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NASA's Cold Atom Lab Is Pushing Physics to the Limit · The Quark Side - Quantum Physics Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the quart 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: I want you to just take a second and picture
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: something in your mind.
• 0:30
  Speaker 3: Right now, Okay, setting the scene, I like it.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so picture the International Space Station. It's flying at
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: roughly what seventeen five hundred miles an.
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: Hour, give or take, yeah, in low Earth orbit.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Right, So it's silently slicing through the vacuum of space, yea,
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: experiencing like sixteen sunrises and sunsets every single day.
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: That's an incredible environment.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: It really is. And inside that station it is just
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: a chaotic, densely packed mess of hardware. You've got humming
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: lifesport systems, worrying ventilation fans, these tangle webs of cables everywhere, not.
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: To mention the astronauts floating around conducting dozens of experiments
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: all at once.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: Exactly, it's loud, it's busy, But tucked away among all
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: of that complex machinery is this completely unassuming box, just
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: a simple box. Yes, it's roughly the size of a
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: mini refrigerator. You might easily just float right past it
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: and assume it houses spare parts and environmental monitors or something. Sure,
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: but inside that specific, unassuming box is actually the coldest
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: known spot in the entire universe.
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: It's just wild to think about.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: It's a localized pocket of reality where the physical laws
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: we interact with every single day just completely break down.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: They give way to something entirely alien.
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: It's a profound juxtaposition, really. I mean, humanity tends to
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: think of the ultimate mind bending extremes of physics as
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: phenomena that only occur out in the distant cosmos.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: Are totally like black holes exactly.
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: We picture the event horizons of super massive black holes,
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: or the crushing cores of neutron stars, or the violent
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: aftermath of supernovas.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: Right, stuff that's light years away.
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we imagine these extreme environments as places we can
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: only observe through telescopes. Yet, right now, we have engineered
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: an extreme thermodynamic environment that, as far as we know,
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: literally does not exist naturally anywhere else in nature, nowhere else, nowhere.
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: We have manifested it, controlled it, and placed it inside
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: a compact rack floating roughly two hundred and fifty miles
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  Speaker 3: above our heads.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: And the reason we really need to look inside this
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: box today is because what's happening in NASA's Cold Atom
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: Lab is quietly setting the stage for a massive technological
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: paradigm shift.
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: It really is.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: We are looking at a bizarre frontier of quantum mechanics.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: So we need to figure out what a Bose Einstein condensate.
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: Actually is, which sounds like pure science fiction, Honestly, it
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: absolutely does, and.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: We need to understand the underlying mechanics of how freezing
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: matter to a near absolute standstill is poised to revolutionize
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: our future, not just on Earth but deeply into the
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: Solar System.
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: We are witnessing a fundamental transition in how we interact
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: with the universe. I mean, what is occurring within the
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: Cold Atom Lab represents the vanguard of a movement physicists
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: are calling quantum two point zero quantum.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: Two point oh, okay, what was quantum one point zero? Then?
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: Well, for nearly a century we've observed the quantum realm
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: and sort of passively utilized its quirks. Okay, but now
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: we are actively manipulating macroscopic quantum states. The implications of
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: shifting from passive observers to active architects of quantum geometry
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: are just monumental.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: Okay, let's unpack this because to really comprehend what is
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: actually happening inside that mini fridge, we have to establish
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: some fundamental ground rules about the matter. NASA is creating
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: good idea. When we talk about quantum science, we're zooming
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: way past the everyday macroscopic world, right.
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: Past the things we can see in touch.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, zooming past biological cells, past complex molecules, all the
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: way down to the most extreme microscopic scales. We're talking
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: individual atoms, electrons, particles of light.
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: And at that specific scale, our intuitive understanding of physical
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: reality completely fails us.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: It goes right out the window totally.
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: The classical mechanics that govern our everyday lives just do
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: not apply down there.
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  Speaker 2: Right, Because our standard mental model is usually rooted in
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: like high school chemistry, we tend to visualize atoms as tiny, solid,
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: discrete objects.
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: Like tiny little billiard balls.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: Exactly. We picture them like microscopic billiard balls. If you
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: put a bunch of them in a container and heat
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: them up, they bounce around furiously, ricocheting off the walls.
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  Speaker 2: In each other, and.
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  Speaker 3: If you cool them down, they lose energy and they're
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: bouncing slows down.
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  Speaker 2: Right. But treating atoms as tiny hard spheres is a massive, massive,
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  Speaker 2: oversimplification of how the universe actually operates at that fundamental level.
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  Speaker 3: It is. I mean, the billiard ball model is a
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: useful heuristic for basic chemistry, but it entirely misses the
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: do nature of matter, the.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: Whole wave particle duality thing exactly.
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: Under the framework of quantum mechanics, atoms do not strictly
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: behave as solid particles. They also behave as waves.
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  Speaker 2: And we are talking about a physical wave moving through
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: a medium, right, like a ripple in a pod.
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: No, No, not at all. We are talking about waves
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: of probability. And atom's physical location isn't a single highly
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: defined coordinate in space.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: It's kind of smeared out.
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: Yes, it's a smeared out wave representing the probability of
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: finding the atom in various locations at any given time.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: Which means an atom can essentially exist in multiple places
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: simultaneously or well more accurately. Its state isn't locked down
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  Speaker 2: to a single point. It means that under the right conditions,
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  Speaker 2: the rigid boundaries of solid objects just blur. These matter
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: waves can overlap, interfere with one another, and literally pass
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  Speaker 2: right through each other.
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  Speaker 3: The mathematical concept behind this is the Debroley wavelength.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: Okay, break that down for us.
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  Speaker 3: So Lutibroley proposed that all matter has a wave wavelength,
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: and that wavelength is inversely proportional to its momentum. In
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: simple terms, the faster and heavier an object is the
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: shorter and more imperceptible its quantum wave is. Ah, gotcha,
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: take a massive, fast moving object like a baseball. Its
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: quantum wavelength is so unimaginably tiny that we can completely
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: ignore it.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: The baseball just acts like a solid object. It's going
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: to break a window. It's not going to phase through
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  Speaker 2: it as a probability wave.
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: Precisely, even for a single atom at room temperature, it's
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: bouncing around so fast, carrying so much momentum that its
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: wavelength remains incredibly small.
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  Speaker 2: So the chaotic energetic motion completely masks the underlying wave.
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  Speaker 3: Nature right, making the atom act for all intents and
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: purposes like that tiny billiard ball we talked about.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: But okay, if wavelength is inversely proportional to momentum, that
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  Speaker 2: means if you drop the momentum, the wave gets bigger.
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  Speaker 3: You've hit the nail on the head.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: And momentum is intrinsically tied to temperature. Right, Temperature isn't
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: just how hot or cold something feels to us.
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: No, it's a direct measurement of the kinetic energy, the
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: chaotic motion of the particles in a system.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: So if you want to stretch out an atom's quantum
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: wave and actually see it, you have to drastically reduce
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: its momentum. You have to cool it down.
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  Speaker 3: And this is where the Cold Atom lab pushes physics
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  Speaker 3: to the absolute extreme. They cool clouds of atoms down
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  Speaker 3: to temperatures just a fraction of a degree above absolute zero.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: Which is mind bogglingly cold. Absolute zero is minus four
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: hundred and fifty nine degrees fahrenheit or minus two hundred
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: and seventy three point one five degrees celsius.
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  Speaker 3: It's the theoretical limit where all thermal motion in matter
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  Speaker 3: completely stops. It's the absolute floor of thermodynamics.
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  Speaker 2: So at those ultra cold temperatures, the chaotic bouncing practically ceases.
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  Speaker 2: The momentum drops to near zero exactly, and according to physics,
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: we just outlined as that momentum drops, the atom's quantum
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  Speaker 2: wave begins to stretch and expand outward.
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  Speaker 3: Right. And when you have a dense cloud of thousands
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: of atoms and all of their individual waves are expanding.
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  Speaker 2: Simultaneously, eventually they're going to touch.
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  Speaker 3: They do more than touch, they completely overlap and merge.
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  Speaker 2: Wow.
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  Speaker 3: And when that happens, the atoms combine into a unique
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  Speaker 3: quantum state known as a Bose Einstein condensate or a.
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  Speaker 2: BC, a BEC, which is officially classified as the fifth
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  Speaker 2: state of matter, joining solids, liquids, gases, and plasmas.
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  Speaker 3: That's right, it's an entirely new category of physical reality.
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  Speaker 2: I think the most staggering aspect of a BDC is
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: the issue of scale. We're taught that quantum mechanics only
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: governs the impossibly.
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  Speaker 3: Small, right subatomic particles and such, But.
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  Speaker 2: A Bosinstein condensate is a macroscotic cloud. It's much larger
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  Speaker 2: than any individual sub atomic particle. You can theoretically see
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  Speaker 2: a large enough BEC with the naked eye glowing in
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  Speaker 2: a vacuum chamber.
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  Speaker 3: You can. Yet, despite its size, the entire cloud perfectly
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  Speaker 3: obeys the bizarre rules of quantum mechanics. It acts as
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  Speaker 3: a single entity.
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  Speaker 2: So you're basically taking a fundamental property of the microscopic
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  Speaker 2: realm and amplifying it up to our level.
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  Speaker 3: That's a great way to put it. In a BC,
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  Speaker 3: the atoms become entirely indistinguishable from one another. They fall
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  Speaker 3: into the exact same quantum ground.
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  Speaker 2: State, so they no longer possess individual identities at all.
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  Speaker 3: None They are one unified quantum object.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, think about a massive crowd in a sports stadium.
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  Speaker 3: Okay, I'm picturing it.
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  Speaker 2: Usually the crowd is like a chaotic gas. Tens of
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  Speaker 2: thousands of individual people are acting independently. They're walking the aisles,
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  Speaker 2: buying hot dogs, talking to their neighbors. There are discrete particles.
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  Speaker 3: Bouncing around right, a lot of kinetic energy.
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  Speaker 2: But then the crowd starts doing the wave.
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  Speaker 3: Ah, I see where you're going with this.
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  Speaker 2: When the wave sweeps through the stadium, the focus completely
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  Speaker 2: shifts away from the independent actions of the individuals. The
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  Speaker 2: people synchronize.
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  Speaker 3: Their individual identities are momentarily subsumed by the unified macroscopic
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  Speaker 3: motion of the wave traveling around the arena.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly in a BC. You're cooling that chaotic crowd of
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  Speaker 2: atoms down so severely that they perfectly sink, nize, they
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  Speaker 2: merge into one giant, unified wave of matter.
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  Speaker 3: What that highlights is the concept of quantum coherence. Jason Williams,
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: the project scientist for the Cold Atom Lab at NASA's
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, articulated this transition beautifully.
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  Speaker 2: What did he say?
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  Speaker 3: He noted, At the coldest temperatures, matter behaves drastically different
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  Speaker 3: from anything we have experienced. The wavelike nature of matter dominates.
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  Speaker 2: The wavelike nature of matter dominates. That phrasing implies a
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  Speaker 2: total inversion of how we usually experience reality.
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  Speaker 3: It is an inversion.
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  Speaker 2: The wave isn't just a hidden quirk anymore like it
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: is with a baseball. It becomes the defining characteristic of
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: the entire physical object.
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: That is the core of the phenomenon right there. The
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: wave function doesn't merely apply to an isolated electron or
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: a single atom anymore.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: It applies to the whole cloud.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, the mathematical equation that dictates quantum probability now governs
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  Speaker 3: an entire cloud of thousands or millions of atoms acting
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: in absolute unison.
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  Speaker 2: It's a singular quantum object that we can hold, shape
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  Speaker 2: and observe.
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  Speaker 3: Which leads us directly into the massive engineering challenge.
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  Speaker 2: Oh man, Yeah, Because conceptualizing a Bose Einstein conden state
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  Speaker 2: on a chalkboard is one thing.
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: It's relatively easy in math, right.
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  Speaker 2: But actually manufacturing the coldest spot in the universe remotely
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: inside a box on a space station controlled by Caltech
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: and JPL back on Earth, that requires an incredibly delicate
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: sequence of physical manipulation.
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: It's a staggering achievement. The mechanics of reaching absolute zero
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: require a sequence of highly counterintuitive steps because you.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: Have to carefully extract kinetic energy from a system without
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: physically touching it exactly.
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: Any physical contact introduces heat.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: So let's look inside the lab's vacuum chamber. The raw
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: material that you use to create this fifth state of
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: matter isn't some exotic, rare cosmic dust. They use small
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: strips of common alkali metals, specifically rubidium or potassium.
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: Very standard laboratory elements, and the.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: Very first action the system takes to achieve absolute zero
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: is ironically to turn on a heater, which.
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: Sounds completely crazy, right.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: They bake these metal strips at extremely high temperatures up
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: to seven hundred and fifty degrees.
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: Fahrenheit that's roughly four hundred degrees celsius.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they heat the solid metal until it completely vaporizes
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: into a gas. You're telling me we heat metal up
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: to seven hundred and fifty degrees fahrenheit just so we
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: can freeze it to minus four hundred fifty nine degrees.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: That seems completely counterintuitive.
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: Heating metal to seven hundred and fifty degrees in order
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: to freeze it to absolute zero sounds paradoxical on the surface.
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: I get it. But if we consider the thermodynamic state
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: of a solid block of metal, the necessity becomes really clear.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, clear it up for me.
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: In a solid piece of rubidium, the atoms are locked
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: together in a dense, rigid crystalline lattice. They are constantly vibrating,
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: knocking into their immediate labors, exchanging thermal energy continuously, and.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: If they're constantly physically interacting, you can't control them, right, You.
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: Can't isolate an individual atom's momentum if it's being continuously
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: jostled by billions of its neighbors.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: So by heavily heating the metal in a complete vacuum,
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: the atomic bonds break, the material vaporizes into a diffuse,
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: highly energetic gas.
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: Now, instead of a locked grid, you have individual rubidium
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: atoms flying freely through the vacuum chamber.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: They're hot, they're moving incredibly fast, but crucially, they are
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: isolated from one another.
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: Exactly, you've created a clean slate. Once the atoms are
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: flying solo, you can begin the precise work of stripping
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: away their velocity.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: And the tool they use to strip away that velocity
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: is light. They literally fire carefully tuned lasers directly into
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: this cloud of hyperactive seven hundred and fifty degree gas.
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: Which is another henterintuitive step. Lasers usually heat things.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: Up right, but as the laser light interacts with these atoms,
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: it actually strips away their energy, causing them to slow
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: down and cool dramatically.
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: The use of laser refrigeration relies on the print of
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: photon momentum. We intuitively understand that light carries energy. I mean,
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: you feel the heat of the sun on your skin,
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: but light also carries momentum. A photon, a single particle
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: of light, has a tiny discrete amount of physical push.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: Okay, I have an analogy for this. Tell me if
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: this works, let's hear it. Imagine a chaotic swarm of
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: hyperactive bees buzzing furiously in every direction inside a glass box,
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: and your only tool to calm them down is an
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: endless supply of ping pong balls.
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: Okay, I like this.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: If a bee is flying directly at you, and you
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: throw a kingpong ball so it hits the bee perfectly
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: head on, the physical impact of that lightweight ball is
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: going to slow the bee down just a microscopic fraction.
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: Right, because of the transfer of momentum.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: Now, imagine you have a system firing millions of perfectly
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: targeted ping kong balls from every conceivable angle. No matter
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: which direction to bee tries to dart, it instantly takes
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: a barrage of head on impacts that push against its
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: flight path.
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: And eventually the bee is battered into exhaustion, hovering perfect
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: still in the center of.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: The box exactly.
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: That is a remarkably accurate analogy. Building on that, the
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: true brilliance of the engineering lies in how the lasers
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: are tuned to ensure they only hit the atom's head on.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: Wait, how do they ensure that the atoms are moving
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: in random directions?
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: It involves the Doppler effect.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: Like when an ambulance siren changes pitch as it drives
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: past you.
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: Exactly like that, but with light instead of sound. When
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: a rubidium atom is flying toward a laser beam, the
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: light waves appear slightly compressed or blue shifted from the
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: perspective of the atom.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: Okay, so the frequency seems higher to the moving atom.
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: Right, So the lasers and the cold atom lab are
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: deliberately tuned to a frequency slightly below the precise absorption
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: frequency of the rubidium atoms.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: Ah. So, if the atom is sitting still, the laser
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: light is basically the wrong color for the atom to absorb.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: The light just passes right through it without interacting at all.
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: Exactly the case. But if the atom is moving toward
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: the laser, the Doppler shift compresses the light waves just
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: enough that they particularly the atom's absorption frequency.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: That is so clever, isn't it.
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: The atom absorbs the photon, takes the momentum hit, slows down,
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: and then randomly re emits the.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: Photon, and they shine these slightly detained lasers from all
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: six spatial directions right, ye, up, down, left, right forward, backward.
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: Yes, So an atom will only ever absorb photons from
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: the specific laser it is currently flying toward. It's a
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: self correcting optical molasses.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: Optical molasses, I love that term. The atoms are just
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: bogged down, bombarded by light that meticulously steals their kinetic
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: energy until they are nearly frozen in place.
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: It drops the temperature of the gas from seven hundred
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: and fifty degrees down to a fraction of a degree
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: above absolute zero in mere seconds.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: Mere seconds, But the atoms are still a gas floating
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: in a chamber. And if those ultracal atoms drift and
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: touch the metal walls of the vacuum chamber, which are
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: just sitting there at room temperature.
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: The heat transfer would be violently instantaneous. The quantum cloud
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: would boil apart in a microsecond.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: So how on earth are we keeping them suspended in
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: the absolute center of the void so they don't touch
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: the walls.
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: That requires the engagement of powerful magnetic fields. Alkali metals
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: like rubidium have a slight magnetic moment. They react to
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: magnetic fields. Once the laser cooling has brought the atoms
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: to a near standstill, electromagnets surrounding the chamber are powered
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: up and what do they do. They create a three
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: dimensional magnetic bowl. It's essentially a localized force field that
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: catches the slow moving atoms and confines them perfectly in
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: the center of the vacuum chamber, completely physically isolated from
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: the warm walls.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: But the laser cooling, incredible as it is, has a
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: physical limit, doesn't it.
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: It does, and atom recoils slightly every time it randomly
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: re emits a photon, which means lasers can only get
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: the temperature down so far. It's a fundamental floor.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: So to push the cloud across the final threshold into
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: the Bose Einstein condensate state, they have to drop the
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: temperature even further.
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: The final stage to reach that near complete Standstille relies
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: on a process called evaporative cooling.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: Evaporative cooling, like sweat or.
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: The concept is identical to how a hot cup of
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: coffee cools down.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: Oh right, when you blow on a hot cup of coffee,
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: you aren't just pushing cold air onto it. You're actually
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: skimming the most energetic molecules off the top.
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: Exactly. The water molecules in the coffee have a distribution
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: of energy. Some are moving relatively slowly, but the hottest
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: ones are moving fast enough to break the surface tension
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: and escape is steam.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: And when those ultrafast, high energy molecules leave the cup,
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: they take their kinetic energy with them, so the average
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: energy the temperature of the coffee left behind in the
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: cup drops.
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: Taking that thermodynamic principle into the vacuum chamber, the scientists
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: slowly lower the walls of their invisible magnetic bowl.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: They weaken the trap right.
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: The magnetic field is weakened just enough so that the
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: most energetic, fastest moving rubidium atoms can escape the trap and.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: Fly away, leaving only the coldest, slowest ones behind.
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: Precisely, as the hottest atoms are selectively purged from the system,
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: the remaining atoms recollide and settle at a much lower
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: average energy.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: And they just repeat this delicate shaving process over and over.
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: Until the remaining cloud reaches that critical threshold, a minuscule
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: fraction of a degree above absolute zero. The individual waves expand, overlap,
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: and the fifth state of matter is born.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: It is an absolute triumph of thermodynamic manipulation, it really is.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: We have this recipe, vaporize the metal, bombard it with
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: Doppler shifted lasers to create optical molasses, trap it in
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: a magnetic bowl, and evaporate the hottest atoms until the
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: waves merge.
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: That's the playbook.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: But here's the thing. Scientists have been able to execute
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: this exact recipe in university laboratories down here on Earth
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: since the mid nineteen nineties.
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: Yes, the first PEC was created in nineteen ninety five, which.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: Begs the multimillion dollar question, why go through the immense
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: astronomical trouble and expense of miniaturizing this entire setup and
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: shooting it into low Earth orbit.
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: It's a great question. The answer laws in the fun
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: ndamental incompatibility between Earth's gravity and the extreme fragility of
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: a Bose Einstein contency.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: Gravity just ruins the whole thing.
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: It severely restricts what we can do with these macroscopic
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: quantum states. If you build a BC and a lab
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: on Earth, you create it inside that magnetic trap we
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: talked about, right, But you can't really study it effectively
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: while it's tightly squeezed by magnetic fields. The fields and
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: themselves interfere with the delicate quantum wave, so you.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: Have to turn the trap off to observe the pure condensate.
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: Yes, but the exact microsecond you turn off the magnetic
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: trap on Earth, gravity takes over.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: Gravity pulls the quantum cloud straight down. It accelerates at
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: nine point eight meters per second squared, hits the bottom
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: of the vacuum chamber, and is instantly annihilated.
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: Scientists on Earth have only tiny fractions of a second,
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: literally milliseconds to observe the BC before it is destroyed
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: by the planet's gravity.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: Well, that sounds incredibly frustrating. You spend all this time
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: perfectly isolating the atoms, blasting them with lasers, carefully of
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: operating them into this pristine quantum wave, and then gravity
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: just yanks the floor out from under the experiment.
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: It's exactly like that.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: It's like trying to study the intricate details of a
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: snowflake while it's falling past your face at terminal velocity.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: You just don't have the time.
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: That's a perfect way to visualize it. In quantum physics, observation,
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: time is the most valuable currency.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: You need time to watch the wave evolve.
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: Exactly if you want to measure the subtle interactions of
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: matter waves, you need time to watch the phase evolution
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: of the wave. You need time to watch it expand
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: and interact. The microgravity environment of the International Space Station
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: provides exactly.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: That, because when you turn off the magnetic trap and
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: the cold atom lab up there, the condensate does not plummet.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: It simply hovers in the center of the chamber, expanding gently.
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: That hovering allows researchers to observe the cloud for several
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: seconds at a time, rather than milliseconds. That is orders
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: of magnitude more observation time. It fundamentally transforms the science
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: we can do.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: And microgravity doesn't merely grant more time, does it. It
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: physically allows the creation of a fundamentally colder and therefore
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: larger and purer quantum state.
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: It does.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: Wait, how does the lack of gravity actually affect the temperature?
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: That doesn't seem obviously connected.
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: It relates directly to the strength of the magnetic trap
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: we discussed earlier. On Earth. The magnetic bowl has to
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: be incredibly steep and powerful to support the mass of
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: the atoms against the relentless downward pull of gravity.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: Oh, because otherwise they just fall through the magnetic field.
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: Right, and because the trap must be so tight, it
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: forcibly squeezes the atoms closely together at the bottom of.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: The bowl, and squeezing them together causes problems.
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: Yes, when atoms are squeezed that tightly, they suffer from
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: something called three body recombination. They constantly bump into each other,
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: which generates heat, completely limiting how cold the cloud can
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: ultimately get.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: So on Earth, gravity forces you to squeeze the cloud
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: tight just to hold it up, and squeezing it makes
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: it inherently warmer, exactly.
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: It's a catch twenty two. But in orbit there is
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: no downward pull to fight against.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: Because the station and everything inside it is essentially in
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: perpetual freefall.
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: Right, So because they are in freefall, you do not
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: need a tight magnetic bowl. You can make the magnetic
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: trap incredibly weak and shallow, and.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: A gentler trap means the atoms are not crushed together.
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: The cloud can be much more diffuse, which severely reduces
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: those heat generating collisions. This allows the evaporative cooling process
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: to push the temperature significantly lower than is physically possible
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: on the surface of the Earth, and.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: As we established earlier, lower temperatures mean larger, longer lasting
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: quantum matter waves that can be sustained and studied precisely.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: The microgravity environment essentially provides a pristine, perfectly quiet room
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: where the extreme noise of gravity and thermal motion is
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: completely silenced, allowing us to finally hear the subtle lispers
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: of quantum mechanics.
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: It's the ultimate physics playground.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: But getting that quiet room into orbit required an absolute
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: engineering miracle. I really want to ground this in the
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: reality of what launching space hardware entails.
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: It's not for the faint of heart.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: No on Earth, a laboratory capable of generating a beec
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: is massive. It typically takes up an entire room. You
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: have giant optical tables bolted to concrete floors, covered in
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: hundreds of carefully aligned mirrors, complex vacuum pumps, water cooling systems,
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: and massive laser emetters.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: It's incredibly sensitive equipment.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: So sensitive that if someone slams a door down the hallway,
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: the microvibrations can misalign a mirror by a fraction of
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: a millimeter and the laser cooling fails completely.
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: The tolerances are microscopic.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: Now, NASA engineers had to take that entire room full
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: of delicate glass, lasers and vacuum equipment and miniaturize it,
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: compress it down. Yeah, they had to compress a room
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: sized optical physics lab into a standardized payload rack the
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: size of a mini fridge, and then they had to
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: bolt that delicate lab to the top of a rocket.
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: Which is essentially a controlled explosion.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: Right, a controlled explosion, generating millions of pounds of thrust,
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: rattling and shaking violently as it punched through the atmosphere
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: into orbit. And when it arrived at the iss the
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: lasers and mirrors had to be perfectly aligned and fully operational.
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: It represents a masterclass in robust systems engineering. The payload
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: had to survive immense acoustic vibration and g forces, and
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: it must continually operate without physical human intervention, managed entirely
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: via remote telemetry.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: It's unbelievable that it works at all.
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: The fact that it functions flawlessly is a testament to
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: the design ensuring the United States maintains a vital leadership
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: role in space based quantum technology.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: And it isn't just a static piece of hardware that
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: NASA launched and left to age. The cold Atom Lab
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: is designed with a modular architecture. It is constantly being upgraded.
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: Yes, let's look at the most recent mission that pushed
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: the boundaries of this physics even further.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: On April eleventh, a newly upgraded science module arrived at
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: the ISS via a commercial resupply services mission.
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: This represents the fourth major hardware upgrade to the LAE
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: since its initial installation in twenty eighteen, so.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: They are continuously swapping out the core hardware to expand
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: its capabilities. This new module included redesigned metal atom sources,
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: you know, the tiny ovens that generate the rubidium and
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: potassium gas clouds.
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: But the truly revolutionary upgrade was the inclusion of a
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: completely redesigned magnetic trap.
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: Right. This is where it gets crazy. This new trap
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: allows researchers to physically alter the shape of the quantum
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: gas clouds.
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: The ability to manipulate the geometry of a condensate is
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: a profound leap in capability.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: Because the previous iterations of the magnetic trap were relatively constrained. Right.
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: Yes, they primarily held the atoms in simple roughly spherical
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: or elliptical lumps, just simple blocks exactly. But the new
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: magnetic oils allow researchers to precisely sculpt the spatial dimensions
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: of the Bose Einstein condensate.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: Here's where it gets absolutely mind bending. We're talking about
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: shaping quantum clouds like an invisible potter working with a
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: fundamental fabric of reality.
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: It's a beautiful image.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: If a beec is a unified quantum wave, altering its
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: shape isn't like squishing a balloon. You are altering the
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: geometry of a macroscopic quantum probability field. But why does
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: the physical shape of the cloud actually matter to the physics.
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: Because in quantum mechanics, dimensionality strictly dictates behavior. How So,
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: if you can find a quantum gas into a flat,
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: incredibly thin, two dimensional pancake shape, the atoms are restricted
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: in how they can move and interact.
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: Okay, they can only move side to side, not up
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: and down.
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: Right, and because of that restriction, they behave fundamentally differently
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: than if they were confined in a one dimensional line
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: or allowed to exist in a three dimensional sphere.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: So changing the shape changes the rules they follow.
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: By changing the spatial geometry, you change the topology of
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: the system. You alter how the matter waves propagate, how
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: they interfere with each other, and the types of quantum
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: phase transitions that can occur.
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: It's kind of analogous to changing the shape of a
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: musical instrument. Oh, like that a crumpet sounds entirely different
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: than a tuba because the physical geometry of the brass
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: tubing alters how the sound waves resonate and interfere.
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: Exactly by molding the geometry of these atomic clouds, scientists
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: are essentially building novel quantum instruments to see how the
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: universe resonates in different dimensions, and.
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: This active manipulation is the defining characteristic of the current
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: era of research.
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: It is. Ethan Elliott, the deputy project scientist for the
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: Cold Atom Lab at JPL, provided some really crucial historical
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: context for this.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah. He pointed out that over the past century, humanity
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: experience what we can call the first quantum.
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: Revolution, which was massively important.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: Oh, that first quantum Revolution is responsible for essentially the
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: entire modern world. I mean, the principles of quantum mechanics
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: gave us the laser. They gave us magnetic resonance imaging
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: MRIs in hospitals.
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: They gave us the semiconductor transistor.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: Which means every computer, every cell phone. Every piece of
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: modern electronics relies on quantum rules to function.
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: They absolutely do. However, as Elliot emphasizes, that first Revolution
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: was fundamentally passive.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: Passive meaning we just took what nature gave us exactly.
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: We discovered the inherent quantum properties of certain materials, like
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: the band gap properties of silicon semiconductors, or the energy
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: levels of electrons and a laser crystal, and we harnessed them.
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: We utilize the physics that nature provided us to build devices.
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: So we understand quantum tunneling well enough to engineer a microchip.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: But we aren't creating a giant, visible quantum wave floating
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: inside the smartphone.
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: No we aren't.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: We're just routing electrons through incredibly tiny gates based on
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: quantum rules.
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: Exactly the distinction. But Elliott declares that with the capabilities
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: of the cold atom lab, we are actively performing quantum
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: two point zero, and.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: He defines quantum two point zero as the direct active
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: manipulation of large quantum states.
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: Right, researchers are no longer just utilizing a property of material.
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: They are actively molding macroscopic quantum phenomena. They're controlling and
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: the shape, the temperature, and the interactions of these coherent waves.
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: And the expectation is that this active mastery will lead
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: to massive technological leaps parallel to the innovations born from
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: the first revolution quantum two point zero. We're essentially moving
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: from just passively observing the fire to designing a highly
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: complex combustion engine.
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: That's a great analogy.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: Kamal Adreary, the project manager at JPL, summarize the significance
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: of this lab with a very specific quote. He said,
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: the cold Atom Lab is the closest thing we have
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: to controlling the boundary of the quantum world.
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: Controlling the boundary is a deeply evocative and precise phrase.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: What does he mean by the boundary exactly?
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: Well.
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: Throughout the history of physics, there has been a stark,
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: impenetrable boundary. On one side, you have the microscopic world,
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: governed by quantum probability and wave functions, the weird stuff,
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: the weird stuff. On the other side, you have the
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: macroscopic world, governed by classical mechanics, gravity and relativity, the normal.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: Stuff, right and never the twain shall meet exactly.
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: But the cold the Atom lab blurs that boundary. It
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: creates a macroscopic object that operates on microscopic.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: Rules by manipulating its geometry and dropping its temperature. They
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: are standing directly on that boundary line.
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: They are exploring how the quantum realm scales up into
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: the macroscopic reality we actually inhabit.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: So we've engineered the coldest spot in the universe. We've
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: placed it in microgravity to grant as unparalleled observation time.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: We are sculpting quantum probability fields in different dimensions. We
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: are pioneering quantum two point zero.
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: It's an impressive list, it is, But.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: At this point we really must address the inevitable. So
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: what question ah the practical applications. Yes, you might be
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: thinking I don't need a quantum gravity sensor to get
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: to the grocery store, but people probably thought the same
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: thing about the first quantum revolution before cell phones existed.
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, the transition from fundamental physics to applied technology is
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: already underway. Currently there are five distinct international research teams
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: utilizing the lab for fundamental experiments.
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: But the practical applications stem directly from the wave nature
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: of the condensates. Right.
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: Yes, because of BC is a coherent wave of matter,
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: it enables unimaginably precise measurements of fundamental forces, specifically time, gravity,
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: and motion.
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: How does freezing a cloud of atoms turn it into
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: an ultra precise measuring tool.
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: It relies on a process called interferometry.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: Interferometry, Okay, break that down.
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: Just as light waves can overlap and create interference patterns,
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: matter waves can do the exact same thing. In a
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: quantum interferometer. You take a Bosinstein condensate and use precise
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: laser pulses to split the quantum wave packet in two.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: Okay, so you cut the wave in half.
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: Essentially, you send these two matter waves along slightly different
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: physical paths and then you recombine them.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: And because their waves when they recombine, they are going
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: to interact exactly depending on what happened to them along
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: their separate paths, The peaks and troughs of their waves
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: will either line up perfectly and amplify each other, or
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: they will be out of phase and cancel each other out.
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: And the resulting interference pattern is an incredibly sensitive record
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: of everything those atoms experienced during their journey.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: So if one path experience something different, it shows up
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: in the pattern.
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: Yes, if the gravitational field was infinitesimally stronger on one path,
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: or if the system experienced a microscopic acceleration or rotation,
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: it physically alters the phase of the matter wave.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: Because matterwaves have actual mass, unlike photons of.
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: Light exactly, they are profoundly sensitive to gravity and inertial forces.
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: By reading the interference pattern when the clouds recombine, you
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: can measure accelerations and gravitational gradients with a level of
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: precision that makes current technology look crude.
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: Wow. So the cold atom lab is effectively a testing ground,
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: approving facility for these future quantum instruments.
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: It is we are talking about next generation positioning, navigation, timing,
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: and gravity sensing.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: Let's look at navigation for a second. Right now, Global
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: logistics aviation and our cell phones rely heavily on GPS.
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: Which works by triangulating radio signals from satellites in orbit.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: But if that external signal is jammed, or if you
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: are somewhere the signals simply can't reach, you lose your
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: navigation capabilities entirely.
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: You're flying blind. But a quantum navigator based on matter
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: wave interferometry requires absolutely no external signal. It is the
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: ultimate evolution of dead reckoning dead reckoning Yeah, by continuously
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: measuring its own infinitesimal accelerations and rotations using these quantum
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: phase shifts, A vehicle equipped with a quantum sensor would
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: know its precise location in three dimensional space with near
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: perfect accuracy.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: Indefinitely, indefinitely. So you could navigate a nuclear submarine deep
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: under the polar ice caps for months without ever needing
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: to surface for a GPS fix. You could, or, more
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: relevant to NASA, you could navigate a spacecraft through the
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: entire Solar System with pinpoint on time.
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: The applications for Earth science are equally transformative. We already
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: know from satellite missions like Grace that Earth's gravitational field
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: is not uniform.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: Gravity is lumpy.
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: Yes, gravity is lumpy. It varies slightly depending on the
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: density of the mass directly beneath you. Current satellites map
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: these large scale mass concentrations or mascons, but they have
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: resolution limits.
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: But if we deploy quantum gravity sensors based on ultra
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: cold atom technology and low Earth orbit, the sensitivity increases dramatically.
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: Dramatically. A massive hidden underground aquifer of water exerts a
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: slightly different gravitational pull than an empty cavern or a
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: dense layer of bedrock.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: Oh wow. So with quantum graphymmetry we could map subterranean
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: water resources globally.
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: We could monitor aquifer depletion in real time. We could
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: track the subtle shifts of magma chambers beneath volcanoes before
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: an eruption, or a monitor the exact mass loss of
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: the polar ice sheets with unprecedented spatial resolution.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: Completely changes how we observe the hidden dynamics of our
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: own planet.
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: It's about profound situational awareness, both looking down at the
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: Earth and looking out into the void. This entire project
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: is sponsored by the Biological and Physical Sciences Division within
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: NASA's Science Mission.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: Directorate, and their dual mandate is pretty clear, isn't it.
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: It is they utilize the unique environment of space to
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: pioneer experiments impossible on Earth, aiming to produce direct benefits
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: for humanity's home.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: Planet, while simultaneously developing the fundamental technologies required to help
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: units travel farther and survive longer in deep space.
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: Because when we look at the timeline of human exploration,
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: the necessity for this technology is obvious.
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: Right If we are establishing a permanent outpost on the
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: Moon or launching crude missions to Mars. We cannot rely
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: on Earth based infrastructure for navigation.
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: Communication to Mars involves a light delay of up to
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: twenty minutes each way.
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: Which means deep space architecture must be inherently autonomous. It
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: requires hyper person decise onboard timing and navigation that will
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: not drift or degrade over a multi year journey.
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: And the fundamental physics being mapped right now inside that
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: unassuming mini fridge on the ISS are laying the groundwork
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: for the quantum compasses that will safely guide humanity across
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: the vast dark stretches of the Solar System.
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: The compasses of our future interstellar journeys are currently being
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: forged in the coldest localized environment in the known universe.
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: That is just a stunning realization.
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: It really is.
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: I want to take a moment to trace the entire
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: arc of what we just explored today, a quick recap. Yeah,
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: we started with the extreme thermodynamic violence of taking a
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: solid piece of rubidium metal and aggressively baking it to
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: seven hundred and fifty degrees fahrenheit just to isolate the
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: atoms in a chaotic vapor.
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: We then bombarded that vapor with Doppler shifted lasers, utilizing
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: the momentum of millions of photons to meticulously batter the
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: atoms into a state of frozen exhaustion.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: We caught them in a magnetic force field and carefully
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: evaporated away the remaining heat, dropping the temperature to a
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: frack of a degree above absolute.
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: Zero, bringing atomic motion to a near absolute standstill.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: And in that mind numbing cold, the atoms lost their
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: individual identities. Their quantum waves stretched out, overlapped, and merged,
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: giving birth to a macroscopic quantum entity, a Bose Einstein
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: Cones state, the fifth state of matter.
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: And because humanity engineered the capability to achieve this inside
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: a compact box floating in the microgravity of low Earth orbit,
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: those fragile quantum clouds are free from the destructive pull
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: of the Earth.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: They float gently, giving researchers the precious time needed to observe.
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: Them, and, with the continuous upgrades to the lab, the
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: capability to actively mold, shape, and manipulate the geometry of
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: those quantum waves.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: We have crossed the threshold into quantum two point zero.
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: We're moving beyond the era of the transistor and the laser,
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: and stepping into the era of matterwave interferometry, hyper precise
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: autonomous navigation, and quantum gravity sensors capable of mapping hidden
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: subterranean oceans.
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: It is an absolute triumph of human curiosity, robust engineering,
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: and our relentless desire to understand the mechanics of reality.
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: We're actively learning how to listen to and speak back
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: to the quantum foundations of the universe.
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: It's a remarkable epic in the history of science. And
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: as we process the sheer scale of the engineering and
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: the physics happening inside that orbiting laboratory, I want to
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: leave you with a final thought to ponder.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: I love these Let's hear it.
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: Consider the journey of that rubidium atom. We took ordinary matter,
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: the mundane building blocks we interact with constantly, and we
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: subjected it to an engineered extreme absolute cold. By simply
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: lowering the temperature and removing the chaotic noise of heat,
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: we stripped away the illusion of the solid classical world.
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: We revealed an entirely new fifth state of reality, characterized
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: by unified matter waves, a state that was always there fundamentally,
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: but was completely invisible and inaccessible to us at.
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: Room temperature it was hiding in place exactly.
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: It forces us to ask a profound question. If merely
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: altering a single variable temperature revealed something so fundamentally alien
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: and powerful about the nature of existence, what other hidden
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: states of the universe are sitting right in front of us,
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: right now, completely unnoticed, just waiting for humanity to invent
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: the exact right extreme conditions to finally see them.