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Beyond Bosons and Fermions: One-Dimensional Anyons · The Quark Side - Quantum Physics Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the court Side Quantum Physics Podcast, an exploration
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: of the fundamental structure of reality, where quantum laws govern matter, energy,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: and information. Here, uncertainty is a feature, not a flaw,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: and understanding begins at the smallest scales.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Welcome back to the show. You know I had a
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: bit of a crisis this morning.
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: I was standing in my kitchen staring at the absolute
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: disaster zone. That is my junk drawer, you know.
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: The one everybody has, the drawer, the graveyard of good intentions.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Exactly, it's the drawer where logic goes to die. I
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: had batteries mixed with rubber bands, a screwdriver next to
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: a dried out marker, and keys to a car I
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: haven't owned in five years.
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: The usual suspects.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: The usual, and I decided, day is the day today
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: I organize. I went out and bought these little dividers,
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: one specific slot for batteries, one specific slot for writing utensils,
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: one for tools.
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: So you were imposing order on chaos, a very human
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: thing to do.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: I was trying to. But I realized something while I
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: was sorting through this mess. We as humans are obsessed
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: with boxes. We have this just this biological need to
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: categorize things. Is it trash for treasure? Is it edible
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: or poisonous? Is it friend or foe? We just we
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: have to sort.
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: It's a cognitive survival mechanism. Really, our brains are processing
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: millions of bits of data every single second. Right, If
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: we didn't use shortcuts, if we didn't instantly file things
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: into category A or category B, we'd be paralyzed. We
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: just wouldn't be able to function.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: So we crave the binary.
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: We crave the binary because the binary is safe, it's efficient,
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: It lets us make quick decisions.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Right, It makes the world manageable. But here's the thing
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: that just absolutely blew my mind when I started reading
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: the research for Today's conversation. Okay, it turns out this
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: obsession with two boxes isn't just a human quirk. For
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: the last hundred years, physicists have been operating under the
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: assumption that the universe itself, I mean, the fundamental architecture
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: of reality is obsessed with two boxes.
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: You are referring to the categorization of elementary particles.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: I am. We've been told that every single particle in existence,
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: from the photons hitting your retina right now to the
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: electrons holding the atoms of your chair together has to
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: pick a side.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: It has to declare its allegiance exactly.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: You join club A or you join Club B. There's
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: no middle ground. Nope, I it's sort of in both.
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: That is the standard model of quantum mechanics. We call
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: it the great binary. You are either a boson or
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: you are a Fermion. And up until very very recently,
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: that was considered the ironclad law of the three dimensional
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: world we live in.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: But today, today we are going to smash those boxes.
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: We're going to see what's in between them.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: We are looking at a brand new discovery published literally yesterday,
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: February third, twenty twenty six. This comes out of the
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology OSD and the University
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: of Oklahoma, and what they have found is, well, it's wild.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: It's completely wild.
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: It is a fundamental shift in perspective. It really is.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: They've found a way to break the rules. They've discovered
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: a system where particles aren't just A or B, they
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: can be anything, anything in between.
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: We are entering the world of Enians. And this isn't
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: just about finding a new particle to add to the zoo.
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: You know it's not just another entry in the textbook.
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: This is about challenging our very understanding of dimensional space.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: It forces us to ask are the laws of physics
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: actually universal or are there just side effects of the
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: fact that we happen to live in a room with
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: three dimensions?
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  Speaker 2: Okay, let's unpack this. Because when I first read the
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: headline a new class of strange one dimensional particles, my
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: first thought was Okay, cool, another sub atomic.
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: Spec Sure, that's a natural reaction.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: But as I got into the text, I realize this
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: is more like finding out that gravity works backwards if
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: you stand on one leg. It changes the context of
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: everything we thought we knew.
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: That's a fair analogy. And to really understand why this
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: ois research is so groundbreaking, we have to start with
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: the status quo. We have to understand the prison we've
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: been living in.
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  Speaker 2: The two boxes.
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  Speaker 3: The two boxes. So let's look at our three D universe.
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  Speaker 3: Everything you can touch, see, or interact with. Every fundamental
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  Speaker 3: particle falls into one of two categories based on how
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  Speaker 3: it behaves socially.
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  Speaker 2: Socially like particle Etiquett, you're telling me particles have manners.
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  Speaker 3: In a way, Yes, a very very fundamental way, So
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: let's open the first box. The bosons.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: The bosons. Okay, in my notes i wrote down the
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  Speaker 2: conformists or maybe the party animals.
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  Speaker 3: Both are very accurate. Bosons are the force carriers of
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  Speaker 3: the universe. The most famous example is the photon, the
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: particle of light.
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  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 3: The defining characteristic of a boson is that it loves company.
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  Speaker 3: It is profoundly social. If you have a boson in
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: a specific quantum state that means a specific energy level
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: moving in a specific direction, other bosons are perfectly ha
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: In fact, they prefer to join it in that exact
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: same state.
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  Speaker 2: They don't mind crowding at all.
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  Speaker 3: They crave it. It's more than just not minding it.
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  Speaker 3: The probability of a new boson joining a state actually
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: increases with the number of bosons already in that state.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: Oh wow, so it's like quantum peer pressure.
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: It is. Hey, all the cool photons are over here.
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: They pile on top of each other. Mathematically speaking, this
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: is the mosh pit particle, or a choir, a perfectly
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: synchronized choir. Think of a laser beam. A laser is
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: only possible because photons are bosones. Well, a laser is
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: just trillions upon trillions of photons, all marching in perfect lockstep.
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  Speaker 3: They have the same color, the same frequency, the same direction,
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  Speaker 3: occupying the same space at the same time. They act
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: as a single coherent wave of light.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: And if they were claustrophobic, that wouldn't work. They'd all
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  Speaker 2: be pushing each other out of the way exactly.
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: The beam would just diffuse and fall apart. Lasers are
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: a direct macroscopic consequence of this bosonic piling on behavior.
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  Speaker 2: The source material also mentioned bos Einstein condensates. That's the
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: extreme version of this, all right.
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: That is the absolute extreme. If you take atoms that
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: behave like bosons, certain isotopes are bosons, and you cool
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: them down to your absolute zero, just a fraction of
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: a degree above the coldest possible.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: Temperature, they basically stop moving.
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  Speaker 3: They slow down so much that their quantum natures overlap,
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  Speaker 3: and they stop acting like individuals entirely. They collapse into
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: this single quantum state, a super atoms, so.
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  Speaker 2: You can't tell where one atom ends and the other begins.
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: You can't. They lose their individual identities and behave as
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  Speaker 3: one single entity. It's the ultimate form of collectivism in
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: the universe. It's a truly bizarre state of matter.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, so box one is the bosons. We are all
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  Speaker 2: one crowd, the conformists, the party animals.
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  Speaker 3: The ultimate collectivists.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: Now let's look at box two. The fermions.
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  Speaker 3: Ah, the fermions. They are the polar opposis in every
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: conceivable way. If bosons are the force, fermions are the stuff, stuff,
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  Speaker 3: the building blocks of matter. We're talking about electrons, protons, neutrons,
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  Speaker 3: everything that has mass and takes up space is made
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  Speaker 3: of fermions.
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  Speaker 2: And if bosons are social.
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  Speaker 3: Then fermions are deeply aggressively antisocial.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: They need their personal space.
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  Speaker 3: They demand it. It's not a preference, it's a law.
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  Speaker 3: They obey a rule called the poly exclusion principle, and
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: it is arguably the most important rule for our existence.
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  Speaker 2: The strictest rule in the book I read it is.
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  Speaker 3: It states very simply that no two fermions can occupy
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  Speaker 3: the exact same quantum state at the same time period.
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  Speaker 2: So if I'm an electron and I'm spinning up in
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  Speaker 2: this particular spot with this particular.
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  Speaker 3: Energy, then that spot is taken.
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  Speaker 2: No one else is allowed to spin up in this spot.
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  Speaker 3: Correct, You are the sole owner of that quantum state.
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  Speaker 3: If another electron tries to squeeze in it gets repelled.
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  Speaker 3: It has to go find a different energy level, a
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  Speaker 3: different location, or a different spin. It has to find
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  Speaker 3: its own unique address in the universe.
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  Speaker 2: How I always thought of exclusion as a negative thing,
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: but the article points out that we actually owe our
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  Speaker 2: very lives to this an antisocial behavior.
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  Speaker 3: We absolutely do. Our existence is a monument to the
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  Speaker 3: stubbornness of fermions. How so, well, think about a simple atom.
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  Speaker 3: You have the nucleus in the center and electrons orbiting
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  Speaker 3: around it in shells. If electrons were social, like boosons,
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  Speaker 3: what would they do? They would all rush to the
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  Speaker 3: lowest possible energy state. They'd all pile up right next
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  Speaker 3: to the nucleus.
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  Speaker 2: They'd all crash into the center.
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  Speaker 3: The atom would implode. It would be a tiny, dense
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  Speaker 3: and chemically inert little ball. There would be.
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  Speaker 2: No structure and no chemistry.
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  Speaker 3: There would be no chemistry. The reason chemistry exists the
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: entire beautiful complexity of the periodic table. The reason carbon
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  Speaker 3: bonds with four things and oxygen bonds with two is
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: because the electrons are forced by the exclusion principle to
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  Speaker 3: stack up in shells.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: It's like filling seats in a theater exactly.
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  Speaker 3: Sorry, the first row is full, you have to go
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  Speaker 3: to the second row. Second row is full up to
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: the balcony with you. That stacking creates different energy levels,
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  Speaker 3: and it's the electrons in the outer or most partially
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  Speaker 3: filled shell that do all the interesting work of forming
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  Speaker 3: chemical bonds.
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  Speaker 2: So the fact that my hand doesn't pass through this table,
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: the very concept of solidity, it's fermions is basically because
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: fermions are stubborn introverts who refuse to share a seat.
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  Speaker 3: Precisely, you are pushing against a wall of electrons that
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: are all saying this spot is taken. Boson attraction gives
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: us forces like light and heat. Fermion repulsion gives us
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: structure and solidity. That fundamental tension is what builds the
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: universe as we know it.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: And for a long long time we thought that was it.
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  Speaker 2: That was the complete menu. You check the box boson
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  Speaker 2: or fermion, Yeah, end of list.
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  Speaker 3: It seemed complete. The math was elegant, and it explained
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: everything we could see and measure in our three dimensional world.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: But why I love a good rule, But why only two?
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: Why can't we have a particle that's like mostly a
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: loner but likes to hang out on weekends. Why is
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: nature so binary?
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: That is the exact qurdon that kept physicists up at night.
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: Why are there no others? It seems too simple, almost
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: our arbitrary.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: It does.
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  Speaker 3: And the answer, strangely enough, isn't really about the particles themselves.
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: It's not an inherent property of an electron that makes
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: it affermion. It's about the math of how they move.
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: It comes down to a really deep and weird concept
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: called indistinguishability.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: Okay, the article used a marble analogy here, and I
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: want to walk through this slowly because usually when people
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: start talking about quantum statistics, my eyes glaze over. But
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: this actually made sense to me.
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: It's a very helpful visualization. Let's do it. Imagine you
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: have a table in front of you. On that table,
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: you have two marbles. They look absolutely identical, same size,
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: same glass, same color.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: Got it. Two marbles in our.
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: Everyday world, what we call classical physics. You can still
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: tell them apart because you can label them, even if
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: it's just in your mind. You can say that's the
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: marble on the left, and that's the marble on the right.
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: If I were to paint one red and one blue,
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: and then I swapped their positions, you know I swapped them.
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: It's an observable event, right, I see.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: The red one move to the right, blue and to
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: the left. No ambigiity, exactly.
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: Even if I don't paint them, you can, in principle
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: watch them move. You can track their individual paths through space.
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: You can say, marble A went here, marble BU went there.
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: They are distinct entities.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: Okay, that makes sense. That's our normal, intuitive world.
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: Now let's shrink down to the quantum level. We have
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: two electrons on our table.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: Okay, first problem.
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: You cannot paint an electron. You cannot put a tiny
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: little sticker on it that says, hello, my name is
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: electron Bob.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: They are fundamentally generic.
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: They are more than generic. They are indistinguishable. There is
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: no measurement in the universe that can tell one electron
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: from another. They are identical in mass, charge, spin, every
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: single property. They are perfect clones.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: So there's no electron on the left, an electron on
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: the right. There's just electron.
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: There is just electron ness in two locations. So here's
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: the scenario. You have two electrons. You close your eyes
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: for a second. While your eyes are closed, I swap
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: their positions. You open your eyes. What do you see?
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: I see exactly what I saw before, two electrons in
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: the same spots.
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: Precisely. The universe looks identical. The final state is physically
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: indistinguishable from the initial state. But and this is the
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: absolute core of all quantum weirdness. We describe these particles
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: with a mathematical formula called a wave function.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: Right, the thing that describes the probabilities of where it
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: is and what it's doing exactly.
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: And just because the physical scene looks the same doesn't
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: mean the math of the wave functions stayed the same.
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: Something can change under the hood. So an invisible change happened,
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: an invisible mathematical change. When we swapped two identical particles,
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: the total wave function of the system gets multiplied by
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: a number. Let's call it the exchange factor. It's a
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: phase factor technically, but exchange factor works just fine.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: The exchange factor. Okay, So every time they swap, the
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: math gets tweaked by this factor exactly.
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: Now let's complete the operation. Imagine I swapped them again.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: So we swap them and then we immediately swap them back.
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: Right, we've performed two exchanges. Logically, if I swapped them twice,
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: everything should be back to exactly where we started. Right,
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: not just physically, but mathematically too. We've done an operation
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: and then undone it.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: Yes, swap A to B, then B back to A.
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: We are back at the start. No net change.
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: So mathematically, if we multiplied by the exchange factor once
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: and then multiplied by it again, the final result must
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: be one, because multiplying by one represents no change.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: Okay, I'm with you. The exchange factor multiplied by itself,
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: the exchange factor squared must equal one exactly.
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: So popquz. Thinking about all the numbers in the universe,
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: what numbers when you multiply them by themselves equal positive one?
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: Well, one one times one is one.
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: Correct, that's the boson. The exchange factor is plus one
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: when you swap two bosons. The wave function doesn't change
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: at all. It's multiplied by one. We say the wave
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: function is symmetric under exchange, and.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: Wait, negative one negative one times negative one is also
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: positive one.
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: Bingo. That's the fermia. The exchange factor is negative one
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: when you swap two fermions. The wave function flips its sign,
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: it becomes negative what it was before. Okay, so it inverts,
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: it inverts, it's antisymmetric. And that negative sign, that simple minus,
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: is the mathematical root of that entire poly exclusion principle
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: we talked about. The math forbids them from being in
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: the same state, because if they were, the wave function
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: would have to be zero, meaning they can't exist there.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: Wow, So all of chemistry comes from a minus sign.
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: In a very real sense.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: Now for the critical question, are there any other real
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: numbers that, when squared give you one?
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: Uh? No, just plus one and minus one. That's it.
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: That's it, and that is why the binary exists. The
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: fundamental mathematics of swapping two things in our three D
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: space forces the exchange factor to be either plus one
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: or menic one. There is no room for anything else.
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: The universe's operating system only allows those two options.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: It feels so rigid. Yeah, it's like finding out that
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: the reason we only have vanilla and chocolate ice cream
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: is because the ice cream machine literally cannot freeze any
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: other flavor. The physics of the machine forbids it.
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: That's a great way to put it. The machine our
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: three dimensional universe was fundamentally limiting the menu.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: But and this is the beyond the binary part of
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: our whole conversation. It turns out the machine is only
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: limited if it's a three D machine.
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: Correct. This is where the story pivots completely. This is
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: where we break out of the prison.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: The source material quotes Professor Thomas Bush from Oyest asking
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: that exact question we posed earlier, why are there no others?
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: And the answer is there are others, but they can't
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: exist in three dimensions. They need to live in flat land.
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: Yes, to break the binary, we have to do something
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: that sounds impossible. We have to delete a dimension. We
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: have to go from three D to two D.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: This is the part I really want to visualize because
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: it's so counterintuitive. Why does flattening the universe suddenly break
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: that strict math rule? Why does x squared equals one
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: stop being? The only answer?
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: It has to do with topology. It's about the geometry
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: of the paths the particles take when they swap. Okay,
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: let's go back to our classical world for a moment.
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: Think about two airplanes flying in the sky. That's a
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: three D space.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: Okay, I've got plane A and plane B.
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: In my head, if plane A wants to swap positions
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: with plane B, it has an infinite number of options. Right, sure,
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: it can fly over B under B to the left,
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: to the right, it can do a huge loop to
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: loop and come in from behind. The space is wide.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: Open, right, plenty of room to maneuver.
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: Crucially, because there is so much empty space, specifically that
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: third dimension of height, the paths the planes take never
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: have to get tangled up with each other. You can
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: always find a way to smoothly deform the path plane
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: A took and shrink it down to nothing without ever
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: hitting the path of plane B.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: Okay, so their histories, their flight paths are independent.
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: In topology the math of shapes, we say that the
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: swap is trivial. It leaves no lasting trace on the system.
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: And that's the key. Because the swap is trivial. When
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: you do it twice, you have to get back to
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: where you started. The universe forgets the swap happened, which
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: is why the math forces you back to one.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: But now let's squash the world. Let's take away that
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: third dimension. We are in two D. We're like two
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: coins sliding on a table top.
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: Exactly. Now, imagine coin A wants to swap places with COINB.
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: It cannot lift off the table. It has to slide
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: around COINB.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, it has to skirt around it.
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: Now it has a choice. Does it go clockwise or
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: does it go counterclockwise?
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: Does it matter which way it goes.
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: In two D? It matters immensely. This is the entire trick.
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: Because you can't lift the coin off the table. You
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: can't just undo that loop you made. Think about it
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: this way. If I walk around you clockwise holding one
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: end of a rope, and you hold the other, and
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: then I walk back to my starting spot, the rope
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: is now wrapped around you once.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: Oh, I see. In three D I could just lift
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: the rope over your head and it would be untangled.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: In two D, the rope is stuck. The tangle is
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: real exactly.
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: The paths get tangled. We call this phenomenon braiding. The world.
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: Lines of the particles paths through spacetime get braided together
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: like strands of hair.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: That is such a cool image. The history of the
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: particles movement is a literal braid in space time.
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: And because the system is braided, it has a memory.
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: The universe remembers that the particles swap, and it remembers
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: how they swapped clockwise or counterclockwise. And because it remembers,
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: you don't have to go back to the exact starting
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: state when you swap them twice.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: So the rule swap plus swap must equal one breaks down.
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: It breaks down completely. The phase factor, that exchange factor
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: no longer has to be just plus one or megas one.
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: It can be any complex number. It can represent a
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: rotation by any angle, so.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: It can be halfway in between. It can be ten
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: percent boson, ninety percent fermion, it can be any any on,
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: anything goes.
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: The term was coined by the Nobel laureate Frank Wilchek
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: back in the early eighties. He realized that in two dimensions,
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: the rules of quantum statistics could be fundamentally different. You
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: could have particles that were neither bosons nor fermions, but
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: something in between.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: So these particles, these enions, they occupy that vast gray area.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: They aren't totally social, but they aren't totally antisocial either.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: They have their own unique set of rules.
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: They have what's called fractional statistics. Their exchange behavior is
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: a fraction of what you'd see with the normal particles,
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: and this allows for entirely new types of collective behaviors,
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: things that are just flat out impossible in our normal
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: three D world.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: Okay, this sounds like some really out there theoretical physics.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: Have we actually seen these? Is this real or is
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: it just a fever dream on a whiteboard?
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: Oh, it's real, we have It took about forty years
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: from the theoretical prediction to the experimental proof, but in
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: twenty twenty researchers at a lab in France finally observed
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: Enians experimentally.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: But wait a minute, we live in three D. How
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: did they find two D particles in our three D world?
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: They had to build a trap. They had to create
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: an artificial two D universe. They used very special materials semiconductors,
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: and cool them down to near absolute zero, and then
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: applied massive magnetic fields.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: So they create extreme conditions, very extreme.
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: And those conditions force the electrons in the material to
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: stop moving up and down. They get locked into moving
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: in a strictly two dimensional layer right at the interface
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: between materials, like.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: They're skating on the surface of a frozen pond.
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: A perfect analogy. And when you can find them like that.
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: When you force them to live in flatland, the electrons
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: stop behaving like fermions, they start acting like Enians. The
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: brading effect takes over.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: Okay, so twenty twenty was the year the two D Aenian.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: We proved the gray area exists.
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: That's a huge deal in itself, massive deal, a no
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: bellworthy discovery, many would say.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: But the paper we are discussing today, this oist research,
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: this takes it another step further. They're not satisfied with
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: two DALs.
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: No, we are going from flatland to lineland.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: One dimension, the ultimate constraint.
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: This is the work of Jack Featherstone, Raoul hid Algo
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: Sokoto and their colleagues. And they asked a very simple
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: but very profound question, what happens if we take away
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: the around entirely right? One Dephysics is fascinatingly weird. Let's
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: go back to our analogies. Imagine beads on a string
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: or cars on a one lane road.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: Okay, beads on a string. I'm with you.
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: In three D, we fly over. In two D, we
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: slide around and get braided. In one D. How do
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: two beads on a string swap places.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: They can't. If I'm on the string and you're on
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: the string and I want to get to the other
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: side of you, I'm stuck, of least, unless I go
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: through you bingo.
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: There is no left or right. There is no up
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: or down. There is only forward or backward. So for
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: particles to swap in a one dimensional system, they must
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: transmit through one another.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: Like ghosts. They just phase through each other in.
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: A quantum sense. Yes, it's a collision, but a quantum
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: collision where they can tunnel through each other. And this interaction,
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: this moment of passing through is where the brand new
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: discovery lies.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: Okay, so what's new about that?
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: Well, in the two D case, the behavior of the
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: Enian is usually a fixed property of the material. You
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: buy the semiconductor, you do the experiment, you get the
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: any and you get the braiding statistic is locked in.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: You can't change the settings, right.
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: But in this new one DE proposal, the researchers at
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: OST and the University of Oklahoma found that the enianness,
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: where the particle sits on that spectrum between Boson and fermion,
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: isn't a fixed property. It depends entirely on that moment
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: of collision.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: What about it?
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: It depends on how strongly the particles interact when they
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: pass through each other, and.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: Can we control that? Can we control how strongly they interact?
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: We can control it with incredible precision. And this is
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: the magic word from the paper. They call it a
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: tunable exchange factor.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: Tunable. Okay, that's the magic word. That sounds important.
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: It changes everything. It means we aren't just hunting for
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: new particles in the wild anymore. We are building a
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: system where we can literally dial them in. Imagine you
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: have a slider on a mixing board in a recording studio.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: Okay, I can picture that slide.
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: It all the way to the left. You set the
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: interaction to be very wet. The particles pass through each
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: other easily, almost like they don't see each other. In
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: that case, they act like bosons.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: Okay, the social particles.
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: Now it all the way to the right. You crank
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: up the interaction strength. Now when they meet, they bounce
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: off each other hard, They refuse to pass through.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: They act like fermions, the antisocial particles.
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: And the incredible part is the middle. As you move
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: that slider from left to right, as you adjust the
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: interaction strength. You can smoothly transform the particles through every
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: possible shade of any or all.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: Wait, really, so you can have a particle that is
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: thirty seven percent fermion and then just nudge a dial
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: and make it thirty eight percent.
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: That is exactly what their theoretical model predicts.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: It is. It feels like cheating. It feels like we're
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: hacking the source code of reality. Yeah, taking an electron
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: and telling it no, today, you're not going to be
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: an electron today, You're going to act a bit more
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: like a photon.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: Essentially, Yes, we are decoupling the identity of the particle
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: from its statistical behavior. The behavior becomes a choice we
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: make in the lab. It's an engineered property of the system,
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: not an innate property of the particle.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: This sounds incredibly difficul So how do they actually do this?
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: You mentioned ultra cool atomic systems. Is this something that
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: exists or is it just a blueprint for a future machine.
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: The beauty of this paper, and this is why I
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: was published in a journal like Physical Review A, is
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: that it's a recipe. It's a detailed set of instructions
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: for an experiment that can be done with equipment that
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: already exists in labs today.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: We already have the kitchen to cook this up.
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: We do labs around the world, including at ost or experts.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: In this they use powerful lasers to create something called
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: an optical lattice. It's like an egg carton made of light,
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: and they can shape these laser beams to create a
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: rays of incredibly narrow tubes of light. The tubes are
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: so narrow that the atoms they trap inside can only
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: move forward and backward. They can't move side to side.
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: That's your one D string.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: So they literally build these one dimensional universes for atoms
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: to live in.
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: They do it's routine, which is still amazing to think about.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: And the tuning knob, the slider that controls the interaction.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: How does that work?
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: For that, they use magnetic fields. There's a wonderful phenomenon
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: in atomic physics called a Feshbach resonance. The details are complex,
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: but the upshot is simple. By tweaking an external magnetic field,
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: you can make the atoms in the trap attract each
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: other or repel each other with almost any strength you want.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: So the magnetic field is the slider.
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: The magnetic field is the slider. You want them to
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: be bosons. Set the field to this value. You want
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: them to be fermions. Set it to that value. You
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: want a very specific type of enion dial in the
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: magnet to precisely two point three gas or whatever the
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: number is.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: So the theory is solid, the equipment is ready. But
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: here's the big question. How do you know it worked.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: You can't see an atom with your eyes. You certainly
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: can't see its personality or its quantum statistics.
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: You watch how they run away. It's a technique called
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: time of flight imaging, and the thing they measure is
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: the momentum distribution. Imagine you have your one D tube
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: full of these ultra coold atoms. You've set the magnetic
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: field to create your enions. Then suddenly you turn off
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: the lasers.
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: The trap disappears.
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: The trap disappears, The gas, which was tightly confined, is
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: now free to expand.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: It explodes outward and a.
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: Very gentle, cold quantum way. Yes, and how it expands
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: tells you everything you need to know. Okay, if the
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: particles inside were bosons, they like to clump together. They
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: have a very low relative momentum, so when they expand,
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: they do so in a specific, dense, focused pattern.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: Right, the socialites stick together.
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: If they were fermions, they avoid each other. They have
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: a high relative momentum, so they fly apart much faster
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: and the cloud spreads out much more broadly.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: The introverts run for the.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: Exits exactly, and if they are these new one d enions,
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: we'll do.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: Something in between.
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: They will produce a specific, unique signature that is somewhere
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: in between. The paper by Hidalgo, Sokota and Featherstone essentially
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: gives experimentalists a chart, a field guide. It says, if
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: you tune the magnet to this setting to create this
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: type of anenion, and then you release the gas, the
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: spray pattern should look exactly like this.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: It's like identifying a bird by its flight pattern because
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: you can't see its feathers.
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: That's a lovely image. Yes, that's precisely it. We can't
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: see the internal state, but we can infer it with
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: incredible accuracy by observing the collective behavior.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: So Professor Bush is quoted in the press release saying
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: this opens the door to improving our understanding of the
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: fundamental properties of the quantum world, which is a very
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: polite reserve scientist way of saying, this is a big deal.
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: A very big deal.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: But why let's bring it back to the listener. Why
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: should we care that we can make atoms act weirdly
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: in a super cold tube. What's the payoff?
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: The payoff is about control, and about a concept called emergence.
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: Emergence everything we see in the macroscopic world, properties like superconductivity, magnetism,
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: the heat capacity of a material, whether something is an
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: insulator or a conductor, all of these things are emergent properties.
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: They emerge from the statistical rules of the trillions of
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: particles that make up the material.
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: So the little rules dictate the big picture.
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: The little rules dictate everything, And for all of human
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: history we've only been able to play with two sets
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: of rules, Boson rules and Fermion rules. That's it.
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: We're painting with only two colors, exactly.
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: We're trying to paint a masterpiece with just red and blue.
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: But if we can create systems with anions, and not
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: just any anians, but tuneable anions, we suddenly have the
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: whole color wheel, green.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: Purple, orange, all the infinite shades in between.
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: We can start to ask questions like what kind of
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: novel material would emerge if it's constituent particles had a
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: statistical factor of say zero point seven. We don't know
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: the answer because nature never gave us a material like that.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: But now we can build it.
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: We can build it. We might discover new phases of matter,
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: we might find new ways to guide energy with perfect efficiency.
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: And the really big one is quantum computing.
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: Topological quantum computing. I've heard that phrase. It's supposed to
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: be the holy grail.
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: It is the idea there is to use that braiding
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: memory we talked about to store quantum information. You encode
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: a bit of data into a not in space time.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: And because it's a not, it's stable. You can't just
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: undo it by bumping into it.
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: Precisely, it's naturally robust against noise from the environment, which
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: is the biggest killer of quantum computers today. This research,
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: by giving us a system where we can directly control
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: the anianness of particles, is a massive stepping stone toward
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: learning how to create and manipulate those kinds of robust
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: topological states.
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: So it moves us from just observing nature to actively
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: designing it.
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: That is a transition we are living through in quantum
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: physics right now. For a century we were explorers mapping
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: a strange new continent. Now we're becoming architects. We're learning
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: how to build with the quantum bricks and mortar.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: It's incredibly exciting, but it also makes you realize how
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: much of our reality, our physical laws are just local.
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: They're contingent, they are local to our dimension.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: Right. That's the philosophical angle that just gets me. We
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: think the laws of physics are these stone tablets brought
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: down from the mountain. Thou shalt be a.
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: Fermion, thou shalt obey the exclusion principle.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: Yes, but it turns out the laws are just suggestions
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: that depend entirely on the geometry of the room you're
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: standing in.
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: Context is everything. In three D, the context is rigid,
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: there's too much freedom of movement, so the weirdness gets
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: washed out. In two D and one D the context
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: is constrained, and that constraint allows these new, richer behaviors
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: to emerge.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: It's so backwards from how you'd normally think. You think
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: more freedom means more possibilities.
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: But here less freedom, fewer dimensions means more possibilities for
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: quantum statistics, So I have to ask.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: We've talked about going down in dimensions. We went from
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: the rigid three D world to the braided two D
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: world to this newly discovered tunable one D world.
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: Right, we've gone from two choices to infinite fixed choices
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: to infinite tunable choices. What happens if we go up
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: into the fourth dimension? You mean a fourth spatial dimension?
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah. If three D limited is to just two options,
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: does four you get restrict us even more? Or does
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: it open up something totally new that we can't even imagine.
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: That is a wonderful and a very deep thought experiment.
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: Let's think about the braiding again. That's the key. In
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: two D we got inians because the paths got tangled, right.
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: In three D we lost the onions because we had
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: that extra dimension to move in, which allowed us to
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: untangle the paths.
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: The rope could be lifted over the head.
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: In four D you have even more room, you have
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: another direction.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: To move in, so it's even easier to untangle things.
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: It's so much easier that it breaks our intuition again.
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: Mathematicians have shown that in four D space you can
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: untie any knot in a piece of string. Without cutting
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: the string. What you just lift part of the knot
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: into the fourth direction, pass it under the other strand,
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: and drop it back down. The knot just falls apart.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: So four D is hyper trivial when it comes to
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: tangles exactly.
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: So, following that logic, if we lived in a four
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: D universe, the rules of particle exchange would likely be
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: even simpler than they are here. The braiding that gives
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: us enians in two D would be completely gone. You'd
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: almost certainly just have bosons and fermions again.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: So the weirdness is a feature of low dimensions.
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: It seems to be, or perhaps entirely new structures could
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: emerge that rely on forty geometry we can't even visualize.
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: Maybe you get new classifications based on hyper rotations. Maybe
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: they have hyper bosons or something even stranger we don't know.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: It completely breaks the brain a little bit. It makes
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: you wonder if there are forty creatures looking down at
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: our plane of existence, watching us struggle with our bosons
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: and fermions, and just thinking, oh, look at those cute
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: little three D beings. They're stuck with their binary choices.
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: Why don't they just rotate into the W axis to
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: get around that problem.
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: It's so simple, exactly, just sidestep time for a moment.
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: It's easy.
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: Well, until we figure out how to ascend to the
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: fourth spatial dimension. It seems we have plenty of fascinating
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: new physics to work with down here in one D.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: We certainly do so to recap this whole journey. Today,
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: the universe isn't as black and white, not as binary
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: as we thought, not at all. The boxes we've used
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: for a century. Boson and Fermion are real, but they
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: are just the end points of a vast, continuous spectrum
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: that only reveals itself when you change the geometry of
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: reality itself.
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: And thanks to this new research from Oyist and the
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: University Oklahoma, we now have a theoretical map and an
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: experimental recipe to access that entire spectrum. We can finally
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: turn the knob.
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: It's a great reminder that when you're organizing your life
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: or the universe, sometimes the problem isn't the stuff you're sorting,
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: it's the boxes you're trying to force them into.
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: Or maybe it's just the dimension of the drawer.
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: I am definitely blaming the topology of my kitchen drawer
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: for the mess next time. It's not my fault, honey,
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: it's the non trivial brading of a spatulus.
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: Good luck explaining that to your guests. I'm sure it
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: will go over well.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: I'll give it a try. Thank you so much for
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: walking us through this. This was a heavy one, but
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: I really feel like I get it now.
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: It was a pleasure. It's always good to stretch the
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: mind a bit, and this topic certainly does that.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: And everyone listening, thanks for sticking with us as we
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: went down this rabbit hole. Keep questioning the categories, keep
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: looking for the gray areas, and remember the laws of
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: physics might just be waiting for you to change your perspectives.
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: Be curious.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: We'll see on the next one.