Infinitely Jesting About the Year of Quantum Science & Tech

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Ned: Somewhere deep in the bowels of the Microsoft 365 portals—of

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which there are many—somewhere in there, there is a setting

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that says, “Bounce emails if they’re not originating from

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a client in the United States.” I’m certain that is there.

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All of my furious googling has resulted in nothing, and

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trying to actually, like, pry open the various layers

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that Microsoft has created is an exercise in futility.

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Chris: I mean,

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you saying you can’t do it with PowerShell?

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I was told you can do everything with PowerShell.

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Ned: I hate you.

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So, much.

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Hello, alleged human, and welcome to the Chaos Lever podcast.

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My name is Ned, and I’m definitely not a robot.

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I’m an illegal immigrant coming in from

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Canada to steal all your… American dollars?

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Is that what we steal?

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I don’t know.

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With me is Chris, who is also here.

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Chris, I’m still in the same timezone, but somehow I’m jet-lagged.

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That’ll happen.

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I assume you drove.

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Yes.

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Yes, indeed.

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That was one of the bonuses was that we didn’t have to

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go to an airport and deal with the TSA, and children.

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Right.

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Wait, which one’s worse?

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Yes [laugh]

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.
Fair.

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Fair, fair, fair.

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[laugh] . Am I calling the TSA a bunch of children?

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That’s for the listener to decide.

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Oh, don’t revoke my TSA PreCheck, please.

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Yeah, we crossed the border with nary an incident into

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Canada because the Canadians make it easy, and then

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it took an hour-and-a-half to cross the border back.

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Nice.

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Because, America.

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[chanting] USA.

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USA.

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There was more to it than that, but that’s the bit that I’m going with for now.

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That’s fair.

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I

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Chris: mean, I’m sure it had nothing to do with the five

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tons of contraband maple syrup you were trying to sneak

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Ned: over.

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Four tons, and we had it in a compartment that they’ll never find.

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That’s what the minivan is for: the false bottom and all.

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It’s like the TARDIS, in a number of ways.

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Indeed.

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The border guard had a lengthy conversation with us about college sports.

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It went on for, like, three minutes, and I was like, [laugh]

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there’s a line going back [laugh] , like, a mile-and-a-half.

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And you’re like, “So, how’s Villanova doing?”

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And we’re like, “Good?” Can we go yet?

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[laugh] . I was like, “I think I might know why this is taking so long.”

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Might have an idea.

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Little Chatty Cathy going there.

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But he let us through, and we got back into

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the United States with my cover intact.

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So, that’s good.

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The perfect… not crime.

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Chris: Yeah.

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Ned: Right

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[laugh] . So, I took a break from my bath in maple syrup

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to come record this episode, so I guess we should do that.

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What are we talking about, Chris?

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We’re going to talk about—and

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Chris: not talk about—eh?

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Oh, I know what’s going on.

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Eh?

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2025 has been declared by the United Nations

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as the year of quantum science and technology.

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[singing]

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Ned: Do-do-dooo.

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Does the United Nations often declare years as having a scientific theme?

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Apparently they do it every

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Chris: year, and by that I mean, they’ve at least done it twice.

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I’ll get back to that point later.

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Ned: Have you pretended to read Infinite Jest like the rest of us?

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Chris: No, I actually read it, unfortunately, and it’s affected me.

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Ned: Deeply.

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Yeah, I was going to make, you know, the year of the Glad trash bag joke.

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Chris: Ah, yes.

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Ned: That’s also the book that taught me what ‘disseminate’ means.

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So, that’s exciting.

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And ‘eschatology.’

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Indeed.

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So, quantum [laugh]

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?
Chris: [laugh] . So yeah, that’s—it’s, you know… the United Nations, man.

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It’s cool that they did this, right?

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Yep.

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Why not?

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They decided on it because it is officially unofficial that 1925 was the year

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quantum mechanics became a real, formalized, accepted mathematical thing.

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Mmm, okay.

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All right, now it’s hazy, but that’s the year, and we’ll figure out why maybe.

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Because there’s a lot to talk about, and we should talk about it.

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Because without quantum mechanics, obviously,

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you wouldn’t have quantum computers.

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Ned: I mean, who’s going to fix the quantum computers when they break down?

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Quantum monkeys with quantum wrenches.

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Would you call them quantum mechanics?

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Chris: [laugh] . Ohhh, my God.

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Go back to sleep.

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One major reason that people don’t understand quantum

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computing is that they don’t understand quantum mechanics.

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Ah.

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Nailed it.

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First try.

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Every time.

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Absolutely

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[
Ned: laugh] . Fifty percent of the time,

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you get it a hundred percent of the time.

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Chris: So, here’s the thing.

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Quantum mechanics flies in the face of everything

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that seems logical about the world that we live in.

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So, there’s also a lot of vocabulary.

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Here’s an example quote describing the critical

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difference in weirdness about quantum computers.

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Quote, “The principle of superposition, fundamental to quantum

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mechanics, is what gives quantum computers their power.

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In quantum computing, performing an operation on a qubit in superposition is

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equivalent to performing the operation on all possible values simultaneously.”

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All right.

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Got all that?

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Yep.

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Yeah, me too, completely.

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Okay.

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End of episode.

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And that’s all the time we ha—

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[laugh]

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.
So, for everybody else that might need to have a little bit of help

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understanding what in the hell is going on, how it’s possible, and

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why—which is a really—that’s the hardest one to answer—I thought

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it would be fun to take a little gamble through space and time—but

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not space-time; we do not have time for that—and just try to shed a

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little light on how the hell we got wherever it is we are right now.

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Okay.

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And so, I wrote that expecting to get to today, and I did not get to today.

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So, we’re going to get a lot of the way there.

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Fair.

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So, we need to do a little history to understand where we came from, and

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how we got here, and I swear to God, there’s not going to be any math.

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Well—okay.

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There’s definitely math involved, but since I am not a mathematologist,

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I’m just going to tell you what the math proves without delving into any

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Ned: formulas.

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And I appreciate that because I suspect all

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those formulas have zero actual numbers in them.

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There’s a lot of Greek symbols.

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You know, just as a quick aside, when I started taking trigonometry,

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and then later, calculus, no one ever sat me down and explained what

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the different Greek letters were and how to properly write them.

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Oh, that makes it more difficult.

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And they were just like, “Here’s a delta.

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You know what delta is.

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And lambda, here’s a la—there’s a sigma.” And you just had to, kind of, either

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pick this up on your own, or hope somebody else filled in the gaps for you.

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Maybe just one day?

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Or maybe I was absent that day.

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Who knows?

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But like, here’s the five Greek symbols we’re going to

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use this year, how to pronounce them, how to write them.

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How to do it on a keyboard.

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Eh, we’re way too old for that.

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Chris: What am I kidding?

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[laugh] . Oh,

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Ned: no.

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Chris: Ugh.

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Keyboards.

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Anyway, let’s go back to the beginning, where we began.

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And we can only say this with a little bit of an asterisk because

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I am certain, and historians are certain, that humans have been

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wondering about this question since we learned how to wonder.

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But we can only work with what was written down.

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One of the first major efforts to understand the world around us that

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was not “Obvious,” in air quotes, was trying to understand light.

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And it goes back a long time.

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Because you don’t have to be a scientist to

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know that light, in and of itself, is weird.

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Yeah.

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Some light is harmless, like, you know, the 60 watt bulb in the closet.

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Some light is so intense that it can burn your skin.

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Light doesn’t even have to be generated by electricity.

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Or fire.

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Here’s an example.

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Go get a framing nail, you know, one of the big ones—

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Okay.

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—and a solid piece of wood—not a word from

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you—and just blast that nail a few times.

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As long as you hit it square, and you hit it hard

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enough, eventually, it’ll start to glow, aka, emit light.

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Now, I know you’ve never actually worked

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with your hands, but I promise this happens.

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That’s fair.

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I’ve been called panda hands in the past.

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[laugh] . I am not delving into that.

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No follow-up questions.

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Fair [laugh]

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.
So, if you look at sources, even ancient philosophers, scientists—because there

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really was no separation between those two for a long time—recognized that there

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was a correlation between light and heat, and it has something to do with eyes—

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Yeah.

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Because you need those to see the light, right?

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But light can affect other things.

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Like, what the hell’s going on?

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Ned: Yeah.

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If something was underwater, you could see that

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it kind of refracted things in a weird way, right?

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Right.

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Or if you were underwater yourself and looking up, you could see that,

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I sort of see the reflection of myself, but I also see what’s—like, does

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a lot of weird things in different mediums, and why is it doing any of

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Chris: that?

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Right.

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So, in order to save time, and make this less than a 12-episode arc, I’m

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going to skip roughly 2000 years of exactly this kind of philosophizing.

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And I’m not exaggerating.

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In terms of what is written down, this shit goes all the way back to

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Pythagoras, who, yes, he was a real person, and he was fucking weird.

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Ned: He was real weird.

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The word cult is thrown around, and it’s not wrong.

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A number of times.

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Chris: It is not just a squared… you know the rest.

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Yeah.

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Anyway, this is going to come up with a lot of these scientists, where

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there’s going to be an aside where I’m just like, “And he was fucking weird.”

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Yeah.

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The next person you bring up, I suspect.

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[laugh] . I will leave the bulk of that research out

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though, as you know, a fun little exercise for the reader.

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So, let’s fast-forward to the 1700s, and a guy

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you might have heard of called Issac Newton.

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And he was fucking weird.

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His cookies

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Ned: are weird

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Chris: too.

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So, Newton posited the theory—or supported the

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theory, I should say—that light was a particle.

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It traveled in a straight line unless it interacted with something,

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in which case it would bounce off, reflect, reflact, et cetera.

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Reflact?

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Yes.

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Refract.

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We’re all reflacting.

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Every day, I’m reflactin.

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[laugh] . “Tough acting Reflactin.”

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[laugh] . This is going good.

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It is.

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He did this in direct contrast to another scientist named Christiaan

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Huygens—apologize, by the way, in advance for all pronunciations.

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Huygens, in 1680s, had the idea that light was a

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series of waves that were emitted in all directions.

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Now, you can see that there was philosophical

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reasoning behind both positions, though, right?

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Wave theory, as we understand it, you know, you write

259
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a wave, it’s got peaks and valleys, and it’s regular,

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and it goes across for as long as it needs to go across.

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This was understood because even in the 1680s, we had water.

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Yeah.

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We had ponds.

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You could throw a rock in a pond, and watch the waves come out from the impact

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point, perfectly concentric circles, evenly distributed in all directions.

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So, understanding what waves were: pretty natural.

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Newton, by contrast, showed—using his own mathematics—that he could

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explain reflection and refraction without waves being involved.

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He could do it as particle science.

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And he published it in, I think, the book is called Opticks with

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a k at the end because they spelled things way more fun back then.

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Indeed they did.

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And his argument held sway for a century, primarily because A, he

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was the hottest shit in science, and the most influential, and let’s

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just say he didn’t treat his competitors kindly, but B, there wasn’t

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what we could consider evidence that proved the case for either side.

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This was just theoretical at this point.

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And experimental science and theoretical science often lag one behind the other.

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They don’t follow evenly, and you see that through all

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of scientific history, not just physics or mathematics.

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Ned: Right.

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It’s the fundamentals of the scientific method.

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You come up with a hypothesis, and then you test it.

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Right.

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And until you can test it, it’s really hard to make it a theory.

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Chris: And as we will see later on, sometimes, especially as

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we get more and more modern, testing this stuff gets real hard.

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[laugh] . Yeah.

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So, we were in the 1700s.

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Light might be a wave; light might be a particle.

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Let’s move forward to 1801.

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And an interesting scientist, who I don’t think was a fucking lunatic, named

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Thomas Young, had an idea for a way that this could actually be tested.

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First, though, let’s think about this from

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his perspective, as a thought experiment.

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Let’s say you have a, I don’t know, a flat piece of wood, two feet

297
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square—just something hand-holdable—and in the middle of the block,

298
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you cut two perfectly parallel slits, each one about half-an-inch

299
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wide, maybe half-an-inch apart, something very consistent.

300
00:13:08,540 --> 00:13:12,760
Now, hold that about a foot off the ground, and pour a bucket

301
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of sand so that the flow of the sand hits basically exactly

302
00:13:17,420 --> 00:13:20,360
in between the slits, both slits at the same time, right?

303
00:13:21,150 --> 00:13:22,340
What’s going to happen to the sand?

304
00:13:23,050 --> 00:13:25,010
Ned: I mean, in my mind’s eye, I would see the

305
00:13:25,010 --> 00:13:28,020
sand would fall pretty evenly through both slits.

306
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Chris: Right.

307
00:13:29,139 --> 00:13:32,080
You should basically end up with two piles of sand roughly

308
00:13:32,080 --> 00:13:36,260
the same size and shape, directly below the slits, right?

309
00:13:37,440 --> 00:13:40,470
That’s what your intuition tells you, and also what should

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happen with light, if crazy old man Newton is to be believed.

311
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Ned: Right, if there are particles—like, sand is made of

312
00:13:47,040 --> 00:13:50,310
particles—they should go through the two slits evenly.

313
00:13:50,310 --> 00:13:53,440
You should have the same concentration of light under both slits.

314
00:13:53,850 --> 00:13:55,660
And since light particles are so

315
00:13:55,950 --> 00:14:01,689
Chris: infinitesimally small, it should also be very sharp edges—

316
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Mmm.

317
00:14:03,290 --> 00:14:03,800
Okay.

318
00:14:04,230 --> 00:14:06,640
—not like little haze or anything like that

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because light is way smaller than grains of sand.

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Well, Young decided to test this, setting the stage for

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what has become one of the most famous experiments ever.

322
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Using a dark room [laugh] and basically an index card, Young

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proved that, far from behaving like a particle, light clearly

324
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showed interference patterns as though it were a wave.

325
00:14:30,020 --> 00:14:34,260
This so-easy-a-caveman-can-do-it experiment was then double-proven

326
00:14:34,530 --> 00:14:38,160
with a more scientific and rigorous double-slit experiment.

327
00:14:38,290 --> 00:14:38,719
Okay.

328
00:14:38,940 --> 00:14:42,080
Which, amazingly, is also super easy.

329
00:14:42,490 --> 00:14:43,530
And you can do it at home.

330
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I know this because I did it at

331
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Ned: home.

332
00:14:46,640 --> 00:14:47,180
Wow.

333
00:14:47,540 --> 00:14:50,599
I am impressed by the level of rigor for this episode.

334
00:14:50,889 --> 00:14:51,339
Chris: I know.

335
00:14:51,340 --> 00:14:53,350
I’m waiting for my PhD to arrive in the mail.

336
00:14:53,929 --> 00:14:58,790
Now, similar to the example that we talked about with sand above, in order

337
00:14:58,790 --> 00:15:03,260
to do the double-slit experiment, you get a source of light—in modern

338
00:15:03,260 --> 00:15:05,949
times, it’s usually a laser pointer because that’s the easiest way to do

339
00:15:05,950 --> 00:15:10,570
it—and you get two slits that are parallel together on an opaque surface.

340
00:15:11,160 --> 00:15:13,709
Now, if you want to do this at home, the easy way to do

341
00:15:13,710 --> 00:15:17,410
it, you can just buy a scientifically designed slide that

342
00:15:17,410 --> 00:15:20,870
is built to do this experiment in, like, high schools.

343
00:15:21,420 --> 00:15:26,970
If you want to do it, the Etsy way, you can just cut two slits in

344
00:15:26,970 --> 00:15:31,210
aluminum foil with an X-Acto knife and then paste them onto a card with

345
00:15:31,210 --> 00:15:34,480
a hole in the middle to hold the aluminum foil so it doesn’t crinkle.

346
00:15:35,170 --> 00:15:39,260
If you do that, make sure you’re using the non-reflective side because… reasons.

347
00:15:39,550 --> 00:15:44,499
And yes, aluminum foil has a non-reflective, or at least a less reflective side.

348
00:15:45,000 --> 00:15:45,420
Ned: Okay.

349
00:15:45,500 --> 00:15:46,060
Chris: It’s true.

350
00:15:46,469 --> 00:15:48,100
I’ll give you five minutes to run to the kitchen.

351
00:15:49,049 --> 00:15:52,279
Also pour one out for all of the index cards and aluminum foil that

352
00:15:52,279 --> 00:15:57,870
were lost in this scientific endeavor because it was substantial.

353
00:15:58,520 --> 00:16:01,790
You have your slits, you have your card, all you

354
00:16:01,790 --> 00:16:05,400
do is aim the laser pointer right at the slits.

355
00:16:05,920 --> 00:16:06,310
Okay.

356
00:16:06,540 --> 00:16:09,740
Now, once again, what do you expect will happen?

357
00:16:10,469 --> 00:16:11,589
You think it’s the same thing?

358
00:16:11,589 --> 00:16:13,520
Or do you think it’s something else?

359
00:16:14,390 --> 00:16:14,660
I kind

360
00:16:14,660 --> 00:16:15,760
Ned: of know it’s something else

361
00:16:17,520 --> 00:16:18,710
[
Chris: laugh] . Let’s just jump to that.

362
00:16:19,300 --> 00:16:21,110
I should have interviewed your dog for this one.

363
00:16:22,050 --> 00:16:23,060
You’re right, of course.

364
00:16:23,469 --> 00:16:28,000
You do not get to hard-edged bars of light

365
00:16:28,109 --> 00:16:30,189
illuminated on the wall, like the sand.

366
00:16:30,189 --> 00:16:35,839
What you get is a long line of bright, then dark, then bright, then

367
00:16:35,840 --> 00:16:40,660
dark, then bright, then dark, et cetera, moving outwards until it

368
00:16:40,670 --> 00:16:44,820
stops being visible on the periphery, called an interference pattern.

369
00:16:45,410 --> 00:16:49,159
Which is exactly what would happen if you were using waves.

370
00:16:50,210 --> 00:16:56,120
The light waves hit each slit, separate into two separate expanding semicircles

371
00:16:56,690 --> 00:17:01,100
of waves that are interfering with each other in a regular geometric pattern.

372
00:17:01,830 --> 00:17:03,850
And the way that it works is very simple: you

373
00:17:03,850 --> 00:17:05,529
have a wave that has a—what’s it called up top?

374
00:17:05,529 --> 00:17:06,069
A crest.

375
00:17:06,170 --> 00:17:09,290
—a crest—and another way that has the—again?

376
00:17:09,730 --> 00:17:10,230
The trough.

377
00:17:10,500 --> 00:17:11,350
No dumdum.

378
00:17:11,390 --> 00:17:11,980
A crest.

379
00:17:12,079 --> 00:17:14,369
Two crests hit together, and it makes a bright point.

380
00:17:15,150 --> 00:17:18,139
Two troughs hit together, and it makes a dark point.

381
00:17:18,420 --> 00:17:21,140
A crest and a trough hit each other, and you get nothing.

382
00:17:21,780 --> 00:17:22,839
So, what do you end up with?

383
00:17:23,150 --> 00:17:25,530
Bright, then dark, then bright, then dark,

384
00:17:25,609 --> 00:17:28,120
then bright, then dark, all the way across.

385
00:17:28,150 --> 00:17:32,200
And honestly, the light goes way farther than we can actually see.

386
00:17:32,880 --> 00:17:35,260
If you look this up on YouTube, there are some people that did this

387
00:17:35,270 --> 00:17:40,589
in serious laboratory areas, and it is consistent for really long

388
00:17:40,590 --> 00:17:43,629
distances, and it does not matter how bright your light point is.

389
00:17:43,990 --> 00:17:46,860
It only matters—like, the one of the main reasons you use a

390
00:17:46,870 --> 00:17:49,850
laser pointer is it’s incredibly bright, and it’s incredibly

391
00:17:50,340 --> 00:17:53,899
concentrated, so it’s easy to see with the naked eye, right?

392
00:17:54,240 --> 00:17:56,659
If you didn’t have the naked eye, if you had, say,

393
00:17:56,969 --> 00:18:01,120
photosensitive paper, you could see this no matter what.

394
00:18:01,690 --> 00:18:01,990
Wow.

395
00:18:02,600 --> 00:18:02,959
Ned: Okay.

396
00:18:03,170 --> 00:18:03,810
Makes sense?

397
00:18:04,120 --> 00:18:07,240
I mean, what you’re explaining makes sense that’s

398
00:18:07,240 --> 00:18:10,740
acting as a wave, but it still seems weird.

399
00:18:11,000 --> 00:18:13,139
It is weird, and it only gets

400
00:18:13,230 --> 00:18:13,780
Chris: weirder.

401
00:18:14,530 --> 00:18:18,349
Now, interestingly, and I brought up the lake earlier for a reason,

402
00:18:18,530 --> 00:18:22,600
which is you can simulate this experiment on a calm body of water.

403
00:18:23,070 --> 00:18:26,570
If you create a repeating wave pattern by say, I don’t know getting

404
00:18:26,570 --> 00:18:30,860
a paddle and smacking the water rhythmically, and you put two

405
00:18:30,860 --> 00:18:34,609
separate slits out X amount in front of you, you can actually watch

406
00:18:34,629 --> 00:18:38,710
the wave, the single wave hit the two slits become a double wave and

407
00:18:38,710 --> 00:18:41,679
cause the same interference patterns as they go out into the lake.

408
00:18:42,150 --> 00:18:42,850
That is cool.

409
00:18:43,330 --> 00:18:44,270
That is pretty cool.

410
00:18:44,700 --> 00:18:47,900
And sometimes messy, and it upsets the frogs, so don’t do it for too long.

411
00:18:48,740 --> 00:18:49,099
I won’t.

412
00:18:49,559 --> 00:18:53,210
Now, in order to create those interference

413
00:18:53,210 --> 00:18:55,879
patterns, you need more than one wave, right?

414
00:18:56,700 --> 00:18:57,340
I mean, obviously.

415
00:18:57,340 --> 00:18:58,520
We just talked about that.

416
00:18:58,540 --> 00:19:01,030
One wave hits two slits, causes two waves, they interfere.

417
00:19:01,510 --> 00:19:01,780
Right.

418
00:19:02,160 --> 00:19:04,790
We’re going to fast-forward a little bit, and we get

419
00:19:04,790 --> 00:19:06,880
to a point with experimental equipment where you can

420
00:19:06,880 --> 00:19:11,220
literally send only one photon at a time at the slits.

421
00:19:11,840 --> 00:19:12,760
What do you think you’re going to get?

422
00:19:13,280 --> 00:19:16,179
Ned: Well, I would think if it’s just one photon,

423
00:19:16,240 --> 00:19:18,510
it would have to go through one slit or the other.

424
00:19:18,590 --> 00:19:19,610
It can’t go through both.

425
00:19:20,270 --> 00:19:21,989
Oh, you sweet summer child.

426
00:19:22,730 --> 00:19:25,649
Chris: We tested this and actually, it took a long-ass time.

427
00:19:25,660 --> 00:19:28,620
It took until, like, the ’80s to do this experimentally.

428
00:19:28,690 --> 00:19:28,940
But—

429
00:19:28,969 --> 00:19:31,340
Ned: Well, isolating a single photon is not easy.

430
00:19:31,370 --> 00:19:32,040
They’re super tiny.

431
00:19:32,050 --> 00:19:32,230
Yeah,

432
00:19:32,230 --> 00:19:34,280
Chris: they weren’t doing that in the 1800s for some reason.

433
00:19:34,790 --> 00:19:35,220
Egh, slackers.

434
00:19:35,570 --> 00:19:39,270
But if you put a photosensitive paper or plate behind the two

435
00:19:39,270 --> 00:19:44,629
slits and fire one photon at a time and wait, they will show up

436
00:19:45,049 --> 00:19:49,700
as an interference pattern exactly like if it was a full wave.

437
00:19:49,970 --> 00:19:50,690
That makes no sense.

438
00:19:50,690 --> 00:19:52,320
Now, here’s my question to you.

439
00:19:52,440 --> 00:19:54,240
How in the hell is this possible?

440
00:19:54,360 --> 00:19:57,290
Well God, I hope you’re going to tell me because I got nothing.

441
00:19:57,920 --> 00:20:01,280
What ends up happening, and the easiest way to explain it is, the

442
00:20:01,280 --> 00:20:05,380
single photon going through this apparatus is interfering with itself.

443
00:20:06,129 --> 00:20:09,820
And to quote my main source for this episode, which is the amazing

444
00:20:09,820 --> 00:20:13,750
book Through Two Doors at Once, quote, “This is rather curious.”

445
00:20:13,760 --> 00:20:13,790
[laugh]

446
00:20:16,250 --> 00:20:17,890
.
How is that understatement?

447
00:20:19,040 --> 00:20:19,110
Ned: Holy shit.

448
00:20:19,120 --> 00:20:22,879
Uh, yeah, that’s a bit of an understatement, to say the least.

449
00:20:23,000 --> 00:20:27,699
Okay, so a single object is interfering with itself to create

450
00:20:27,700 --> 00:20:30,810
an interference pattern that, in my mind, should not exist?

451
00:20:31,050 --> 00:20:31,560
Correct.

452
00:20:31,580 --> 00:20:32,070
And this is

453
00:20:32,139 --> 00:20:34,899
Chris: absolutely provable, and there’s no question that it happened.

454
00:20:34,900 --> 00:20:37,690
It has been tested hundreds of times in hundreds of apparatus.

455
00:20:38,160 --> 00:20:40,740
Ned: Are we sure that aliens aren’t just fucking with

456
00:20:42,380 --> 00:20:42,400
Chris: us?

457
00:20:42,400 --> 00:20:44,950
[laugh] . Are aliens even real if no one’s there to observe them?

458
00:20:46,140 --> 00:20:46,790
Think about it.

459
00:20:47,250 --> 00:20:48,140
Yes, yes, they are.

460
00:20:48,890 --> 00:20:49,980
I’m not a solipsist.

461
00:20:50,500 --> 00:20:54,269
I’m not going to go too much further down this particular rabbit hole today.

462
00:20:54,790 --> 00:20:56,010
I might do it later.

463
00:20:56,660 --> 00:21:00,279
The reason that I bring this stuff up is not to do a math lesson.

464
00:21:00,380 --> 00:21:02,790
It’s really more of a open your mind to the

465
00:21:02,790 --> 00:21:05,370
insanity and wonderment that is the quantum realm.

466
00:21:05,920 --> 00:21:10,500
And it is far, far weirder than you could possibly imagine.

467
00:21:11,190 --> 00:21:14,429
And something interesting comes of this that starts to really

468
00:21:14,910 --> 00:21:18,760
inform how we have to handle anything at this size—and by that

469
00:21:18,760 --> 00:21:22,600
I mean in the quantum realm—and that is, you can never know for

470
00:21:22,600 --> 00:21:27,139
sure where in that interference pattern the photon will land.

471
00:21:27,719 --> 00:21:31,219
You can not even know for sure which slit it goes through.

472
00:21:31,830 --> 00:21:36,290
You can only calculate—and I promised that there would be no math—you can

473
00:21:36,290 --> 00:21:40,500
only calculate the probability of it landing somewhere within the range

474
00:21:40,500 --> 00:21:44,889
established by the conditions of the slits and the photosensitive receiver.

475
00:21:46,240 --> 00:21:50,199
And that forms the basis of all quantum mathematics.

476
00:21:51,020 --> 00:21:55,909
It is—remember, a qubit plays this same game: a qubit can be any value

477
00:21:55,910 --> 00:22:00,100
between zero and one, and it is a probability that we are going after.

478
00:22:00,570 --> 00:22:04,049
And that’s also the reason that quantum computing calculations are

479
00:22:04,050 --> 00:22:08,170
run hundreds and hundreds of times, which is an interesting thing that

480
00:22:08,200 --> 00:22:11,679
I’m not going to get too much more into today, but I might do later.

481
00:22:12,139 --> 00:22:13,880
As soon as I get to that chapter.

482
00:22:16,320 --> 00:22:16,980
[laugh] . Okay.

483
00:22:17,200 --> 00:22:20,250
So, I’m asking the audience to just embrace the weirdness.

484
00:22:20,270 --> 00:22:21,670
And I’m going to ask another question.

485
00:22:22,760 --> 00:22:27,619
If you set up a mechanism wherein you know for certain which

486
00:22:27,620 --> 00:22:30,990
slit the photon goes through, what do you think happens?

487
00:22:32,170 --> 00:22:37,390
Ned: You collapse the wave and the interference pattern goes away.

488
00:22:37,600 --> 00:22:39,200
And I’m saying that because I know that’s the

489
00:22:39,340 --> 00:22:41,530
answer [laugh] and not because it’s obvious.

490
00:22:41,750 --> 00:22:42,779
That is correct.

491
00:22:43,900 --> 00:22:46,829
Chris: Now, like I said, these single photon experiments

492
00:22:47,309 --> 00:22:50,950
didn’t happen until much, much later, but the behavior

493
00:22:51,000 --> 00:22:54,389
I talked about, was known and explained mathematically.

494
00:22:54,570 --> 00:22:57,330
But I did promise that there would be no math.

495
00:22:57,910 --> 00:22:59,750
I won’t do a math.

496
00:23:00,620 --> 00:23:08,500
In short, between 1901 and 1928 was some of the most interesting

497
00:23:08,520 --> 00:23:11,530
and dramatic changes in the way that math was talked about,

498
00:23:11,830 --> 00:23:14,349
by some of the smartest people who have ever lived on earth.

499
00:23:15,110 --> 00:23:18,510
There was this one guy, an obscure little dude called Einstein.

500
00:23:19,110 --> 00:23:20,000
Doesn’t sound familiar.

501
00:23:20,540 --> 00:23:24,379
He proved that light was quantized into a discrete

502
00:23:24,390 --> 00:23:28,320
series of packets, or quanta—hence the time that we

503
00:23:28,320 --> 00:23:32,500
started using these terms colloquially—called photons.

504
00:23:33,280 --> 00:23:36,220
Now, the idea of quantize is an amount.

505
00:23:36,910 --> 00:23:42,239
The idea of quanta is the smallest possible amount, aka, for these

506
00:23:42,250 --> 00:23:46,330
equations, for these experiments, et cetera, this is as small as it gets.

507
00:23:46,950 --> 00:23:49,960
And that’s an interesting concept too, which again, I don’t have time to

508
00:23:49,970 --> 00:23:53,340
get into because it’s not like you can have a third of a photon, right?

509
00:23:53,349 --> 00:23:54,380
That stands to reason.

510
00:23:55,179 --> 00:23:56,070
But what does that mean?

511
00:23:56,070 --> 00:23:58,119
You can’t have a third of an electron, you can’t have

512
00:23:58,119 --> 00:24:00,180
a third of an electron having certain amount of energy.

513
00:24:00,620 --> 00:24:02,470
How do they jump between one level or another?

514
00:24:03,390 --> 00:24:05,370
Like I said, there’s a lot that I’m not talking about.

515
00:24:05,620 --> 00:24:06,140
I know it.

516
00:24:06,500 --> 00:24:07,629
And yet, I’m talking about it.

517
00:24:09,420 --> 00:24:13,210
But Einstein did that in 1905, and he won a Nobel Prize.

518
00:24:13,520 --> 00:24:14,120
Eventually.

519
00:24:14,410 --> 00:24:15,479
Because Nobel Prizes are weird.

520
00:24:15,480 --> 00:24:16,819
You can win them, like, a decade later.

521
00:24:17,190 --> 00:24:18,610
I don’t get it, but whatever.

522
00:24:19,600 --> 00:24:20,960
I always thought it was like the Oscars.

523
00:24:20,960 --> 00:24:21,980
It’s not like the Oscars.

524
00:24:22,550 --> 00:24:25,800
Ned: It’s actually kind of like the Oscars because people tend to win

525
00:24:25,820 --> 00:24:29,740
Oscars not for the movie that they starred in, but as a, “Sorry, we

526
00:24:29,740 --> 00:24:32,729
didn’t give you the Oscar for the movie you were in ten years ago.”

527
00:24:33,320 --> 00:24:35,379
Oh, that’s true.

528
00:24:35,400 --> 00:24:36,770
Yeah, that’s a good way to think about it.

529
00:24:36,780 --> 00:24:38,860
It explains Scent of a Woman perfectly.

530
00:24:39,350 --> 00:24:39,730
Wow.

531
00:24:41,080 --> 00:24:44,880
Chris: Yeah, so long story short, fun fact for the episode, Einstein

532
00:24:44,880 --> 00:24:49,719
didn’t actually win the Nobel Prize for E=MC^2 or relativity.

533
00:24:50,030 --> 00:24:53,149
He won it for this work on the photoelectric effect.

534
00:24:54,049 --> 00:24:54,699
So, there.

535
00:24:55,030 --> 00:24:57,720
I just answered an impossible question for you.

536
00:24:58,170 --> 00:24:59,220
You’re welcome.

537
00:24:59,860 --> 00:25:00,700
Aw, thanks, buddy.

538
00:25:01,250 --> 00:25:05,720
So, at this point, things do get obtuse and very, very mathy.

539
00:25:06,309 --> 00:25:08,040
It’s really annoying for me to do this, but

540
00:25:08,040 --> 00:25:10,260
I’m just going to say a lot of stuff happened.

541
00:25:11,500 --> 00:25:15,550
There was a huge argument understanding what an atom really looked like.

542
00:25:16,000 --> 00:25:19,949
Spoiler alert, the image that you have in your head of electrons is wrong.

543
00:25:20,429 --> 00:25:21,800
Yes, completely wrong.

544
00:25:22,010 --> 00:25:27,179
Once again, it is not like a planet in the middle with moons orbiting it.

545
00:25:27,520 --> 00:25:28,560
The planet in the middle part?

546
00:25:29,080 --> 00:25:34,650
Sure, even though not really, but around them is a cloud, and in that

547
00:25:34,650 --> 00:25:39,260
cloud is electrons, and where the electrons are in there, in mathematical

548
00:25:39,270 --> 00:25:42,170
terms, the only way we can describe it is, “Who the fuck knows?”

549
00:25:42,380 --> 00:25:42,410
[laugh]

550
00:25:44,070 --> 00:25:46,239
.
Ned: They’re somewhere around there.

551
00:25:46,650 --> 00:25:46,840
Right.

552
00:25:46,840 --> 00:25:46,870
And

553
00:25:46,870 --> 00:25:48,590
Chris: sometimes, they’re not.

554
00:25:48,980 --> 00:25:50,760
So, that all got weird.

555
00:25:50,860 --> 00:25:51,540
And then in

556
00:25:53,590 --> 00:25:57,870
1924, another scientist named Louis de Broglie made a shocking proposal.

557
00:25:58,219 --> 00:26:01,909
What if it wasn’t just light that behaved as both a wave and a particle?

558
00:26:02,410 --> 00:26:04,639
What if matter did, too?

559
00:26:04,639 --> 00:26:07,710
[singing] Dun, dun, daaaa.

560
00:26:07,830 --> 00:26:11,659
Long story short—too late—this was proven to be correct.

561
00:26:12,390 --> 00:26:14,639
In 1925, we got there.

562
00:26:15,030 --> 00:26:15,649
Yay.

563
00:26:15,800 --> 00:26:19,719
Matrix mechanics was developed by a guy called Heisenberg—not the one that

564
00:26:19,719 --> 00:26:24,890
sells drugs—to formalize the mathematical descriptions of probabilistic

565
00:26:24,960 --> 00:26:29,740
calculations because by this time, everybody understood at least this much:

566
00:26:30,240 --> 00:26:34,370
there is no definitive answer to the question of, “Where is this particle,

567
00:26:34,580 --> 00:26:39,000
and how fast is it going?” Now, this is the Uncertainty Principle, right?

568
00:26:39,040 --> 00:26:41,920
I did not exactly say it the way that it is written

569
00:26:42,440 --> 00:26:45,770
because we as non-scientists tend to oversimplify it.

570
00:26:46,160 --> 00:26:48,690
But really all it does is reinforce the concept

571
00:26:48,790 --> 00:26:52,300
of certainty not existing in the quantum realm.

572
00:26:53,750 --> 00:26:58,589
Observation changes things, and if we’re not observing things, things

573
00:26:58,590 --> 00:27:01,149
get even more complicated, which I’ll get to in the conclusion.

574
00:27:02,730 --> 00:27:04,060
So, matrix mechanics happened.

575
00:27:04,550 --> 00:27:08,290
There was a lot of argumentation, there was the Copenhagen thing,

576
00:27:08,360 --> 00:27:11,720
where very famously, a couple of scientists spent about four months

577
00:27:11,740 --> 00:27:15,050
hanging out in their attics, and arguing with each other about this.

578
00:27:15,670 --> 00:27:17,519
Which I’m sure was fun for the housekeeper.

579
00:27:18,240 --> 00:27:18,260
Ugh.

580
00:27:18,730 --> 00:27:19,910
Sounds like a disaster.

581
00:27:20,350 --> 00:27:21,100
What else happened?

582
00:27:21,110 --> 00:27:21,129
Oh, Schrödinger.

583
00:27:22,530 --> 00:27:23,530
You might have heard of him.

584
00:27:23,550 --> 00:27:24,450
He’s the guy with the cat.

585
00:27:24,710 --> 00:27:26,340
He did the cat thing.

586
00:27:26,590 --> 00:27:28,199
He did a lot of other stuff, too.

587
00:27:28,929 --> 00:27:30,070
The cat thing came later.

588
00:27:30,349 --> 00:27:35,639
Early on, he invented what’s called wave mechanics, another form of math, that

589
00:27:36,139 --> 00:27:39,700
calling it a replacement for matrix mechanics doesn’t make sense; in reality,

590
00:27:39,720 --> 00:27:43,340
they both are still used, and they’re used to solve for different problems.

591
00:27:43,930 --> 00:27:49,759
And the matrix mechanics—just to be as precise as I can—matrix mechanics

592
00:27:49,759 --> 00:27:55,110
was an algebraic approach, employing the technique of manipulating matrices.

593
00:27:55,520 --> 00:27:58,919
Wave mechanics, employed differential equations, and had

594
00:27:58,960 --> 00:28:01,990
a basic partial differential wave equation at its heart.

595
00:28:02,550 --> 00:28:04,760
And I could explain that, but we’re running out of time.

596
00:28:05,320 --> 00:28:05,800
Indeed.

597
00:28:06,259 --> 00:28:07,050
Ned: And you can’t explain

598
00:28:07,050 --> 00:28:07,139
Chris: it.

599
00:28:07,330 --> 00:28:07,550
Sh—ehhh.

600
00:28:07,550 --> 00:28:08,025
Ehhh.

601
00:28:08,500 --> 00:28:08,540
[laugh]

602
00:28:10,620 --> 00:28:11,890
.
Ned: I like that you tried, though.

603
00:28:13,160 --> 00:28:16,060
Chris: All of that happened, among a few other things.

604
00:28:16,070 --> 00:28:19,810
I want to stop here, though, because it’s a good point to stop at.

605
00:28:20,130 --> 00:28:23,320
Because it does—honestly, we could probably do an entire episode

606
00:28:23,330 --> 00:28:27,699
just on 1925 through 1928, but we also don’t want to go too deep

607
00:28:27,730 --> 00:28:31,899
into the physics, per se, because this is not a physics podcast.

608
00:28:32,499 --> 00:28:33,303
Not yet [laugh]

609
00:28:33,303 --> 00:28:36,740
.
Dude, you don’t know how close it came to being a historical weirdos podcast.

610
00:28:37,360 --> 00:28:40,610
Ned: Oh… Chris, I have something to tell you [laugh]

611
00:28:41,220 --> 00:28:41,250
.
Chris: [laugh]

612
00:28:41,410 --> 00:28:42,650
.
That may have already happened.

613
00:28:43,559 --> 00:28:46,040
But anyway, there we have it: the short, short version

614
00:28:46,059 --> 00:28:48,369
of how we went from Newton to quantum mechanics.

615
00:28:48,639 --> 00:28:52,070
Quantum mechanics, as again, proven to work over the past

616
00:28:52,070 --> 00:28:56,090
100 years, many, many times shows clearly that all matter

617
00:28:56,309 --> 00:29:00,889
is composed of small, individual stuff that we call energy.

618
00:29:01,630 --> 00:29:03,729
It becomes mass, it adds up to atoms, which

619
00:29:03,730 --> 00:29:05,470
become molecules, which become Xboxes.

620
00:29:06,810 --> 00:29:09,910
The quanta simply don’t behave like the Xboxes do.

621
00:29:10,550 --> 00:29:12,580
Quanta do things like superposition and

622
00:29:12,600 --> 00:29:15,410
entanglement, which makes quantum computing possible.

623
00:29:15,410 --> 00:29:18,000
The Xbox just lets you play Fallout for seven

624
00:29:18,000 --> 00:29:19,820
hours when you should be writing term papers.

625
00:29:20,299 --> 00:29:21,120
So, I’ve heard.

626
00:29:21,450 --> 00:29:21,850
Right.

627
00:29:22,059 --> 00:29:25,159
The amount of weirdness that I read and ultimately left out for

628
00:29:25,310 --> 00:29:28,920
clarity and a minimum of tangents was absolutely astounding.

629
00:29:29,610 --> 00:29:35,210
Like this: did you know there is a huge argument about the observer

630
00:29:35,210 --> 00:29:40,569
effect, to wit, the theory that if we don’t observe something—or

631
00:29:40,570 --> 00:29:43,289
something isn’t observed, I should say, because it really is not

632
00:29:43,300 --> 00:29:46,790
humanistic in this way—but if something isn’t observed, it doesn’t exist.

633
00:29:47,370 --> 00:29:50,130
Ergo for certain arguments in quantum physics, the question,

634
00:29:50,150 --> 00:29:52,340
“If a tree falls in a forest and no one’s there to hear it, does

635
00:29:52,340 --> 00:29:55,239
it make a sound?” Could theoretically have a different answer.

636
00:29:56,089 --> 00:29:59,470
Nobody could hear it, then nobody could see it so, uh, what tree?

637
00:30:01,970 --> 00:30:04,130
[laugh] . I don’t like that, and it makes me uncomfortable.

638
00:30:04,720 --> 00:30:07,840
Oh boy, will I send you a paper that will ruin your day?

639
00:30:08,389 --> 00:30:11,470
Einstein famously rejected this all through his life, and

640
00:30:11,470 --> 00:30:14,669
spent most of the rest of his life trying to disprove it.

641
00:30:15,080 --> 00:30:16,249
One of his biographers, A.

642
00:30:16,430 --> 00:30:20,080
Pais, recalled, quote, “During one walk Einstein suddenly

643
00:30:20,080 --> 00:30:23,659
stopped, turned to me and asked whether I really believed

644
00:30:23,660 --> 00:30:27,900
that the moon exists only when I look at it.” Which, fair?

645
00:30:28,380 --> 00:30:31,499
I mean, one thing we know for sure is the moon is absolutely not a dragon egg.

646
00:30:31,860 --> 00:30:32,469
Ned: Mmm.

647
00:30:33,110 --> 00:30:38,320
I will say that—you mentioned video games in passing earlier—and the virtual

648
00:30:38,630 --> 00:30:43,810
worlds that we build with video games, and the way that they’re rendered lets us

649
00:30:43,820 --> 00:30:48,270
put this in a different perspective of the fact that as an observer inside the

650
00:30:48,270 --> 00:30:54,800
video game, are things happening outside of what I can observe inside the game?

651
00:30:55,720 --> 00:30:56,840
The answer is yes.

652
00:30:57,370 --> 00:31:00,320
So, that’s why I think that the answer broadly, “Are things happening

653
00:31:00,320 --> 00:31:02,830
in the universe when I’m not there?” The answer is also yes.

654
00:31:03,370 --> 00:31:03,790
Where’s your

655
00:31:03,889 --> 00:31:05,070
Chris: physics PhD from again?

656
00:31:05,690 --> 00:31:05,940
Ned: Shut

657
00:31:05,940 --> 00:31:06,090
Chris: up

658
00:31:06,280 --> 00:31:06,310
[
Ned: laugh]

659
00:31:06,310 --> 00:31:06,330
.
I’ve

660
00:31:07,469 --> 00:31:09,270
Chris: got a PhD from Ultima Online.

661
00:31:09,469 --> 00:31:10,250
That’ll tell you.

662
00:31:10,510 --> 00:31:10,540
[laugh]

663
00:31:11,590 --> 00:31:14,030
.
So, of course, like I said, this is an argument.

664
00:31:14,150 --> 00:31:18,440
Other scientists have refuted Einstein on it with even crazier, but apparently,

665
00:31:18,770 --> 00:31:24,270
mathematically feasible statements, like, quote, “Observations not only disturb

666
00:31:24,270 --> 00:31:29,720
what has to be measured, they produce it… we compel [the electron] to assume a

667
00:31:29,720 --> 00:31:35,430
definite position… we ourselves produce the results of measurements.” Unquote.

668
00:31:36,140 --> 00:31:39,360
As the kids say, quantum physics be cray.

669
00:31:39,950 --> 00:31:40,530
Yeah.

670
00:31:40,870 --> 00:31:41,769
And they’re right, man.

671
00:31:42,040 --> 00:31:42,939
It do be cray.

672
00:31:42,939 --> 00:31:44,729
Cray-cray, even.

673
00:31:44,739 --> 00:31:48,980
And I want to end—I’m actually going to throw in one bonus craziness.

674
00:31:49,720 --> 00:31:52,429
Let’s pretend—I’m going to do a thought experiment, and it’s not

675
00:31:52,430 --> 00:31:55,590
going to take too long—let’s pretend we have an electron that

676
00:31:55,600 --> 00:32:00,480
we have control of and can fire through detectors at will, okay?

677
00:32:01,360 --> 00:32:04,770
The electron has two properties to it, and only two

678
00:32:04,770 --> 00:32:09,010
properties: it is either a black electron or a white

679
00:32:09,050 --> 00:32:14,050
electron, and it is either a hard electron or a soft electron.

680
00:32:14,490 --> 00:32:16,640
That’s it: two categories, either-or.

681
00:32:17,309 --> 00:32:21,790
And we have built detectors for the color and the hardness.

682
00:32:22,279 --> 00:32:24,659
So, the electron goes into the color detector, and it

683
00:32:24,660 --> 00:32:26,970
comes out of one or two chutes: either black or white.

684
00:32:26,970 --> 00:32:30,890
So, we know for certain, it goes through the white one, it’s a white electron.

685
00:32:30,890 --> 00:32:32,860
If we test it again, it’s a white electron.

686
00:32:34,139 --> 00:32:37,760
If we send that electron through the color detector and

687
00:32:37,760 --> 00:32:41,159
then through the hardness detector, what should we get?

688
00:32:41,959 --> 00:32:44,139
We should get both properties.

689
00:32:44,280 --> 00:32:44,570
Right.

690
00:32:44,630 --> 00:32:49,280
You should know for sure that, for example, it’s a black, hard electron.

691
00:32:49,440 --> 00:32:49,850
Okay.

692
00:32:50,270 --> 00:32:50,490
Right?

693
00:32:50,520 --> 00:32:51,920
Because these were 50/50 questions.

694
00:32:51,929 --> 00:32:52,999
There was no ambiguity.

695
00:32:53,440 --> 00:32:54,770
Now, here’s my question to you.

696
00:32:55,190 --> 00:32:57,979
We take that electron, we send it through the color, we send it through

697
00:32:57,980 --> 00:33:01,310
the hardness, and then we send it through color again, we go through, and

698
00:33:01,310 --> 00:33:04,710
it’s a black electron; we go through the middle, and it’s a hard electron.

699
00:33:04,860 --> 00:33:07,290
So, it’s black, hard going into the color detector again.

700
00:33:07,880 --> 00:33:11,420
What are the percentages of it coming out as a black electron again?

701
00:33:12,330 --> 00:33:14,159
Ned: It should be a hundred percent that it’s going

702
00:33:14,160 --> 00:33:17,860
to be black, but the probability is still 50/50.

703
00:33:18,240 --> 00:33:19,930
That is absolutely correct.

704
00:33:20,580 --> 00:33:22,420
Chris: And that is bezaco.

705
00:33:22,420 --> 00:33:22,490
[laugh]

706
00:33:23,730 --> 00:33:28,410
.
Now, honestly, the only thing that I changed about this to make it more

707
00:33:28,410 --> 00:33:31,424
understandable is the types of things that we can measure with electrons.

708
00:33:31,670 --> 00:33:33,810
So, we could also measure spin, momentum, blah, blah,

709
00:33:33,810 --> 00:33:37,010
blah, but this is a much simpler crayon example.

710
00:33:37,580 --> 00:33:41,500
And again, it has been proven experimentally hundreds of times.

711
00:33:42,240 --> 00:33:45,730
There are certain things about the quantum world that are just so

712
00:33:45,730 --> 00:33:50,020
insane that even people that understand it, kind of don’t understand it.

713
00:33:50,650 --> 00:33:53,520
And I read [laugh] I read something about trying to understand

714
00:33:53,520 --> 00:33:57,970
it and the pointless nature of that, and the quote read something

715
00:33:57,980 --> 00:34:02,080
like, “Trying to understand the nature of these probabilistic

716
00:34:02,080 --> 00:34:04,809
experiments is like trying to ask the weight in grams of

717
00:34:04,809 --> 00:34:08,830
Catholicism.” It’s just not a question that needs to be asked.

718
00:34:09,520 --> 00:34:09,679
Or

719
00:34:09,679 --> 00:34:09,919
Ned: can

720
00:34:09,920 --> 00:34:10,060
Chris: be

721
00:34:10,060 --> 00:34:10,519
Ned: answered.

722
00:34:10,879 --> 00:34:11,449
It’s 26.

723
00:34:12,000 --> 00:34:13,859
But—you know because it’s double-13.

724
00:34:13,969 --> 00:34:14,699
Don’t worry about it.

725
00:34:14,699 --> 00:34:16,600
It all makes sense, theologically.

726
00:34:17,100 --> 00:34:18,449
Chris: Oh, and one last note.

727
00:34:18,630 --> 00:34:20,770
Remember how I said that 2025 was going to be

728
00:34:20,770 --> 00:34:22,730
the year of quantum from the United Nations?

729
00:34:23,050 --> 00:34:23,410
Yeah.

730
00:34:23,559 --> 00:34:25,969
And that was pretty cool of them to do.

731
00:34:26,250 --> 00:34:26,590
Yeah.

732
00:34:26,860 --> 00:34:28,150
And that there were other things.

733
00:34:28,570 --> 00:34:32,420
You want to know what 2024 is the year of for the United Nations?

734
00:34:32,830 --> 00:34:33,710
I’m going to let you guess.

735
00:34:34,659 --> 00:34:35,920
Is it blockchain?

736
00:34:36,540 --> 00:34:37,650
No, thank God.

737
00:34:37,650 --> 00:34:37,779
Okay.

738
00:34:37,909 --> 00:34:40,060
I would have had to start a United Nations war.

739
00:34:40,440 --> 00:34:40,470
Phew.

740
00:34:40,710 --> 00:34:42,520
Ned: Is it the year of peace?

741
00:34:43,080 --> 00:34:44,590
Oh, angel.

742
00:34:46,119 --> 00:34:46,949
[laugh] . Sweet angel, baby.

743
00:34:47,000 --> 00:34:47,250
All right.

744
00:34:47,250 --> 00:34:47,570
I give up.

745
00:34:47,590 --> 00:34:48,139
What is it?

746
00:34:48,139 --> 00:34:52,270
Chris: [sigh] . 2024 is the year of camels.

747
00:34:52,580 --> 00:34:52,949
Oh.

748
00:34:53,280 --> 00:34:56,179
Or camelids, or camel…camelaires.

749
00:34:56,730 --> 00:35:00,060
And while I was writing this joke, I realized that actually

750
00:35:00,550 --> 00:35:04,160
camels are probably pretty cool too, so whatever man.

751
00:35:04,459 --> 00:35:06,759
Tune in next week for our deep-dive into camels.

752
00:35:07,860 --> 00:35:07,890
[laugh]

753
00:35:07,890 --> 00:35:09,130
.
But not quantum camels.

754
00:35:09,730 --> 00:35:10,500
Ned: Or are they?

755
00:35:10,870 --> 00:35:11,470
Ooh.

756
00:35:11,820 --> 00:35:14,720
And if you really want us to do an episode on camels and how they’re

757
00:35:14,720 --> 00:35:17,939
related to technology, I would a hundred percent fucking do that.

758
00:35:17,940 --> 00:35:23,029
Just… go to chaoslever.com and leave us a voicemail, or a

759
00:35:23,029 --> 00:35:26,280
message, or a comment, or whatever, and say, “I want the

760
00:35:26,280 --> 00:35:29,500
camels episode,” and we will make it happen somehow [laugh]

761
00:35:30,870 --> 00:35:32,559
.
Oh hey, thanks for listening or something.

762
00:35:32,559 --> 00:35:35,460
I guess you found it worthwhile enough if you made it all the way to the

763
00:35:35,460 --> 00:35:39,159
end, so congratulations to you friend, you accomplished something today.

764
00:35:39,370 --> 00:35:42,310
Now, you can go sit on a couch, grab an index card,

765
00:35:42,310 --> 00:35:45,320
and some tinfoil, make your own double-slit experiment.

766
00:35:45,470 --> 00:35:46,710
You have earned it.

767
00:35:47,440 --> 00:35:50,069
You can find more about this show by visiting our LinkedIn page,

768
00:35:50,070 --> 00:35:53,940
just search ‘Chaos Lever,’ or go to the website, chaoslever.com—yes

769
00:35:53,960 --> 00:35:57,960
I redirected the apex domain so it all just works now—

770
00:35:58,359 --> 00:35:58,889
Wow.

771
00:35:58,900 --> 00:36:02,549
—you’ll find the show notes, blog posts, and general tomfoolery.

772
00:36:02,630 --> 00:36:05,359
We’ll be back next week to see what fresh hell is upon us.

773
00:36:05,660 --> 00:36:06,500
Ta-ta for now.

774
00:36:15,420 --> 00:36:16,970
The redirect was actually really easy.

775
00:36:16,970 --> 00:36:18,769
Then why did it take you six weeks?

776
00:36:19,309 --> 00:36:19,810
Shut up

777
00:36:20,040 --> 00:36:20,090
[
laugh]