Superhero Science: StarTalk Live! With Charles Liu

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Speaker 1 Next up on Star Talk, we've got a Star Talk special edition filmed live at Guild Hall. We have our geek in chief, Charles Liu, with us.

Speaker 1 We needed him for this one because we explore the role of the quantum and other exotic scientific elements that have appeared in the powers of superheroes. Coming right up.

Speaker 1 Welcome to Star Talk,

Speaker 4 your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide.

Speaker 1 Star Talk begins right now.

Speaker 1 Welcome. This is a live recording of the Star Talk podcast here in East Hampton in Guild Hall.
Thanks for coming out on a Sunday night.

Speaker 1 Tonight, you probably came and didn't know what the subject would be. Is that correct?

Speaker 1 So I feel the love because you come no matter what. That's a good fact.

Speaker 1 The subject tonight is

Speaker 1 superhero science.

Speaker 1 And we got the expertise for that because we found it. But let me introduce the rest of our panel up here.
First of all, Gary O'Reilly. Gary, come on out.
Gary.

Speaker 1 Thank you. Gary.

Speaker 1 Former soccer pro.

Speaker 1 There's a wiki page on him, actually. Can we go there again? Yeah, we got it.
Yeah, we got it. I got to say it every time.

Speaker 1 A former soccer pro in the UK, soccer announcer, and he's with us for this branch of Star Talk that we call Special Edition, which focuses on how science and technology come together to enhance, augment, or adjust human performance.

Speaker 1 And when we speak of the science of superheroes, some of that might reach us one day in terms of what may lie in our future. So who else do we have? We have Chuck Nice.
Come on out, Chuck Nice.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 He's an actor, professional comedian, and my long-term co-host for the series. I love him because he's scientifically literate and

Speaker 1 MQ.

Speaker 1 They'll be the judge of that.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 So we have an empty seat there because that's our special guest this evening. I don't know if you know this.
Perhaps you attended this evening because you have a little bit of geek in you.

Speaker 1 But there's something you should know: that

Speaker 1 no matter how geeky you think you are,

Speaker 1 there's someone geekier than you. Okay?

Speaker 1 So I carry...

Speaker 1 strong street cred in the geekiverse

Speaker 1 but our guest tonight is geekier than I am. Please welcome my friend and colleague, Dr.
Charles Liu. Charles, come on out.

Speaker 1 Charles, a professor of astrophysics at the College of Staten Island and City University of New York. And he's also recently the author.
Check this out. Here's a title.
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 The handy quantum physics answer book.

Speaker 2 Is that geeky enough for you?

Speaker 1 because you know you have these burning quantum questions that must be answered so Charles welcome to the show thank you this is not your first rodeo with us that's right but anytime we want to reach out to the to the geekdom the geek universe you are our prime person for that I don't know what to say all right thank you I hope not later on because we got we need you to say stuff

Speaker 1 so so Gary you conceived this show some what you set it up yeah well as you said we we always try to consider the human condition and superhero movies aren't strictly sort of science fiction, but they kind of are.

Speaker 1 And they've been long part of our pop culture. We've idolized them, we've scrutinized them and we've wondered.
And they've been riding the wave of quantum theory, that golden age. of quantum theory.

Speaker 1 And I think tonight we'll kind of explore the pillars of science fiction and superhero science.

Speaker 5 Let's start off with a classic scenario.

Speaker 1 I'm going to go to you, Charles, for this.

Speaker 5 It's the OG, Superman.

Speaker 1 Superman. Right? Well, the damsel, once again,

Speaker 1 just to be clear, Higgins was not the first superhero. No, he's one of the OGs.
No, no, no, I think you go back. I mean, we had Hercules.
Oh, okay. We're going that far back.

Speaker 1 Legendary storytelling. Is Hercules any different to that world of Hercules? Hercules?

Speaker 1 I mean, Superman is our version of Hercules. Every culture has their own superheroes they've thrown forward.

Speaker 5 As I was saying, Superman's origins is from comic books. Hercules was not in a comic book first.

Speaker 1 Oh, I thought he was in a comic book. Okay.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's chiseled into snow.

Speaker 1 I got that settled. So as I was saying, the damsel's been pushed off the balcony of the 32nd floor again.
She's hurtling. Ah, that's her.

Speaker 1 And so then he comes in. He swoops in and he grabs her.
But from a physics perspective, Charles, what would really happen?

Speaker 5 Well, the problem is, of course, if Superman is a man of steel, and the thing is coming down, right? And you're coming up with the steel, it's like hitting the concrete ground, right?

Speaker 5 So that poor damsel in distress would be quite rescued, but also quite squished.

Speaker 1 So quite dead. Basically, yeah, he kills her.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 This is.

Speaker 1 She's a bug on the windshield.

Speaker 5 Well, the problem is, of course, that. moment of impact, right? And so it has been hypothesized that Superman actually has a way to absorb motion.
In other words, the momentum and the energy.

Speaker 5 He actually not only can get there and stop the person from hitting the ground, but also can absorb the impact so that he himself, who is invulnerable, is unharmed.

Speaker 5 But the person who is falling is also unharmed because it's as if they had fallen and just stopped in midair.

Speaker 1 So it's like airbags.

Speaker 5 Like airbags.

Speaker 1 Okay, so

Speaker 1 airbags he wouldn't have to do that he could just wait until they fall but typically you see superman flying horizontally so that's quite a calculation to fly horizontally and perfectly intersect yes when the person is where you are yes superman's brain has to be at least as good as your average computer right right so superman i he's everything about him is super yes right and

Speaker 1 I wondered, we actually got a question, a branch of our podcast that goes online are questions open to the public, our fan base.

Speaker 1 And one of them just simply asked, would Superman's physiology be the same as humans, even if he's sort of steel on the outside? And it got me thinking, if he's got super everything,

Speaker 1 but he does eat food. We've seen him eat.

Speaker 1 So the food would be digested in some super way,

Speaker 1 perhaps. Okay.
So what would that mean? And then I thought, so everything that's going on in you would happen in a super way in Superman.

Speaker 1 So it would digest faster the it goes into your intestines and a lot of the action is in your lower intestines where the the microbial action happens anaerobically uh oh here we go

Speaker 1 no and and anaerobic gases uh-huh methane sulfur compound yes sulf yes super taco tuesday yeah so hydrogen sulfide that's the smell of rotten eggs you have a methane which i didn't know this when i was in camp when i was 10 but the the my fellow campers were right when they said have you ever ignited

Speaker 1 yeah that thing which i mean we can come on i mean i know we're in the hamptons but everybody knows what a fart is come on come on

Speaker 1 no but so okay so fine but no so so you can ask what is the gaseous composition of that okay and in superman it would be super right and methane of course, is highly flammable. Yes.

Speaker 1 And in cities, it's the gas of choice for your stove if you still have a gas stove. Suburbs tend to have propane.
These are varieties of flammable gases that you get from crude oil.

Speaker 1 So, so methane is flammable.

Speaker 1 So it occurred to me that this is another

Speaker 1 tool Superman would have

Speaker 1 in crime fighting. Because

Speaker 1 he would just sort of

Speaker 1 load it up, okay?

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 pull down his pants and just let one out. And he's got the vision.
Laser vision. Laser vision.
X-ray vision.

Speaker 1 But no, we can get the x-rays, yeah. All right.

Speaker 1 He got laser vision. Laser vision.
He could just ignite it, and so it would be a new kind of flamethrower.

Speaker 2 Oh, what a terrible death for those villains.

Speaker 1 No, no, that would be a,

Speaker 1 it's physiological. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It works.

Speaker 1 I think it would work. Yeah.

Speaker 5 You could never sneak up on Superman with kryptonite.

Speaker 1 Why?

Speaker 5 Because there'd be a rear guard defense.

Speaker 1 Oh, yes. Yes.
You couldn't get close enough.

Speaker 3 You couldn't take him from behind.

Speaker 1 Literally, it would be a fireball. Yes.
Yes, a fireball.

Speaker 5 The only problem with this very reasonable reasoning is that when Superman came to the world from Krypton,

Speaker 5 he did not have gut bacteria yet.

Speaker 5 He was still like pre-colonoscopy.

Speaker 1 Okay?

Speaker 5 So any gut bacteria he has achieved from eating here on Earth has come from Earth. So this is a fascinating question, which I would love for your opinions, okay?

Speaker 5 Does Superman have super gut bacteria or just ordinary gut bacteria?

Speaker 5 In which case, right, if he has super digestion, which you said earlier, which would be great, it might be so good as to eliminate all gaseous emission.

Speaker 2 In which case, Superman never passes gas.

Speaker 1 Oh. All right.
So Superman has X-ray vision. All right, yeah.
Right.

Speaker 1 There's a scene in one of the movies where Lois Lane walks behind a lead planter because he asked, oh, if you have X-ray vision in her first interview, then what color panties am I wearing?

Speaker 1 And he said, I don't know. And he says, well, why? Well, because you're standing behind a lead planter.
Because everyone knows leads absorbs x-rays.

Speaker 1 And then she steps out and he says pink or red or something. But x-rays should not be able to tell color of clothing.
That's right.

Speaker 1 Ah, it's true. It would just go through the clothing.
That's right. Right.
Right. Yeah.
Yeah. So you're not accepting poetic license, are you? Not at all.
No, no, no, right. Okay.

Speaker 1 If you're going to use x-rays, then stay in the x-ray world. Otherwise, invent n-rays or something.
Invent some other rays that he had.

Speaker 1 If you're going to stay x-rays, you better stick with what we know. So what you want is an upgrade for Superman, just X-ray vision, and then a whole load of different

Speaker 1 dial-up visions. That would be interesting.
See? See, they didn't think of that. Well, if you think about it.
You got a whole alphabet. That's right.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Y-rays, Z-rays.

Speaker 1 Z-rays, omega-rays, yes.

Speaker 5 Well, X-rays, as many of you know, they go right through our bodies, right? And they go through different materials and wind up with different colors.

Speaker 5 For example, our bones look different from our soft tissues and things like that.

Speaker 5 X-ray telescopes that we're familiar with, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, XMM Newton, things like that, they can look at the X-rays, but X-rays are also different colors.

Speaker 1 Some of them are what we call hard x-rays, some of them are soft x-rays.

Speaker 5 And in the same way that we can take pictures in red, green, and blue and then mix them together to form a color photo, Superman could be able to detect or even emit x-rays and come back and forth in these different bands and thus create a three-color image.

Speaker 1 This is an undeveloped feature he could have expressed. That's right.

Speaker 5 This is an evolutionary superiority that he has. But instead of us having rod and cone cells, he has some sort of x-ray rod and cone cells that'll be.

Speaker 1 We are limited to just the visible spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. Yes.
He's got x-rays as a whole accessible part of the electromagnetic spectrum. That's right.

Speaker 1 And all he does is just see through walls with it. Yes.
But it's way more useful.

Speaker 3 Highly underdeveloped.

Speaker 2 He's modest, man. You know what I mean? He probably could do all that, but he just doesn't want to let you know unless you're asking him about your pants.

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Speaker 1 This is Star star talk

Speaker 1 with neil degrasse tyson

Speaker 1 now this thing about his his gut yes um we know superman came here as an infant yes

Speaker 1 so i

Speaker 1 once got a phone call from dc comics

Speaker 1 in my office you're in trouble oh i i work at the hayden planetarium in case anybody was dragged here by the person next to you and and doesn't know anything else about me. That's where I work.

Speaker 1 And I don't know, 10, 15 years ago, I got a phone call. Hello, is this Dr.
Hyson? I said, yes. This is DC Comics.
Can we ask you some questions? I said, sure.

Speaker 1 We have a new comic book we're illustrating, and we want to know if we can illustrate Superman visiting the Hayden Planetarium. Will you give permission for this?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, who's going to say no to that? Right. So I said, what's up?

Speaker 1 And they said, oh, superman in this in this story that they're telling is going to come to the planetarium to use our special tools of visualization and telescopes and things to see

Speaker 1 the destruction of krypton

Speaker 1 which is finally reaching earth

Speaker 1 and i said oh that's good that's good but i had to i had to i i had to dig in and I said all right superman was launched moses style in a basket as an infant, arrived on Earth in that same basket as an infant.

Speaker 1 And anyone who knows infants knows that a month, two months, you know the difference between the baby who's two months old and with the three months old.

Speaker 5 This baby did not age.

Speaker 1 So there's only two ways. I'm telling this guy on the phone.
Only two ways, and he's taking notes, right? He didn't argue with anything I was telling him.

Speaker 1 I said the two ways it could have gotten here. If he traveled, because they're aliens, so they could do what they want.

Speaker 1 If he traveled the speed of light to Earth, he would not age relative to Earth, because that's Einstein's relativity. However, if he's traveling the speed of light, so is the destruction of Krypton.

Speaker 1 That light. Those light beams from the destruction would be right alongside him and he'd land on Earth.
You'd see Krypton destroyed. He couldn't show up later and then observe the event.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 it can't be the speed of light.

Speaker 2 It was at this point the gentleman from DC Comics knew that he had made a mistake.

Speaker 1 So then I said, the only way you can get him here and have all his work is through a wormhole. Okay?

Speaker 1 A wormhole. They put him through a wormhole.
He gets here instantly long before the light beam.

Speaker 3 Dude,

Speaker 1 that's very cool, man.

Speaker 3 To be honest, that's really cool.

Speaker 1 Okay, so now, hang on. So then I said, yeah, hang on.

Speaker 1 How old is Superman? And he said, he's eternally in his late 20s. So I said, okay, I can find you a star that's like 26, 27 light years away.

Speaker 1 And I can make sure it's red because there are plenty of red stars in the galaxy because the Krypton star is red. And we can make that the star he came from.
I can find an actual star. He said, yeah.

Speaker 1 So I went back and finded it.

Speaker 2 But is there an exoplanet around that star that could actually be Krypton?

Speaker 1 Well, most stars will have exoplanets, we knew at this time. So I wasn't worried about that.
Okay. So I gave him a choice of two or three stars.
Okay. Okay.

Speaker 1 And they said, we'll take this one.

Speaker 1 I said, why? Oh, because it's in the constellation Corvus.

Speaker 1 One of the 88 constellations of the night sky. Corvis is a crow.
And I said, well, why? They said, oh,

Speaker 1 the mascot of Smallville High is the crow. I said, oh, that's good.

Speaker 1 Whoa.

Speaker 1 So there it is. It's now Superman Cannon, this conversation.
And so, yeah, they drew him. And then they called me back and said, do you mind if we have him meet you?

Speaker 1 And I said,

Speaker 1 Yeah, let's do it. Okay.
So in this comic, I am meeting Superman. And there's a tender moment because he sees the destruction of Krypton.
and he's sad. He's crying super tears.
Yes, he's sad.

Speaker 1 And I never, I realized at that moment, I'd never seen Superman emotionally sad. Right.
Angry, sure, but not just genuinely sad. Right.

Speaker 1 And so I know a little more than usual about how Superman got here because of that conversation. So here's the takeaway, people.
Neil deGrasse Tyson made Superman cry.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you did. Okay, so now they didn't show him opening up a wormhole.
They just sent sent him here. Right.
And that was that. Yeah.
Okay, so you've touched on wormholes. Yes.

Speaker 1 Faster than light travel. Yes.
And I think everybody in the room, me included, wants to know what are we going to be traveling by in the future if we actually get to do that?

Speaker 1 Is it going to be a warp drive? Is it going to be a wormhole? Is it going to be a transporter? What is it going to be? You know,

Speaker 1 I was hanging out with William Shatner. As you do.
Yeah. You know, who doesn't?

Speaker 1 And I told him and I said, the day we have wormholes, you won't need transporters. Right.
Because you just pop a wormhole to where you and the planet surface and step through and there you are.

Speaker 1 You don't need

Speaker 1 the lights and the sounds and the room and the Scotty on the Switch.

Speaker 1 So this is an important choice here. So, Charles, can we make a wormhole? No.

Speaker 1 Why not? All right, next.

Speaker 1 I'll let you have it. No, no, no.
Bill Scatter is going to be so disappointed.

Speaker 5 Actually, in the original Star Trek motion picture, the Enterprise almost got sucked into a wormhole because there was a warp drive malfunction and they were forced to be pulled out.

Speaker 5 You guys all remember that?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Now, the story is with wormholes is it requires a great deal of energy to have happen.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 5 A transporter supposedly, they could draw the energy from some sort of mythical slash mystical warp drive engine or something, right? And so that was something that you could do person to person.

Speaker 5 A wormhole requires something much more supernatural, more powerful, a black hole, for example, or some sort of mystical creature, someone who could master magic and dimensional travel.

Speaker 5 So in that sense, the wormhole strategy is less likely to be our strategy than a warp drive type strategy, where we can somehow move faster than the speed of light through space through our controlled engines.

Speaker 1 So do we borrow this energy from another dimension? Ooh, good question. Yeah, because how much, because if this is like the galaxy and and you warp it,

Speaker 1 and then you travel through the little bridge in the warp and you unwarp, then you can cross the galaxy during the TV commercial. That's right.
And then you can make it. Right.

Speaker 5 The problem is you would have to, in that scenario, you are warping space. That's a lot harder than warping ourselves.

Speaker 1 It's warping the entire galaxy.

Speaker 5 Right, the whole galaxy. That's what a wormhole would have to do.

Speaker 1 Yeah. You see? Okay.
So

Speaker 5 what happens is with warp drive, this was all sort of retroactively created after the television show, right, was so successful.

Speaker 5 The idea is that you put the enterprise or your spaceship of choice into a little bubble

Speaker 5 outside the regular space-time that we live in. But it's inside in a little pocket, right? So it's almost in its own extra-dimensional travel.

Speaker 5 And what happens is that bubble can move faster than the speed of light, even though you yourself cannot. So while you're in the bubble, that's when your warp drive is working.
It's not warping space.

Speaker 1 It's warping you into, out of, through, and otherwise bubbly, bubbly, bubble in space. Which would take much less energy.

Speaker 1 The space is around you.

Speaker 5 In fact, a Mexican physicist named Miguel Acubiere used Einstein's general theory of relativity and actually came up with some mathematical equations that could make a warp bubble like that exist.

Speaker 5 So mathematically, you could do it. The problem is, once you've made the bubble, how do you move that thing

Speaker 1 itself?

Speaker 5 And we still don't have anywhere near the technology to be able to do that.

Speaker 1 Okay. What do you do with it once you've got it?

Speaker 5 You go through space-time at faster rate.

Speaker 1 Once you've made the bubble? Yeah, and you've traveled. Right.
Then what happens?

Speaker 5 What you have to do is literally warp the bubble in such a shape that the space behind it is changing at a faster rate than the space in front of it. And that's how you get it to move through space.

Speaker 5 You keep warping in this sort of continuous way so that the warp pushes you forward through space. That's not what he asked.

Speaker 1 How do you get out of the bubble? Yeah. Once you get to your destination,

Speaker 1 you pop it.

Speaker 1 There's my answer.

Speaker 5 Quite literally, your dilithium crystals in Star Trek, right? Your dilithium crystals just shut off and then the bubble just evaporates around you.

Speaker 1 Oh, okay.

Speaker 1 So I have this dream of the future where wormholes, because now you're putting kibosh on it. Wormholes are how we get around, which means no one needs roads.

Speaker 1 Not only that, your back of your refrigerator could be connected via a wormhole to your grocery and they pop it open oh the milk is and they put in fresh milk and eggs and you just have you just have a contract to have that loaded and there's no truck there's no it would put amazon out of business right well the trucks would the drivers if we could move wormholes one end here, the other end there, and just move them around at will, then your scenario is completely likely.

Speaker 5 The problem is it takes so much energy even to create a wormhole with two stable locations that even if it were physically possible, which we don't know yet, when that happens, it's station to station.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but if we told the Wright brothers, one day we're going to fly 400 people at 600 miles an hour across the ocean, they would say. So that takes too much energy.

Speaker 1 Are you kidding me?

Speaker 2 You're flying a bicycle right now.

Speaker 1 So that is the challenge. Where is your...
sense of time perspective in that declaration that you're making?

Speaker 5 I would say that sometime sometime within our lifetimes, we will be able to generate something that we have tried to do since the end of World War II, and that is controlled nuclear fusion. Whoa.

Speaker 5 We will, at the moment, there is some technology that's happening being developed all over the world, including in France at a site called...

Speaker 1 Charles, that's a low bar. I'm talking about like the fusion.
But wait a minute.

Speaker 2 I don't know if that's a low bar because when you think about it, what we're talking about here is the need for massive amounts of energy.

Speaker 1 So if we're able to control fusion, which I mean, we know what kind of energy is packed in the middle. I get it.
I'm just saying, we should have had fusion decades ago.

Speaker 1 We're not there yet. That's right.
So, I don't want that to be the, I want that to be a given and now give me like extra cool stuff. Okay, that's all.

Speaker 1 So, now, but let me, let me just shape the conversation a little differently. Okay.
So, we're talking about warping space. All right.

Speaker 1 There's another feature that we've seen in different films, and that's becoming invisible. Not disappearing, right? But just

Speaker 1 that's something different.

Speaker 3 I know how you do that.

Speaker 1 Get older

Speaker 2 and then try to talk to young people.

Speaker 5 Yes, invisibility played a very prominent role in Fantastic Four of the most recent superhero movie featuring the invisible girl.

Speaker 1 Now

Speaker 1 there's the invisibility cloak in Harry Potter. Harry Potter Potter.
You got Star Trek, the Romulan visibility. That's what he devised.

Speaker 1 Right, right. So,

Speaker 1 oh, also, in the original Predator movie,

Speaker 1 he could go invisible. But in all those cases, there was a little bit of

Speaker 1 jittery

Speaker 1 thing. Like silhouette.
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 A see-through shimmering silhouette.

Speaker 1 So I'll tell you what I know about this, and Charles, you might know more, that there is work on this. It is real.

Speaker 1 In fact, there's a James Bond, I forgot which one was it, Quantum of Solace?

Speaker 1 One of those where his aston martin has an invisibility button and he presses it and it just becomes invisible but it shimmers into invisibility of course you can still shoot it you just can't see it okay you don't know where to aim and so there is research now

Speaker 1 because what does it mean to be invisible it means light from behind you continues to your sight line as though you're not there.

Speaker 1 So so what you do is instead of blocking the light, they have a series of reflectors that coherently moves the light around your body and then sends it forward as though it didn't take this detour.

Speaker 1 And you're sitting on the other side of me, you just see the wall behind me and you don't even know that I'm there.

Speaker 1 There are demos of this online. They're YouTube videos.
You can see this. Authentic.
It's not AI fake. The problem is

Speaker 1 now it works only if you're exactly aligned with it. If you go offline,

Speaker 1 then

Speaker 1 the effect collapses. So, but that's a start.
And you're functionally invisible when you can pull that off. Marvelous.

Speaker 5 Yeah. I was not aware of the technology.

Speaker 1 But there's different types of invisibility.

Speaker 1 If you look at a stealth bomber, for instance, right? It's invisible on the right, but that's only in that particular area. Very important fact.

Speaker 1 So the stealth bomber has a radar cross-section of a bumblebee.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 So a dangerous bumblebee right there.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Imagine that radar like hello.

Speaker 1 So if you are trying to detect planes with radar, so just

Speaker 1 at the risk of stating the obvious, the radar hits your your intended object and it reflects back to you. in the shape of what the thing is.

Speaker 1 And you can look at the blip and if it's got any kind of detail and you put some ai on it it'll tell you what the plane is

Speaker 1 the stealth bomber is designed very

Speaker 1 specially so that any incident radar reflects in a different direction than straight back wow okay and can we get a version for this for um speed traps because

Speaker 1 yeah because they to try to send it then it doesn't go back and it doesn't go back it'll whiz by by and it'll just say there's nothing there. Exactly.
Right.

Speaker 1 So so if you look at how the surfaces of the stealth bomber and other stealth technologies are shaped, take a line and hit it, and it'll never send you back in the direction you came on any surface.

Speaker 1 Okay. So it's all faceted and accurate.
Correct. Yeah.
Correct. And just a side fact.

Speaker 1 The earliest of the stealth bombers, I think it was the F-117 used now decades ago, had

Speaker 1 flat surfaces on it. Okay, take a look at a fascinating history of this.
You know why it had flat surfaces?

Speaker 1 Because the computers were not powerful enough to perfectly solve the equation to have a continuously curving surface. So it had to approximate it with flat surfaces.

Speaker 1 So that still reduced the radar cross-section, but it didn't take it to as low as the bumblebee.

Speaker 1 Once we could fit it with high-performance computing, you can curve the surfaces so that hardly any signal goes back. So here's the problem,

Speaker 1 exactly your point. Its radar cross-section is a bumblebee.
But if you just step out and look up, there it is. Okay.

Speaker 1 Its optical cross-section is the full plane. Okay.

Speaker 1 So where you are in the electromagnetic spectrum matters here. Totally.

Speaker 5 Well, invisibility isn't all that great of a superpower by itself. Let's face it.

Speaker 5 If you can just hide, that's great. But you got to to do something other than hide, right?

Speaker 5 And so in fact, with the superheroine, the invisible woman, the Marvel comics back in the 60s developed an extra power for her.

Speaker 5 Not only did she have the ability to turn invisible, she also could project invisible force fields. She could actually do things invisibly to you without even touching you.

Speaker 5 All she had to do was to envision a shape of something made of force that was invisible and then be able to lift you up as as if you were sitting in a chair or to move you around or to push you back.

Speaker 5 It had the ability to protect and be invisible at the same time.

Speaker 1 So that's effective even if the force is not invisible. That's right.

Speaker 1 It's a field around you. Right.
You can do that. Now we know in quantum physics,

Speaker 1 there's an effect. Quantum is spooky, weird stuff.

Speaker 1 And that's why everyone, it attracts people because they want to understand it. And quantum physics is not there to understand.

Speaker 1 Charles, correct me if I'm wrong. No one comes out of a quantum physics class saying, oh, I understand that.
No, you don't. Okay? It is just what the universe does

Speaker 1 on the small scales. We can describe it.
We can calculate, but we scratch our heads every single time.

Speaker 1 And one of the effects, fascinatingly, is if you take two very smooth, very flat metal plates and evacuate the space between them. So it's a vacuum.

Speaker 1 You start making them closer and closer to each other.

Speaker 1 There is a point where there's a whole new force

Speaker 1 that pulls them together. It's not electromagnetic.
It's not gravitational. It's not the strong nuclear force.
It's some new thing. Maybe they just really like each other.

Speaker 1 Good point.

Speaker 1 They pull each other together. And that discovery won a Nobel Prize.
And so...

Speaker 1 The Casimir effect. Yeah, the Casimir effect is right.
And that's the Casimir force. The Casimir Force.
So

Speaker 1 what causes that?

Speaker 5 The Casimir effect is caused because there are things called quantum fluctuations in our universe.

Speaker 5 Even when things have apparently no energy or no change at all, at the quantum level, levels far smaller than atoms, with energies far tinier than a single, say, electrical pulse, there is a little bit of this happening all the time all around you so if you are getting a smaller and smaller space between these two plates you get to a small enough point where the quantum fluctuations are actually bouncing off of those plates and so you create an attractive or sometimes a repulsive force okay that kicks in only just before they touch because the quantum effects, small as they are, are definitely there.

Speaker 5 And so you can imagine actually influencing something without actually pushing on it or pulling on it. It's actually just the quantum work that's being done because the universe is shimmering.

Speaker 1 You have to be really close. Super close.

Speaker 1 So I'm a villain, just an average villain, but I want to upgrade to super villain.

Speaker 1 How am I using the Casimir effect?

Speaker 1 Is it like, you're here, I've got to do stuff?

Speaker 5 Yes, that's a great point.

Speaker 5 If you somehow were a superhero or super villain that could take advantage of quantum fluctuations, you might be able to say, I hereby declared that the quantum fluctuations in this part of the universe are going to be reduced.

Speaker 5 In exchange, the buttons in this part are going to be increased. All of a sudden, you have all this extra energy over here and much less over there.

Speaker 5 So you can imagine something literally being sucked from here to there due to quantum effects alone.

Speaker 1 Because the object naturally wants to go from high energy to low energy. That's right.

Speaker 5 So you could move something without doing anything other than just changing the quantum fluctuation.

Speaker 1 You're creating a gradient.

Speaker 5 You're creating that gradient. And the problem, of course, is that this is a much larger space than the quantum fluctuation space is.

Speaker 5 Anytime you have a quantum fluctuation, we're talking things that are billionths of billionths of inches, right? Going from this part of the room to that part of the room.

Speaker 5 If you wanted to carry me from here to there, that's many, many, many, many, many billionths of inches. So by the time that happens, I think we're all going home.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so there's a.

Speaker 1 Not yet, not yet.

Speaker 1 There's a physicist, George Gamar. He's a hero of mine because he was an active physicist and he wrote for the public.

Speaker 5 And he was one of the first people who hypothesized the hot big bang theory.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's right. That's right.
And so he had a series of books called Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland.
And each book, it's fanciful and he illustrated it with cartoon illustrations. Each book was...

Speaker 1 You living in a world where the universal constants have different values.

Speaker 1 So for example, instead of the speed of light being as fast as it is, speed of light is 60 miles an hour. Oh, wow.
So you drive down the street. He's describing this.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And as you go to 30 miles an hour, he's describing how all your scenery changes.

Speaker 1 And so it was such a world to jump into, which has me wonder, if you had real power over the universe and you could adjust the value of the physical constants that control quantum physics.

Speaker 1 Maybe you could dial that up so that we respond to quantum physics in the way particles do. Yes.

Speaker 5 There is an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation called Q Who, where this exactly happened.

Speaker 1 Really?

Speaker 5 Yes. The great creature named Q, who was being punished by his other fellow Qs, had been powerless.

Speaker 1 This one would happen.

Speaker 5 Yes, right, because he was being too mischievous. So what happened was that they were having a problem on a planet and trying to solve that problem, and they couldn't figure it out.

Speaker 5 And so they asked Q, said, what would you do? He's like, oh, it's obvious, change the gravitational constant of the universe. And all the rest of the humans are like, we can't do that.

Speaker 5 But the engineer, Jordy LaForge, said, hey, maybe we could, right? That's the superhero you're talking about.

Speaker 5 Somebody who could actually change the gravitational constant of the universe and boom, suddenly your planet is as light as a feather.

Speaker 1 Just because you changed the force of gravity. Because you changed force of gravity in that light.
That's a badass power right there.

Speaker 1 You're thinking like a supervillain now. No, I'm not.
Stop. Don't bring me into your category.

Speaker 1 So, what intrigues me about,

Speaker 1 I think, most about what has happened in this world is there are some writers who know that matter is mostly empty space.

Speaker 1 We think we're solid objects, and we're just not.

Speaker 1 And you can say, how empty are we?

Speaker 1 Well, let me first, let's go back to Ernst Rutherford, who's a New Zealand physicist,

Speaker 1 turn of the previous century, around there, I think, or a little later. 1900, 1900.
Yeah, around there. And he did experiments

Speaker 1 where he hammered gold very thin. Gold is very malleable, so it's the most malleable substance on the periodic table.
So you can hammer it. That's why gold makes very good

Speaker 1 leaf, gold leaves, on cake. What is a word for it? Gilding.
Right. Oh, I wonder how that happened.
Guild hall? Guilding? Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 So, anyhow, if you gild a statue, you take gold leaf. And using very little gold, you can greatly shine something up.
And that's why the Oval Office looks fantastic.

Speaker 1 Don't leave, everyone.

Speaker 1 Absolutely beautiful.

Speaker 1 Honey, courage.

Speaker 1 Don't courage that.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 he hammered it really, really, really, really thin. Okay?

Speaker 1 So the whole leaf is just dangling there. And he fired particles into it.

Speaker 1 99.999% of the particles went through as though nothing was there. Oh.

Speaker 1 And occasionally one would bounce back the other way. And when he did the math on this, he realized that atoms are mostly empty space.

Speaker 1 And it is rumored that the next day,

Speaker 1 he alone on Earth knew this:

Speaker 1 that he was afraid to step onto the floor from his bed out of fear he would fall through.

Speaker 1 Just like the nightmares of a classical physicist transitioning into the world of the quantum.

Speaker 2 Believe me, I have been that high in my life.

Speaker 1 so so if you want a physical example the nucleus of an atom is to the size of an atom

Speaker 1 as a cracker jack kernel of corn is to the entire stadium

Speaker 1 in which you may purchase it put it are you sure we got the the right analogy here you said well one cracker jack to the size of a stadium. Yes.
It's the nucleus of an atom to the atom.

Speaker 1 The atom with the electron. The structure of an atom.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 5 I'll give you another analogy, Chuck. Please do.

Speaker 1 If we took all of the Hamptons,

Speaker 5 took the space out of it,

Speaker 5 all of the Hamptons, including us, would fit in my fingernail.

Speaker 2 Man, you just messed up a lot of real estate value.

Speaker 5 No, but it's true. The universe is 99.99999999999999%

Speaker 5 empty space.

Speaker 1 And that's why don't we ask? Why don't we, here we have a double-edged question. Okay.
Firstly, why don't we just keep falling through stuff or putting our hands through things?

Speaker 1 And...

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 Is this the serial probability?

Speaker 1 So having asked that question, I know the answer to it. So how is a superhero...

Speaker 1 using this to their advantage to walk through wall. We've got the flash can run through walls.

Speaker 1 But the flash can run through walls. I thought he just ran fast.
Through walls. He can ran fast.
He can vibrate.

Speaker 2 He can vibrate and run.

Speaker 1 And you have Dr. Manvalad can just move through things.
Wait, wait.

Speaker 1 So the flash can do what? He can.

Speaker 1 He's like, hey.

Speaker 1 And that didn't get him through a wall.

Speaker 2 And he can get through a wall by like shimmying, vibrating.

Speaker 1 Wait, wait, Charles, is he moving through the empty space of the atoms as he goes through?

Speaker 5 He's quantum tunneling, yeah.

Speaker 1 Quantum tunneling. Okay, quantum tunnel.
We've talked about that. Quantum tunneling.
Here we go. Yeah.
Okay, here's a story. Don't leave me hanging.

Speaker 5 See, because you have this 99.99999999% emptiness, the reason we don't keep falling through the floor is because those itty-bitty bits of material actually produce force fields.

Speaker 1 I would like to force fields.

Speaker 5 There are fields of force, mostly electromagnetic, some nuclear, some gravitational, around the particles that make us up.

Speaker 5 So for example, when I'm clapping my hands together, it is the force fields of the atoms in my fingers that are touching each other. And that is what's creating the sensation in my hands.

Speaker 1 And that's why your hands don't pass through.

Speaker 5 That's right. Because they just tap each other because the fields are there.

Speaker 5 But it was shown a hundred years ago that every once in a while, because there is all this empty space and there are fields involved that make this all not fall through, that every once in a while, something will go through.

Speaker 5 just by accident because the shimmering quantum fluctuations every once in a while will shimmer just right so that a little particle will actually go right through. That's called quantum tunneling.

Speaker 5 And this can happen. And in fact, it happens all the time.

Speaker 5 And I was so surprised to find out when I was writing the handy quantum physics answer book that this was part of electronics technology for decades.

Speaker 5 There's a thing called a quantum tunnel diode that was in many radios and other transisting products that were for sale in the 50s, 1970s, 1960s, 1970s. They are now obsolete.

Speaker 5 This is quantum technology that's now older than our non-quantum technology that's in our cell phones, for example. But quantum tunneling is a real phenomenon and it happens all the time.

Speaker 5 But the Flash is supposedly so good at this that he can vibrate his entire body, all of his trillions and trillions of molecules, and go right through and figure out exactly the jigsaw puzzle way to get through the other side.

Speaker 2 Oh, it's like a game show where the wall comes at you and you have to.

Speaker 1 Yeah, uh-huh.

Speaker 5 It's exactly that. But he's able to do it with every single atom in his body and every single atom in the wall.

Speaker 1 He doesn't leave the body hole through the wall.

Speaker 1 So is this that is this basic probability that it's a continual working out of which molecule is going to pass through that as opposed to which is that's right.

Speaker 5 The odds of any single molecule doing something like a quantum tunnel is tiny. Now you add it up and multiply it by every single probability of every single other quantum tunneling possibility.

Speaker 5 And you have a number that's so beyond anything that even our current supercomputers can't even computer for one tiny late.

Speaker 1 But the flash can do it. But the flash can do it all.
Is this the same thing as quantum teleportation? Yes. Oh, a little bit different.

Speaker 1 Okay. A little bit different.
Okay. Oh, do tell.

Speaker 5 Quantum teleportation is not beat me up, Scotty. Okay, the term quantum teleportation actually predates the idea of teleporting, say, a human from one place to another using some sort of machine.

Speaker 5 But it was the idea of communicating information from one place to another.

Speaker 5 So copying a message perfectly and then sending that message perfectly to a different location without any kind of degradation would be what we used to call teleportation.

Speaker 1 Okay. I didn't know that.
So you're saying material objects were not part of that original. That's right.

Speaker 5 It was an informational thing. So Morse code, for example, was actually a way of teleportation because your dots and dashes here could be translated exactly as dots and dashes there.

Speaker 1 With low error.

Speaker 5 With very low error.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 5 Quantum teleportation now is a little bit different. You want to move quantum information from one spot to the next.

Speaker 5 And then when you do that transportation, there is always a massive amount of noise and energy lost, and your information gets lost.

Speaker 5 But if you can quantum teleport and you can get this information from one spot to another without losing, you literally have an unbreakable code, a way to transmit information that nobody else in the universe can actually ever intercept.

Speaker 5 And that's what quantum teleportation is really cool about.

Speaker 1 And that's its greatest value going forward. At this moment, that's right.
It would be a perfectly secure internet for example. Yes, that's right.
So what's our energy source for this?

Speaker 5 The energy source is merely the fluctuations that are caused by the quantum system itself.

Speaker 5 You're sending bits of information of bits of quantum information, we call them qubits, and then you package them in whatever physical system you want, whether it's an ion or an electron or some other set of particles, and then you send them either in a beam or along a wire or a fiber or something like that to another spot.

Speaker 5 And you want to preserve the coherence of information inside that qubit for as far as possible.

Speaker 1 All right. And scope me.
Is that happening tomorrow? I thought it was.

Speaker 5 Right now, people are actually able to quantum teleport little bits of information for actually many miles.

Speaker 5 So you can do pretty well, like send just a few pieces of yes, no, up, down, so forth without losing decoherence, losing coherence.

Speaker 5 But the moment you have too much noise, moment the temperature goes up above a few degrees above absolute zero, you start losing information.

Speaker 1 Because things vibrate and they

Speaker 1 those quantum fluctuations overwhelm what you're doing. That's true in absolute zero.

Speaker 2 It's not good for texting.

Speaker 1 Depends on what you're texting. Guinea pigs.

Speaker 1 You mentioned absolute zero. Yes.
That comes up quite a lot in quantum, doesn't it?

Speaker 5 That is true. It does.

Speaker 1 Do things actually have to take place at absolute absolute zero? If it is. Oh, that's a great question.
We might just be out of the equation.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Absolute zero is 459.16 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Ouch.
Give or take. Okay.
At that temperature, no motion of atoms or molecules happens above the quantum fluctuation.

Speaker 5 Okay, that means that the reason we are warm is because the different atoms and molecules in our body actually vibrate and move and rotate and things like that.

Speaker 5 When all of that stops, that's the temperature known as absolute zero.

Speaker 1 Well, can you blame them?

Speaker 2 No. I mean, it's pretty doggone cold.

Speaker 5 It is pretty doggone cold. And at that temperature, see, what's interesting is it has been shown physically that we can never make a machine that reaches that temperature.

Speaker 5 It is only a theoretical minimum because you cannot create any kind of refrigerator that can get a temperature of absolute zero in a space.

Speaker 1 So what is the coldest spot in the darkness of space?

Speaker 2 What would that temperature be?

Speaker 5 Ah, the coldest temperature we've been able to achieve is actually colder here in a laboratory than out in space.

Speaker 5 Here in a laboratory, we've been able to get down to a few millionths of a degree above absolute zero. But out in space...
Oh, what a failure.

Speaker 1 Right, right.

Speaker 5 But out in space, we have the leftover heat from the Big Bang.

Speaker 1 It's called the cosmic microwave background.

Speaker 5 It's everywhere. And that's about three degrees above absolute zero.

Speaker 1 It's still damn cold. It's still that weird.

Speaker 5 Yes. You don't want to go out there.

Speaker 1 Wear a jacket. It's so cool.
But it is very cool.

Speaker 2 So the Big Bang itself is hanging around in such a way that it's warming space to the point where we can't get to an absolute zero.

Speaker 1 That's absolutely right.

Speaker 5 And that heat is actually very important in the universe because we have these cold clouds of hydrogen gas floating around in the universe.

Speaker 5 These clouds would be doing absolutely nothing and having no emission of energy or signal of any kind, except the cosmic microwave background warms them up just enough that once every 10 to 20 million years on average, a hydrogen atom floating around in space will do a spin flip and release one single photon of radio wave emission at a wavelength of

Speaker 1 21 centimeters.

Speaker 5 And so that

Speaker 1 means what

Speaker 2 it's like, the two of them are just like, one fuck,

Speaker 1 and it releases at, and Neil's just like, 21 centimeters.

Speaker 2 What the hell are you talking about?

Speaker 5 It's the best inside joke in the universe.

Speaker 1 Okay. Okay.

Speaker 5 See, we tried hard not to laugh during that time.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 5 as Neil can explain better than I can, because this was actually part of the area of research he was doing more than I was.

Speaker 5 21 centimeter radiation is what tells us where the hydrogen material is in the universe and how it's moving to make new stars, new planets, and new galaxies in the universe.

Speaker 2 So the excitation of these clouds.

Speaker 1 That's the right word, too. Yeah.
What?

Speaker 1 That alone, is it now a chain reaction? Yes. Okay.

Speaker 5 You create that bath of 30 degree Kelvin cosmic microwave background photons, which in a turn causes these gas clouds to do something.

Speaker 5 And that allows us as astronomers to figure out how the universe is aging and what its processes are going on billions of light years away.

Speaker 1 But just to put this to bed, if absolute zero is the coldest possible temperature, then

Speaker 1 you need

Speaker 1 something to draw the heat away from what's there. And as you do that, it's still kind of in contact with what's doing the drawing of the heat.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 in principle, it may be physically impossible to reach absolute zero because it's always, like you said, it will always be in contact with something that's not absolute zero. Gotcha.

Speaker 1 Because otherwise, everything is absolute zero and it's not. Right.
Okay. There's some enclosure.
So, no matter how good your Yeti

Speaker 1 is,

Speaker 1 okay?

Speaker 1 You're standing.

Speaker 1 All right. No matter how good it is, the ice in there eventually melts.

Speaker 1 Right. Okay.
Because there's heat transfer, however slow, it's not a perfectly, if it were perfectly insulated, it would never melt. That's right.
But that's not how the actual world works.

Speaker 1 That's right.

Speaker 5 So even without quantum effects, you will wind up with thermodynamic losses. But even at absolute zero, we're now pretty sure that there are quantum fluctuations.

Speaker 1 The quantum. Yes.
But so what about the superheroes that can that breathe fire or something or

Speaker 1 whatever? They make fire.

Speaker 5 They're called dragons. You mean like Godzilla or something?

Speaker 1 Well, I don't know. Any of the ones that...

Speaker 5 Or when Superman burps?

Speaker 1 Oh, we're bad for that. Back there with...
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Sorry, everybody. I'm just wondering, thermodynamically.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 1 The fire has energy, so that energy has to come from within. Torch.
Fantastic for.

Speaker 5 The human torch in the Fantastic Four supposedly is able to convert chemically. Like fire is basically a chemical reaction, right?

Speaker 5 Something like a nuclear detonation or say the interior of the sun, that's a nuclear event.

Speaker 5 And so somehow that energy gets converted to heat depending on what the processes are in the sun or in the person or in the campfire.

Speaker 1 Okay, so the fire superheroes don't need quantum effects. They don't.
It's a simple burning.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Okay.
Even thermodynamics is extremely powerful. A lot of us don't understand just how powerful, but you know how there was this industrial evolution based on the steam engine, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Just the heat energy in this room right now.

Speaker 1 And it is hot. You people are hot.
I'm telling you.

Speaker 5 If you were to convert that into mechanical energy, you could take an 18-wheeler and drive it right through the wall from that side to that side and all the way out.

Speaker 5 You have so much kinetic energy from the thermal motions in the air alone that it's easy to see how you can have tremendous superpower, even if you don't have quantum power.

Speaker 1 So coming out of the Industrial Revolution. That's right.

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Speaker 1 Let's keep this going with the fact that

Speaker 1 if most of matter is empty, yes, most of the universe is empty space, and most of matter is empty space on top of that. If you had the power to collapse particles down and then restore them, okay,

Speaker 3 you get a smaller version of yourself and then a bigger version of yourself.

Speaker 1 That's Ant-Man. Exactly.
Ant-Man.

Speaker 2 Yes. By the way, worst name for a super.

Speaker 1 It is. It is.
It is really bad.

Speaker 5 Well, but he's a pretty powerful guy.

Speaker 1 But that's the quantum mechanics. That's exactly the quantum mechanics.
Mystical pin particle, right? Yes, that's right. They are borrowed from another dimension.

Speaker 1 So are we looking at quantum mechanics being able to enlighten us and our understanding of higher dimensions?

Speaker 5 What a great question.

Speaker 1 That's a great way to... It won't happen again, don't worry.

Speaker 5 The so-called PIM particle is a fictional thing invented by Marvel Comics. There's a scientist named Henry Pym, P-Y-M,

Speaker 5 and by using these, harnessing these particles, which are sort of super-dimensional, you're able to make things big and small.

Speaker 5 You're literally in, in a sense, taking something like this, making it small, and then making it big, or making it huge because you're taking advantage of the space in between your molecules and your atoms that we were just talking about.

Speaker 1 So this fictional particle is exploiting known physics. That's right.
Okay. Yeah.
But this fictional particle.

Speaker 2 Let me ask you, because what you just said, if you keep the same mass

Speaker 3 and you make me super big,

Speaker 2 I'm the stay-puff marshmallow man. That's right.

Speaker 1 I'm a beach ball. Yeah, I'm a beach ball.
That's right.

Speaker 5 And so therein lies the extra-dimensional part to which you refer. The only way that these particles can work in our world, you know, as if they were actually in our world, right?

Speaker 5 But if they were really working, you would have to add mass to things as you were growing them. And you would have to reduce the mass of the things that you were shrinking.

Speaker 5 Otherwise, if you shrunk down your vehicle and put it in your pocket so that you could ride it later, you would not be running very fast.

Speaker 1 It would still weigh thousands of pounds

Speaker 1 in your pocket.

Speaker 1 Just because it fits in your pocket doesn't mean it belongs in your pocket. That's right.
Okay. So somehow

Speaker 5 these pym particles

Speaker 1 doesn't mean it belongs there. Yeah, I love it.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 So this material, this matter, had to either go into some dimension that doesn't weigh anything in our space-time or be drawn from somewhere that previously didn't have any weight in our space-time and suddenly becomes having weight.

Speaker 5 So you're really shunting these things in and out of space-time.

Speaker 1 Otherwise,

Speaker 1 your challenge would be the creation and destruction of mass

Speaker 1 in our own space-time. That's right.
And we know what happens when that happens.

Speaker 1 Those are nuclear bombs. Right.
If you take mass and make it energy, that's the end of your situation.

Speaker 2 I'm sorry. I don't know why I got all excited just then.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's okay. That worries me, Charlie.
No, no, no.

Speaker 5 Because nuclear fusion also powers the sun. Yeah.
It's a very benign thing. We often think about on our world as being dangerous, but in fact, without it, we wouldn't be here.

Speaker 1 Okay. We talked about quantum tunneling.
Yes. There's another term that comes up.
And if I think of a superhero, I go back to Dr. Manhattan.
And that's the superposition.

Speaker 1 Where I am simultaneously in different parts. in any part of wherever I want to be.

Speaker 2 And Dr. Manhattan could be in many places at the same time.
He would be on Mars and on the moon and in his laboratory and, you know, all at once.

Speaker 1 Wait, wait, is that correct that way? Well, how many friends know Dr. Manhattan? Wait, yeah, first of all.
Dr.

Speaker 2 Manhattan. I know we're geeking out here.
This has turned into four guys at a bar.

Speaker 2 Does everybody know who Dr. Manhattan is?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Dr.

Speaker 5 Manhattan was created in the Watchman universe by Alan Moore in the 1980s. Yeah.

Speaker 5 And this is a superhero which didn't really want to be a superhero, but he's essentially blue and he's played by Billy Krudip, and he doesn't wear any clothes. And he just sits around in this blue.

Speaker 1 Is that your most obvious fact about him? Well, the man is the most powerful entity ever created. And he's going to say he doesn't wear clothes?

Speaker 2 I got to tell you, he looks pretty good naked.

Speaker 5 Anyway, the idea is that he is...

Speaker 5 by himself, a kind of quantum particle. He has the powers of doing anything that quantum particles can do, but he is the size of a house.

Speaker 5 And therefore he has an unbelievably large amount of power because he can do all the things that can happen on microscopic scales, but out on the scale of us and our size.

Speaker 1 So for him, his personal quantum constants are just larger. That's right.

Speaker 5 It's as if George Gamoff himself was talking about earlier.

Speaker 1 He's got a nut, he's Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland.
That's right. He is the Wonderland.
That's right. Right.
So I don't think it's that he was simultaneously in those places.

Speaker 1 He's just like a particle has a probability it can be found in any one of the places in its, what should we call this? The wave function. The wave function.

Speaker 1 Anywhere his wave function, he can say, my wave function includes Mars. I'm going to be on Mars right now.
So then he's on Mars. Right.
Yeah. And

Speaker 1 he doesn't actually have to travel there. He doesn't travel there.
He's already there all the time. All the time.
Right.

Speaker 2 Because he's entangled with himself. Yes.

Speaker 1 But is it entanglement or is it manipulation?

Speaker 5 Great question. Let me try to break that down a little bit.
Okay. You guys might have heard of quantum entanglement lately.

Speaker 1 It's in the news.

Speaker 5 It's very exciting and so forth.

Speaker 1 But actually... It's not in the Hamptons news.
That's a different thing. No?

Speaker 1 It's summer.

Speaker 2 Okay. I heard some people on the beach the other day talking about it.

Speaker 5 Quantum entanglement is the idea where you can take a particle.

Speaker 5 and literally split it into two identical particles and they can be as far apart or as old or as new or as kept or as they want, and they will still stay the same particle.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 And know about each other. That's right.

Speaker 5 So you have something that could be the size of a solar system.

Speaker 5 And yet, if you got information on one particle, you would instantaneously get the information on the other particle as if they were entangled.

Speaker 5 When in fact, in the quantum way of thinking about it, they are still one particle.

Speaker 1 One particle.

Speaker 5 They just still happen to be connected as both a particle and and a wave that keeps changing size and shape.

Speaker 5 So you have this particle, and we in the classical world think of particles as like a piece of stone or a rock or a piece of metal or something, just a particle, right?

Speaker 5 But in fact, if you think quantumly, the particle and the wave are interconnected. And so the concept of size and the concepts of age are very, very different.

Speaker 5 And as long as you can keep that coherence and make sure that there isn't noise or static that interrupts the connection between these pieces, they are one particle, no matter how.

Speaker 1 There's a contest who can create the most distant particle pairs in this exercise. And the leaders in this world is China.
China has the farthest separated particles. Yes.
Not for long.

Speaker 1 I'm here to say that I'm going to take care of this

Speaker 1 two weeks, two weeks,

Speaker 1 and China

Speaker 1 will lose.

Speaker 1 So it's a contest. We don't know.

Speaker 1 It's like an arms race, but we don't know why.

Speaker 1 What good is it? Right.

Speaker 5 At this moment, physicists are still trying to figure out whether entanglement is a perfectly normal thing that happens all the time.

Speaker 1 We just never noticed it.

Speaker 5 Or whether it's actually something profound that can be used in a way, for example, for instantaneous communications or other kinds of storage of information and so on.

Speaker 5 What we do know is that if you entangle some things, you can create this thing called a qubit, which is a piece of information that's not just one or zero that we use on our current computers.

Speaker 1 Which I call bits. That's right, they're called bits.

Speaker 5 But these qubits can take positions between zero and one, doing strange things in between until such time as you read them out as a zero or a one. Okay, this is a very odd concept in our heads.

Speaker 5 But what it is, it means that we as particles or conglomerations of particles could in fact communicate or otherwise interact as waveforms of energy in ways that we can't imagine now, but might be able, for example, to break computer codes instantaneously or allow us to do kinds of computations or communications

Speaker 1 with computing. We're very, very,

Speaker 5 way, way, well, the door is very thick.

Speaker 5 Okay. But we are at the doorstep, yes.

Speaker 1 So what you're describing is the, I guess, in the lingo, the collapse of the wave function, because the particles are waves, the waves are particles, but when it's manifesting as a wave, the wave occupies all the space that you're describing.

Speaker 1 When we think of particles, it's here or there. The wave is, whatever you calculate the extent of the wave to be, the particle can manifest at any point within that volume.

Speaker 1 And so then you collapse the wave function. There it is.
Then there's the particle over here. So Dr.
Manhattan would collapse his own wave function and he'd go up on Mars

Speaker 2 collapse it again and he's back here.

Speaker 1 Right. That's wild.

Speaker 1 That's the manipulation.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yep.
There you go. If we've gone through the collapse of a wave function and we understand that there's a duality of particles and waves, where does it go when there's a many worlds theory?

Speaker 1 Because you're not quite... Are you certain about that one? The many worlds, I'm.

Speaker 3 What is the many worlds theory?

Speaker 1 Ask Charles. Charles, please.
Because you don't know. Enlighten us.

Speaker 1 No, no, no.

Speaker 5 Neil knows he just doesn't like it as much. We've had this conversation a little bit before, but maybe we can expound on it later.
See, here's the deal.

Speaker 5 About half a century ago, some physicists noticed that the mathematical equations that describe wave functions and quantum physics and so forth don't necessarily have to reflect our universe alone.

Speaker 5 In fact, those equations are consistent with the picture that every time a quantum particle does something or doesn't do something, a whole new universe is spawned.

Speaker 5 Okay. Imagine if, for example, I go out there and I get hit by the Jitney.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 All right. But I would have a good lawyer for that.
Thank you. Okay.

Speaker 5 As we confirm it. In most cases, I would not be in good shape.
But you could imagine a scenario in the universe where I'm hit by the Jitney and I'm fine. Just that one tiny possibility.

Speaker 5 If that happens, then that universe has me in it just fine. And then all the other universes, they continue to coexist, but I'm not fine.
Now imagine tomorrow I get hit again by the jitney.

Speaker 5 And then that process happens all over again. There's a tiny little possibility that I'm fine.
And that person survives.

Speaker 5 If I keep following the surviving me in front of the jitney, I am in a universe where I live forever.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but you keep getting hit by the damn bust. Yeah, right.
That sounds like hell.

Speaker 5 That ain't so good.

Speaker 1 I agree.

Speaker 5 But you see, the vast majority of other universes that exist

Speaker 5 in this mathematical many worlds, I'm not fine. And that's the one that we are most likely going to share.
Right.

Speaker 5 Because the chances of me being fine after being hit by the jitney a few thousand are very, very small. Very, very, very small.
Right.

Speaker 5 But you can see the problem with this many worlds worlds hypothesis of quantum physics, right?

Speaker 5 You're generating essentially a nearly infinite number of new universes every single second that the universe is around.

Speaker 5 It's not quite infinite because the universe isn't infinitely old, but in every single circumstance, you can imagine literally anything happening.

Speaker 1 Charles, isn't this kind of a cop-out? What it's saying is we have the wave function. Yes.
And the wave can collapse here or there.

Speaker 1 And we don't know until you poke it or until it does collapse. But it might have collapsed over there.
In fact, maybe it did collapse over there. And you're telling me it did collapse over there.

Speaker 1 And that's a whole new universe. So

Speaker 1 what you're saying, you're using our statistical ignorance and trying to step out the back door by making multiple universes so that we're no longer statistically

Speaker 1 significant.

Speaker 1 And why should I embrace that? You shouldn't.

Speaker 1 You don't have to.

Speaker 5 This is actually what we're doing.

Speaker 2 That's one one of the universes, by the way.

Speaker 1 That's right. In one universe.

Speaker 2 In another universe, you're just like, I love minute worlds.

Speaker 5 Chuck is exactly right.

Speaker 5 You can literally imagine any kind of universe, and it has just as good a chance of existing, assuming the laws of physics are the same in that universe as in your universe, as your own universe.

Speaker 5 Our universe, the one that we share right now in this room, is a collective collapse of the wave function, where all of our wave functions that make up who we are and where we are have all collapsed to this moment in this place.

Speaker 5 That makes our universe right now unique. If we allow the existence of all those other universes, what does that make this universe?

Speaker 5 Mathematically, those universes are just as valid as this one, but we're in this one. Doesn't this one have some greater validity than those?

Speaker 1 Well, Charles, you're dead in this unit we've established. You've been hit by the business.
Yeah,

Speaker 1 bus, buddy.

Speaker 1 So then what about

Speaker 1 the Marvel universe where they keep going in and out of the multiverse? Oh, yes, the quantum realm. Yeah, is this some of that? Yes.
Was that some of this?

Speaker 5 Here's the point. If you get that small, right, your wave function becomes pretty much melded with all the other wave functions in this many worlds universe.
Right.

Speaker 5 As a result, if you figured out some way to navigate this quantum realm, which is far smaller than even what the Big Bang was just before it began to bang, this is a millionth of a billionth of a trillionth of a quadrillionth of an inch, you know, really, really, really tiny.

Speaker 5 This Marvel universe fake quantum realm thing suggests that if you just all you need to just be able to navigate this really weird quantum tiny space, and you can emerge in that universe where I am living forever, despite being hit day after day, right?

Speaker 5 Then you can come get me from that universe and say, here's the guy who can't be killed by the jitney, bring him back navigating through the realm to here, and then bring me over there, and then you can engage in the most amazing insurance fraud in history.

Speaker 1 That's the quantum realm of Marvel Comics. Okay.

Speaker 1 Should we believe it?

Speaker 1 I wonder just what's possible.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 we're not quantum-sized. We can't play in Mr.
Tompkins' Wonderland. It's fun to think about, though.

Speaker 2 But you said the math works.

Speaker 1 The actual math works. Yeah.
So the curious fact

Speaker 1 is mathematics, as expressed by the physicist, is that it is a representation of our models of how the universe works using symbols, which allow us to manipulate the ideas perfectly logically.

Speaker 1 You can argue what's true or not, but once you've set it up mathematically, then manipulate the math.

Speaker 1 And that's tantamount to manipulating your understanding of the universe, if it's the correct model of mathematics.

Speaker 1 So everything else about this math is working in our universe.

Speaker 1 So I step lightly towards these other realities that are so mind-blowing.

Speaker 1 But again, is it more mind-blowing than

Speaker 1 what quantum physics might have looked like to the original classical physicists.

Speaker 1 But we live, there is no IT revolution without the exploitation of the quantum. There is no creation, storage, and retrieval of digital information without quantum physics.

Speaker 1 It's not some other thing that other smart people worry about in the lab. It is with us.
We are embedded in it. There is no modern industry without it.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 2 and if you were to go back to like 1910 and and show somebody

Speaker 3 an iPhone, you know,

Speaker 2 they'd burn you at the stake.

Speaker 1 They'd resurrect the witch burn. Yes, they would.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they were like, we were wrong about witches.

Speaker 1 So are we gradually inching towards the practical of quantum theory rather than it being able to be achieved with immediacy? So I'm going to say it, and then I want to get Chuck's reaction.

Speaker 1 There's those parts of quantum physics that we need, that we want, that help us in our technologies and our computers and everything.

Speaker 1 Then there's the part of the quantum physics that's just kind of floating out there that we have to take seriously because it's the extensions of what we know works mathematically and conceptually.

Speaker 1 So now you go to the edge and you explore the edges of those equations. Oh my gosh, you just gave me a whole new freaking universe.
And what does that mean? And what is that going to take us?

Speaker 1 And I got entanglement and I got all of this. That's why people are taking it seriously because the rest of it works.
In fact, quantum physics is the most successful theory of physics ever put forth.

Speaker 1 It has never been shown to be wrong and that's spooky.

Speaker 2 Well, that's because nobody understands it.

Speaker 1 All right, let me try to land this plane here. Is what you're telling me

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 this sort of probabilistic understanding of a particle, the wave-particle duality,

Speaker 1 When it's manifesting as a wave, we don't know where the particle is. The question doesn't even make sense.
It's the wave that takes up the space.

Speaker 1 And depending on how you poke it, it will manifest the particle here, there, or somewhere else. Okay.
Yes.

Speaker 1 Now you want to create universes in which the particle can be in those places, turning what is probabilistic, statistical, and quantum into something that's deterministic.

Speaker 1 So Einstein's quip quip

Speaker 1 declaration even,

Speaker 1 because he was slow to adopt the weirdness of the quantum physics, he said, God does not play dice with the universe. And if you're in our realm, it kind of looks that way.

Speaker 1 God is playing dice with the universe, but in your realm, God has loaded the dice and knows exactly what role is going to get because every role is happening in a universe that's out there, spontaneously created in the act of the collapse of the wave function.

Speaker 1 Have I said that accurately? You have.

Speaker 5 God is playing all of the dice all at the same time.

Speaker 1 And that's why the house always wins.

Speaker 1 And it's just a matter.

Speaker 5 It's just a matter of which table you want to roll at.

Speaker 5 That's all it is. Beautifully said, Neil.

Speaker 1 Beautifully said. Yeah, so if the casinos, if it says God's casino, stay away.

Speaker 1 So, Charles, give us a thought to take us out.

Speaker 5 When we first thought of quantum physics, heck, when I first took quantum physics in college, I was like, this can't be right.

Speaker 5 But that's only because I didn't have a good sense yet of reality as a whole.

Speaker 5 Today we understand as I see more and more of reality happening, all the things that I don't understand is only what I don't understand, not

Speaker 5 how the universe works.

Speaker 5 So I'm hoping that as I continue to go in my journey of discovery and studying things like galaxies and supermassive black holes and things like that, that I am open enough to see those things which I could never conceive of, things that in my gut I know are wrong, and yet be able over time to see that actually that is reality.

Speaker 1 And that's why you cut yourself short there. It's not that in your gut, you know it's wrong.

Speaker 1 It's that in your gut, your life experience is insufficient to absorb that which stands far outside of your life experience. So it's not that it's wrong, it's just it doesn't fit.
It doesn't fit.

Speaker 1 Yeah, don't make so hard on yourself, man. I know.
Thanks, man.

Speaker 1 These guys are the most supportive friends I could ever ask for.

Speaker 5 If I can embrace that part of me, which I don't understand and don't know, and perhaps even fear, then I'm going to be a better off in this world. And I hope all of us would share in that with me.

Speaker 1 All right. Well, thank you for that.

Speaker 1 Thank you for that.

Speaker 1 As I'd like to do at the end of our shows is offer a cosmic perspective, the summation of what we've discussed, and perhaps a perspective on what it means for us today, tomorrow, and beyond.

Speaker 1 Just as a scientist, it's It's kind of your job to stand at the frontier. You put a foot in what is known and a foot in what is unknown, and you sort of work your way out there.

Speaker 1 Now, what we do know is that, of course, as the area of our knowledge grows,

Speaker 1 so too does the perimeter of your ignorance.

Speaker 1 So, we can feel good about what we do know, as Charles surely does. He's worked hard for his expertise.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 as you walk the perimeter,

Speaker 1 oh my gosh, there's so much more we don't know than what we do.

Speaker 1 And for me, I celebrate the ignorance. As the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke noted, one needs to learn to love the questions themselves.

Speaker 1 Because those questions are not just, oh, I don't know, and then walk the other way. They draw you.

Speaker 1 towards paths of discovery. And what I enjoy about our world is that we have creative people who maybe took a few physics classes, maybe read your quantum handy question book,

Speaker 1 whatever it's called.

Speaker 1 Sorry.

Speaker 1 Quantum handy...

Speaker 1 That.

Speaker 1 And these are people who are creative storytellers, cinematographers, comic book illustrators, people who are not content with just the world.

Speaker 1 Let's reach out to all the places science can take us and stoke our imagination beyond what is otherwise visible, just looking at what we know today.

Speaker 1 And so I celebrate the fact that

Speaker 1 we live in a world where science is accessible to enough other people who are not scientists that we can celebrate science as a fundamental part of our culture, not just an activity conducted by pony-headed intellectuals in laboratories.

Speaker 1 And that is a cosmic perspective. Thank you, Guild Hall.

Speaker 1 Gary, pleasure, my friend. Thank you very much.
You can see.

Speaker 1 That was Star Talk Live, special edition at Guild Hall, East Hampton. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, wishing you to keep looking up.

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