Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Nobel Committee in Sweden announces who wins various prizes. A
few days ago, we had the Nobel Prize for medicine,
I didn't talk about it on the show.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
This morning we got.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
The official announcement of the Nobel Prize in physics. So
joining us to help us understand what this is all
about and hopefully able to do it without our heads exploding,
is the man himself, Paul Biel. See you, physics professor
and a guy who was I often say makes me
wish I were back in college so I could take
a class from him, because I've always loved physics, which
(00:32):
doesn't mean I'm very good at it.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Hi Paul, it's good to see you again.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Hi Ross, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
So just jump right in it.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Tell us what these three scientists engineers won the Nobel
Prize in physics for.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Okay, So there are three physicists, John Clark who's at
Berkeley and Michelle de Vay who's at Yale and University
of California, Santa Barbara joined appointment, and John Martinez who's
at the University of California, Santa Barbara. And they won
the Nobel for a work they did in nineteen eighty eight,
(01:09):
in which they were the first folks to measure what's
known as macroscopic quantum tunneling in superconductors.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Okay, we're going to need a little bit of that
in English.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
And I did watch some of the Nobel presentation. Yes,
I did watch some of the Nobel presentation, and it
has basic stick figure kinds of graphics that are nevertheless
mind blowing, like a kid throwing a ball against a
wall and it bounces back, and then one time he.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Throws the ball at the wall and it goes through
the wall.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Okay, so quantum tunneling goes all the way back to
the right the era when quantum mechanics was first invented
by Schreddinger and Heisenberg. And so it's possible in quantum
mechanics for a particle to be able to go through
a region where it technically does not have enough energy
to go through in any classical way. So you're trying
(02:04):
to get from one side of one valley over to
another valley. You got across a mountain. If you don't
have enough energy to get up to the top of
the mountain and go across, then you're never going to
make it whereas in quantum mechanics there's a possibility and
you can calculate that that an object can actually tunnel
through and get from one side of the hill to
(02:24):
the other. And this was applied almost immediately in the
nineteen twenties. George Gamov used that idea to describe why
certain materials have radioactive alpha decay. Alpha particles tunnel out
of the nucleus of things like uranium, and he calculated
how much that, what the half life of that should be,
(02:46):
and how it's related to the energy at which they tunnel,
and it was a perfect agreement with the experimental results
at the time. Now, that's one particle at a time,
And what was discovered later is quantum mechanics applies much
more broadly than to single particles. So superconductor, for example,
(03:09):
is represents what's known as a macroscopic quantum state. All
of the electrons in the superconductor are in exactly the
same quantum state and they act together, and so that
allows the system to have almost a classical degree of freedom.
But what these folks discovered and people related to them,
(03:32):
was that the entire quantum state itself is a quantum
It has a quantum character, and it bays its own
separate Schrodinger equation for this quantum quantum state.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Okay, I'm not sure if it's too early for Bourbon,
but I'm thinking about it. The Nobel's website says, and
I think this is what you were just talking about.
But I'm gonna tell you what this says, and then
I want you to try to put it in the
plainest English you can. The charged particles moving through the
superconductor comprised a system that behaved as if they were
(04:13):
a single particle that filled the entire circuit. So I
think that's what you were just saying. But can you
put it in any planar English or is it just
not possible?
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Okay, So they macroscopic effects happen with the things like Okay,
imagine water.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
You know.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
So water is composed of a bunch of molecules, right,
but you have enough of it in a tub and
it can slash back and forth. It has a wave
characteristic that's not described by any one of the water molecules,
but collectively they have the wave like behavior, Whereas in
quantum mechanics, the entire system can have a wave like behavior,
(04:54):
which is described by its own Stroudinger equation, and that
was the system that Martinez and Clark and Devay were investigated.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Okay, what are the practical implications and how does how
would this science? How is this science being used now
to develop computers or anything else?
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Right, So, in fact, this is one of the most
commonly used methods for creating what are known as qbits
to create quantum computers. So the superconducting system is what
many companies are developing now in order to create quantum computers.
And in fact, Martinez is a big player in that.
(05:42):
And Martinez I actually know him. He was at CU,
he was at NIST in the nineteen nineties and went
to Santa Barbara in two thousand and four. And so
his specialty is trying to use this quantum mechanic of
the macroscopic uh wave function to create quantum systems that
(06:07):
you can then manipulate very carefully, in fact, engineer to
create quantum computers.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
What what just strikes me about this whole conversation is
that you must have a whole bunch of friends who
you can sit down with and have these conversations and
actually understand what the other guy is saying.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Like I I asked you. I asked you to put I.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Asked you to put this in the plainest English you
could in the first word out of your mouth was macroscopic,
and and so and so this is this is obviously
extremely difficult stuff. But but I and I am kind
of serious about that. But more more seriously is how
how remarkable it is that that this stuff is is real?
Speaker 2 (06:58):
It's almost it. It seems like science fiction, right. I
don't think that.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
My confusion is because I haven't mastered partial differential equations.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
I think it's just crazy, right, right, So all of
these the electrons in a material are not acting independently.
They are acting as all as one thing. They're all
on one team. They're all going down the field together
doing exactly one thing. And in fact, at that point
you can't tell one from the other. So the team
(07:32):
is has a behavior and independent of what any individual
member of the team is trying to do, they all
are going to work together to go down the field.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Even though I don't know much, it does seem to
me like this work really deserved a Nobel Prize, don't
you think?
Speaker 3 (07:54):
Oh yes, it's It was revolutionary at the time, and
many many people had picked it up and started doing
things with it, including this team that continue to make
big discoveries in this field. And quantum computing is being
done with several different ways. One is with these super
conducting circuits that John Martinez works on.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
But trapped ions.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
So people at NIST in Boulder developed the theory and
helped experiments to trap one atom at a time and
be able to use the quantum mechanics of one atom.
And so what Martinez and team have created is a
sort of a super atom. It has its own quantum
states and you can make it go through phase transition
(08:38):
quantum transitions, just like atoms go through transitions.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
All right, My last question for you, and this is
not a sarcastic question, is a real question. Have you
ever met a physicist and your reaction after talking to
him or her after some amount of time is that
person is smarter than I am?
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Oh, every day, every single day really in this department,
I just I've bumped into people in the hall as
like it occurs to me it's like, Wow, that person
is way smarter than I am.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
What I mean when I when I mean, I realize
you've been studying this your whole life and I'm sure
there's stuff I could talk to you about, like financial
markets trading that you wouldn't understand. But still, but still,
when I talk to you, I feel kind of stupid.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
And I don't mean that in a bad way.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
It's like, oh my gosh, there's a lot I don't understand,
and there's a lot that I'm not capable of understanding,
even if I spent a long time trying, and yet
Paul knows all of it. And and then you to me,
it's it's remarkable that someone who is as amazingly smart
as I think you are, routinely, you say, runs across
(09:51):
people who you feel about them the way I feel
about you.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Well, well, thank you, I will say, I know a
little bit about a smattering of things that you and
I can have conversations about.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
You're very humble, Paul BLSCU physics professor and a guy
who makes me wish I were back in college so
I could study more.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Thanks so much for your time, Paul, appreciate it. Okay,
have a good one, right, Okay, you too.
Nobel Committee in Sweden announces who wins various prizes. A
few days ago, we had the Nobel Prize for medicine,
I didn't talk about it on the show.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
This morning we got.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
The official announcement of the Nobel Prize in physics. So
joining us to help us understand what this is all
about and hopefully able to do it without our heads exploding,
is the man himself, Paul Biel. See you, physics professor
and a guy who was I often say makes me
wish I were back in college so I could take
a class from him, because I've always loved physics, which
(00:32):
doesn't mean I'm very good at it.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Hi Paul, it's good to see you again.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Hi Ross, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
So just jump right in it.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Tell us what these three scientists engineers won the Nobel
Prize in physics for.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Okay, So there are three physicists, John Clark who's at
Berkeley and Michelle de Vay who's at Yale and University
of California, Santa Barbara joined appointment, and John Martinez who's
at the University of California, Santa Barbara. And they won
the Nobel for a work they did in nineteen eighty eight,
(01:09):
in which they were the first folks to measure what's
known as macroscopic quantum tunneling in superconductors.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Okay, we're going to need a little bit of that
in English.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
And I did watch some of the Nobel presentation. Yes,
I did watch some of the Nobel presentation, and it
has basic stick figure kinds of graphics that are nevertheless
mind blowing, like a kid throwing a ball against a
wall and it bounces back, and then one time he.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Throws the ball at the wall and it goes through
the wall.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Okay, so quantum tunneling goes all the way back to
the right the era when quantum mechanics was first invented
by Schreddinger and Heisenberg. And so it's possible in quantum
mechanics for a particle to be able to go through
a region where it technically does not have enough energy
to go through in any classical way. So you're trying
(02:04):
to get from one side of one valley over to
another valley. You got across a mountain. If you don't
have enough energy to get up to the top of
the mountain and go across, then you're never going to
make it whereas in quantum mechanics there's a possibility and
you can calculate that that an object can actually tunnel
through and get from one side of the hill to
(02:24):
the other. And this was applied almost immediately in the
nineteen twenties. George Gamov used that idea to describe why
certain materials have radioactive alpha decay. Alpha particles tunnel out
of the nucleus of things like uranium, and he calculated
how much that, what the half life of that should be,
(02:46):
and how it's related to the energy at which they tunnel,
and it was a perfect agreement with the experimental results
at the time. Now, that's one particle at a time,
And what was discovered later is quantum mechanics applies much
more broadly than to single particles. So superconductor, for example,
(03:09):
is represents what's known as a macroscopic quantum state. All
of the electrons in the superconductor are in exactly the
same quantum state and they act together, and so that
allows the system to have almost a classical degree of freedom.
But what these folks discovered and people related to them,
(03:32):
was that the entire quantum state itself is a quantum
It has a quantum character, and it bays its own
separate Schrodinger equation for this quantum quantum state.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Okay, I'm not sure if it's too early for Bourbon,
but I'm thinking about it. The Nobel's website says, and
I think this is what you were just talking about.
But I'm gonna tell you what this says, and then
I want you to try to put it in the
plainest English you can. The charged particles moving through the
superconductor comprised a system that behaved as if they were
(04:13):
a single particle that filled the entire circuit. So I
think that's what you were just saying. But can you
put it in any planar English or is it just
not possible?
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Okay, So they macroscopic effects happen with the things like Okay,
imagine water.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
You know.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
So water is composed of a bunch of molecules, right,
but you have enough of it in a tub and
it can slash back and forth. It has a wave
characteristic that's not described by any one of the water molecules,
but collectively they have the wave like behavior, Whereas in
quantum mechanics, the entire system can have a wave like behavior,
(04:54):
which is described by its own Stroudinger equation, and that
was the system that Martinez and Clark and Devay were investigated.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Okay, what are the practical implications and how does how
would this science? How is this science being used now
to develop computers or anything else?
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Right, So, in fact, this is one of the most
commonly used methods for creating what are known as qbits
to create quantum computers. So the superconducting system is what
many companies are developing now in order to create quantum computers.
And in fact, Martinez is a big player in that.
(05:42):
And Martinez I actually know him. He was at CU,
he was at NIST in the nineteen nineties and went
to Santa Barbara in two thousand and four. And so
his specialty is trying to use this quantum mechanic of
the macroscopic uh wave function to create quantum systems that
(06:07):
you can then manipulate very carefully, in fact, engineer to
create quantum computers.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
What what just strikes me about this whole conversation is
that you must have a whole bunch of friends who
you can sit down with and have these conversations and
actually understand what the other guy is saying.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Like I I asked you. I asked you to put I.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Asked you to put this in the plainest English you
could in the first word out of your mouth was macroscopic,
and and so and so this is this is obviously
extremely difficult stuff. But but I and I am kind
of serious about that. But more more seriously is how
how remarkable it is that that this stuff is is real?
Speaker 2 (06:58):
It's almost it. It seems like science fiction, right. I
don't think that.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
My confusion is because I haven't mastered partial differential equations.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
I think it's just crazy, right, right, So all of
these the electrons in a material are not acting independently.
They are acting as all as one thing. They're all
on one team. They're all going down the field together
doing exactly one thing. And in fact, at that point
you can't tell one from the other. So the team
(07:32):
is has a behavior and independent of what any individual
member of the team is trying to do, they all
are going to work together to go down the field.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Even though I don't know much, it does seem to
me like this work really deserved a Nobel Prize, don't
you think?
Speaker 3 (07:54):
Oh yes, it's It was revolutionary at the time, and
many many people had picked it up and started doing
things with it, including this team that continue to make
big discoveries in this field. And quantum computing is being
done with several different ways. One is with these super
conducting circuits that John Martinez works on.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
But trapped ions.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
So people at NIST in Boulder developed the theory and
helped experiments to trap one atom at a time and
be able to use the quantum mechanics of one atom.
And so what Martinez and team have created is a
sort of a super atom. It has its own quantum
states and you can make it go through phase transition
(08:38):
quantum transitions, just like atoms go through transitions.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
All right, My last question for you, and this is
not a sarcastic question, is a real question. Have you
ever met a physicist and your reaction after talking to
him or her after some amount of time is that
person is smarter than I am?
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Oh, every day, every single day really in this department,
I just I've bumped into people in the hall as
like it occurs to me it's like, Wow, that person
is way smarter than I am.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
What I mean when I when I mean, I realize
you've been studying this your whole life and I'm sure
there's stuff I could talk to you about, like financial
markets trading that you wouldn't understand. But still, but still,
when I talk to you, I feel kind of stupid.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
And I don't mean that in a bad way.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
It's like, oh my gosh, there's a lot I don't understand,
and there's a lot that I'm not capable of understanding,
even if I spent a long time trying, and yet
Paul knows all of it. And and then you to me,
it's it's remarkable that someone who is as amazingly smart
as I think you are, routinely, you say, runs across
(09:51):
people who you feel about them the way I feel
about you.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Well, well, thank you, I will say, I know a
little bit about a smattering of things that you and
I can have conversations about.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
You're very humble, Paul BLSCU physics professor and a guy
who makes me wish I were back in college so
I could study more.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Thanks so much for your time, Paul, appreciate it. Okay,
have a good one, right, Okay, you too.
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