Kind: captions
Language: en
foreign
we live in a world where objects have
permanence
[Music]
and we see cause then effect
but a startling phenomenon is revealing
that this is not how the universe works
at the smallest scales of atoms and tiny
particles
Albert Einstein argued it couldn't
possibly be real Einstein was like a
jack-in-the-box every day he'd pop up
with a new challenge but after a century
of disputes and discoveries
the experiment just beautiful we're
using it to create revolutionary new
technologies
what we have here is a Quantum
playground we want to push this
technology as far as possible it's
perhaps the strangest Concept in physics
we're left with conclusions that make no
sense whatsoever yet it could be what
forms the very fabric of our Cosmos in
the end we just have this quantum
mechanical World there is no space
anymore
it's like being in Alice in Wonderland
everything is possible
could it be real
it's Einstein's Quantum riddle
right now on Nova
[Music]
is reality an illusion
could something here
mysteriously affect something there
A Century of discoveries in physics
reveals a strange counter-intuitive
Micro World of atoms and tiny particles
that challenges our intuitive
understanding of the world we see around
us
it's known as quantum mechanics
[Music]
strange theory has enabled us to develop
the remarkable Technologies of our
digital age
but it makes a very troubling prediction
called quantum entanglement
entitlement is this is this very
powerful but strange connection that
exists between Pairs of particles
even if they're very far apart
in a way they're always coordinated
Nature's fundamental building blocks
could be connected and influence each
other instantaneously as if the space
between them doesn't exist
as if two objects can mirror each other
without any apparent connection
Einstein called it spooky action at a
distance
he rejected the idea and tried to prove
it couldn't be real you could have
situations where the cause and the
effect happen at the same time
but if entanglement isn't real
Cutting Edge Technologies could be in
jeopardy
quantum computers Quantum encryption
they depend on entanglement being a fact
in the world
underlying it all is a profound question
do we live in Einstein's Universe of
Common Sense laws or a bizarre Quantum
reality that allows spooky connections
across space and time
[Music]
300 miles off the coast of West Africa
on one of the Canary Islands
a team of physicists is setting up a
remarkable experiment that will use
almost the entire breadth of the
universe
settle the question
[Music]
seemingly impossible phenomenon of
quantum entanglement and illusion
or is it actually real
[Music]
leading the team is Anton zeilinger
so we are going up today
Mountain towards the rocket De Los
Muchachos
everything looks perfect today
it's a precarious undertaking
they've got a short window on two of
Europe's largest telescopes
each one will simultaneously focus on a
different Quasar an extremely distant
Galaxy emitting huge amounts of light
from its core
this light will be used to control
precise equipment
that must be perfectly aligned to make
measurements on Tiny subatomic particles
and if that isn't tricky enough the
weather on the mountain is notoriously
unpredictable the team needs perfect
conditions for the experiment to work
in the end it could be running smoothly
or this need to be a couple of decisions
made you know in the United States in
the last instance
with the experiment finally set up
the team takes their positions
David Kaiser has worked on this
experiment with his colleagues Jason
galicio and Andy Friedman for four years
coordinating it all is Dominic Roush
the experiment is his thesis project
and it's been years in the making
but as Darkness Falls temperatures on
the mountain begin to drop
[Music]
okay okay
[Music]
there's bad news
um they have been told to leave the
William Herschel because the road will
be so dangerous too dangerous so they
have to go down now yeah
thank you
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
the next day
the team prepares for another attempt
they verify the equipment hasn't been
affected by the weather
but now the air is thick with clouds
yes the humidity with the various
telescopes and you see
the humidity is 100 percent so as long
as this
lasts
we can't do much
teams at both telescopes wait
the clouds don't clear
all the preparation has come to nothing
time on these huge telescopes is
precious and theirs has run out
this ambitious test of quantum
entanglement must wait
[Music]
why are physicists so determined to put
this bizarre aspect of quantum mechanics
to the ultimate test
[Music]
to explore the beginning of the story
David Kaiser has come to Brussels
the city that Albert Einstein traveled
to in 1927.
to attend a meeting about a new theory
that described the Micro World of atoms
and tiny particles
quantum mechanics
[Music]
quantum mechanics is one of those
amazing intellectual achievements in
human history
[Music]
for the first time scientists were able
to probe a world that was until then
quite invisible to us
looking at the world at the scale of
atoms a million times smaller than the
width of a human hair
one way to think about the skills is
that if you take an everyday object like
a soccer ball
and you enlarge that soccer ball so that
actually you can see the individual
atoms you roughly have to make it the
size of the Earth
and then move into that planet
then you are in the world of atoms and
particles
it was the nature of fundamental
particles which make up the world we see
around us that Einstein had come to
Brussels to discuss
and it was here that Einstein entered
into a heated debate that would lead to
the discovery of quantum entanglement
a concept that would trouble him for the
rest of his life
David Kaiser has come to the place where
it all began
this is the original Solvay Institute
Building
beautiful Grand building and this is the
place back in October 1927 where the
fifth Solvay Conference was held
this amazing week-long series of
discussions on really what the world is
made of on the nature of matter and the
new quantum theory and these steps are
the very steps
on which this famous group photograph
was taken is a collection of some of the
most brilliant people in the world here
in the front row we see Albert Einstein
and the great Marie Curie and Max Planck
in the back row standing the Dapper
Erwin Schrodinger and these kind of
brash 20 year olds or mid-20s Vander
Heisenberg and Bill gang Paoli
these scientists were the pioneers of
quantum mechanics
I had a huge version of this Photograph
up on the walls a poster in my college
dorm room my roommates had their
favorite bands and I had in the 1927
silver conference which says a lot
this was one of the greatest meetings of
mines in history
more than half were or would become
Nobel Prize winners
their experiments were showing that deep
inside matter tiny particles like atoms
and their orbiting electrons
we're not solid little spheres
they seemed fuzzy and undefined
so this group here this these these were
the folks who had just been
Plumbing deeper and deeper and deeper to
find what they hope to be a Bedrock of
what the world is made of and to their
surprise they found things less and less
solid as they dug in this world was not
tiny little bricks that got smaller and
smaller at some point the bricks gave
way to this mush and what looked like
solidity solidness in fact became very
confusing and and kind of a whole new
way of thinking about nature
the theory of quantum mechanics
presented at the meeting
was strange
it's said that a particle like an
electron isn't physically real
until it's observed
measured by an instrument that can
detect it
[Music]
before it's detected instead of being a
solid particle an electron is just a
fuzzy wave a wave of probability
[Music]
these objects like electrons are atoms
when we describe mathematically their
behavior the only thing we can describe
is the probability of being at one place
or another
it's like a wave of all those different
possibilities
it's not that the electron is in one
place or the other we just don't know is
that the electron really is a
combination of every possible place it
could be until we look at it
quantum mechanics only tells us the
probability of a particle's properties
like location
laws of nature were no longer definite
statements about what's going to happen
next they were just statements about
probabilities
and Einstein felt well that's defeat
you're giving up on the heart of what
physics has been namely to give a
complete description of reality
for Einstein the idea that particles
only pop into existence when they're
observed is akin to Magic
[Music]
it said he asked do you really believe
the Moon is not there when you are not
looking at it
[Music]
outside of the formal setting of the
conference
he challenged the most vocal supporter
of these ideas
the great Danish physicist Niels Bohr
Einstein would show up to breakfast at
the hotel and Niels Bohr would be there
and Eisen would present his latest
challenge Niels Bohr would sort of
Mumble and wonder and and confer with
his younger colleagues they'd head off
to the formal meeting at The Institute
and somehow every night by supper time
board would have an answer one of The
Observers said that Einstein was like a
Jack In The Box every day he'd pop up
with a new challenge and Bohr would flip
this way and that and the End by supper
have crushed that one and they would
start all over again
[Music]
to Bohr and his colleagues quantum
mechanics not only explained
experimental results its mathematics
were elegant and beautiful
and since Einstein hadn't found flaws in
their equations
they left the Solvay meeting feeling
more confident than ever in their ideas
[Music]
Einstein didn't give up his conviction
that quantum mechanics was flawed
and in his refusal to accept the weird
implications of the theory
he would wind up uncovering something
even weirder
in 1933 with the Nazi party in power in
Germany Einstein chose to settle in
America and took a position at The
Institute for advanced study in
Princeton New Jersey
[Music]
he recruited two
to help him Nathan Rosen and Boris
Podolski
and in 1935 at afternoon tea the three
men spotted a possible flaw in quantum
mechanics
would shake the very foundations of the
theory
they noticed that the mathematics of
quantum mechanics led to a seemingly
impossible situation
today Robert Digraph is the director of
The Institute
apparently podols could say well
Professor Einstein this is very
important in your arguments showing that
quantum theory is incomplete
so they've got this very animated
discussion and what have happened still
is now you have a bunch of scientists
discussing and at some point someone
says let's write a paper together so
they did
their paper known today as epr argued
that the equations of quantum mechanics
predicted an impossible connection
between particles
a seemingly magical effect
it would be like having two particles
hidden under a cup
[Music]
looking at one
mysteriously causes the other to reveal
itself too
with matching properties
[Music]
quantum theory suggested this effect
could happen in the real world
for example with particles of light
photons
the equations imply that a source of
photons could create pairs in such a way
that when we measure one
causing it to snap out of its fuzzy
state
the other mysteriously snaps out of its
fuzzy State at the same instant with
correlated properties
the 1935 paper that described this
effect has become Einstein's most
referenced work of all
it has captivated generations of
physicists
including Anton zeilinger
the Einstein Rosen paper fascinated me
and I had to read it at least five or
six times until I finally understood
what goes on and then it didn't
let me go again
another way to think of the paired
particles
is to imagine a game of chance that's
somehow rigged
I suppose I had
a pair of quantum dice
I put these two Quantum ties in my
little cup
throw them
and look at them they show the same
number six
I put them again in the cup throw them
again
now they post show three I put them in
again I throw again
now they both show one
point now being what I see here is I see
two
random processes namely each die showing
some number but these two random
processes do the same
that's really mind-boggling
how could two particles act in unison
even when they're separated from each
other
essential to the epr argument is that
these particles can be can be separated
at an arbitrary distance one could be
here at Princeton one could be in the
Andromeda galaxy and yet according to
Quantum Mechanics a choice to measure
something here is somehow
instantaneously affecting what could be
said about this other particle
you can't go from Princeton to Andromeda
instantly and yet that they argued is
what the equations of quantum mechanics
seem to imply and that they said so much
the worst for quantum mechanics the
world simply can't operate that way
for Einstein this strange effect
conflicted with the most basic concept
we use to describe reality
space
for him objects particles everything
that exists is located in space
together with time was the key
ingredient in his theory of special
relativity
with its famous equation E equals m c
squared
[Music]
Einstein of course was the master of
space-time
he thought that if something happened
here that shouldn't immediately and
instantaneously change something that is
going on over there the principle of
locality as we currently call it
for Einstein it's simply common sense
that if objects are separated in space
for one to affect the other
something must travel between them
and that traveling takes time
Quantum particles acting in unison could
be explained if they were communicating
one particle instantly sending a signal
to the other
telling it what properties it should
have
but that would require a signal
traveling faster than the speed of light
something Einstein's theory of special
relativity had proven impossible
and it would mean the particles were
fuzzy and undefined
until the moment they were observed
instead Einstein thought the particles
should be real all along
they must carry with them a hidden layer
of deeper physics that determines their
properties from the start
almost the way that magic tricks
while appearing mysterious
have a hidden explanation
but this hidden physics was missing from
quantum theory so Einstein podolsky and
Rosen argued that quantum mechanics was
incomplete
Podolski was very enthusiastic about
this project in fact he was so
enthusiastic that he went to the New
York Times and told them the news so
Einstein was really upset with Podolski
and apparently he didn't speak to him
anymore
[Music]
when Niels Bohr heard of Einstein's
paper he wrote an obscure response
arguing that one particle could somehow
mysteriously influence the other
this seemingly impossible phenomenon
became known as quantum entanglement
but Einstein dismissed it as spooky
actions at a distance
no one could think of an experiment to
test whether Einstein or Bohr was
correct
I didn't stop physicists and Engineers
from making use of quantum mechanics to
do new things
in the 30s and 40s the debate around the
epr paper sort of dies down but Quantum
Theory actually takes off
the mathematics leads to all kinds of
amazing developments
entanglement aside the equations of
quantum mechanics enable the scientists
of the Manhattan Project to develop the
atomic bomb
and in the years after the second world
war researchers at Bell labs in New
Jersey used quantum theory to develop
one of the first lasers in our
Laboratories men experiment with a light
once undreamed of in the natural world
and build small devices that could
control the flow of electricity
transistors it's destined to play a
vital role in your future
your electronic future
transistors became the building blocks
of the burgeoning field of electronics
computers disk drives the entire digital
Revolution soon followed all made
possible by the equations of quantum
theory
yet Einstein's questions about
entanglement and what it implied about
the incompleteness of quantum mechanics
remained unanswered until the 1960s
when a physicist from Northern Ireland
made a remarkable breakthrough
John Bell
was a very talented young physics
student but he quickly grew dissatisfied
with what he considered almost almost a
kind of dishonesty among his teachers
Bell insisted that Einstein's questions
about quantum mechanics had not been
addressed
you got into shouting matches with his
professors don't tell us that Bohr
solved all the problems this really
deserves further thought quantum
mechanics has been fantastically
successful so it is a very intriguing
situation that the foundation of all
that impressive success there are these
great diets
it's a very strange thing that ever
since the 1930s
the idea of sitting and thinking hard by
the foundations of quantum mechanics has
been disreputable among professional
physicists when people tried to do that
they were kicked out of physics
departments and so for someone like Bell
he needed to have a day job doing
ordinary particle physics but at night
you know hidden away he could do work on
the foundations of quantum mechanics
Bell became a leading particle physicist
at CERN in Geneva but he continued to
explore the debate between Einstein and
Bohr
and in 1964 he published an astonishing
paper
Bell proved that boers and Einstein's
ideas made different predictions
if you could randomly perform one of two
possible measurements on each particle
check how often the results lined up
the answer would reveal whether we lived
in Einstein's world
a world that followed Common Sense laws
or boars
a world that was deeply strange and
allowed spooky Quantum connections we
now know with hindsight this was one of
the most significant articles in the
history of physics not just the history
of 20th century physics in the history
of of the field as a whole
but Bell's article appears in this you
know sort of out of the way journal in
fact the journal itself folds a few
years later this is not Central to the
physics Community it's sort of dutifully
filed on Library shelves and then
forgotten it literally collects dust on
the Shelf
a few years later completely by chance a
brilliant experimental physicist
stumbled upon Bell's article
I thought this is one of the most
amazing papers I had ever read in my
whole life
and I kept wondering well gee this is
wonderful but where's the experimental
evidence
John worked on Bell's Theory with fellow
physicist Abner shimoni and at the
University of California Berkeley
started work on an experiment to test it
he had a talent for tinkering in the lab
and building the parts he needed I used
to rummage around here in scavenge
dumpster dive for old equipment
he knew where to find hidden storage
rooms like this which he could raid to
salvage spare parts for his experiments
[Music]
this was a
car supply for a diode lasers that looks
like something I built
[Music]
a picture of the
experiment I did I had more hair in
those days
here's another picture this is this is a
stu Friedman worked on it with me
piece by piece John klauser and Stuart
Friedman constructed the world's first
Bell test experiment
they focused a laser onto calcium atoms
causing them to emit pairs of photons
that the equations of quantum theory
suggested should be entangled
[Music]
they recorded whether or not the photons
passed through filters on each side
checked how often the answers agreed
after hundreds of thousands of
measurements if the pairs were more
correlated than Einstein's physics
predicted they must be spookily
entangled
[Music]
we saw the stronger correlation
characteristic of quantum mechanics
we measured it and that's what we got
foreign
quantum mechanics predicted
the experiment appeared to show that the
spooky connections of quantum
entanglement
did exist in the natural world
[Music]
could it be that the great Albert
Einstein was wrong
remarkably the first people to react to
this extraordinary result were not the
world's leading physicists
[Music]
Ronald Reagan's definition of a hippie
was someone who dresses like Tarzan has
hair like Jane and smells like cheetah
[Music]
a small group of free-thinking
physicists at the heart of San
Francisco's new age scene got in touch
with John
they call themselves the fundamental
physics group they spelled physics with
an F some members would experiment with
psychedelic drugs I mean they were they
were kind of in the flow of the kind of
hippie scene and that group was just
mesmerized by the question of
entanglement
[Music]
the idea was just to discuss Fringe
subjects with an open mind and I thought
I'm sure uh that's kind of what I do
they were doing their best to link
Eastern mysticism with quantum
entanglement
they sold a lot of popular textbooks
there were a lot of followers
their books became bestsellers like the
Tao of physics
which highlighted that Eastern
philosophy and quantum entanglement both
described the Deep connectedness of
things in the universe
is the great Cosmic Oneness
held meetings at the iconic esselen
Institute
it was a marvelous beautiful place where
they would discuss all of these ideas it
was right on the Pacific coast with the
Overflow from the hot tubs cascading
down the cliffs into the Pacific Ocean
to my knowledge no uh useful
connections to Eastern mysticism were
ever discovered by the group
but it was fun
the fundamental physics group may not
have uncovered the secrets of cosmic
Oneness
but in seeing entanglement as Central to
physics they were decades ahead of their
time
[Music]
years later cutting-edge labs around the
world are now racing to harness quantum
entanglement to create revolutionary new
technologies
like quantum computers
in our everyday computers
a binary digit zero or one and inside
the computer there's all these
transistors which are turning on and off
currents on is one office zero and these
combinations lead to Universal computing
with a quantum computer you start with
the fundamental unit that's not a bit
but a Quantum bit which is not really a
zero or a one but it can be fluid
a Quantum bit makes use of the fuzziness
of the quantum world
it's known can be zero or one or a
combination of both
a particle or tiny Quantum system can be
made into a qubit and today it's not
just pairs of particles that can be
entangled
groups of qubits can be linked with
entanglement to create a quantum
computer
the more qubits the greater the
processing power
at Google's Quantum Computing laboratory
in Santa Barbara
the team has recently succeeded in
creating a tiny chip
that holds an array of 72 cubits
the task for researcher Marissa giostina
and her colleagues
is to send signals to these microscopic
qubits to control and entangle them
mounted on the underside of this plate
we have the quantum processing chip
itself
in essence a Quantum playground you
could say each qubit is a Quantum object
that we should be able to control at
will
thinking about it as
the faster version of that PC over there
would be a great slight to this it can
be much more than that
by using entangled qubits quantum
computers could tackle real world
problems that traditional computers
simply can't cope with
for example a salesman has to travel to
several cities and wants to find the
shortest route
sounds easy
[Music]
but with just 30 cities there are so
many possible routes that it would take
an ordinary computer even a powerful one
hundreds of years to try each one and
find the shortest
but with a handful of entangled qubits a
quantum computer could resolve the
optimal path in a fraction of the number
of steps
there's another reason teams like
Marissa's are racing to create a
powerful quantum computer
cracking secret codes
[Music]
in today's world everything from online
shopping to covert military
Communications is protected from hackers
using secure digital codes
a process called encryption
but what if hackers could get hold of
quantum computers
a quantum computer could crack our best
encryption protocols in minutes whereas
a regular computer or even a super
Computing Network today couldn't do it
you know given months of time
but while quantum entanglement may be a
threat to traditional encryption
it also offers an even more secure
alternative
a communication system that the very
laws of physics protect from Secret
hacking
researchers in China are leading the way
here in Shanghai
at the University of Science and
Technology
path runs a leading Quantum Research
Center
his teams are working to harness the
properties of the quantum world
they can send secret messages using a
stream of photons in a system that
instantly detects any attempt to
eavesdrop
janway's team has created a network of
optical fibers more than a thousand
miles long
that can carry secure information from
Beijing to Shanghai
it is used by Banks and data companies
[Music]
but there's a limit to how far Quantum
signals can be sent through Optical
fibers
to send signals further janway's team
launched the world's first Quantum
communication satellite
above Earth's atmosphere there are fewer
obstacles and Quantum particles can
travel much further
[Music]
each night teams on the ground prepare
to track the satellite across the sky
laser guidance equipment locks on and
allows signals to be sent and received
the team aims to use this equipment to
create a new secure communication system
using quantum entanglement
[Music]
the satellite sends entangled photons to
two users
an eavesdropper could intercept one of
the entangled photons
measure it
and send on a replacement photon
but it wouldn't be an entangled Photon
its properties wouldn't match
it would be clear an eavesdropper was on
the line
in theory this technique could be used
to create a Totally Secure Global
Communication Network so the next step
is we will have ground station for
example in Canada and also in Africa and
many countries so we will use our
satellite for the global Quantum
communication
we want to push this technology as far
as possible
these are the first steps in creating a
completely unhackable Quantum Internet
of the future
made possible by quantum entanglement
but there's a problem
what if quantum entanglement
spooky action at a distance isn't real
after all
it could mean entangled photons are not
the path to complete Security
the question goes back to klauser and
Friedman's Bell test experiment
in the years after their pioneering work
physicists began to test possible
loopholes in their experiment
[Music]
ways in which the illusion of
entanglement might be created
so the effect might not be so spooky
after all
one loophole is especially hard to rule
out
in modern Bell test experiments devices
at each side test whether the photons
can pass through one of two filters that
are randomly chosen
effectively asking one of two questions
and checking how often the answers agree
after thousands of photons if the
results show more agreement than
Einstein's physics predicts the
particles must be spookily entangled
but what if something had mysteriously
influenced the equipment
so that the choices of the filters were
not truly random
is there any common cause deep in the
past before you even turn on your device
that could have nudged the questions to
be asked and the types of particles to
be emitted maybe some strange particle
maybe some force that had not been taken
into account so that what looks like
entanglement might indeed be an accident
an illusion maybe the world still acts
like Einstein thought
[Music]
it is this loophole that the team at the
High Altitude observatory in the Canary
Islands is working to tackle
with quantum mechanics now more
established than ever
they're determined to put entanglement
to the ultimate test and finally settle
the Einstein board debate beyond all
Reasonable Doubt
creating a giant version of clauser and
Friedman's Bell test
entire universe as their lab bench
[Music]
in this Cosmic Bell test
the source of the entangled particles is
about a third of a mile from each of the
detectors
the team must send perfectly timed pairs
of photons through the air to each side
at the same time the telescopes will
collect light from two extremely far off
extremely bright galaxies called quasars
these are among the brightest objects in
the sky emitting light in powerful Jets
random variations in this light will
control which filters are used to
measure the photon Pairs
and since the quasars are so far away
the light has been traveling for
billions of years to reach Earth
it makes it incredibly unlikely that
anything could be influencing the random
nature of the test
[Music]
if the experiment is successful the team
will have tackled the loophole and shown
that quantum entanglement is as spooky
as bore always claimed
Dominic and Jason are at one telescope
Anton is at the other
yeah
okay ciao
[Music]
with clear skies finally overhead
the huge telescopes awaken
[Music]
to collect light from distant quasars
[Music]
dark on level
so we're doing everything everything
runs now so the guys for the links are
setting the state of the entangled
Photon pair we try to acquire the Quasar
we're just centering it and making the
field of views most possible to be sure
that we only have the quasar
[Music]
yeah that's good
[Music]
it looks like 90 let's say 91 to be
conservative of purity
with the telescopes now locked on to two
different quasars
team begins to take readings
let's count 12th concerts
[Music]
we do the fool the full company Belfast
what yeah we're doing a full Cosmic Bell
test
it's working light from the quasars is
selecting which filters are used to
measure the entangled photons
[Music]
exciting it is now we do have a test but
it's not clear what the outcome will be
going
assistant
all right
everything's exactly the same beautiful
perfect yeah
foreign
[Music]
two months later back in Vienna the team
analyzes the experimental data
might take a second
the numbers look really great and it is
extremely pleasing to see that all these
books are nice
we clearly see correlations that
correspond to quantum mechanics
the results show entanglement
and since the light from the Quasar is
controlling the test was nearly 8
billion years old
it's extremely unlikely that anything
could have affected its random nature
this remaining loophole seems to be
closed
the experiment we teach is just
fantastic the big Cosmos comes down to
control a small Quantum experiment but
that in itself is a
beautiful
you know honestly I still I still get
chills I mean I
when I realized what our team was able
to do in this intellectual Journey that
stretches back to the early years of the
20th century
there's there's hardly any room left for
a kind of alternative einstein-like
explanation
we haven't ruled it out but we've shoved
it into such a tiny corner of the cosmos
as to make it even more implausible for
anything other than entanglement to
explain our results
foreign
[Music]
ment is a part of the natural world
around us
has profound implications
it means we must accept that an action
in one place
can have an instant effect anywhere in
the universe as if there's no space
between them
or that particles only take on physical
properties when we observe them
or we must accept both
we're left with conclusions about the
universe that make no sense whatsoever
science is stepping outside of all of
our boundaries of common sense it's
almost like being in Alice in Wonderland
right where everything is possible
[Music]
it was first seen as an unwelcome but
unavoidable consequence of quantum
mechanics
[Music]
now after nearly a century of disputes
and discoveries
spooky action at a distance is finally
at the heart of modern physics
[Music]
at The Institute for advanced study
where the concept of entanglement was
first described
researchers are now using it in their
search for a single unified theory of
the universe the Holy Grail of physics
[Music]
Einstein's theories of special and
general relativity perfectly describes
space time and gravity
at the largest scales of the universe
while quantum mechanics perfectly
describes the tiniest scales
yet these two theories have never been
brought together
so far we've not yet had a single
complete theory that is both quantum
mechanical and reproduces the prediction
of Einstein's wonderful theory of
general relativity
maybe the secret is entanglement
what if space itself is actually created
by the tiny Quantum world
just like temperature warm and cold
consists simply of the movement of atoms
inside an object
perhaps space as we know it emerges from
networks of entangled Quantum particles
it's a mind-blowing idea
what we are learning these days is that
we might have to give up that what
Einstein holds sacred namely space and
time so he was always thinking well we
have little pieces of space and time and
out of this we build the whole universe
in a radical Theory known as the
holographic universe
space and time are created by entangled
Quantum particles on a sphere that's
infinitely far away
what's happening in space in some sense
all
described in terms of a screen outside
here
the ultimate description of reality
resides on the screen think of it as
kind of quantum bits living on that
screen
and this like a movie projector creates
a illusion of the three-dimensional
reality that I'm now experiencing
[Music]
it may be impossible to intuitively
understand this wild mathematical idea
but it suggests that entanglement could
be what forms the true fabric of the
universe
[Music]
the most puzzling element of
entanglements that you know somehow took
points in space can communicate
becomes less of a problem because space
itself has disappeared
in the end we just have this quantum
mechanical World there is no space
anymore
and so in some sense the paradoxes of
entanglement the epr Paradox disappears
Into Thin Air
[Music]
the understanding quantum mechanics will
only happen when we put ourselves on the
entanglement side and we stop
privileging the world that we see and
start thinking about the world as it
actually is
science has made enormous progress for
Centuries by sort of breaking
complicated systems down into Parts when
we come to phenomena like quantum
entanglement that scheme breaks
when it comes to the Bedrock of quantum
mechanics
the hole is more than the sum of its
parts
basic motivation is
just to learn how nature works
what's really going on
Einstein said it very nicely he's not
interested in this detailed question or
that detailed question he just wanted to
know what were God's thoughts when he
created the world
[Music]
[Applause]
foreign
[Music]
to order this program on DVD visit shop
PBS or call 1-800 play PBS episodes of
Nova are available with passport Nova is
also available on Amazon Prime video
foreign
[Music]