Translator: Queenie Lee
Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs They just told me back there apparently, there's a golden rule
in book publishing that says, "with every formula you show,
you lose half of your audience." I have two on my first slide. But I only want to show you these formulas
to illustrate that with just a few symbols like "F" equals "m" times "a," we can describe a wealth of phenomena
- from the Earth around the Sun, from a ball game,
from your bike ride, everything. Or if you are a communications person,
you may like Maxwell's equation. Everything we do with our radio,
or mobile phone communication, or actually, the fact
that we see each other is all described by this very simple
Maxwell equation that you see here. It's so simple. It describes basically
these two equations, describes basically
everything in our daily life. But there's more. Besides our classical world,
there's also a quantum mechanical world; this is the world of atoms,
molecules, the very small particles. And again, we have
a very simple-looking equation. It has a Greek symbol in it
and that makes it a little bit obscure, but otherwise, it's fairly short. And please be impressed
that this equation, the Schrödinger equation,
describes all of chemistry. So in some sense, because our bodies
are big chemical factories with all the atoms held together
by quantum mechanical glue, our existence is thanks
to quantum mechanics. But maybe with this third equation,
and losing another half of the audience, that many people think, 'Well, these small particles,
they're not my thing,' or 'Formulas, I never
have understood them. I'm more of the human scale. I want to feel things, or hear things,
or maybe even touch things.' In that case, you are the right person
for me to talk to because I will not show
any more formulas in my presentation. I will actually show you
some quantum objects that you can actually see, you can actually hear them,
and you can touch them. So let's start. It all starts, actually,
up to a few minutes ago, before I came on stage, that quantum mechanics
was describing very well, very accurately the world of atoms and molecules. Then, at larger scale,
and it had already started at our unit, the biological cell, it kind of stops. The biologist takes the cell as the fundamental unit
to build up biology. This is an enormous simplification because it completely
ignores quantum mechanics. But it is as best as we can do
at this moment. Larger objects like our hair, which is basically the smallest thing
we can see with our eyes; or us, you know, that's all classical. But the small things can
be described very accurately. And the people who
put forward this theory - the quantum theory - maybe they've made the greatest
intellectual revolution of mankind. You see a picture here
with on the first row, very prominent - Albert Einstein. You can clearly recognize him
in the middle. On his right, left for us,
there is Hendrik Lorentz, our Dutch hero. And next to Lorentz, we see Madame Curie. And many of these men in this picture have received a Nobel Prize
for their great work. There's one person
who got the Nobel Prize twice. That's actually the only woman
in the picture, Madame Curie. So apparently, it's true what they say that women have to perform twice as good
in order to be part of the gang. (Laughter) She did it. (Applause) This is a hundred years ago. What's new? Well, present day geniuses look like this. This is a group of brilliant people
that form our group at the TU Delft. But again, they are at the verge
of a new quantum era. We are no longer studying atoms
and molecules as given by nature, in contrast to that
we actually design and make, by using very advanced
fabrication techniques, new objects, much bigger, but that still showed us
this absurd quantum mechanical behavior. So what is actually absurd
about quantum mechanics? Why are we so excited
about our quantum stuff? Let me give you two examples
of absurd quantum mechanics. The first example
is quantum superposition. Let's take a particle,
like an electron or something, and bring it into a ring structure. And the particle can take
the upper arm to get to the exit or take the lower arm to get to the exit. Now, what actually happens
in quantum mechanics is that the electron takes both arms
at the same time, simultaneously - really sitting in the upper arm
as well as in the lower arm at the very same time. And we know this
because we follow the particle and we see that at the exit of the ring
it actually collides with itself - it bounces into itself. And we observe this as interference. And such a superposition
of being at two different locations at the same time has been very thoroughly checked
in all kinds of experiments. Quantum superposition. The next example
is the example of entanglement. And we start very simple. We take, let's say, a red particle
and a white particle. Very classical colors. Then the next step
is that we bring them together and we make them interact a little bit. So we bring them been very close together
so they feel each other. And by virtue of this interaction,
they become entangled; they take over each other's properties. So in terms of color,
they become white-reddish. Now that's OK. The curious thing happens if we take them,
we entangle them, and bring them apart. And while taking them apart,
they remain entangled. They still - the one
that's on the left for you, still has some properties
of the other particle, which can be at a very large distance, as far as the size
of the universe, in principle. So that's entanglement
over a very long distance - particles keep having
each other's properties. So what can we do? How can we actually measure that? Well, the problem is
that if we measure it, we have a classical, let's say,
color measurement apparatus, and the color measurement
apparatus is a classical thing so it can only give classical answers. So it says, let's say, red or white. So if I say, 'Well, particle on the left,
what is actually your color?' and I measure it,
it says, for instance, 'red.' But maybe you notice
that the particle on the right, at the same moment, became white. Now let's check it again. I measure the left particle, and the one on the right
immediately becomes white. And that's because color
is a conserved quantity in the universe. So if something completely turns red, there's something else
where it used to be entangled with, it's completely turning white. And this action, over a large distance, now remember, it can be
the size of the universe, these particles can be apart,
takes place instantaneously. Let me put it there. A measurement of the color
on the left particle immediately changes also
the color that's far away. And so if I do something here, and at the same time
I change something there, without any signals traveling over,
to actually say, 'well, just go there,' there's nothing in between. Much faster than the speed of light. So this is a prediction
from quantum theory. And one guy - Einstein - said: (Laughter) 'That must be wrong. Any theory that predicts
spooky action on a distance - do something here,
change something there - that's a prediction
that tells that the theory is wrong' - it doesn't say it's possible,
tells us the theory is wrong. Luckily, we also have
other heroes in physics, and this is a theoretical physicist
called Richard Feynman. And he said, 'Let's not be bothered with all this philosophical, you know,
consequences of our theory, let's calculate and see what happens.' Now here at the Delft
University of Technology, we educate engineers,
actually guys like me, and our approach
is that if you feel challenged, we say, 'OK, let's do it.' So what do we do? We take these two particles,
we bring them far apart, and we make it a bit more complicated, we bring in a third particle,
the green one. The green one we bring it to the left one,
and we make these two interact. I'm going to give them some interaction but view the graph carefully. You see that at the same moment, when these two interact
and share some color, also the particle on the right, which was still entangled
with the first one, also becomes green a little bit. The next is that I ask for color. 'Hey, left particles.' I do a color measurement, and they,
for instance, turn white-reddish. At the same time,
the one on the right becomes green. So look what I've done, effectively. Let's start again. I bring in a green particle,
they entangle. They're also entangled
with the one on the right. I click once more, and the one on the right is now green. I have teleported the green particle from the left universe
to the right universe over a long distance, instantaneously. So this teleportation is what we call, let's say, absurd,
or strange, or very odd. But we can do it, and we actually do it. And actually, we do this in the lab. And we've actually done it so many times that we actually made
a student-proof setup. I can tell you,
if a setup is student proof, then it's a very robust setup. (Laughter) Alright, so what do we make? We want to make some stuff
that we can actually use and do something with. First of all, a very simple
example of a light bulb. It's a plain wire; if we send
a current through the wire, or it's excited by light, it also luminesces
a little bit of its light. But in this case, the wire is very small; it's only nanometers in diameter,
maybe a micrometer long. At the red arrow that you see, we excite the system
with some laser light, and we actually look
what comes out of the wire. And if we do that, you actually see a little bit of light
coming out of the thing, right? That bright spot. Now what is special about this bright spot is that if you analyze it
with a good detector, it actually comes out as a stream
of individual light particles, one by one. It's no longer a stream of light,
it's really granular - one comes out,
the next one comes out, etc. And these are our photons that we use
in these color experiments to teleport. Let me give you another example,
a different type of - If you are more of a hearing person,
then let me take a string. And with all our strings,
guitar, or violin, or whatever, if you put a little tension on the string, the tone of the music
goes up in frequency. The tone goes up. So we've taken a very thin wire, a nanotube, only one
nanometer in diameter, we suspend it over a trench, we clamp it very tightly at two contacts, and we excite the nanotube
with an electric pulse. It starts to vibrate,
and we hear the tone. Now, what is special
about this particular vibration is that it is very small,
so it's also very sensitive. So if we add one electron,
one quantization of electrical charge, to this nanotube, it's a little bit of extra tension
into the nanotube that changes the tone a little bit. Let me hear you
the sounds of electrons. (Tone variably dropping in pitch) (Tone stops) The composition could
be a bit more interesting, but the change in tone, if you go from one level
to the next level, that change is induced
by one particular individual electron. You hear ... Let us hear it again. What you hear are
individual quantum electrons. (Tone variably dropping in pitch) Now it's coming to our ears. And it becomes audible. Now let me give you
the most recent example that comes straight
from the lab of my colleague Leonardo DiCarlo. And actually, I need
to do something for this. The DiCarlo lab actually made a box. You see the box already
on the picture, on the upper right, with a few coaxial connectors to it. And if I get my gloves on,
it will actually let me touch the box. Alright. And the box is big. I can hold it in my hands. What we do in our group
is to make small electronic elements - elements that are so small
that they can process information in a completely different way. Instead of having bits of zeros and ones, we want to make superpositions of bits, a superposition of being zero and one
at the very same time. But you want to make them
on an electronic circuit. And what Leo DiCarlo has done
is make three qubits - and I'm going to zoom in
a little bit in a few seconds, but you already see the box
with three qubits in it - and these three qubits can
be put in a superposition, or be entangled together
in any arbitrary way that we wish. Let me see if the camera
can actually show you the qubits. There must be more zoom. This is my finger.
So this is the size of the system. I hope you can see that there are three black spots
on this quartz plate. And these three black spots are about a centimeter
away from each other. And these are our qubits
which are in quantum superposition, and we can entangle
different qubits together. So we're now on a chip of centimeter size, the distance between the different qubits
is about a centimeter, and we can perform all this
quantum absurdness on this chip at a visible length scale. Alright, so you've seen it. Now, of course, it only works if the details are fabricated
very precisely, and the details are nanometer scale. So it's not just
that every centimeter object starts to behave quantum mechanically, no, you really have
to engineer it very precisely, down to the nanometer scale. That's a picture that you see right here. OK. Let me zoom out a little bit. What are we trying to do here? We actually want to make
quantum mechanical systems, and use the richness of quantum systems, like the extra possibilities
of being superpositions and their having very fast teleportation
over long distances, also in technology. Can we make applications that are much more efficient
than we have today? Particularly, because we're in the quantum
information business, we want to extend the level of quantum
from the atom to a transistor, that is already the case,
that's working very well. But we want to bring even up
to a higher level of complexity, at a complete electronic circuit
that behaves quantum mechanically. And it would win so much in efficiency,
you would not believe it. And that would also make
our gadgets a lot faster. Now, only a few years ago,
people also in our field were saying that that's not going to happen, that's inherently impossible
as quantum mechanics to bring them up to a larger scale
of size and complexity. But with the progress
of the last few years, I can really say here, actually, I'm saying it
for the first time in public, it is clear that it will come. Yes, we will be able
to make quantum circuits, and a quantum computer
will only take maybe a decade later or so. Alright, let me conclude here
with a take-home message. I started with some equations,
including one for quantum mechanics, but there's one message
that up to a couple of minutes ago, quantum was only restricted
to the small objects, but from now on, it has
arrived to the human scale, and we can see it, we can hear it
and we can touch it. Thank you very much, and have a great day. (Applause)
The implications of this are mind blowing. One being that a particle can be in two states depending on how it is measured or observed. It can be a probability wave or act as a physical particle. When it is a waveform it is in a form of potentiality, when it is a particle it is in a form of actuality. When they make two particles interact, they are said to be entangled. They separate those particles by a great distance, but when one is measured the other shows a response at the exact same time. It's as if they are now the same particle in the same physical space reacting at the same time.
When a particle exists in a state of probability (it doesn't physically exist yet) and that particle is faced with more than one option as to where it should go, or where it should exist, it takes both paths. It exists as a waveform as the potential to exist in either path or possible choice. When the particle is observed, or measured, it becomes an actuality and takes on a single physical existence on one of the two possible paths. The many worlds interpretation states that it actually makes both choices and the worlds branch off to accommodate both paths for that single particle.
If we think outside the box then it is possible to imagine that objects on the macro scale can behave in a similar way as particles on the micro scale. http://www.yalescientific.org/2010/09/quantum-mechanics-on-the-macroscale/
When you take this into consideration and retrocausality which is also spooky physics as Einstein would have put it. The present or future being quantum entangled with the past this could explain the Mandela effect perfectly. What we remember was once correct but has since been altered through retrocausality. https://www.sciencealert.com/this-quantum-theory-predicts-the-future-might-influence-the-past This guy's predictions on the timescale of having quantum devices was a bit too long. We already have quantum computers now. For all we know as we harness the power of Quantum computing we might be causing entanglement with the past. The Mandela effect could be a side effect, or they could be doing it intentionally.
who else didn't get any of this?
someone here read "Biocentrism" by Robert Lanza? it has a chapter only on this, very enlightning