SIO442: Is Quantum Technology Actually Better?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:15 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 442. I'm your host, Thomas Smith, and happy Quantum Day, everyone! Last or so. Late, but happy Quantum Day when that was. The spirit of it being like a week after Quantum Day. Quantum episode for you. In the meantime, Quantum Anne is back. Reminder, Quantum Ann works literally in this field, she does work for the government. So she wants to remain semi-anonymous here. And so Quantum Anne.

She wanted to tell us about some quantum technology and and explore the question of, is quantum better? What really is quantum technology? So much buzz about it. There's many headlines, and it is always so hard to, as a layperson, be able to tell what's real, what's BS. She's got a bit of a guide for us as to what areas of quantum technology there are, and what's only theoretical, and where the potential is. Actually not talking about quantum computing because we've already covered that quite a bit.

Quantum other stuff. There's a few other areas where quantum technology seems very promising or perhaps already exists and you didn't realize it. Quantum Man is going to take us through it. Can't wait. Let's get on over to that. Before we do, if you'd like to skip this brief ad break, go to patreon.com/seriouspod. Consider pledging. It means so much to us. It makes the show happen. And wouldn't be able to do it without our amazing patrons. patreon.com/seriouspod, hop on over. Right, let's get to the interview. Joining us once again is top secret government stooge, Quantum Anne. How's it going? Oh,

0:01:51 Anne: How are you? How was your eclipse?

0:01:53 Thomas: -existent, really. Stared directly at the sun and just I didn't see anything. Like I couldn't tell. I looked and looked. I did what you're supposed to do, which is look directly at it for as long as possible. And I never saw it. Yeah. No, it didn't blink. Yep. I'm not seeing a whole lot since then, actually, though, is the thing. I'm Not. Maybe there's something wrong with all of the world, not just the eclipse. But I hear it's a quantum day, possibly sometime.

0:02:06 Anne: Without blinking. Yeah.

0:02:20 Anne: April 14th is Quantum Day.

0:02:24 Thomas: Don't they have a Newtonian day? First off, hashtag Newtonian rights. Whites. Happy Quantum Day. How do you celebrate? Do you have a, do you both have or don't have a cake? Yeah.

0:02:32 Anne: Cake. Needs cake.

0:02:36 Thomas: You Could actually set up in your lab some sort of like Schrodinger's thing that tells you whether or not you can have a piece of cake. I feel like that would be the right way to celebrate it, right?

0:02:36 Anne: I would be a really good way to celebrate it. I think we'll do that.

0:02:48 Thomas: Ooh, okay. Let me know. We can, you know, live stream the results. What's

0:02:53 Anne: Great way to celebrate Quantum Day would be to have, like, chips and hom dip.

0:02:58 Thomas: Chips. Hmm. And...

0:02:58 Anne: Two people got that joke.

0:03:00 Thomas: Yeah, I don't know what that is. Sorry.

0:03:01 Anne: And hom and dip, how we measure if we have indistinguishable photons. The

0:03:07 Thomas: I really wonder. Okay, call in if you got that joke, everybody. That's... My favorite kind of jokes to tell on the show are ones that approximately two people will get, but mine usually aren't as smart as all that.

0:03:17 Anne: That you have to explain, um, are good Yeah.

0:03:19 Thomas: They're definitely the funniest. Yeah. Is, do you set up the Schrodinger's cake, how would we do this? Because you just need like a 50-50 decay or not or something, right? Isn't that how the cat is set up usually? Okay.

0:03:29 Anne: I So we'll have to set up, we could set up like a Schrodinger cat state, like two sending photons in, maybe a Bell state measurement. We'll have to do a whole bunch of them.

0:03:39 Anne: So when we're looking for an inequality or a correlation between the two photons that can't be explained classically in words, so They would be entangled.

0:03:39 Thomas: What's that? Are You entangling them or Geez.

0:03:55 Anne: It would be, it would be an entanglement witness, so we could do something like that, or are we, you, it's entangled, you get cake, it's not entangled if you don't. Mmm.

0:04:06 Thomas: Is How did he originally set it up? Was it like if it was gonna, if something decayed or not? I can't remember. Oh.

0:04:10 Anne: Yeah, it's like the original thought experiment is you have some sort of radioactive atom, and if the daughter particle, um, decayed out of the atom, it's it flips a switch, and the, the switch hits poison. So not really a 50 50 um.

0:04:27 Thomas: Right, okay. Okay, it's just an unknown. It's just something you don't know until you measure. Okay. We'll set it up. Get the cake button instead of the poison button. Make sure you switch the button so it's not poison and it's actually cake. And is an easier way to do it. Like that is like a Newtonian. Well that's a good way to lead into this because I know you wanted to talk about is quantum always better? And in this very thought experiment that was definitely intentional this whole time, I like you kind of have made a certain point, which is that you You could set up an elaborate thing or, you know, you could just do the old fashioned way. And that might be better in some cases.

0:04:38 Anne: I roll some dice and, like, write God on them.

0:05:03 Anne: This is something that comes up a lot. Well, actually, maybe this is something that should come up more when we're talking about new technology. Just, do we need this? It's, what problem are we actually solving? And while it might be really fun to make something new and elaborate, it is it really gonna do anything? And that's, that's really like the downer way to be about new stuff, you know, you're supposed to be raw, raw, it's new and we should do it because it's new. But, you know, sometimes things like, might, what is it, the juice might not worth, worth the squeeze. Pretty much, yeah.

0:05:31 Thomas: Yeah.

0:05:42 Thomas: I mean, your role on the show is often just quantum downer, I will say. Sorry to I don't hope that's not insulting or anything, but you're kind of a quantum on your quantum parade, you it's also your job.

0:05:47 Anne: Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much.

0:05:54 Thomas: It is also something you do, and I assume you respect and enjoy the field that you're in, right?

0:05:54 Anne: Oh. Yeah, I love doing quantum stuff and I, I love coming up with quantum solutions, but then I also have to be realistic and be like, oh, yeah, you know, you could just like write that on a post-it.

0:06:10 Thomas: Yeah. But, you know, not exactly the same, but maybe, I always have that problem with whether it's building elaborate Excel spreadsheets or programming solutions, where there's always that calculation where it's like, all right, I'm doing this thing manually, how many times do I have to do this? And there's like a graph you could make that's like, all right, because the first time you program something, or you, or make an elaborate Excel spreadsheet, you're definitely taking more time to get the task done, you know, but if it's something you do a million times a day and it saves you a lot of time, it's totally worth the investment. But there's always those things that are right on the cusp, you know? Like, ah, I do this thing like once every six months, and like, is it worth programming a whole solution? And then also there's like the unknown amount of time it will take you to make the solution, you know. Like, then you start troubleshooting, you're like, damn it, I shouldn't have even started trying to do this. Is any comparison there to be made?

0:06:59 Anne: Is like the process. It sounds like you need an Excel spreadsheet to determine if you need to make an Excel spreadsheet. I

0:07:06 Thomas: Absolutely. Yeah, Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And but I better make that one be universal though. So it's like my universal spreadsheet of whether or not it's worth to make a spreadsheet. I can come up with some parameters. Okay. It'll generate, graphs you automatically show me that curve, like where the return on investment kind of is. Okay, I'm going to work on that. I don't have time to record anymore. I'll see you later.

0:07:24 Anne: Somebody could tell you there's an AI solution to that.

0:07:28 Thomas: That's another thing that's never right. Like, I think I just don't know how to use those AI things correctly because I've yet to actually get much use out of them. But let's talk about what she came to talk about. Did you want to begin with this idea?

0:07:41 Anne: Thing that we're calling quantum technology right now, because I think, I mean, I don't know, it's hard to tell because I live in this world. So from my perspective, there's a lot of quantum buzz right now. Says the word quantum and people get all excited and they're like, we need to do that. We need to make that quantum thing happen. Sometimes it's, it's a little bit confusing over what exactly is, you quote quantum or not. And then also it's, are you really getting out of it? Cause I think when this does trickle down to, youknow, the mainstream, so to say, like, is just sort of slapped on something to make it sound like next generation or better. Be quantum. And that's kind of not where we're at with quantum technology. In a different phase of it. So, I kind of this aside of, you HAVE been making quantum advances. Like since we really got a handle on quantum technology, you know, like semiconductor chips, you know, use quantum technology and yeah, because there's some Zener diodes are definitely quantum because those are tunneling.

0:07:54 Thomas: Yeah. Really?

0:08:50 Thomas: We all know what that means. So, no need to elaborate further. Sorry. You said it matter -of -factly. Yeah, of course. This is what I'm talking about on diodes or obviously. Yeah. Are you saying we use, let me clarify, and apologies, I'm just being sarcastic, But are you saying we use quantum technology like in order to make these things or like as you know, utilizing it in the machinery that fabricates these things? Or are they utilizing some quantum, you and how they work for us day to day?

0:09:01 Anne: Of course. Yeah, like So if you're into building radios and circuit boards, you can buy a Zener diode out, crap, Radio Shack isn't around anymore. Yeah.

0:09:33 Thomas: No, not even close.

0:09:35 Anne: So you used to be able to buy them from Radio Shack, now you can buy them for like Arcade Electronics or Mouser or Digi-Key and they'll cost you like 10 cents. So and way that they work is they work on the principle of tunneling of electrons, tunneling through a barrier, which is a quantum mechanical effect, effect. Are another case of quantum technology.

0:10:00 Thomas: Right.

0:10:01 Anne: Use it in really things that we take for granted. So kind of like all the advances of where, like, quantum tech is going to make these advances that are just going to make like, say, your light source better. Like an LED light bulb, I think everyone can agree, is just better than an incandescent.

0:10:20 Thomas: Yeah. Aren't they just like incredibly efficient?

0:10:23 Anne: They don't burn out. Like we haven't changed a light bulb in like since we moved into this house. Don't burn your hand off when you try to touch them. I enjoy that. You can't use them in easy bake ovens, so I guess that's a downside. But

0:10:28 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but that's fine. Oh my God. Those easy bake ovens. Those are not a good idea. They're not good.

0:10:39 Anne: Oh my gosh, looking back, that is so unsafe. But

0:10:46 Thomas: Yeah, exactly. It's so bad. So I'm going to count that as another win for quantum.

0:10:47 Anne: Yeah, Yeah. Yeah. I would say that's a definite win. That's

0:10:54 Thomas: An LED, you would count that also like quantum technology, even though I'm not sure your average person would. I feel like your averageperson is just like, yeah, quantum computing is the only thing that's quantum.

0:11:03 Anne: Kind of where I'm going. Like, I don't think many people do count that quantum technology and

0:11:07 Thomas: Yeah. What's the quantumness of The LED? Do you mind explaining, or did you already, and I don't understand it, it's light emitting diode right, isn't that thank you

0:11:09 Anne: Oh, that's, that's where you have the that, yes. Good. Get a gold star. Yeah, So you, you light in to the, the diode. Oh, well, you don't have to put, you can put light in. You can also just send a voltage through. So you send a a voltage, through, there is an energy gap in the material that making your diode out of, and whatever that gap is tuned to be, the energy, you know, that voltage that say jumps that gap will emit photons that are representative or that are equal to that amount of energy gap that you had. So Finely you tuned way of controlling. This is all limited to how well you can manufacture them. But you have a fine way of controling, say, quantifying the amount of energy that you put in and the energy that you're getting out and you're converting it from a voltage or a current to a photon. And you can also do the same thing in reverse. You can hit an LED with a photon of light and where it it matches that energy gap, it's going to turn into current, so They're

0:11:20 Thomas: Huh Really? Wow. When

0:12:26 Anne: They're great devices, um,

0:12:27 Thomas: Was that invented? I imagine it's the kind of thing where it's like discovered a long time ago and then only recently utilized as actual light technology, or what, to

0:12:29 Anne: Yeah, I think so, I think this is probably something that was like figured out in the 40s or 50s, but then like nobody could do it until the 90s, and then it wasn't until they got blue, so it's like red and green were pretty easy, and I think anything in IR, but like blue was really hard

0:12:43 Thomas: Make it, yeah, oh, wow, what determines that oh is that that energy gap, you, you have to like get it to a certain frequency or something? Wow. That's interesting. And so being technology essentially determines like how well we could do that. And the same way that chips are getting smaller and tinier and tinyer and tinier. It's like that kind of print, same principle.

0:12:56 Anne: Yeah, that's that energy gap, yeah, Yeah, but I think a lot of people don't really consider things like that to be quantum, but those are the things that like have made those, I don't want to downplay it, but like, um, to say incremental advances, but those incremental advances that like build up to where you have like this noticeably better product where you're, they're like, LED light bulbs are way better than incandescents.

0:13:08 Thomas: Really cool. Mm. Hmm. And they are way better. How did the incandescent? I don't even remember how that, where that's like the tiny man in there starts a campfire. I think when you, I don't,

0:13:38 Anne: Effectively, yeah. It's like just sending an insane amount of current through a little filament of metal. And then the light that you're seeing is actually black body radiation. Because the little wire, that filament, is heating up so much that that spectrum of light that's being produced, heat, that intense heat, is in the visible range.

0:13:52 Thomas: Black body range.

0:14:05 Thomas: How does it not like just melt or something?

0:14:06 Anne: Yeah. That's like why Edison went through like thousands of materials.

0:14:11 Thomas: Yeah. And now we've gone back to his old shitty bulbs. Cause it's stylish. You know, we've got the Edison bulbs.

0:14:16 Anne: Is it? Is that a thing?

0:14:17 Thomas: Yeah. Edison bulbs are a thing. I'm sure they're made better, but they just look, they just looks old timey, but anyway, no, that's really cool. And, and the fact that it creates so much heat, I mean, that's usually an indication that it's not going to be very efficient because you're trying to turn electricity into light, right? Like, like, fundamentally, and if you've got a whole bunch of heat, or I guess theoretically some other kind of byproduct that's not light, so you're gonna have some waste in the, where was LED, well,

0:14:18 Anne: Oh. Oh. That leads to a whole planned obsolescence, but that's a different episode.

0:14:36 Anne: Yeah. The heat is light, but it's like, but its fundamentally,

0:14:49 Thomas: Kinetic heat, yeah, that's

0:14:51 Anne: Yeah. Yeah, it's fundamentally a bad process because it's also heating up and you're just not using that heat.

0:14:58 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, okay, I mean, that's what I mean, it's like, the, the physical heat that you can feel is like, I guess it's a byproduct, but like, that, that means energy is going somewhere, right, that you don't exactly want it to, necessarily

0:15:09 Anne: Yeah. I'd whole bunch of heat that's just useless. So It's all waste. And then the amount of voltage that you are currently have to put into that filament to get it to that intense temperature, temperature, is just kind of crazy, I mean, it could bake brownies, it's a lot.

0:15:14 Thomas: Yeah, And then, what's so funny is I actually saw this, I can't remember where, maybe I heard it in a podcast, but it's something that I think as a society, or maybe just a, your average person, hasn't quite updated our kind of way we operate, because it was to the point where someone pointed out, on a, uh, it might have been a podcast about, you know, climate change and saving, uh, energy and footprint and stuff, where they're like, yeah, honestly, you don't really need to sweat the lights anymore. Like, it used to be like, turn off the lights, turn off the light, and now it's like, yeah, LED bulbs are so tiny in terms of the output that like, it's honestly not even that big of a deal if you leave them on a lot.

0:15:29 Anne: Oh, Yeah, That's what I've heard, too, in those calculations, they're like, it doesn't even matter though, though I think where it where it does matter is like, not fucking with wildlife, so maybe this depends on where you live, you should probably turn off your lights in that regard, or close, close curtains. But yeah, when your kid needs the light on all night or they won't sleep, you're fine. Contributing to global warming, if you have an LED.

0:16:09 Thomas: Yeah. It's like ridiculously more efficient. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.

0:16:31 Thomas: Okay. And we've got a lot of stuff. Him to thank. Specifically, Um, I think, that um, Deepak Chopra invented the LED light. And that's why he has that reputation for it.

0:16:37 Anne: Yeah. And it heals you. And but I think that they don't get lumped into what is trendy now is called quantum technology. So I think like the three main categories of what people would call like the field of quantum, you know, quotes or big Q quantum would be you got your quantum computing, you have quantum information and communication, and you have Quantum Sensing.

0:16:40 Thomas: That's one is lights are good sensing.

0:17:06 Thomas: What's Is that what you're talking about, like the light detector thing, is that that kind of thing? Oh,

0:17:10 Anne: And that one was just, well, I'll say it's related to quantum sensing in that quantum sensing, you can kind of break into three different, say, or that it's used or thought about. Would be you use a quantum object to measure some physical quantity, and that quantity would be characterized by energy level that is fundamentally quantized. This would be the thing that we talked about last time, the Squid product.

0:17:43 Anne: Yeah, so a superconducting quantum interference device, what does is it creates, you loop that measures a flux quanta of magnetic, you is one magnetic flux? What is one quantum of magnetic flux.

0:17:42 Thomas: Yeah. I Don't Have any fucking idea, and I'm Sorry, I don't know, I Hope You're Gonna tell Me because I Have most Of these words I, I don't even understand.

0:18:01 Anne: Oh, it's pretty low. It's I forget exactly what it is. Call it phi. Just write it out as phi and say that is one flux of, that is one quantum of magnetic flux.

0:18:15 Thomas: But I'd probably say, like, poof, that is one quantum of magnetic flux. You feel me?

0:18:22 Anne: The way that that sensor works is that it can measure down to the quantum level. So you're not going to get any more precision than measuring what a flux of quantum is. It can't go go down anymore. You can't divide it anymore. So that's one way that you have what you would call a quantum sensor while measuring little changes in magnetic field. And I'll tell you why that, why a lot of people care about that one is that you can map your location, say, if you're at sea or something. You know, ancient people looked at stars, It kind of fucked on a cloudy night there, right?

0:18:33 Thomas: Right.

0:18:43 Thomas: What's that useful for?

0:19:05 Thomas: Yeah.

0:19:05 Anne: And that only did latitude. For longitude, you needed to have really good clocks. And people did. I mean, there's hundreds of years of technology into synchronizing clocks just to navigate ships. But if you can measure, like, so if you have a, so we can map the magnetic field of the Earth. And it's very different. There's, it's not uniform. It's not isotropic, as the cool kids say. It's it's, you know, it's got like as much interesting texture to it as a, as a, you know, an actual map that you would look at you

0:19:16 Thomas: Yeah.

0:19:36 Thomas: But it's consistent enough to, like. Use it as a map. Interesting.

0:19:40 Anne: Can, yeah, so you can use that to geolocate where you are, um, it does change it changes so you you, you constantly remap it, but but it's, it's a useful thing to know, like, that's a very practical thing that's, that's useful for you to, to be able to tell where you are. It's also useful to know where you are in relation to other things, like big, tall buildings. If you're flying a plane, it's big metal buildings affect magnetic field, so having good magnetometers is something

0:19:45 Thomas: It's not, like., constantly changing, though. Oh, okay. Sorry. Okay. Gotcha. Mm -hmm. Like if you're if youre

0:20:16 Anne: That's useful there.

0:20:16 Thomas: That accurate like if you can measure stuff that slight, then then you can, it's almost like another set of eyes, or it's almost like echolocation, but not, or like it's like radar, like a really good radar kind of thing, sort wait, like a really good compass wow I thought I got there everybody, I got there on the comparison

0:20:25 Anne: Yeah, don't need to bounce it back and receive it. You can just sense it. It.

0:20:34 Anne: Yeah, it's basically a really good compass that works in all directions. So that's one way that having a really Good Magnetometer can help you. Another thing that it helps with, well, one is material characterization. So, you know, you have a really interesting rock that say came from outer space, and you can map how the magnetic fields got frozen in it.

0:20:58 Anne: You can map what materials are in it, like you could see, like, down, is there something kind of magnetic-y at the core, and there's a bunch of different types of magnets, so it's great to be able to map all those without having to like cut the rock open, um, you never know, it's, you might want to preserve rocks and other samples, um, destroying them or cutting into them. So having, having a good magnetometer is really helpful for that. So, and also things using like, um, atoms for, um, electric field, so you could measure, um, that would make, say, a very good antenna. So, could measure very finely changes in an electric field, and there's where you get like some really good radar, I suppose, but, but if really good already, so it's kind of hard to improve that one. That's where you kind of get into this, the quantum buying you anything, when

0:20:58 Thomas: Yeah just in case it's one of those transformer ones or something, or like a soul stone, you interesting

0:21:51 Anne: You have something that works really, really well. The other way that you have quantum sensors, like the other category, is using quantum coherence, like spatial or temporal superposition states, to measure a physical quantity. That's where you can make measurements much, much better by applying a quantum technique to them. So the example for that would be how they measured the gravitational waves.

0:22:20 Anne: They used squeeze light to do that, to get that extra last little bit of information out of the measurement and precision out of the measurement, instead of just using like a, you know, they used a big interferometer, but they used squeezed light in that interferometer, where they can kind of like squeeze it and squeeze it to be very narrow in a dimension that you want to measure, at the expense of making it kind of fat and ugly and something that you don't care about. Using the Heisenburg uncertainty principle to your advantage.

0:22:53 Thomas: So you're giving up, like, all right, we don't care about this dimension of measurement, so Heisenberg, you can have all that uncertainty as you want, take, take it, eat as much of that uncertainty if you want, but we'll be super precise on this other thing, because that's the, a trade-off. Yeah, because measuring those gravity waves was insanely precise, and because wasn't until very recently that they were even able to do that, right?

0:23:11 Anne: So, Oh, yeah and that's like a huge technological achievement in of itself just that you could do that. Then the third category of a quantum sensor is using quantum entanglement to improve a sensitivity or precision of a measurement beyond what you could to do classically. So an idea of that would be what's, I think it's just generally referred to as a quantum telescope.

But, like, the idea is like, right now you can have, you know, two telescopes that are separated by some distance, looking at some, the same object, you can get the differences in the measurements between those telescopes to tell you something about it.

They can either tell you something about the parallax, or how Earth is moving in relation with these two telescopes, and how that's related to the measurements that they're making to the star or whatever they're looking at, the, or relationship between stars that they're both looking at. And then they can get information from there.

You get the quantum advantage there, would, you could set up, say, a quantum communication channel between these two telescopes, where a can effectively be coded into a quantum state and then teleported to another telescope. And that gets you much, much better timing precision. So that

0:23:14 Thomas: Yeah right

0:24:36 Anne: Makes your precision better.

0:24:36 Thomas: It's not faster than light though right, we can't, we've just, we've covered all that, there's no faster and light information

0:24:41 Anne: Can't go faster than light. Could retroactively determine it was faster than light, but you can't actually transmit the information faster.

0:24:49 Thomas: Well, then I guess my question is, can't they already do good old-fashioned transfer information the speed of light via normal internet or whatever, it'd

0:24:58 Anne: What you would get from teleportation is you could say, put a a timestamp time stamp on a quantum state or series of quantum states and then teleport teleport it to another location. And then, you know, okay, when those, you know, when you're looking back over the data, then you sync your clocks to when it was received, because you know when it was perceived was like the, you know, faster than light moment that it was transmitted. You just can't do it live. That's, that's the thing.

0:25:15 Thomas: Boy I sort of understand kind of what you're talking about, but that, that crazy, so

0:25:31 Anne: I said we Take it to a whole episode on quantum teleportation because it's not as cool as maybe teleporting an actual person. It's one of those things that's really, really cool, but nobody knows exactly how you're going to use it yet. Kind of fun.

0:25:48 Thomas: That sounds like, there are some, and now are those, these applications you're talking about, are these things that are currently in, in use, or are these things that are like, oh, they maybe people can do this one day?

0:25:58 Anne: For the most part, what I'm talking about is stuff that we're looking at like advances. Like, yes, there are squids that exist now, but, um, don't have like squid antenna on top of a cell phone tower right now. You can use squeeze light to make, you much, much better, but um, outside of something like LIGO, this isn't isn't, a measurement that's going to be done for any other like commercial, say, purpose or something that's really going to affect your life.

I think that's kind of what falls under this category of, you quantum tech, you where all the, you know, the big tech sector people are getting into, we need to develop quantum technology. And it's all kind of vague. And sort of, I would say, like maybe like 90% marketing and things are real but impractical, and then the rest is just hope. We think this is going to work, but it's fun to figure out, so we think it will work.

What kind of happens there, so this is like, you know, you're quantum computing, quantum sensing as a whole, and quantum communication or information sharing. Think the kind of the elephant in the room is, yeah, but is it better? Because think we're kind of past the point where we can say like, oh, like a quantum computer isn't going to be analogous to what an iPhone is to an Apple II.

0:27:05 Thomas: Yeah an Apple 2, what's an Apple too? Sorry, oh yeah yeah, yeah, okay, gotcha. And refer to, you know, our past episodes where we've discussed that, where it's like, quantum computing is, it's useful for different things, possibly, if it's practical even, but you, your calculator, speaking of Apples, your iPhone calculator is probably going to do a better job of just multiplying numbers than a quantum computer, right?

0:27:30 Anne: Was the computer that Apple made a lot of in the 80s, yeah that's yeah, now, now they can like tell you two times two equals four most of the time they're getting there, depending on what kind of computer it is, but we're not really at the point, like in any of those three categories I kind of laid out, like not at the part where we're like, we're at the right point where it's, the thing is going to be better than the classical thing.

0:27:58 Thomas: Really?

0:28:13 Anne: They're just going to me different. See, LEDs we already did, so there's no need to hype them.

0:28:12 Thomas: Except for LEDs, right? Oh, I see what you're saying. Well, we could at least, you know, give quantum some credit for them much in terms of the, like, stuff that's on kind of theoretical, you're saying, what would that be

0:28:23 Anne: Oh, yeah. Like, so the communications, you look at the quantum internet. Really knows what that means. Nobody really knows, but it would be using quantum information. So, like, some sort of sharing quantum information, or say sharing entanglement, you know. Right now, we have a bunch of people that are all connected with nodes to a network, where we're connected via Wi-Fi or fiber connections. And, you can talk to, say, probably like a million different nodes to get to you on

0:28:35 Thomas: Oh I'm so tired of talking to nodes, it's fucking nodes, I gotta talk to a bunch of nodes real quick to get to you yeah and

0:29:12 Anne: Nodes that you talk to are very important because you can you can route it through all sorts of different nodes, um,

0:29:18 Thomas: Is it just the case where it's like the thing, in theory, well, not even in theory, the thing we know exists, which is quantum entanglement and that kind of thing, which, it just seems amazing, like, okay, it's this near instant, or it is this instant thing sometimes. And it seems like there's got to be a way to take advantage of these principles or these phenomena to stuff better. And it's just like, time and time again, it seems to be like, well, maybe not, like it just isn't working out for some reason. Or is this a question of like, yeah, it seemed not as good, until it just is, like with the LEDs, maybe all of a sudden that's way better and nearly ubiquitous because it's just a question of like someone needs to make that next step in terms of you fabricating stuff, or does our manufacturing stuff, hmm

0:30:04 Anne: Would say in like the question of like the quantum internet, I would say no, because what you're getting out of communicating via entanglement is not going to be fundamentally faster or more precise or more secure than where, how we're, where we're talking right now. Now, it's different, and it can add things to it. But like we, you know, this is where we get into our issue of, you can't communicate faster than light. We can't have quantum communication without classical communication.

0:30:42 Anne: So since we can't really do that, we're not going to have something that's just going to be so incredibly, you better, it is going to blow away what we we have now, yeah

0:30:54 Thomas: And remind me why can't we do that, just because of the fundamental problem of, like, you would need to have someone know what the thing is, the kind of the same reason that the quantum entanglement can't give you faster than light stuff is that, okay right

0:31:05 Anne: Yeah So, the same fundamental reason, it's because, a, you entangle something, you don't get to choose what state is entangled where, that's kind of the whole, the whole point. So, when have, say, two photons that are polarizations and we interfere them together on a beam splitter, the, that they are entangled is that we don't know which, out which side of the beam splitter. And then when we measure one, but if we, you know, we can say transform one and then we can measure it, and then we'll measure the other one, and we'll see, no, they correlate. But the problem is that we can't choose which one goes into the beam splitter.

0:31:47 Thomas: And You basically have to be on the walkie-talkie being like, all right, it's this one, otherwise it's useless, so it's redundant really, but Like, once, is there any way, like, once you establish that kind of connection, to then use it better, or is it just like, nah, just pretty much it's always limited by that, I'm

0:31:55 Anne: Yep. Yep. Yeah.

0:32:07 Anne: Just that you can do teleportation protocol where you can transfer one state to another. But when you're doing the actual entanglement, fundamentally, you can't choose what the state is first. Or if you use a decaying atom that sends out two electrons that are opposite spins of each other, one is random. You don't have a way of choosing which spin is which. But if you measure one, you know instantly what the other one is. It can be useful. It's just never going to be faster than light useful. Useful and it's useful, but you're never going to be able to use it without that talking to each other to confirm what the measurements are.

0:32:52 Thomas: Having a hard time even understanding why it's useful then, like, why is it more useful than a walkie-talkie, okay?

0:32:57 Anne: So in terms of what you use a walkie talkie for, probably not going tobe more useful than that because you're probably not gonna ever have a reason why, you want your voice to appear on the other walkie talky. Radio waves are very good at doing that. Really no reason to go down to a single photon at good for is, say, sharing a precision measurement.

0:33:02 Thomas: Well, there you go.

0:33:24 Thomas: Yeah.

0:33:24 Anne: Or if you had a quantum computer wanting to talk to another quantum computer, then it needs to share a quantum state with another quantum. It needs that quantum state to go from one computer to the other computer now it's very useful but in terms of yeah if you wanted to talk to somebody on the other side of a park it's not going to be more useful than that kind of where I'm going with it like it's not going to be this inherent, just because it's quantum it's always going to be better

0:33:55 Thomas: It's Not like this upgrade to all technology, sort of, like, yeah, of my favorite games was Age of Empires as a kid, and there'd be like, you'd go from the Bronze Age to the, you know, or whatever, the Stone Age, the Bronze ages something age, and it was like, okay, we've gone to the next age, and then all your crap can be better, you know, basically it's like, ah, now the Iron Age, you can all the, and it's, it's very much not, it sounds like, in the real world, while that might be somewhat applicable historically, like, oh, we're in the, you know, the Iron Age, we're in the Fossil Fuel Age, you You know, like, basically everything gets that kind of upgrade in a way. It sounds like we're, yeah, we're not in the quantum age in a sense that like, all right, now we add quantum to everything and it just makes it that much better. It's like just not that, it sounds like.

0:34:26 Anne: Ruin the plasticine age yeah but I think that um it is a bit of a mental shift of like I is forget which was first is the bronze age before the iron age whichever one okay but like but we still use bronze for stuff I

0:34:46 Thomas: Yeah, I think iron's better. Fair, fair. And certain civilizations, you know, certain troops, they peaked. They peaked in high school. They peached in the Bronze Age. You can't actually upgrade them. No, that's not a good analogy. But yeah, I know, I take your point, it's like, but I do think that there are some things, and there is, I think, a way that, you know, humans tend to think, where it's like, alright, we've reached this new level of thing, and now all of our stuff is that, or all of it, you know, somehow it adds dimensions, it adds capabilities to everything we have, and it's just not really quite true.

0:34:52 Anne: Yeah like it's not gonna be like you know The emerging quantum technologies, they're not going to be like this huge paradigm shift. And it's not even going to look like things that we've seen before, like the iPhone. All of a sudden, you have a computer that you can hold in your hand. In reality, that was a much more gradual shift than what it seems like.

0:35:44 Thomas: Yeah.

0:35:44 Anne: But also, looking back on it in a few hundred years, it's going to seem pretty instant. You, we went from not doing much with computers to doing a whole bunch with computers. Um, like, the quantum technologies that we're talking about, like, in terms of quantum communication and computing and sensing, that they're not, they're not inherently this, oh, just because it's quantum, it's better.

0:36:06 Thomas: Yeah.

0:36:06 Anne: Some are better, and better in different ways, but maybe not inherently better, but I, the the analogy that I bring up a lot is we still read books. Still read type. I'll put it that way.

0:36:16 Thomas: Some Of us Okay. Yeah, fair, fair, I'm

0:36:22 Anne: Isn't going anywhere.

0:36:23 Thomas: Familiar, yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:36:27 Anne: It's an old technology. That's one of the first things you do on that tech tree in civilization is the alphabet.

0:36:35 Thomas: Printing press kind of thing, yeah.

0:36:37 Anne: Still using it. And even Though our alphabet isn't perfect, imperfect, um, like, so that's another thing that happens, sometimes technology, even if they're imperfect, they're gonna be so ingrained in everything that we do that we're not replacing it anytime soon, yeah.

0:36:38 Thomas: Yeah. Right. Well, and I think that's two different things, but it's one thing to be like, this tried and true thing is just always better, uh, a way that's like, there's just no replacing it, it's always better, it works out, works, versus there's another distinction, which, which is this thing we've always done. It's just too hard for us to like, I think of like the QWERTY keyboard as like an example of that. The QWERTy keyboard is definitely not the most efficient thing. If you were to design it now, it's not even close. It's actually, you know, if, if the memes are to be believed, it's actually designed to not be efficient because typewriters couldn't handle, that you much fast typing, they jam up. And, but like, I I, think from time to time, like, Oh, I wonder if I could get used to like whatever. And I'm like, nah, there's no, there's no possible way. I'm not doing it. I don't, I'm just not doing it direct,

0:37:09 Anne: True. Yeah. The Dvorak keyboard, no. But is true, um, there's also, like, you know, reading, the concept of reading, meeting, we're not going to beat that, no matter how good we

0:37:41 Thomas: Like we're never going to have the direct matrix into your brain stuff kind of thing.

0:37:41 Anne: Get. Yeah.

0:37:45 Thomas: Yeah. Do you have any other examples for us to chew on in terms of the quantum not being really any better or what?

0:37:45 Anne: Well, I think sometimes it's just it's just different Like the problems that you can solve, say, with a quantum computer. And I think some computing nerds can get on you and say this better than I can. But I think fundamentally, a quantum supercomputer would not be able to do anything that a classical computer couldn't do and vice versa. It's just that the types of problems a quantum computing can handle, it could do more efficiently in some cases than a classical computer. And in some cases, a classical supercomputer like 4x4 or 2x2 is going to be much, much better than a quantum computer. So it's not going to be like this, you years we're all going to have quantum computers in our pockets. You might have well, not in 10 year, but say in 100 years, you might have a quantum chip in your computer that does a very specific task that it's really good at, but it's not going to be like, it's not just a one -to -one just because it's quantum. It's better. I just want to bring it back down to being the quantum downer and

0:38:14 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, you are the quantum downer, this is the quantum downer show, every time you come on, they

0:39:05 Anne: No, quantum sucks. It's not that great. There's... there's a there, there are a lot more things that you can do. There's cool things you can deal with it. And then there's also a lot of unknowns, um, are what you were getting at before. It's like we really know all the cool things that you can do with, say, teleportation. We kind of have to make teleportation happen first. I mean, people have done teleportation experiments, but not really.

0:39:29 Thomas: Have what are you talking about, what are

0:39:31 Anne: Yeah, like papers there published. You can do a teleportation protocol, say. Like on optical table in a lab. And you can prove that this is something that is possible.

0:39:45 Thomas: Your teleporting just like a photon or something? Oh.

0:39:47 Anne: A quantum state. Yeah.

0:39:48 Thomas: A quantum state, oh, okay, yeah.

0:39:50 Anne: In our case, it would be a quantum State of a photon, you we don't know how useful that's going to be because, well, too busy trying to make it work to to really see past that. Think once we get these quantum technologies in the, like, to a state where people get to use them, then it's going to, then you're going to see more of an explosion.

0:40:16 Thomas: All It's like we covered last time, as soon as they can be used for porn is when we will see innovation, yeah.

0:40:18 Anne: Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. So somehow when you have quantum porn, well, we're not going to have any problem with, like, say, education, getting people interested into quantum. That's going to take care of itself. Once you get to that point, then you'll start to see, like applications of, oh, what are these cool things that you can use with them? Like, you now they put LEDs on drones and use them instead of fireworks. Works. Who would have thought of that? You needed to have cheap LEDs first. My soapbox there is that there's, I don't know, I'm not I guess there isn'T really like a straightforward incremental increase path in, you trendy quantum.

0:40:22 Thomas: Yeah yeah that's pretty cool yeah

0:41:00 Anne: Quantum is, you kind of big and broad and messy right now. At least the areas that I sort talked about. We don't really know what to do, we just know that we need to do it for some reason.

0:41:01 Thomas: Yeah That's fair, I think, you know, new things is always cool, I like doing that just for doing it, but yeah, message seems to be like realistic about the capabilities, especially because there's so many bullshit artists, you know, I think being skeptical of any quantum claims about products or new technology, uh, seems like it's pretty warranted, it's

0:41:33 Anne: See, that's a hard one because, you know, I spend, not all my time, but I spend a fair chunk of my change, um, being that person that other people can email and say is what this person told me full of shit or not, because, because what will happen is somebody will say something that is completely full of shit, but then, like, that when they wrap it around, like, quantum technology, uh, person who's getting the pitch, uh, now feel too self-conscious to say anything, thing, because they're kind of like, well, I just don't understand quantum. If they ever like kind of say, I don't really think what you're trying to sell me is real, then kind of a salesman will just pitch it as, ah, you just don't understand quantum. Yeah, which might be there or might not be there. We don't know until

0:42:16 Thomas: The emperor's quantum clothes, oh, my gosh it's Schrodinger's emperor's clothes, all

0:42:26 Anne: We make a measurement of it.

0:42:29 Thomas: Right, well, quantum downer is your new name, um, really do come and just rain on our quantum parade, uh quantum buzzkill I like that, I like the emperor's quantum clothes as well, there's a lot of good stuff here. Hey, if nothing else, Quantum has given us good, you or something. I don't know.

0:42:35 Anne: Buzzkill, that's a good superhero name I do have one other, um, uh, I guess sort of shout out, so it's 14th is Quantum Day, as much as I've been a downer about quantum, they're still, like, you know, it's worth it to go, too, um, dot org, there's some fun activities that they have and and it, it's just a nice little resource, source to see, like, what's going on in this field, there's a picture of Joe Biden on the front page.

0:42:46 Thomas: I

0:43:09 Anne: He's looking very confused at a picture of a dill fridge, yeah, like he really looks like he probably doesn't want to be there, but he's like being a good sport about it, um, we're also, um, least some friends and colleagues of mine are working to get, uh, next year, 2025, as an international year of quantum, you can find out about that on Quantum 2025.org, but

0:43:09 Thomas: He's Quantum. Okay. Quantum Joe Biden.

0:43:36 Thomas: Well, there you go.

0:43:43 Anne: If you want some fun resources um they don't have anything about what the appropriate cake is. So I feel like I should write in and maybe do that next year.

0:43:52 Thomas: Improvements to be made. Okay. Right. Well, Quantum Man, thanks so much for totally ruining all our dreams about quantum, as usual. And but LED lights are great, they're super awesome, that's okay, we don't get to have any teleportation or faster than light travel or anything, but, you know, we got some lights, that's, you know, no, for real though, that it is actually really great, I don't think of those as quantum, and I guess we should, so until next we meet and next you want to, you us out about quantum reality, all

0:43:53 Anne: Yes.

0:44:20 Anne: Maybe next time I'll bum you out about how quantum teleportation mean that we get to go to Mars instantly.

0:44:27 Thomas: Right, maybe we do have a good story let's do a good one, let's deal with, oh that would be nice there's only so much, but but killing buzzing kills that we can do, maybe maybe we'd do a positive quantum something, sometime, sometime.

0:44:28 Anne: Get through traffic. I just want to get through traffic, I don't care about her there

0:44:41 Thomas: Reclaim your image.

0:44:40 Anne: We go, yes, positive quantum I'll be a quantum cheerleader next time, I promise, all right

0:44:47 Thomas: Right. Well, until then.

0:45:06 Thomas: We have quantum to think, what was that?

0:45:06 Anne: Oh, sorry, that was my watch.

0:45:10 Thomas: Is it a quantum watch? Does that mean the cat has died? No. And so, okay. And we've got a lot of stuff. Him to thank. Um,

0:45:13 Anne: Sure, there is a quantum version. Are