Latest / The Quark Side - Quantum Physics Podcast / Scientists Capture Molecular Orbitals in 3D for the First Time

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Scientists Capture Molecular Orbitals in 3D for the First Time · 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: Have you ever tried to track something that is, you know,
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: quite literally everywhere at once.
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: I mean that sounds like a total nightmare, honestly, right.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: But imagine throwing a baseball and instead of flying in
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: this nice, straight, predictable line, it just instantly dissolves into
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: a cloud of mist.
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: Just hoof gone. It a thin air.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: Exactly, and then it floats through both open windows of
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: a house at the exact same time and only becomes
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: a solid baseball again the absolute microsecond it smacks into
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: the back.
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: Wall, which is just well, it's the maddening reality of
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: quantum mechanics in a nutshell.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: It really is mind bending, because in our normal day
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: to day world, things have the decency to stay exactly
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: where we put them. You leave your keys on the
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: kitchen counter, they are on the kitchen.
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: Counter unless you're mean you lose them constantly.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: Fair point, fairpoint, but generally speaking, yes, But when you
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: zoom in way way down to the fundamental building blocks
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: of our universe. Those normal rules just completely break down
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: fundamental particles like electrons. They just flat out refuse to
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: be pinned down to a single location.
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: They really do. And it is so incredibly counterintuitive to
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: how our human brains actually evolve. To see the world
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: at that microscopic scale, you simply cannot point to an
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: electron and say it is exactly right there. Yeah, it
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: just doesn't work that way.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Right, So to deal with this, physicists use this concept
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: called a wave function. And despite the name, if you're
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: picturing a wave crashing on a beach, just throw that.
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: Out right now, Yeah, totally different thing.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: In quantum mechanics, a wave function is really more like
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: a mathematical map, this vast sort of probability cloud that
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: shows absolutely everywhere an electron might be and you know
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: how fast it might be moving at any given moment exactly.
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: And what's fascinating here is that when we talk about
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: these wave functions as the exist inside a molecule, what
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: we actually call molecular orbitals, they are essentially the ultimate
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: instruction manuals for.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: Matter, the ultimate instruction manuals.
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they carry the complete inherent code for how that
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: molecule will interact with the entire universe around it.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Wait an instruction manual, So it's a it's less like
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: looking at a physical photograph of a molecule and more
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: like looking directly at the molecule's source code.
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: That's a really great way to put it. If you
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: want to know how a specific molecule is going to
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: absorb a photon of sunlight, or how it's going to
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: physically bond with another molecule to spark a chemical reaction, well,
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: that behavior isn't random.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: It's already programmed in right.
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: It is written directly into the shape and the mathematical
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: behavior of that molecular orbital. You can read the wave function,
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: you basically understand the fundamental choreography of chemistry.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: But actually seeing it or reading that code has always
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: been this ultimate white whale for physicists. I've always thought
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: of the wave function like a spinning fan blade.
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: Oh that's a good analogy.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Like when the fan is turned off, you can
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: point directly at the blade, but when you turn it
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: on high, the blade just becomes this blurred disc. You know,
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: the blade is in there somewhere, occupying that space, But
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: you just can't freeze it to see its shape without
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: turning the fan completely off.
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: That is the exact hurdle. It's the classic old quantum
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: measurement problem. By its very nature, a wave function cannot
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: be directly observed in its entirety, because the very moment
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: you try to measure a quantum state, you force it
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: to pick.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: A location, you collapse the wave exactly.
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you force the fan blade to freeze in one
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: random spot and you entirely lose the shape of the blur.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: Okay, let's unpack this then, because today we are exploring
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: a massive breakthrough from an interdisciplinary team at the University
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: of gutting In published in Nature Communications, where they actually
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: managed to image the complete three dimensional wave function of
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: a nanimeter size organic molecule.
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: Which is just a staggering achievement.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: It really is, because they didn't just run some computer simulation.
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  Speaker 2: They captured the actual three D shape of this probability cloud.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: But if a wave function is just a cloud of probabilities,
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: how do you take a three D photograph of something
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: that doesn't have a fixed shape.
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: Well, it requires a highly indirect approach. You obviously can't
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: just snap a picture with a tiny quantum camera. So
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: the team used a technique called photoelectron spectroscopy.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, photoelectron spectroscopy. That sounds incredibly intimidating. Walk me through
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: the actual mechanics of that.
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: I know it sounds dense, but at its core it's
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: quite elegant. You basically shine a very specific, high energy
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: pulse of light right at the molecule, Okay, and this
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: incoming light acts a bit like a cue ball in
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: a game of billiards. It smashes into the molecule and
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: it kicks an electron entirely out of its.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: Orbital Oh wow, it just evicts.
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: It completely evixed from the molecule. And as that electron
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: goes flying away, the researchers use highly sensitive detectors to
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: measure its momentum. They map the exact speed in the
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: specific angle of its departure.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: So by tracking the speed and angle of the electron
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: flying off, you can kind of work backward to figure
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  Speaker 2: out the environment that was in before it got hit.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, but there is a major catch here. Measuring that
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: momentum only provides access to exactly one half of the
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: wave functions information, just half.
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  Speaker 2: What is the other half.
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  Speaker 3: So mathematically speaking, a wave function has two main components,
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: amplitude and phase. The amplitude is what they could derive
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  Speaker 3: from the momentum of that escaping electron.
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  Speaker 2: Let's pause right there for a second. Define amplitude and
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: phase for me, because if I hear amplitude, my brain
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: instantly goes to a guitariump.
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  Speaker 3: Fair enough, that's where most people go. Let's use ocean
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: waves as an analogy instead. The amplitude is essentially the
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: height of the wave, how intense or powerful it is.
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: In quantum terms, amplitude tells us the probability of finding
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: the electron in a specific spot.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: So the higher the amplitude, the higher the chance it
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: is physically there exactly. Okay, So they measure the electron
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: flying away and that tells them the amplitude the height
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: of the probability wave. What about the phase.
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: Phase is more about timing and structural alignment. If you
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: picture two ocean waves crashing into each other, the phase
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  Speaker 3: determines whether the peaks of those waves perfectly line up
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: to create one massive wave, or you know, if the
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: peak of one lines up with the trough of another
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: and they just cancel each other out. Completely flat.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: Oh like noise canceling headphones.
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  Speaker 3: Spot on in a molecule, phase tells us the structural
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  Speaker 3: flow and the direction of the wave function, and that
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  Speaker 3: phase information it is completely destroyed the exact moment the
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: electron is knocked out of the molecule.
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  Speaker 2: So they knock the electron out. They successfully measure the amplitude,
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  Speaker 2: but the phase is just lost to the void. They
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: basically only have half the puzzle exactly.
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  Speaker 3: But the brilliance of this technique is that they gathered
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  Speaker 3: that first half without destroying the underlying math that governs
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  Speaker 3: the whole system. Okay, so they take the momentum data
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  Speaker 3: they did collect and they feed it into sophisticated computer
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  Speaker 3: algorithms designed to deduce the missing phase.
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  Speaker 2: Wait. Wait, so they only measure half of it and
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: the computer just guesses the rest. How do we know
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: it's accurate? How is this not just a highly educated
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  Speaker 2: guess by an algorithm.
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  Speaker 3: It's a very fair challenge, and it's something a lot
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  Speaker 3: of people struggle with at first, but it's crucial to
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  Speaker 3: understand that it is absolutely not a guess. It is
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  Speaker 3: a strict mathematical deduction.
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  Speaker 2: Walk me through that.
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: Think of it a bit like solving a Sudoku puzzle.
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  Speaker 3: If you know the numbers in certain boxes, the fundamental
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  Speaker 3: rules of the puzzle dictate that there's only one possible
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  Speaker 3: number that can legally go in a remaining blank.
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  Speaker 2: Box right right, Because of the grid rules.
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  Speaker 3: Exactly the remaining numbers aren't guessed, They're forced into existence
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  Speaker 3: by the rules of the system itself.
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  Speaker 2: I get the Sudoku analogy, I really do. But a
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: Sudoku board has exactly eighty one squares. A molecular wave
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: function has what billions of complex quantum possibilities and infinite number?
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  Speaker 2: Isn't there just a huge margin of error when you
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  Speaker 2: scale up to molecular physics.
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  Speaker 3: That's the key difference. Though in Sudoko the rules are
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: just man made logic. In this molecule, the rules are
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  Speaker 3: the unbreakable physical laws of the universe. The algorithm isn't
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: just looking for likely patterns, is applying strict physical constraints.
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  Speaker 2: What kind of physical constraints.
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: Things like the conservation of energy and the exact physical
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  Speaker 3: symmetry of the molecule itself. The amplitude in the phase
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  Speaker 3: are not independent variables that can just do whatever they want.
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  Speaker 3: They are mathematically locked together by the physical structure of
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  Speaker 3: the atoms.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, I'm starting to see it.
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  Speaker 3: Because the researchers design this algorithm to rigidly apply the
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: specific physical geometry of the molecule, knowing the amplitude absolutely
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: dictates what the phase must be. There's only one mathematically
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  Speaker 3: viable reality that doesn't outright break the laws of physics.
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  Speaker 2: Ah wow, Okay, I see. So the computer isn't hallucinating
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: the misas of data. It's just tracing the invisible mathematical
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: strings that attach the half we can see to the half.
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  Speaker 3: We can't precisely. And the proof is really in the
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  Speaker 3: staggering precision of the result. When they reconstructed this three
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: D image, they were able to resolve physical features that
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: are actually smaller than the distance between the individual carbon
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: atoms making up the molecule itself. Wait seriously, Yeah, they're
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: literally mapping the empty space between the scaffolding.
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  Speaker 2: That is just incredible. But and correct me if I'm
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: wrong here. Reconstructing a three D image of an orbital
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: has technically been done before, hasn't it. What makes this
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  Speaker 2: specific gutting and experiment such a massive.
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: Leap forward To understand why this is such a breakthrough,
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: you really have to look at the historical bottleneck of
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: this kind of science. Previously, to pull off a three
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: D imaging feet like this, researchers had to rely on
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: large scale synchrotron facilities.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: Secretrons, which are not exactly something you can order out
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: of a catalog for your basement. Definitely not someone who
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: hasn't visited one. Synchrotron is a massive particle accelerator. We
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: are talking about facilities often the size of a large
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: football stadium.
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: Yes, they are massive, highly expensive, national level infrastructures. They
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: basically work by speeding electrons up to near the speed
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: of light in a giant ring to generate these incredibly bright,
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: intense X rays.
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  Speaker 2: And there aren't many of those lying around.
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: Right Because they are only a handful of these facilities
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: in the world. Scientists literally have to apply for a slot.
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: You might get three days of bean time a year
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: if you're incredibly lucky. And the old measurement techniques were
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: just incredibly time intensive.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: So you have this fundamental world change in quantum science,
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: but it's entirely bottlenecked by a giant real estate problem.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: You can't just run experiments on a Tuesday afternoon because
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: you had a cool idea in the shower.
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: Exactly, which brings us to the dual breakthrough championed by
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: doctor Masais Jansen. On this team, they introduced two new
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: concepts that basically took this science out of the stadium
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: and put it onto standard tabletop.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: Tell me about the first one.
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: The first part goes back to that algorithm we were
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: just discussing. They did a ground up redesign of it
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: because their new math is so vastly more efficient at
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: applying those physical constraints. It can deduce the missing phase
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: using significantly less experimental data, so.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: They don't need to take as many pictures of electrons
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: flying away to get the full three D view exactly.
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: And because they require a fraction of the data, they
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: no longer need the overwhelming continuous blinding power of a
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: stadium sized synchrotron to generate it, which unlocked the second breakthrough.
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: They swamped the giant synchrotron for a powerful lab based
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: soft X ray light source.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: Meaning they can do this in a standard university laboratory.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: That is a massive democratization of quantum physics.
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: It really is, and not only is it smaller, but
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: the soft X ray source operates differently. It provides ultrashort
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: light pulses, and those pulses are the real key to
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: where this research is actually heading.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: Okay, so they have this new lab sized X ray
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: and a super efficient algorithm. But surely they didn't just
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: point it at a piece of plastic or randomspeck of dust.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: What exactly were they looking at? What molecule was the
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: guinea pig?
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: Here? They used a nanometer sized organic molecule called ptcda PTCDA.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: Now, I know it's a relatively common molecule often used
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: in fabricating industrial red dyes, but why choose it for this?
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: Is there something special about how it structurally built?
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: Very much so. I mean it's incredibly flat and rigid
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: structurally speaking, But more importantly, it has an extended delocalized
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: electron cloud. You can think of its structure almost like
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: a perfectly tuned broad antenna that is just exceptionally efficient
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: at catching specific frequencies of light. It interacts uniquely strongly
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: with soft.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: X rays, so it's practically structurally optimized to catch the
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: exact type of X ray they are firing at it,
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: making the ejected electrons much easier to read precisely.
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: It is the ideal subject to prove this new tabletop
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: method actually.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: Works like a quantum movie star, hitting its marks perfectly
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: for the photoshoot, and the scale of what they captured
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: with this PTCDA molecule is just wild. The team released
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: visual slices through the orbital basically taking a clean cross
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: section of this probability cloud at a distance of just
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: one angstrom away from the center of the molecule.
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: And angstrom is a measurement that really pushes the limits
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: of human comprehension.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: It really does. For context, an angstrom is one ten
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: billionth of a meter. To give you a mental picture
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: of that scale. If a single angstrom was the thickness
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: of a standard piece of paper, a meter would reach
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: all the way from New York to Chicago.
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: It's hard to even picture right.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: That is the level of intimate, microscopic structural detail they
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: are mapping here, the literal, fundamental shape of nature.
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: It is a stunning achievement.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: But mapping the shape isn't the finish line here, is it?
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: Because the team isn't just stopping at static three D photographs.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: Building a better quantum camera for still pictures is great,
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: but doctor Bob Kibeniki on the team has outlined a
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: much wilder goal.
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: Yes, the static image is purely the foundation. The true
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: objective now is shifting from static three D photographs to
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: ultra fast.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: Video stroboscopic videography exactly.
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: Remember how he said, this new lab based soft X
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: ray uses ultra short pulses because the light comes in
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: these brief flashes. It operates exactly like a strobe light
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: in a dark club. If you flash a strobe light
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: fast enough, you freeze the motion of a dancer midair.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: And if you string those flashes together, you get a
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: stop motion video of their movement precisely. But a club
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: strobe light flashes a few times a second. The speed
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: we are talking about here makes that look like geological time.
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: We are talking about femtosecond resolution.
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: Femtosecond.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: Yes, I really want you to wrap your head around
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: a femato second, because it honestly sounds made up. A
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: fetosecond is one quadrillionth of a second.
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: It's absurdly fast.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: Ah R. Just to put that into perspective, one femtosecond
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: is to one single second. One second is to about
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: thirty one point seven million years. It is an almost
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: incomprehensibly s short sliver of time, and the pulses from
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: this X ray are flashing that.
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: Fast, which is absolutely necessary because that is the exact
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: frantic timeframe on which atomic interactions actually occur. Electrons do
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: not hang around waiting for us to snap a photo.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: Right, But this raises a huge question for me. Why
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: why do we need to see things happen in a
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: quadrillionth of a second. I mean, obviously it's an incredible
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: technical flex to say you can film an electron moving
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: that fast, but what's the practical application of filming an
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: atom that fast?
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: Well, if we connect this to the bigger picture, it
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: changes almost everything about how we design materials and drugs.
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: Up until now, chemistry and physics have mostly been stuck
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: looking at the before and the after of a chemical reaction.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: Like a magic trick, you see the rabbit in the hat,
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: and then you see the rabbit on the table.
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: Exactly. We mix chemical A and chemical B and we
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: get chemical C. We know what the molecular orbitals look
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: like before the interact, and we can map what they
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: look like after the new bond is formed, But the
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: actual mechodi the exact femtosecond when the electron physically shifts
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: when the old bond snaps and the new bond forms.
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: That has been effectively hidden in the dark. The transition
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: itself was invisible.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: So we've basically been guessing at the actual mechanics of
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: the reaction.
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: We've been relying on incredibly complex theories. But with stroboscopic
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: videography add a femtosecond resolution, we won't just see the
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: static shapes of these wave functions anymore. We will actually
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: observe how.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: They change in real time.
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: Yes, we will watch in real time how a molecule
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: adapts when it's hit by light or electricity or another chemical.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: Okay, so let's apply that. If a photon of sunlight
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: hits a new type of organic solar panel, we wouldn't
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: just measure that it generated a spark of electricity at
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: the end. We could physically watch the specific electron in
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: the panel absorb the photon, watch the wave function alter
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: its shape, and watch the electron transfer its energy to
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: the next molecule in the chain, literally frame by atomic.
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: Frame, precisely, And if you can watch the mechanism of
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: action dynamically like that, you can find exactly where the
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: inefficiencies are if you want to build a vastly more
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: efficient solar cell, or understand exactly how a complex medication
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: dynamically binds to a disease protein in the human body,
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: or how to design a completely new type of solid
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: state battery material. You need to know how these molecular
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: orbitals behave in motion. By watching them adapt, we find
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: the mechanisms to actually control those atomic level interactions.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: So what does this all mean when we step back
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: and look at the entire journey. We've gone from the
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: early days of quantum mechanics, where scientists realized electrons were
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: these abstract, impossible to pin down mathematical probability clouds, a
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: concept that was so deeply weird and counterintuitive that Albert
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: Einstein himself famously hated it.
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: Oh he really did. He couldn't stand the idea of
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: reality being based on probability.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: And now we're sitting on the very real prospect of
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: shooting three D femto second resolution movies of those exact
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: same probability clouds reacting to light, and doing it not
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: in a multi billion dollar part article accelerator, but on
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: a tabletop and a standard university laboratory.
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: It's a complete paradigm shift, and the core value here
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: is that knowledge is most valuable when it can be
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: applied to solve real problems. By combining the physics of
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: soft X ray pulses with the brilliant computational mathematics of
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: their redesigned algorithm, this team has effectively unlocked the visual
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: instruction manual from molecular chemistry. It's a tool that is
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: going to empower scientists across dozens of different fields.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: It takes the invisible mechanics of the universe and makes
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: them brilliantly dynamically visible. And that brings me to a
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: final thought I want to leave you with today. Think
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: about the trajectory we are on right now. If scientists
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: can now watch and eventually use that mechanical knowledge to
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: control how molecules react to light and chemistry at the
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: scale of a quadrillionth of a second, we aren't just
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: passively observing nature anymore.
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: No, we're becoming active participants exactly.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: We are on the verge of being able to direct
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: our own bespoke chemical reactions frame by atomic frame. Imagine
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: a future where we don't just mix chemicals in a
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: vat and hope for the best yield. But where we
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: literally choreograph the building blocks of matter to do exactly
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: what we want them to do. The eternal chaotic atomic
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: dance finally following our.
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: Lead, a truly profound capability that completely changes our relationship
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: with matter itself.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: Keep your eyes on the incredibly small stuff. It's about
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: to get a whole lot clearer. Thanks for joining us
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: on this exploration of the quantum realm.