Latest / The Quark Side - Quantum Physics Podcast / Scientists Simulated Space-Time on a Quantum Computer

Transcript

Scientists Simulated Space-Time on a Quantum Computer · 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: Have you ever looked around the room you're sitting in
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: right now and just wondered if the three dimensional space
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: you're moving through, you know, the air you're breathing, the
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: distance between you and the walls, is actually just.
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: A projection, right, like some incredibly complex illusion hiding a
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: much deeper, flatter reality.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah exactly. I mean it sounds like total late night
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: science fiction, but that exact question is actually sitting at
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: the absolute center of the biggest unsolved mystery in modern
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: physics right now.
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely, the quest for a quantum theory of gravity.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Right because for decades now, science has basically been stuck
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: with two completely different rule books for the universe, and
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: they fundamentally refuse to talk to each other.
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: It's a massive headache for.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: Physicists, it really is, because on one hand, you have
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: quantum mechanics, right, and that perfectly describes the chaotic, microscopic
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: world of atoms and particles everything is jittery and probabilistic
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: and well quantized.
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: But then you have general relativity Einstein's rule book.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: Right, which perfectly describes the vast gravity heavy universe, planets, stars,
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: space itself, and general relativity relies on space time being
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: incredibly smooth and continuous, like a perfectly iron.
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: Sheet, which creates a huge problem the very second you
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: try to apply both of those rule books to the
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: exact same object. I mean, take a black hole for example. Oh, sure,
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: you have this enormous amount of gravity, so you need
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: general relativity, but it's crammed into a microscopic space, which
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: means you also need quantum mechanics. And when you try
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: to combine them of a smooth, continuous sheet with the
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: math of jittery, pixelated particles.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: The equations just spit out infinities.
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: Exactly reality least as we understand it just completely breaks down.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: So physicists have obviously been trying to bridge that gap
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: on chalkboards for half century. But what we're talking about
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: today is, well, it's a monumental leap.
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: It's unbelievable, really.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Because scientists didn't just write a new equation here,
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: they actually successfully simulated a toy model of a holographic
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: universe on a quantum.
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: Computer, right on the actual hardware.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: Yes, they build a miniature working universe to test the
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: idea that the very fabric of space and time might
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: just be an illusion generated by quantum entanglement, which.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: Is just wild to think about. I mean, this breakthrough
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: came from a massive collaboration. You had researchers at q
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: Lab at the University of Maryland, the Duke Quantum Center,
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: Virginia Tech, Caltech, ion Q, and Blue Kubit.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: A serious all star team, truly.
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: It was led by Crystal Knowl and Charles cow and
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: it featured quantum computing pioneers like John Preskill and Christopher Monroe.
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: And they ran the whole experiment on the ion Q fourte,
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: which is a state of the art ion Trap quantum computer.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: Okay, so to even comprehend how a physical machine can
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: simulate a universe, we really have to look at the
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: theoretical bedrock beneath all this, right, the holographic.
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: Principle, which was originally proposed by Gerard Hooft and Leonard Suskin,
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: and it basically argues that all the information contained inside
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: a three dimensional volume of space can be fully described
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: by a theory that lives entirely on the two dimensional
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: boundaries surrounding that space.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: It's basically Juan Maldasana's nineteen ninety seven breakthrough in action, right,
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: the anti disiter conformal field theory correspondence.
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, at ACFT for short, Meldoiciana mathematically proved that two
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: seemingly completely different universes are actually perfectly identical.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: Let's break that down because it's so important. Let's look
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: at the first one, which physicists call the bulk.
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: Okay, So the bulk is a universe governed by gravity,
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: but with a very specific warped space time backdrop called
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: Antidecitter space. And to really understand eighty space, you have
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: to look at the cosmological constant.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: Right, Because our actual universe has a positive cosmological constant.
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: Exactly, meaning it has this repulsive gravitational pressure pushing everything apart.
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: Our universe is extending, but antidissitor space has a negative
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: cosmological constant.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: So it possesses an inward attractive pull. It kind of
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: acts like a containment vessel.
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: It does. It creates what physicists called the thermos effect.
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: Like if you were floating in the dead center of
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: this antidissitter universe and you turned on a laser pointer,
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: the beam of light wouldn't just travel infinitely outward forever.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: Because the space itself is warped.
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: Exactly, because space time itself is warped inward, the light
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: beam would actually curve, hit the absolute edge of the
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: universe in a finite amount of time, and bounce right
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: back to you.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: Ad it is so wild. Okay, So the bulk is
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: this warped, gravity filled three D interior. But then we
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: have the second universe, the boundary, and the boundary is
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: a lower dimensional system of quantum particles that just sits
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: on the absolute edge of the bulk. And crucially, and
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: this is the crazy part, this boundary has absolutely zero gravity,
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: none at all. It's governed by a symmetric conformal field theory.
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: And conformal is the really key word there. It basically
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: means a quantum system that looks exactly the same no
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: matter how closely you zoom in or zoom out. It
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: lacks a definitive scale and as you said, it completely
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: lacks gravity. And what melt seene as math proved is
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: that these two radically different systems. The three D gravity
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: filled bulk on the inside and the two D gravity
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: less boundary on the outside are mathematically equivalent.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: So everything happening inside that warped three D universe, even
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: the gravitational pull between objects, is perfectly encoded in the
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: complex quantum entanglement happening between the particles sitting flat on
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: the two D boundary. Yes, the analogy I always go
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: back to because this stuff is so hard to picture,
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: is to think of the universe as a solid soup can.
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: Oh I love this one, right.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: So the three D soup inside is the bulk. It
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: has gravity, it has warped space time, chunks of matter
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: bumping into each other, basically all the messy physics we
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: associate with moving through space. But the flat two D
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: paper label wrapped around the outside of the can has
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: no gravity at all. Yet everything happening to the soup
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: inside is perfectly encoded in the ink on that flat label.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: So the three D soup is just a holographic projection,
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: emerging entirely from the interactions of the ink on the
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: two D label exactly.
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: The three dimensional space isn't fundamental, it's emergent. The fundamental
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: baseline reality is just the quantum entanglement happening on.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: The surface, which gave physicists an incredible tool, right, like
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: a mathematical dictionary.
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because if you're facing an impossibly complex problem involving
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: quantum gravity in the three D bulk, you can just
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: translate that problem out to the gravity free two D boundary,
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: you solve it using standard quantum mechanics, and then you
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: translate the answer back to the.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: Bulk, which is brilliant on a chalkboard. But getting a
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: physical machine with all of its real world noise and
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: hardware limitations to actually project this hologram is a completely
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: different beast. Absolutely, because if the inside bulk is supposed
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: to be this continuous, smooth space time, but a quantum
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: computer runs on discrete, individual digital quibbits, I mean, those
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: just don't match up. You can't pour a smooth, continuous
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: liquid into pixelated digital boxes. So how do they actually
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: bridge that physical gap.
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: Well, the answer actually lies in a concept from computer
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: science quantum error correction. To build any functioning quantum computer,
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: you have to protect the quantum information from environmental noise.
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: I mean even a stray magnetic field or a slight
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: temperature fluctuation can cause a physical quibt to just lose
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: its fragile quantum state decoherence. So computer scientists don't rely
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: on just one physical quibot. They take one logical piece
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: of information and they spread it across many physical quibots.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: Okay, hold on, let me push back on this premise
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: for a second. Sure, error correction is essentially just redundant
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: data backups, right, Like if my hard drive backs up
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: a text file three times across different sectors, that doesn't
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: magically create a three dimensional universe. Why does error correction
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: in a quantum system suddenly manifest as physical geometry?
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: And that? Right, there is the crucial distinction between classical
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: data and quantum data. In a classical computer, you just
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: copy the data, you hit copy paste. But the laws
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: of physics, specifically the no cloning theorem, strictly forbid you
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: from making an exact copy of an unknown quantum state.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: Oh right, You literally cannot just back it up.
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: Exactly, So instead you have to entangle the logical information
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: into this highly complex distributed web across multiple physical quibbets.
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: The information doesn't live in any single physical quibbit. It
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: lives in the correlations the entanglement between them.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: Ah. So, because you can't just copy it, you have
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: to basically smear it out mathematically.
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: Yes, And a team of scientists Harlow, Pistowski, pre Scale,
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: and Yoshida realize something truly breathtaking about this smearing process.
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: They created what is now known as the Happy Why code,
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: named after their initials. Right, and the Happy why code
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: is a network built out of what they call perfect tensors.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: And you can kind of visualize a perfect tensor as
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: a mathematical building block where the information is equally distributed
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: no matter what angle you look at it from.
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. It creates an incredibly robust web. So they
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: use these perfect tensors to build this mosaic basically tiling
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: a hyperbolic space. The logical quibits the hidden data live
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: deep inside the bulk of this network, but the physical quibts,
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: the actual hardware doing the work, sit on the outer edge,
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: the boundary.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: And this is where the physical geometry connection comes in,
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: isn't it Yes, Because.
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: The mathematical algorithm used to recover a corrupted physical quibot
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: on the edge is fundamentally the exact same mathematical process
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: as mapping a physical event deep inside the gravitational bulk
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: to the boundary.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: Wait, really, so the computer science trick we use to
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: just stop a hard drive from losing our data is
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: the exact same math the universe might use to project
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: three dimensional space time.
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: It really is. It works through what they call a
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: greedy algorithm. So imagine an adversary comes in and corrupts
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: a massive chunk of the physical quibots on the boundary
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: of our universe, basically in erasure error. Okay, the system
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: starts at the remaining uncorrupted boundary quibots, and because of
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: how those perfect tensors are interlocked, the algorithm can use
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: the working quibots to shoot inward into the bulk step
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: by step.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: Oh wow.
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, as long as the corrupted region on the edges
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: and too large, the algorithm greedily pushes all the way
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: to the center bypassing the error entirely and reclaims the
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: logical space behind it.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: That is wild. So mapping this out meant that researchers
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: could literally build a tiny version of this holographic dictionary
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: on an actual quantum processor exactly, And they did this
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: on the ion Q forte meaning they were literally using
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: trapped atoms suspended in a vacuum and manipulated by lasers
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: to build a working model of space time.
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: It sounds made up, but yeah.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: But to actually prove the simulation worked, they had to
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: test a major rule from the holographic dictionary, right, the
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: FLM formula, Yes.
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: The Faulkner, Lukoch Maltosina formula. This was a massive theoretical
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: upgrade to an earlier concept called the U Takenagi formula.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: Right because the original formula just connected the entanglement on
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: the boundary to the pure geometric area in the bulk.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: But the FLM formula as a really crucial condom refinement.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: It actually accounts for the quantum matter floating around inside
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: that bulk space exactly.
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: The FLM formula states that the entanglement entropy of a
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: specific region on the two D boundary, which is basically
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: just a measure of how intertwined the quantum information is,
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: is perfectly equal to the area of a minimal surface
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: in the three D bulk divided by a gravitational constant,
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: plus the entropy of any quantum matter trapped inside that
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: bulk volume.
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: The visual that always helps me with this is dipping
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: a wire loop into soapy.
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: Water, yes the soap film.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: Right when you pull it out, the soap film stretches
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: across the loop and it automatically shifts and tightens until
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: it finds the configuration with the absolute minimal possible surface
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: area exactly.
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: So the FLM formula essentially says that if you select
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: a section of the two D boundary, the quantum entanglement
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: of that section corresponds exactly to the area of an invisible,
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: stretching soap film extending into the three D gravitational bulk.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: So the team programmed this exact scenario into the IMQ fourte.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: They compile the layers of the happy code into these
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: highly optimized quantum gate sequences, and then they basically systematically
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: turn the dial varying the entanglement of the simulated quantum
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: matter inside the bulk.
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: And to see what happened, they had to perform full
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: quantum state tomography, which is just an incredibly exhaustive process.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: Because you can't just look at a quantum system once
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: right the act of measuring it collapses the state right.
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: Full quantum state demography means they had to run the
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: experiment over and over and over again, measuring the system
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: from every conceivable aim just to build a complete statistical,
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: three dimensional picture of the entanglement entropy.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: And the result was a huge milestone. For the first
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: time experimentally, they confirmed the FLM formula on a physical device.
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: As they made the matter inside the bulk more and
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: more entangled, the measured entropy on the boundary increased in
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: perfect lockstep.
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: But here is the really critical part. The calculated geometric
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: area term that invisible soap film remained perfectly constant.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: Meaning the background space was totally stable, exactly.
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: The background space didn't warp or bend at all, regardless
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: of what the matter inside was doing.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: Okay, but, and this is a glaring issue. If the
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: soap film didn't change size, how does this represent real gravity?
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: Because Einstein taught us that matter possesses mass and energy
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: that physically warps and bends the geometry of space time.
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: Right, real gravity is dynamic.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a bowling ball on a trampoline sinks. If their
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: area term remained perfectly rigid, doesn't that mean they beasically
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: simulated a universe with a completely stiff, unresponsive background.
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: You've hit on the exact limitation of the standard happy code,
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: and honestly, it's why the next phase of this experiment
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: is arguably the most innovative part of the whole thing.
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: Oh really yeah, because the original code acts like a
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: rigid background since it's built out of basic quantum operations
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: called Clifford gates and Clicker gates are highly efficient, predictable stabilizers.
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: They rotate the quantum state in these clean, rigid ninety
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: degree increments.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: So geometrically they're inflexible completely.
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: They are completely incapable of reacting to changes in the
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: matter states within them. It's like having a trampoline made
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: of solid concrete.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: So to simulate real dynamic gravity, where matter actually warps
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: the space time around at what physicists call gravitational back reaction,
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: the team had to basically intentionally break the rules of
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: their own incredibly stable code.
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: Yes, they had to introduce a concept that is formerly
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: known in quantum information science as magic.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: I still can't get over the fact that magic is
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: a rigorously defined technical term in peer reviewed physics.
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: I know it's great. It basically refers to non stabilizer resources.
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: To inject this magic, the researchers added deliberate over rotations
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: and under rotations to the quantum.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: Gates, so instead of a clean ninety degree rotation, they
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: might rotate the state by some arbitrary, messy angle.
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: Exactly by detuning the gates, they shifted the circuit away
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: from those rigid Clifford constraints. They introduced complex mathematical interference
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: that effectively forced the concrete trampoline to become flexible.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: Oh wow, So by overturning the dials on the quantum
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: computer injecting this magic, they forced the simulated space to
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: become dynamic, and the results completely flipped, didn't they They did.
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: Once the magic was active, they measured the proto area
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: entropy again, but this time the geometric area term the
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: soap film wasn't static anymore. It actually grew as the
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: bulk quibits became more entangled.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: So the quantum matter inside the universe was actively altering
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: and stretching this arounding emergent geometry.
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: Just like real mass warps real space time. It is
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: a stunning analog for a tree gravitational system. But having
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: achieved the dynamic reactive space time, the researchers decided to
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: push the boundaries even further. Of course, they did, they
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: moved into a multi system configuration to test one of
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: the most mind bending theories in all of physics, the EPR.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: Conjecture right pioneered again by Maldacina and Susskind. So ER
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: stands for Einstein Rosen, which is just the scientific designation
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: for a physical wormhole, a bridge through the fabric of
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: space time connecting two distant regions, and EPR.
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: Stands for Einstein Podolski Rosen, which refers to their classic
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: paper describing quantum entanglement.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: Right so Er EPR suggests that these two vastly different concepts,
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: a tunnel through physical space and a spooky quantum connection
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: between particles, are actually the exact same phenomenon. Entangling two
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: black holes literally creates a physical wormhole between them.
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: Yes, And to test this in the lab, the research
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: which just didn't just use one simulated universe, they took
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: two entirely independent copies of their magic enriched happy code,
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: two completely separate computer generated universes running on the quantum processor,
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: and then they began to entangle the logical bulk degrees
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: of freedom across the two distinct systems.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: So by tying two separate computer universes together, with entanglement.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: They were practically trying to build a microscopic wormhole shortcut
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: between them. How do you even measure a wormhole inside
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: a computer chip?
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: Well, you measure the distance, and in a holographic universe,
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: distance is dictated by entanglement. What they observed was the
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: exact opposite trend of their single universe test.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: What do you mean?
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: As the entanglement between the two separate universe blocks was
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: cranked up, the measured proto area entropy actually decreased.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: Why does a decrease in entropy mean a wormhole is forming?
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: Because high entanglement across the two systems means they're becoming
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: highly correlated. They're practically sharing the same state. In the
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: mathematical language of holography, a drop in that specific entropy
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: is the signature of a wormhole mouth contracting.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: Oh wow yea.
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: As the entanglement grows, the physical distance between the two
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: distinct regions of space qualitatively shortens. The space is literally
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: pulling together.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: That is just I mean. We have computer science air
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: correction algorithms acting as the foundation of physical geometry. We
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: have rigid codes being injected with magic non stabilizer gates
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: to bend that geometry, and we have microscopic wormholes shrinking
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: the distance between simulated universes inside a commercial quantum computer.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: It is incredibly easy to get swept away by the
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: science fiction of it all.
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: Which is exactly why we need to ground this in
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: reality with a necessary note of caution. Fair Enough, the
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: researchers themselves are quick to emphasize that these are toy models.
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: They're operating in what is called an N one regime,
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: dealing with only a handful of quibits. Because the system
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: is so small and discretized, it doesn't possess a true, smooth,
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: semi classical space time background.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: So it's like an eight bit heavily pixelated rough draft
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: of a universe. It isn't smooth reality.
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: Yet Precisely, a smooth space time only emerges when you're
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: dealing with thousands or millions of highly complex quantum degrees
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: of freedom. And furthermore, we really have to remember that
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: this entire experiment relies on antidicis space right, the.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: Universe with a negative cosmological constant that pulls inward.
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: Exactly, but our actual physical universe is expanding. It operates
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: on a positive cosmological constant bridging that gap. Taking the
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: holographic principle from a contracting ADS universe and applying it
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: to our expanding disitter universe remains one of the most
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: profound and difficult open challenges in modern string theory and
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: quantum gravity.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: The dictionary just doesn't fully translate yet.
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: Not yet.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: But even with the n one limitation and the wrong
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: cosmological constant, the philosophical weight of this experiment is staggering.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: I mean, we are living in an era where physicists
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: don't just have to argue over abstract equation on a
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: chalkboard to understand quantum gravity. We can physically build tiny,
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: pixelated drafts of the universe inside quantum computers to test
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: the absolute boundaries of reality.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah. They literally took a mathematical theory about the fundamental
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: illusion of space and ran it on a machine using
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: trapped atoms. It is the ultimate convergence of information theory
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: and fundamental physics.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: It provides tangible experimental weight to the idea that reality
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: at its most basic level isn't constructed out of space
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: and time. Space and time are secondary. The actual foundation
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: of the universe is quantum information and entanglement.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: Which leaves you with such a wild thought. If space
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: and gravity are just holographic projections of quantum entanglement, if
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: the happy Y code is right, and the three D
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: world we move through is just an emergent property of
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: a flat, interconnected web of data. It makes you wonder
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: if distance itself is just a convincing illusion.
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: It really makes you question everything it does.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: When you step outside and look up at the stars tonight,
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: ask so if the vastness of space you are seeing
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: is actually real, or if it is just a holographic
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: reflection of microscopic quantum connections happening all around you, hiding
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: right in plain sight.