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Could Gravitational Waves Become Trapped Inside Spacetime? · The Quark Side - Quantum Physics Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the quark 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 picture a wave, like, really visualize it.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: Maybe it's a I don't know, a massive ocean swell
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: born out in the deep water, finally crashing onto a
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: jagged shoreline.
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: Or you know, even just a sound wave like the
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: bass line of your favorite song, carrying through the air
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: and vibrating your chest as it passes.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Or maybe it's a pulsive light silently rocketing
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: through a fiber optic cable somewhere beneath the city streets. Right,
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: the thing is, regardless of what kind of wave you're
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: picturing right now, they all share this one fundamental defining characteristic.
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: Right, they move.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Yes, the very nature of a wave is that it moves,
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: I mean, it propagates. Its entire existence is basically about
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: traveling from point A to point B.
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: Well. Yeah, from the exact microsecond a wave is born,
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: its physical identity is completely defined by that motion. It
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: transfers energy across a medium, and it's basically in a
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: constant state of fleeing its source. It's always running away, right,
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: So to talk about a stationary wave almost feels like
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: a contradiction in terms. I mean, a wave that doesn't
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: move really goes against our basic intuition of how physics
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: even operates.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: It totally does. And that brings us to the ultimate wave,
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: the one that really captured the world's imagination about a
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: decade ago. Gravitational waves.
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: Ah, yes, the big ones.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we aren't talking about water or sound anymore. We
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: are talking about ripples in the literal, elastic fabric of
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: space time itself. Like ocean waves, gravitational waves are born
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: in these massive, violent cosmic events like.
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: Black holes colliding, stuff.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: Like that exactly, and their entire destinies to travel outward
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: across the universe at the speed of light. But our
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: mission today is to explore a completely mind bending anomaly.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: We are asking the question what happens when a wave,
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: even a ripple in the fabric of space time itself,
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: just completely refuses to move.
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: It's a profound question. Honestly. We're looking at how tricks
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: borrowed from quantum mechanics and specifically from the study of
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: light in a field called photonics, are theoretically allowing scientists
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: to trap gravitational waves in place, which is wild to
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: think about it is, and understanding how to freeze a
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: ripple in space time isn't just some neat mathematical parlor trick.
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: It could revolutionize our understanding of the universe, of quantum
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: entanglement and really the very mechanics of reality.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: So to understand how we trap the fabric of the universe,
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: we kind of have to go back to the origin
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: of the trap itself. And this story doesn't start with
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: black holes or massive space telescopes. It actually starts nearly
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: a century ago in the microscopic world of quantum mechanics.
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it traces back to nineteen twenty nine. Physicists were
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: grappling with the fundamental rules of how particles like electrons
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: behave and the traditional rules they were working with were well,
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: they were pretty straightforward.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: Okay, lay them out for us.
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  Speaker 3: So first you have your bound states. Think of an
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: electron safely orbiting the nucleus of an atom because it's
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: trapped by the atom's pull and just doesn't have enough
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: energy to escape. We say it has discrete negative energy.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: It's in an energy deficit based exactly, it's stuck. It's
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: kind of like being stuck at the bottom of a
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: deep well. You simply don't have the physical energy required
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: to climb out, so you're just bound to the bottom.
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: That's a perfect way to picture it. And on the
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: flip side of that, you have your unbound states. This
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: is a free flying particle moving through space as a wave.
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: It has escaped the well.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: Entirely, so it has plenty of energy. Right.
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  Speaker 3: It has what we call a continuum of positive energies,
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  Speaker 3: meaning it's free to go wherever it wants at whatever
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  Speaker 3: speed its energy allows. But then in nineteen twenty nine,
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  Speaker 3: physicists propose something really weird, a localized perturbation, a bound
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: state that mathematically exists entirely inside that continuum of positive.
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  Speaker 2: Energy inside it.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's called a bound state in the continuum, or
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: a BIC. For sure. It's a wave that has all
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: the right energy conditions to propagate, to move, to be
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  Speaker 3: completely free, but it just stays perfectly stuck in one
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  Speaker 3: place forever.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: Okay, this is a really tricky concept to wrap your
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: head around, so let's try an analogy. Imagine a bird, okay, bird, Yeah. Normally,
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: if a bird is exhausted, meaning it has negative energy,
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: it's stuck on the ground. That's your standard bound state.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: But if the bird is rested and has plenty of
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  Speaker 2: energy positive energy, it takes off and flies away. That's
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  Speaker 2: your unbound state. But a bound state in the continuum,
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: a BIC is like a bird that has completely full
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: energy reserves. It has plenty of positive energy to sing
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  Speaker 2: and fly, but it happens to be sitting in this
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: high tech room equipped with the ultimate noise canceling technology.
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: Ah, I see where you're going with this, right.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: The bird sings with all its might, but the environment
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: instantly produces the exact inverse sound waves, perfectly canceling the
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: song out. The bird has the energy to broadcast its
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: song to the world, but the fundamental mechanics of its
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: environment mean the sound literally cannot leave that immediate space exactly.
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  Speaker 3: The energy is absolutely there, but the configuration of the
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: system prevents the departure. And you know this, nineteen twenty
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: nine quantum idea didn't just stay isolated in the realm
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: of quantum mechanics. It turned out to be a universal
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: wave phenomenon. Over the last two decades, the concept of
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: bics has surged across almost every branch of physics.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, if this trick relies entirely on the
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: universal mathematics of waves, then the medium shouldn't matter at all,
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  Speaker 2: whether it's water, sound, or light.
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  Speaker 3: Precisely, scientists started finding and creating these bound states in
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: acoustic waves bouncing between parallel plates. They found them in
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: water waves trapped and specialized tubes, in elastic waves vibrating
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: through solid materials.
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  Speaker 2: Wow, so everyone.
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  Speaker 3: Literally everywhere, and most crucially for our discussion, they found
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  Speaker 3: them in electromagnetic waves using nanophotonics. Now, when we talk
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: about non quantum feels like water or light, the continuum
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  Speaker 3: isn't really about energy levels like that electron in the well.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: Right, So what does a continuum actually mean if we
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: aren't talking about energy.
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  Speaker 3: It becomes a continuum of wave vectors.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: Wavevectors.
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the physics term for describing all the infinite
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: possible trajectories, angles, and spatial shapes a free wave can take.
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  Speaker 3: When it's moving through open space. A wavevector dictates the
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  Speaker 3: direction and the phase of the propagation.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, got it?
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  Speaker 3: So existing in the continuum of wavevectors. Just means the
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: wave has access to all the open pathways to travel outward,
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: and yet the end result is exactly the same. A
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: wave that has every physical pathway available to propagate completely
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  Speaker 3: localizes itself.
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  Speaker 2: But if there is no physical wall like no canyon
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: rock for a sound wave to bounce off of, or
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: no glass fiber keeping light contained, the only way a
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: wave stops moving is if something actively cancels it out.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: Are we talking about interference here? How does a nanophotonic
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: system build a cage out of open space?
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  Speaker 3: It builds a cage out of symmetry symmetry. Okay, this
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: is arguably the most intuitive localization mechanism heavily used in
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  Speaker 3: modern optics. It's known as a symmetry protected BIC. To
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: understand it, we really just look at how the wave
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  Speaker 3: is being generated and compare that to the fundamental shape
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  Speaker 3: of a moving wave.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, let's visualize that shape.
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  Speaker 3: Sure, imagine a microscopic highly periodic system. Let's say a
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: repeating grid. Within each tiny unit cell of this grid,
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: you have two identical dipoles. You can picture them as
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: two tiny microscopic radio antennas, right and they're pointing in
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  Speaker 3: exact opposite directions.
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  Speaker 2: So one points perfectly north, the other point's perfectly south.
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  Speaker 3: Exactly. Now, let's look at the symmetry of that setup.
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  Speaker 3: If you take those two opposing antennas and rotate the
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  Speaker 3: whole setup one hundred and eighty degrees in a plane,
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  Speaker 3: the north one points south and the south one points north.
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  Speaker 2: But since the two antennas are completely identical, the overall
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: pit sure looks exactly the same as when you started.
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  Speaker 2: Like you literally couldn't tell it had been rotated. Right.
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  Speaker 3: In physics, we call this property even parity. The system
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: is perfectly symmetric under a one hundred eighty degree rotation. Now,
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: let's look at a standard moving electromagnetic wave that might
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: try to propagate a wave from this setup.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, what does that look like.
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  Speaker 3: Well, if you take a standard traveling wave and rotate
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  Speaker 3: it one hundred and eighty degrees, it points in the
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: opposite direction. The crest of the wave becomes the trough.
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  Speaker 3: It has an opposite phase. We call this odd parody.
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  Speaker 1: Ah.
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  Speaker 2: I see, so the source the opposing antennas has even parity,
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  Speaker 2: but the wave trying to leave the system has odd parity.
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  Speaker 2: The geometries are just fundamentally mismatched.
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  Speaker 3: Because the symmetry of the source and the symmetry of
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: the moving wave are fundamentally incompatible, their interference perfectly cancels out.
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  Speaker 3: The exact moment the wave tries to move away from
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  Speaker 3: the source, the wave just cannot propagate. It is completely
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  Speaker 3: trapped by its own mathematical perfection.
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  Speaker 2: So it's not hitting a barrier. The wave literally cancels
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  Speaker 2: its own ability to leave the room because its shape
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  Speaker 2: fundamentally disagrees with the rules of moving forward. Yes, it's
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: basically a prison made entirely of destructive interference.
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  Speaker 3: That is exactly what it is. The geometry of its
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: environment makes propagation an absolute mathematical impossibility, and once physicists
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  Speaker 3: realized they could trap light and sound using this specific
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  Speaker 3: symmetry trick, the next logical leap was the grandest scale.
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  Speaker 2: Imaginable gravitational waves.
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  Speaker 3: Exactly, if general relativity describes gravitational waves as a wave phenomenon,
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: then all these universal rules of destructive interference should apply
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  Speaker 3: to them as well.
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  Speaker 2: So to trap a gravitational wave, we have to look
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  Speaker 2: at its specific parity. We need to know what it
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  Speaker 2: symmetry looks like when it propagates, so we can basically
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: build a source that cancels it out. What does a
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  Speaker 2: ripple in space time actually look like as it passes by?
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  Speaker 3: Okay? Imagine you are floating in empty space, looking straight
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  Speaker 3: ahead at a gravitational wave coming right toward you. As
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: it passes through your location, it physically stretches space in
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  Speaker 3: one direction, say, vertically, and simultaneously squeeze the space in
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  Speaker 3: the perpendicular direction horizontally. Okay, stretching and squeezing, and then
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: it rapidly alternates. It stretches vertical, squeezes horizontal, then squeezes vertical,
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  Speaker 3: stretches horizontal.
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  Speaker 2: It's like watching a perfect circle get pulled into a
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: tall oval and then immediately squashed into a wide oval
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  Speaker 2: over and over again.
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: Yes, great visual. Let's test it symmetry based on that.
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  Speaker 3: If you take that passingway that's stretching and squeezing oval pattern,
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  Speaker 3: and you rotate it one hundred and eighty degrees.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: Well, if I flip a tall oval upside down, it's
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: still a tall oval. If I slip a wide oval
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: upside down, it's still a wide oval. The geometric shape
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: remains totally unchanged.
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  Speaker 3: Which means gravitational waves naturally have even parity. They are
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: perfectly symmetric under one hundred and eighty degree rotation.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: Okay, So if the moving gravitational wave has even parody,
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: then to build our mathematical prison to trap it using
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: symmetry protection, our source perturbation must have odd parity. We
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: have to create the opposite geometric shape in space time
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: to force that destructive interference.
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: Precisely, to achieve this symmetry incompatibility in space time, physicists
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: postulate modulating the phase of a perpurbation across a two
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: dimensional plane by creating a specific periodic flat space time
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  Speaker 3: perturbation with odd parity. It becomes fundamentally impossible for that
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: perturbation to couple with a standard even parody gravitational waves,
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  Speaker 3: so it can't propagate away exactly. It becomes a gravitational
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  Speaker 3: wave bound state in the continuum.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, I have to push back here for a second.
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  Speaker 2: General relativity is famously rigid. You can't just mathematically modulate
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: spacetime on a two D plane like it's a piece
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: of digital plastic. Does the hardcore math of the metric
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: tensor actually allow for this or is this just a
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: theoretical fantasy where we assume away all the hard physics.
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: That is the most crucial question to ask. General relativity
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: is extremely unforgiving. To prove this actually works, physicists have
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: to rigorously analyze them metric tensor. That's the mathematical tool,
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: the fundamental ruler that describes how spacetime curves and how
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: distances are measured in a gravitational feel. So, if we
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: assume a periodic perturbation of this flat space time metric tensor,
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: and we assume it exponentially localizes in a plane, similar
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: to what we observe with electromagnetic fields and nanophotonics, we
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: run it through Einstein's field equations.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: But when you try to pack the entire mass or
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: energy source of a wave into an infinitely thin two
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: dimensional plane, doesn't the math usually just break down like
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: it predicts infinite impossible energy densities, which violates the strict
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: rules of local energy conservation.
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  Speaker 3: That is the exact hurdle. These mathematical constructs are called
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: distributional sources. Typically, a metric tensor associated with a distributional
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: source struggles to conserve energy locally because of those predicted infinities.
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: But here is the breakthrough laid on me. General relativity
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: is notoriously nonlinear. Gravity creates more gravity, so physicists take
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: a first order of proc summation. They essentially zoom in
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: on the complex curves of the math until they look linear.
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: When they run this specific odd parity perturbation through those
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: linearized equations, the idealized solutions successfully conserve energy and momentum locally.
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: Really yes, provided a certain mathematical relationship between the perturbation
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: parameters is strictly obeyed.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: So under very specific, tightly controlled parameters, the math just
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: avoids the infinities. Space time actually permits the cage to exist.
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: It does even when the map is pushed further to
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: look at second order effects, where the nonlinear gravity creating
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: gravity interactions are reintroduced. The equations confirmed that the perturbations
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: stay completely localized, just like the photonic waves on a microchip.
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: They live entirely within the continuum of wavevectors, but they
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: are perfectly bound by their symmetry.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: The math of the universe says, yes, you can build
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: a cage out of space time for space time. But
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: this rais is a really practical problem. I think well,
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: a perfect cage that nothing can enter and nothing can
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: ever leave seems fundamentally useless to us as observers. If
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: a wave is perfectly mathematically isolated, we can't interact with
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: it at all.
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: Ah, you've hit on the flaw of perfection. A perfect
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: be ic is a beautiful mathematical construct, but practically you're right,
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: it is deaf and mute to the outside world. And
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: this is where photonics once again provides the real world blueprint.
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: In the lab, scientists don't usually try to build perfect
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: be ICs. They build what are called quasib.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: Ic quasib ICs, so by breaking the symmetry just a
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: tiny bit, like if we mess up the perfect north
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: south alignment of our little antennas, does the trap start
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: to leak?
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: Exactly? Intentionally breaking the perfect symmetry is the key in
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: a photonic material. You might do this by physically patterning
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: the material, creating microscopic geometric defects, or slightly tweaking its
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: optical density. By breaking the symmetry just a fraction of
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: a percent, the perfectly trapped localized mode suddenly starts to
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: talk to propagating waves.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: It talks to them.
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it begins to leak out very slowly, and it
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: allows external waves to couple with it.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: Going back to our noise canceling room for the bird,
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: instead of the room perfectly canceling one hundred percent of
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: the song, we introduce a tiny flaw in the speakers.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: Now ninety nine percent of the sound is still trapped
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: and bouncing around inside, but a tiny amplified fraction of
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: the song leaks out under the door.
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: That's a great way to put it. And applying this
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: leakage to space time is where the astronomical applications become
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: just staggering. If we can conceptualize massive systems in the
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: universe with equivalent broken symmetries, whether that's an asymmetry in
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: a black hole's geometry or a dense fluctuation in the
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: surrounding cosmic environment, those systems could sustain gravitational wave cause ibics.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: Which acts as an incredible cosmic amplifier. Think about what
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: this means for astronomy. I mean, right now, when incredibly
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: massive objects like two black holes are caught in a
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: death spiral circling each other faster and faster, they emit
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: gravitational waves.
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: Right, but those waves are incredibly faint exactly.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: Facilities like LTO, which uses massive lasers shot down miles
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: long vacuum tubes just to measure changes in distance smaller
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: than a proton. They are mostly waiting for the final
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: violent fraction of a second when those black holes actually collide.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: That crash is the only signal loud enough to easily catch.
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: But if the surrounding environment of those inspiraling black holes
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: creates a broken symmetry that supports a gravitational wave quasibic,
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: that system would trap and amplify the gravitational waves as
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: they are being generated during the long spiral wow. The
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: trapped wave bounces back and forth on itself, building up
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: immense local intensity before it leaks out. The perturbation of
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: space time would be enhanced exponentially, so.
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: We wouldn't have to wait for the crash. If we
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: can harness this enhancement, we might be able to measure
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: the incredibly faint signals of those black holes much earlier.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: It provides the foundation for like an early warning system
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: that tracks massive cosmic events long before the actual merger.
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: Furthermore, these as GW quasibics wouldn't just amplify existing low
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: frequency signals. Because of their highly localized, intensely energetic nature,
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: they could potentially act as a direct source of high
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: frequency gravitational waves.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: Which we don't really have a way to study right now.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: No.
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: Currently, our entire infrastructure is designed to look for relatively
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: low frequency waves. Discovering a source of high frequency gravitational
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: waves would throw open the doors to an entirely new
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: spectrum of astronomy. It is the equivalent of suddenly discovering
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: you can see X rays when your entire life you've
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: only ever perceived visible light.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: That is just incredible. But let's push this concept to
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: the absolute limit. We are talking about massive black holes
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: and galactic early warning systems, But the grandest implication of
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: this physics takes us right back to the microscopic scale.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: We are looking at the ultimate unresolved physics problem, the
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: intersection of gravity and quantum mechanics.
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: Yes, we are venturing into the bleeding edge of theoretical physics. Here,
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: gravity is thought to be a primary mechanism for entanglement
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: and for a process called decoherence. Decoherence is basically what
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: happens when quantum systems lose their magic. A quantum system
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: like a particle existing in multiple states at once relies
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: on perfect, delicate harmonic probabilities. When it interacts with the
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: messy macro world, specifically through the relentless pool of gravity,
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: it loses that harmony. It decoheres, collapsing into a single
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: standard classical state, so.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: The quantum information gets scrambled the exact moment it touches
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: the gravity of the real world exactly.
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: Now imagine shaking flat space time at incredibly high frequencies.
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: In physics, we know that under extreme conditions, specifically in
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: the presence of incredibly strong magnetic fields, fundamental particles and
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: waves can actually convert into.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: One another, convert light into gravity.
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: Yes, photons of light, gravitational waves, and even hypothetical particles
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: of gravity called gravitons can theoretically transform back and forth.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: That's just extreme cosmic aldomy into ripples of space time
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: and ripples of space time turned back into light. It is.
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: But the massive problem with this alchemy is the dissonance.
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: The differing fundamental natures of light and gravity create an
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: impedance mismatch during the conversion, and this dissonance leads directly
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: to that decoherence we just mentioned. Ah I see the
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: delicate quantum information carried by the photon is scrambled when
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: it tries to become a graviton. But remember the primary
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: function of quasi by cs in photonics. We use them
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: specifically to circumvent these exact types of dissonances. By trapping
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: the light in a quasi by A, we control its
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: interactions perfectly, matching its frequencies to preserve its harmony.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: We can preserve harmony with light using a quasi by C,
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: and light and gravity can convert into each other. Then
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: localizing gravitational ways using a GW quasi by C could
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: fix the dissonance entirely exactly.
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: GW quasi by cs could be the ultimate synchronization chamber.
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: They could provide a stable, perfectly tuned environment or gravity
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: and quantum mechanics interact without scrambling the data. They can
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: become the key to studying the true nature of space
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: time and what fundamentally exists within it at the microscopic
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: quantum level.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: Okay, to pull all of this together, we started with
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: a bizarre mathematical quirk from nineteen twenty nine. A particle
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: with enough energy to move that just inherently decides to
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: hover due to its environment. We watched that idea jump
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: from microscopic physics to a raise of tiny antennas using
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: the perfect cancelation of symmetry to build cages out of
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: empty space. Right, And finally we've scaled that exact same
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: mathematical blueprint up to the fabric of the universe itself,
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: theoretically trapping ripples in space time. It just reminds us
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: that the universe isn't a passive stage where events happen.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: It's an active, tunable instrument. We're just finally learning how
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: to read.
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: The sheet music, beautifully said, And if we are learning
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: to read the sheet music, the inevitable next step is
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: learning to play the instrument, which leaves a deeply provocative
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: question to consumer love these let's hear it. If the
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: mathematics hold, and if we can eventually conceptualize, locate, and
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: perhaps one day even control these localized pockets of shaking
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: space time, these gravitational quasi bics, could we use them
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: as a medium.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: A medium for what exactly?
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: For memory? Imagine a future where we need to store vast,
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: incomprehensible amounts of delicate quantum information. Could we one day
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: build a storage drive made not of silicon chips and
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: not of magnetic tape, but of permanently trapped, endlessly vibrating
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: ripples in the very fabric of reality itself.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: A hard drive built out of trapped space time. Yeah,
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: I cannot think of a more profound thought to leave
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: you with today. Thank you so much for bringing your
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: curiosity to the conversation and for exploring the absolute limits
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: of the universe with us. Until next time,