brain right now we're at the level of a mosquito we now know that the mosquito brain has a hundred thousand neurons every single one has been mapped and you can Google it and see what an insect's brain looks like at the level of neurons a hundred thousand neurons in the brain of a mosquito and then of course we're going to go up the scale it's going to take time we have a hundred billion neurons in our brain wait wait so it's that number is not what's impressive what what's impressive is the number of connections right those neurons can make and that's what you ultimately in a mosquito how many neurons are there approximately a hundred thousand and so now the total combinations of connected total ways those hundred thousand neurons can connect that's a huge number correct right okay so that's where the Computing challenges not simply that there's a hundred thousand neurons right right right the connection is everything right because it's the connections that separate us from other animals uh other animals have brains bigger than ours for example okay but we have more connections and more ability to do tasks that certain animals do not have take that you brick pain dummies with the idiot Dolphins no brains and your stupid self ah when you see a quantum computer has enough computer power to begin to model these things a digital computer would go berserk counting how many connections you can have within the human brain but that's exactly where quantum computers Excel because we're talking about the states of an atom how many states of an atom are there infinite number of states for every atom not that zeros and ones zeros and ones are binary which is finite that's the difference between quantum computers and regular digital computers digital computers compute on a finite number of objects zeros and one while the quantum computer computes on simultaneously an infinite number of positions of electrons in other words Computing on parallel universes so give us a time frame when do you think we could map the human brain and know every neurosynaptic connection and the day we do can you just beam that map to another place thereby beaming your Consciousness or at least everything stored in your mind in that moment it was mapped well I think it would probably take a few more decades before we can map every single neuron of the human brain because there's a hundred billion 100 billion neurons each neuron connected to 10 000 of the neurons in the human brain it would take a while but once it's done then the quantum computer can easily easily begin to manipulate it and fire away and create certain thoughts okay so the problem is not the quantum computer the quantum computer has more than enough power to model the human brain the problem is to slice up the human brain slice and dice the human brain so that we get all the connections of the human brain map that's what takes time that's labor intensity what we're lacking are volunteers that's really the problem here brain volunteers yeah that's right laughs all right so it's still a little while before that happens but the day it does happen do you foresee being able to beam an entire an entire person's uh is that the same as beaming their Consciousness just knowing how they think at that point the quantum computer would have to locate Consciousness within the brain but once you do that why wouldn't you be able to recreate it download it or manipulate it and maybe Consciousness is not a thing in the brain right it's an emergent feature brought forth because of all of those connections yeah right I mean that's my personal opinion that it is immersion there's no one quantity that you can put into a computer it emerges naturally as a consequence of all the neural connections Consciousness emerges just as a byproduct of hooking up hooking up everything you plug it in and it becomes conscious basically love that okay next one Chuck keep it going okay here we go let's keep going this is Chris Trent and Chris says hi I have heard Michio Kaku say that his day job is actually String Theory I've always wondered when he shows up at the office gets his coffee and gets to work what exactly does he do how does one work one string yeah Mitchell is there anything on your desk at all a pad and paint see how it's a Chuck I've always joked that a string theorist the theorists they're really cheap right give them a laptop maybe you know a pad and a pencil and just just give him a room and they're good to go so meet you have we completely characterized your professional well when I was in the Army back in 1968 as a GI I used to I read the first articles on string theory and it began to play with it when I was doing basic training so dodging machine gun fire I would imagine twisting strings in my mind and so in other words it's very visual these are real strings like violin strings you can turn them around twist them make knots out of them or whatever and that's what I would do when I was in the military after I get out of the military I would write up the papers okay and I would create something called string field Theory the feel theory of strings just like Maxwell's equations there's a field theory of electricity and aren't you the father of that whole branch of physics is that correct if I remember exactly okay uh-huh so so Chuck you see he must have known something in the mark did you hear what he said he said as I was dodging machine guns right see so he's got some extra access to higher Dimensions there right because the bullets were not hitting you were phasing in and out of this Dimension exactly so Misha you're at your desk and now what you sharpen your pencil right and I go through hundreds of pages of calculations this is tensor calculus super symmetric tester calculus on my desk is a pile of paper each paper basically filled uh chicken scratches because it takes a lot of brain power to be able to write down all the equations because these are resonances resonances of strings vibrating in 11 dimensional hyperspace and so it takes a lot of paper to do that damn come on that I mean can you just say that again I want to get a t-shirt that says that so now combine that with when meteor was in the Army he just slipped it out that he was dodging machine guns right so last I saw that was in The Matrix where Morpheus is teaching Neo how to how to be badass and Neo saying you mean one day I'm going to be able to dodge bullets and Morpheus says Neo when that day arrives you won't have to ah and then he's like what does that mean you don't have to dodge them and my boy just stopped the bullets and that's what happens there it is I'm not even gonna duck I'm just gonna stop so I think micho has those powers and he just leaked it on this show just now nice I guess I'll demonstrate it no free demonstrations no free demonstrations that's right there you go all right keep going Chuck okay here we go uh this is Chris Henderson and Chris says you know where they're from they don't they say where they're from are you skipping that uh no they don't they don't okay if they say where they're from I let you know I like knowing where they're from okay or sometimes they'll put it in the body of the question um hello Dr Tyson hello Dr calculus this is uh or is it theoretically possible to make Communications that uses quantum entanglement if if it is would this give us the ability for instantaneous communication with distant spacecraft so he's talking about Subspace Communications there's Subspace Network yeah and Michio adding to that I read because I only know from what I read right about Quantum Computing that there's there isn't the circuitry of quantum Computing exploiting quantum entanglement between adjacent particles in the circuit board I heard something about that so where where how does how does quantum entanglement fit into Quantum computing well yeah quantum entanglement is one way in which these qubits can communicate with each other now you know that in a digital computer the bits do not talk to each other zeros do not talk to one one does not talk to zero they are independent when you do a calculation not so the atom if I have two atoms close together and I jiggle one atom the other atom responds to it this is called entanglement and the question is well that's one reason why quantum computers are so powerful all the different kinds of qubits talk to each other simultaneously then the other question is do they talk to each other faster than the speed of light let's take a break there and leave everyone dangling on a cliff Edge about whether we are communicating on a circuit board faster than the speed of light we're going to take our second of two breaks here at StarTalk where it's Cosmic queries with my good friend and colleague Michio Kaka we'll be right back we're back third and final segment Cosmic queries star talk with my friend and colleague Michio Kaku Michio tell us about your social media footprint how can we find you uh go to uhmcockwood.org m-k-a-k-u dot o r g I have about five million fans on Facebook and the internet and uh yeah so I'm definitely on the internet okay and do you totally on on on Twitter right you're you're active on Twitter I thought I I follow you on Twitter I know where you're coming and and where you're going so okay that's what we can do all right Chuck you left us off with a question about a quantum entanglement and whether we can use it uh as a byproduct of quantum Computing for instantaneous communication so Michio what can you tell us there well it turns out that Einstein was wrong on this question Einstein said that you cannot break the life barrier it turns out that these qubits uh will actually communicate with each other instantly faster than the speed of light now it turns out I'm such an idiot he was such an idiot well I'll tell you what a dumbass that Einstein even though Einstein was wrong on that that some things can go faster than the speed of light he has the last laugh because it turns out that what goes faster than the speed of light is nonsense random information Morse code cannot be sent faster than the speed of light using the epr effect e for Einstein and it turns out that we can test this in the laboratory we can now prove that you cannot break the light barrier for usable information like Morse code so epr Einstein podolsky Rosen that's right effect that was some experiment that they proposed to test something about quantum physics that's right let's say I have two electrons that are together one spins up one spins down see storms there and get his thumb there so they are in opposite directions okay and then I separate them I separate them by a light year okay if one of these is measured to spin up then the question is what is the other one spinning the other one is spinning down because the sum of the two has to be zero it has to be either like this to cancel out you have to cancel out okay but before you open up one of these Photon electrons you don't know what the other one is but as soon as you know that one is up the other one no the other one's down now how fast did how fast did you know that instantly instantly finds it in the speed of light on one side of the Milky Way galaxy you know the electron is spinning up therefore you know that on the other side of the Milky Way galaxy faster than the speed of light the other electron spins down that is the epr experiment and Einstein thought ha that proves that it's all nonsense it proves that all quantum theory is wrong well we do these experiments now Einstein was wrong information travels faster than the speed of light but it's not usable information you can't send Morse code this way Morse code cannot be sent this way let's say for example that you have one sock which is green and one sock which is red okay you put the red sock on and the other sock is green now let's say you open the sock one day and it is red what is the color of the other song green green how fast did you know that instantly faster than the speed of light okay you knew that sounds like you're sending information faster than light so but you see it's not usable information you can't send Morse code this way source code cannot be sent using socks why not I mean think about it for a moment because as soon as you know that one sock is red the other sock is green but where did where did the message go there's no message there you're not saying so you're saying you're saying you're saying that the message is fixed therefore it's not usable I know it's random it's random and not usable okay so but it but it's random even though you know the outcome uh well you don't know the outcome until you reveal that one is green the other one all the sock is going to be red but that knowledge the knowledge of the fact that they are opposite sides is instantly transmitted faster to the speed of light but try try sending Morse code that way but so what you're saying is but then maybe you misspoke because you said you put on the green sock right right and then send out the red sock no no but you don't know that you put on a green sock you just know you put on a sock right yeah okay well then reveal reveal that it's the reveal that we're really talking about right yeah right we're talking about the reveal the the position of the sock existed before the reveal but we don't know what it is but once we know what it is then we know that everybody knows everything she's got it gotcha got it a physicist in the making right here we're gonna give him an honorary Star Talk degree at the end of this okay all right wow all right so it's not useful all right it's not useful God so disappointing no way to go faster than the speed of like const consistent with Einstein's theory is wormholes wormholes will take you faster than the speed of light and it is consistent with the known laws of Relativity Stephen Hawking even wrote papers on it now to create a usable Wormhole is quite difficult you'd have to have negative matter in positive matter but in principle if you could have negative matter and positive matter you could go faster than the speed of light in a wormhole and Stephen Hawking even though Chuck he just said when pigs fly yeah all we need is negative matter yeah yeah okay all right so Mitchell When Pigs Fly continue yes no negative matter is very rare instead of falling down negative matter Falls up now when was the last time you saw a rock fall up like what's the last time you saw a pig fly okay but if you could if you could create negative matter you you could go faster than the speed of light through a wormhole all right got you okay and just to be clear you're not actually you're still not moving through space faster than light you're kind of cheating in an authentic Way by curving space and the Wormhole then cuts through a passageway and so you're effectively going faster than light but you're not actually moving through the fabric of space-time faster than light is that that's a fair way to say it right yeah that's right you simply hop across yeah yeah there's a hole there's a hole there you just hop across how fast did you go zero zero velocity right you just stopped across right okay there you go and Rick and Morty knew all about this exactly that's Portal guns that's all we need all we need all right maybe the Atlanta will invent one of those a portal gun probably and we're good friends with her I think she'll tell us about it first and then we can like take over the world from there I love every second of that yeah Violet will be the world's over Overlord [Laughter] all right this is uh zagmund vasik I believe I believe that's it he says uh in Singularity I have been told that mass could have infinite density can the algorithm of a quantum computer resolve mathematically Infinity I like that wow I like that so make sure it seems to me that if you take general relativity to its limits at some point you're dividing by zero or it's equivalent right so is there some point where you say uh-oh general relativity stops now we need some different kind of math or more powerful physics that's right the distance at which Einstein's theory of gravity breaks down and the quantum theory takes over is the Planck length Planck's length is 10 to the minus 33 centimeters okay that's a very small number yep and how would you then manipulate something like this if you have empty space and you could heat it up heat up empty space to the plant temperature then bubbles will begin to form just like you boil water you heat water water boils you heat space space will boil at the Planck length or the plug temperature and at that point each bubble is a wormhole and each bubble in principle can become a universe in fact that's probably where our universe came from our universe probably came from a bubble in nothing and that expanded giving you the big bang of today okay Mitchell you keep talking like that truck is going to run out and smoke a joint okay I couldn't wait to smoke I was like forget it you want to boil the universe this sounds like out of control we've got the calculation people who do in what is called inflation Theory have calculated what it would be like to be a God to create your own Universe of course you want to do it safely you don't want to blow yourself up in the process but basically you boil space to the point where space becomes unstable you have Quantum transition what are called vitamin diagrams that allow for universes to pop out of nothing usually these things pop in and out of nothing all the time Stephen Hawking called the space-time foam because it looks foamy with bubbles percolating all the time each bubble being a wormhole but one of those wormholes just kept on going and here we are that's how the universe started we think as a fluctuation of the Planck energy or the Planck length uh his energy is 10 to the 19 billion electron volts as a distance is 10 to the minus 33 centimeters but that's my world I live in the Planck length and the Planck energy String Theory lives there me too that ain't right to call us a fluctuation that's right we are evaluation cherished universe is a fluctuation all right there you go you're a blip that's what you like a fluctuating no that's what we call them when you write papers you write papers on Quantum fluctuations of Nothing Even nothing's unstable nothing would violate the Heisenberg uncertainty principle pure nothing is not possible right all right let's get back time for a couple more questions on Quantum Computing this is Alan rayer and Alan says hello Dr Kaku I used to watch your YouTube channel and I've been watching since 2012. I'm a huge fan uh I live in Lithuania and could you please explain on String Theory what force makes a Quantum string vibrate it's string ooh and and are there strings in the circuit boards of quantum computers or they're just going to say there's strings everywhere you know it strings all the way down as they say so how does how how how does everything you know about strings inform the people trying to perfect a quantum computer okay first of all strings have to fluctuate because of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle pure nothing pure motionless pure anything like that violates the uncertainty principle therefore strings have to vibrate the lowest string the lowest vibration of the string gives us our universe our universe is the lowest vibrating Octave of the string there are higher octaves of the string and these hierarchies we think correspond to Dark Matter so that's why we have dark matter because there's nothing but the next higher excitation of a vibrating string but again strings have to vibrate because of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle this is a quantum theory and when the strings vibrate they create subatomic particles mainly us we are the lowest vibration of the string so people sometimes say well can this yeah predict our universe yes that's right and the next the next set of vibrations would be dark matter right and one day we're going to find dark matter and that could clinch it people want experimental proof of the correctness of string theory that could prove it if we find dark matter in a laboratory analyzes properties ensure that it's predicted to be part of the next vibration the next Octave of the string okay so back to the question the string in its natural state vibrates because it can't not vibrate right because because of the quantum mechanics the quantum mechanics got it so now is this exploitable in a computer circuit in Quantum computing uh well the yeah computer circuit would have a low excitation of the string I mean a low excitation of the electron but the electron itself is an excitation of the strength of the strength got it okay all right there you go so Chuck do we have one last quick question all right how about this one this here we go Charles macko or Mako he says hey what comes after Quantum computing [Music] I think that the Step Beyond Quantum Computing is nuclear computing because Quantum Computing computes an electron shells we're talking about the electron shells that give us the Bohr atom you know electrons going around the nucleus but the nucleus itself is nuclear and it also is quantum mechanical right and that in principle is stable so you can make things out of it however of course if you if you don't watch out you could hit critical mass in which case that would ruin your day it would um destroy the universe yes okay so it's interesting what you're saying Michio is that all these rules that we're talking about are electron based and electron orbitals and all of this electron spins but you can go deep into the nucleus and there's a whole other realm that is in principle in reach that's right at the energy scale of that is millions of times the energy scale of the electron and that's why we have nuclear weapons the nuclear weapons in fact the sun the sun itself is a simple example of what happens when you tap into the nuclear fire that drives the Sun and lights up the universe that's what lights up the universe the nuclear force yeah yeah so that could be The Next Step Beyond quantum computers would be nuclear computers okay so Quantum Computing looks old and we get you on the show in the old days Quantum Computing we thought that was fast we'll get you on for that and take us into the nukes all right Mitchell it's great to see you again and seen you since uh great to have you back on the show good so we'll be looking for your book just came out Quantum Supremacy how quantum computers will change everything and no doubt about it from how you described it it definitely will yeah all right Chuck always good to have you man always a pleasure all right Neil deGrasse Tyson here of course Star Talk another episode of cosmic queries as always I bid you to keep looking up foreign [Music]

Channel: StarTalk

Views: 1,607,814

Keywords: startalk, star talk, startalk radio, neil degrasse tyson, neil tyson, science, space, astrophysics, astronomy, podcast, space podcast, science podcast, astronomy podcast, niel degrasse tyson, physics, quantum physics, quantum mechanics, quantum computing, computers, digital computing, computing, Quantum Supremacy, qubit, binary, bit, electrons, coronal mass ejection, Carrington Event, brain mapping, neural net, string theory, quantum entanglement, speed of light, Einstein, string

Id: IfvoBlDUrPU

Length: 46min 56sec (2816 seconds)

Published: Thu May 18 2023