Hello, and welcome to the Physics World Stories
podcast. I'm Andrew Glessner. In this episode, I'm
joined by theoretical physicist, cosmologist,
and author Paul Davies
to discuss
amongst other things his new book, quantum two
point o, the past, present, and future of
quantum physics.
Paul is a regents professor at Arizona State
University where he directs the Beyond Center for
Fundamental Concepts in Science, a place as he
puts it for cool stuff. I have to
say I agree with him on that and
you will when we talk about that very
shortly. But it tackles everything from the nature
of time and consciousness
to the origins of life and the universe
itself.
We're gonna explore what he calls the next
great quantum revolution,
quantum computing,
teleportation,
cryptography,
and sensing.
Along the way, we'll discuss why Schrodinger's equation
remains so central and how quantum ideas are
reshaping not just technology, but art, and what
might happen when quantum information science meets artificial
intelligence.
From teleporting particles
to the ethical challenges of AI and even
quantum jazz, it's a wide ranging conversation,
and I began by asking him about the
Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science.
I went to ASU
in 2006,
with a mission that,
had a budget behind it, provided by the
university president who's a great visionary.
And the idea was to set up a
center which is, small in terms of numbers
of people, but big in terms of its
agenda,
to,
dwell on foundational questions in in science across
all the sciences.
My profession is really
physics,
astrophysics, cosmology.
But I've also
worked in astrobiology,
it's now now called,
which touches on the problem, the origin of
life, where physics and chemistry turns into biology,
and the nature of consciousness,
the nature of time, the origin of the
universe,
the place of human beings in the great
cosmic scheme of things, you know, all of
these sort of profound questions. The way I
like to put it is that,
it's really
a center for cool stuff.
So whatever people seem to be talking about
at dinner parties, and at the moment, it
seems to largely be AI, and is it
intelligent, and is it conscious, and all those
things, you know, we we pitch in, and
we we do that. We have,
a sort of in house research program, which
is a subset of all the things I've
mentioned, but we hold workshops,
on
anything that's pushing the boundaries.
So if there's a subject that's struggling to
get out,
and, for example, quantum biology,
is there such a thing? Can we take
it seriously?
That things like that, we like to zero
in on and bring people together and say,
well, can we turn this into a
a proper discipline? Can we create
research
projects and collaborations
based upon,
deliberations over the last two or three days?
So that's that's how we'd like to operate.
And we used to do about six a
year,
because I did a lot of cancer research.
And so,
four of these were funded by the National
Cancer Institute.
We used to push
ideas,
new ideas about the nature and origin of
cancer.
That, program was wound up, and so we're
down to about two a year now, maybe
three.
How often does the the quantum
realm of science, if you like,
come into those discussions?
I suppose with the workshops,
it's always hard to avoid saying something quantum
because, of course, it permits all of science,
really. But those that focus specifically
on quantum questions,
probably only about, you know, one in five,
maybe even less than that. As a matter
of fact, I'm
planning one in, April, which will be on,
whether it often goes under the name of,
biophotons.
Living tissues emit photons,
it turns out. No controversy anymore about that.
Low a very low level specific
frequency photons.
What do they do? You say is it
just a
concomitant
process
that goes along with something basic like metabolism,
or is there a signaling function? And is
there anything sort of seriously quantum about it,
like sub quasonian
statistics or,
coherence or something. It's all, wide open. So
we as a matter of fact, our next
one will be very much in this sort
of quantum area. Amazing. Okay. So I have
in front of me a book which is
called, Quantum two point o, the past, present,
and future of quantum physics.
I've been delving deep into it and enjoying
it. But could you tell me well, tell
everyone, what what is quantum two point o?
So I think,
it it won't have escaped people's attention
that quantum mechanics has, pervaded,
pretty much all of science and technology. It's
the most successful scientific theory,
in history, and it's a 100 years old
this year because,
depending a little bit on what you go
back to. But if you go back to,
Erwin Schrodinger's
work and his famous equation
and Heisenberg's
work, then it's just about a 100 years
ago.
And, it's given us all sorts of familiar
things like the laser and the transistor and
superconductors,
and it explains electronics and AI and all
these things people are familiar with.
But,
the at rock bottom, this is a theory
that makes,
no sense. So after a hundred years of
extraordinary success,
physicists are still squabbling over what it all
means. Now this is, has a new twist
now because some of the,
what used to be called thought experiments, which
were devised decades ago to try and sort
of drill down into the philosophical
aspects of this subject,
the nature of reality at a quantum level,
those experiments have been done
and have been turned into a resource that
can be used, for next great quantum leap
forward,
which, I'm calling quantum two point o. That
seems to be a fairly universal description,
but a more formal description
is quantum information science.
So we're familiar with the fact that quantum
gadgets like computers
process information,
but they do it in a rather crude
way. The gates and switches, and they're on
and off and so on. And with a
quantum computer,
what you do is embed the information in
the quantum degrees of freedom itself. So that's
possible to manipulate individual photons and electrons
and sculpt
wave functions, quantum states,
to order. It's possible to,
carry out,
some amazing new things. So I just mentioned
quantum computing about this quantum teleportation,
quantum cryptography,
and a whole area of quantum sensing,
which is commercially,
burgeoning at the moment.
So we're we're on the cusp of this
next great quantum
revolution where we go beyond just using,
the quantum properties of matter,
for technology.
We're now being able to
apply it to the concept of information itself,
and that's very exciting. And
we'll give a further twist to the whole
question about what does it mean and how
can we make sense of a world,
in which
quantum mechanics with all its weirdness,
seems to pervade not just
technology,
but the whole of human society now. We're
feeling the effects of this technology,
pretty much everything we do.
You you mentioned
Schrodinger earlier, and I I get the impression
from reading the book that may I mean,
I don't wanna put words in your mouth,
but maybe,
you feel like his
contributions might have been more important.
Should should we be celebrating one hundred years
next year if you see what I mean?
It's true. The Schrodinger's equation,
was published in January
1926.
And so, we could say that is the
real centenary. But, of course, the work was
done in, 1925,
and, Heisenberg's
effort was also in 1925. And UNESCO declared
2025
to be, the
official
centenary, the year of quantum science and technology.
So it's it's always hard to know with
huge developments in science exactly when to open
the champagne.
Yeah. Okay. But you think Schrodinger's,
equation is
more instrumental, should we say? Well, it it
really is the starting point. If you're teaching
quantum mechanics,
what you do is you,
say, here is the equation that you must
use, and students often want to know, well,
where did that come from?
And that whole backstory is fascinating in its
own way. But, usually, that's the starting point.
And then you solve it for,
you know, fairly simple minded
situations like, the square well potential and the
harmonic oscillator and the hydrogen atom and so
on. And you very soon find
that Schrodinger's equation gives you,
a very powerful way of explaining
the properties of atoms and subatomic particles and,
molecules and so on. And it's it's the
way in which you do,
practical
quantum mechanics, the applications
of quantum mechanics.
Now you can,
take a step back and say, well, what
does it really mean, and how should we
understand it in a more abstract way?
And it's true that a lot of cutting
edge research
really goes beyond
Schrodinger's equation as a practical tool.
And,
we
define
vectors in infinite dimensional spaces and
various sorts of algebras to apply to them
and theorems approved about those and so on.
So you don't have to work with something
that seems sort of intuitive like a wave.
You can,
have this more abstract approach.
But I think the starting point really for
almost all students and the starting point historically
was that equation. So I I've been reading
the book,
you know, in stolen moments around my my
day job.
And everybody who sees me not everybody. Lots
of people who see me reading the book
say, oh, quantum physics. That's really fast. I
don't understand that at all. That's really interesting.
That's quite a common thing. I don't understand
it. It's really interesting.
Why why did you want to write this
book? Because there are other books on quantum
physics. Right? So what what does this one
bring to the table that the others don't?
You have to look at my career. I
think this is my 30 book, actually, if
you depending on how you count, some are
co authored.
And, many years ago, I wrote a book
called Quantum Fields in Curved Space. It's a
quantum field theory, an aspect of,
applied to gravitational systems, aspect of quantum gravity.
I read a textbook called quantum mechanics based
on,
a course that I,
I taught.
And then in all these other books,
the
you have to deal with quantum physics in
some sense. So if you're talking write a
book on cosmology or black holes or whatever
it is, inevitably,
quantum
mechanics is going to come in. And if
you look back at those books as, you
know, a chapter or a few sections or
something in which I hurriedly go through,
well, these are the basics that you need
to understand this particular narrative.
But I have never
really,
at least not for many many decades, sat
down and tried to pull it all together
as a subject, as a particular subject. And
the centenary seemed like a very obvious time
to do that, but also because
it now I think, the word quantum is
on everybody's lips. You you you work on
a newspaper if anyone does that anymore.
But the, you know, the news feeds are
full of quantum. There's some quantum there. And
this is largely this quantum two part data,
the the whole quantum information
revolution that's taking place.
It's the sentiment going into it. Governments are,
backing it, and
it start dominating
research, in,
across a range of of disciplines. So it
just seemed to me that this was a
very opportune time. But I didn't wanna write
a book just about, well, quantum mechanics is
great and it's given us all this technology,
and now it's gonna give us more. I
my real interest is in, well, what does
it all mean? How do we make sense
of this theory
that says, you know, deep down among atoms
and molecules, there isn't anything quite like
a real world in the everyday sense.
And so how is it that we can
probe or investigate this fuzzy,
uncertain,
weird quantum realm
and
get answers that can be communicated between you
and me. You know, did has the atom
decayed? Yes. I heard that that that Geiger
counter got click. You know, we can we
can do that. We can,
investigate
with technology, investigate what is happening at the
atomic and subatomic realm,
and then
make sense of it in the everyday world.
But patching together
the reality,
the fuzzy reality of the
subatomic world with the everyday reality,
of tables and chairs,
is is unfinished business. And there's a dozen
or so, different proposals for how we should
do that. Who do you think,
who do you want to read the book?
Right? If you if you could pick a
particular section of society to read the book,
who would it be?
Well, you know, this is,
what used to be called the the proverbial
layman. That's somewhat sexist term.
But this would be
someone
not necessarily,
with a thorough knowledge of physics, but it
would be someone used to,
science and the scientific method and and,
have some sort of background in thinking about
science, but an interest in the deep philosophical
aspects. So it would certainly
appeal to
philosophy students or or people,
with,
in everyday pre professions who are interested
in the big questions of existence. And I've
always written about those, the things like the
origin of the universe, nature of time, nature
of consciousness.
And quantum physics touches on all of those
areas, and that they're all
referred to in the book. I have sections
on all of those things.
And so, I, you know, I hope this
appeals to a rather broad range of people.
But what I didn't wanna do was just,
you know, another book on, well, what does
quantum mechanics all mean? I wanted to write
about,
this extraordinary effort that is now going into
quantum two point zero, that all of this
technology
are really dazzling technology. And some of this
is really just sort of on the age
of of doability,
things like quantum teleportation,
you know, can be done. Is it going
to be turned into a practical tool for,
like, a quantum Internet? Well, my university has
a whole lot of people beavering away to
try to, understand that. It's a silly question
really because I don't think the answer is
there. But but how quantum teleportation, tell me
how soon in terms of that,
computing aspect of it, how soon is that
gonna be a reality?
Right. Well, I think when people talk about
teleportation, they think of Star Trek and Beam
Me Up, Scotty,
and all that stuff.
What does it mean? It means sending something
from a to b without passing through the
space in between.
And,
you can do that
in
quantum systems,
with a great deal of care.
And you do it by using a property,
of quantum systems called entanglement. And this goes
right back to the culture wars of the
nineteen thirties because,
one of the people who kicked quantum theory
off, Albert Einstein,
never really liked it. In fact, he,
was impeccably opposed to it, and the more
it became developed, the,
more of a skeptic he was.
And
the rest of the community got behind it,
and in particular, Niels Bohr was the great
champion
of what we might think of as the
orthodox or textbook view, sometimes called the Copenhagen
view of quantum mechanics.
And the two of them would,
bicker at conferences, and Einstein was always trying
to find flaws in quantum mechanics with thought
experiments, which say, well, this can't be right
because if we did this and, measured that
and so on, we get an absurd answer.
And he cooked up one of these in
1935,
and,
it involves two particles
which,
fly apart from a common origin,
and, each is separately investigated,
maybe on opposite sides of the lab or
even opposite sides of the galaxy. And so,
you will have,
a proverbial physicist called Alice and Bob, and
Alice will measure her particle, and Bob will
measure his particle.
And it's very clear from the formalism of
quantum mechanics that what happens,
in Alice's lab and what happens in Bob's
lab,
are linked in some sort of, peculiar telepathic
manner. That means that there is a degree
of correlation in what they find over and
above
what could possibly exist,
if these particles had all along
possessed the properties that they are measured. So
this goes to the heart of what, quantum
mechanics is about. So Einstein
hoped
that,
beneath the quantum realm of uncertainty and fuzziness,
there was a sort of more rational
classical world.
When you make a measurement in quantum mechanics,
according to the Copenhagen
view, the official view, you don't uncover a
preexisting reality.
You create that reality or the specific aspects
of that reality by the very act of
measurement.
And you see Einstein,
didn't like that. So he when the particles
fired apart, he wanted them to already have
well defined properties,
and that Alice and Bob merely discovered what
those properties were. But it turns out when
you actually do the real experiment, which you
didn't have until the nineteen eighties,
but Einstein was wrong,
that it is the case,
that, the these
correlated particles that we're now calling entangled entangled
particles,
possess a degree of linkage,
a sort of telepathic linkage that could not
be explained if they
were born originally or emerge from a common
origin with well defined properties in advance. The
only way you get around that is having
some faster than light
communication, because Einstein didn't want that because of
his theory of relativity.
So this thing called entanglement
is now the resource that, it it's not
just a matter of
testing
this, dispute between Einstein and Bohr, which was
original motivation.
It's now a resource
that can be exploited in technology. One of
the exploitations is in this teleportation,
that if,
the a third person, Charlie,
sends an entangled pair of particles to Alice
and Bob, they can Alice can manipulate,
her entangled particle with the information she wants
to send.
And,
Bob will then be able to recover that
information at the other end without it actually
being transmitted down any sort of,
opt optical fiber or anything.
And, there's a there's a caveat there that
in order for that to happen,
Alice,
and Bob have to communicate the old fashioned
way, say, with the telephone,
to give some instructions about who measured what
when.
So you can't use this to send information
faster than light. There's a common misconception that
entanglement does
enable faster than light communication. It doesn't.
But it does mean,
that,
you can
transmit and I'm talking not about transmitting,
Captain Kirk. I'm talking about
transmitting,
you know, one qubit of information. The qubit
does for quantum
information sounds what the bit does for conventional,
computing.
And so you can transmit a key bit.
It's been done. Now Paul went on to
explain how these quantum experiments could translate into
a real world game changing technology
or the quantum Internet.
It's a fascinating area, but I really want
you to read that section of the book.
And if you do read no other bit,
just delve into that. It's really fascinating area.
Anyway, back to the conversation with Paul. So
I think we've, you know, quantum information technology,
quantum two point o has really got these,
three legs. We've got,
quantum,
computing
is the one we hear all about. Then
the whole of the sort of quantum
cryptography
and,
Internet and, tele population and then quantum sensing.
And I think in terms of can I
go out and buy a quantum gizmo that's
going to,
increase the profit in my company,
The answer is yes? There are a lot
of quantum sensors, being used and being developed.
So that's the field that is really moving
fast in the commercial space. But we hear
more, I think, about quantum computing because some
of the big players like Google and so
on
are involved in that.
I'd
that has just reminded me,
of something I was reading about in your
book, which did worry me, to be honest,
which was about,
AI and quantum computers. So this goes right
to the heart of the weirdness of quantum
mechanics and its mismatch
with daily experience. So in daily life, we
think that there's a real world out there,
and it's in a well defined state. And
and that seems to,
work well enough, to to navigate human life.
But then we start investigating this quantum realm.
And the best way that I can explain
it is if you take something like an
electron or an atom,
that a a quantum state for one of
those,
generally speaking, isn't doesn't,
correspond to a well well defined properties like
having a position or a motion or anything
like that,
that all of those factors are
uncertain.
And how should we think about that? Well,
the the way that I like is that
there are parallel
alternative realities.
You'll often read an atom can be in
many places at once in in quantum mechanics.
What do you mean by that? It really
means that there are many potential
positions that an atom could have, and you
can set up a quantum state in which
you could have an infinite number
of potential positions. And one way to think
about that is that these are alternative
possible realities blended together
to form an amalgam.
And and the then the question is,
you know, how how are we to understand,
that how that amalgam when we make a
measurement,
that we get a definite result. One one
of those possible worlds gets promoted
to a real world.
It's the winner, so to speak, in a
great cosmic lottery.
And that process of measurement, is is deeply
mysterious.
We still don't know what it is, how
it is that the,
the the amalgam,
turns into a a specific winner.
So one way of thinking about,
the quantum realm is an infinite number of
possibilities. And mathematically, we can describe that as
like an infinite dimensional space.
Now now you and I don't live in
an infinite dimensional space. We see three,
spatial dimensions, one of time,
and that's it. And yet, you know, the
atom lives in this,
infinite dimensional realm. So if you could imagine
being an atom,
what would you experience? You would experience something
infinitely richer,
than than we can experience in daily life.
And so, if you think that reality is
really at the quantum level, we think that's
the sort of place basement of reality. The
quant quantum mechanics
sits at the bottom of our explanatory chain
and that the everyday world is an approximation
for the quantum world. But that but if
you ask, you know,
how does god see the universe? Well, it
would be through quantum eyes.
And so,
then you have to think, well, if we
only ourselves see a tiny, tiny,
in impoverished
view of the the deep quantum reality,
what would it be like,
if you had a conscious
being on intelligence
who could explore the whole of that infinite
dimensional space? It's it's called a Hilbert space
after,
David Hilbert, the mathematician, but it doesn't matter.
The whole point is that this, that the
quantum realm, which is, an just this infinite
amalgam of all these possible realities, if you
could actually
inhabit that or observe it in some way,
then it's very hard to imagine,
you know, what what
that experience would be like.
Now we can't do it, but,
supposing we were to build now everyone is
building talk about AI, artificial intelligence. Is
he conscious? Is he intelligent? And so on.
I think that most people would say, well,
not yet. We haven't got there yet. But
now,
supposedly we do. Supposed we get to the
stage where, we would say, well, AI, it's
we might as well assume that it's the
we're dealing with a conscious agent,
and this could come quite soon.
Then what would happen if we combine this
with
with quantum two point zero? And there is
indeed an effort to to build quantum artificial
intelligence, QAI.
And then we can think, well,
what what what would
this entity, this agent
that could explore the whole Hilbert space, what
would it have to say to us, and
what sort of problems could it solve that
we could never ever solve even with the
help of our conventional computers?
So it does open up,
something,
science
fiction realm at the moment, but philosophically,
disturbing or exciting or challenging, depending on which
way you want to look at it,
notion that a conscious quantum entity,
would be,
I I imagine,
incomprehensible
to us in terms of its experiences.
And and it may be that we're gonna
build one of those within
the lifetime of some of the people listening
to us.
Do you think we should?
Well,
what we're into here, there's
this debate taking place just with conventional AI,
that
at what point do we hand over,
to to these, things and let them
run our our our world for us. You
even get into it in a smaller way
with quantum sensors because I mentioned
that, you can you can use them
to monitor human brainwaves. You you can wear
a helmet,
with quantum magnetometers in them that can pick
up a tiny magnetic field that penetrate the
skull. And then you can couple
the,
subject to a computer. You could use that
to control robot arms or,
vehicles or,
anything you want, really.
Once you you
couple the human brain
to a computer or to the Internet. And
that raises the question, does this enhance
what it means to be human,
or does it diminish that? In other words,
are we going to become like a node,
just a mere node in something much bigger?
And is that is that good or is
it bad? And it it depends on on
your, philosophical point of view. There are religions
in which,
immersing yourself in the great sort of cosmic
consciousness is regarded as progress.
That doesn't
the Western tradition tends to,
be, I think, very suspicious of the idea
of,
surrendering something,
of what it what it needs to be
human to some bigger system. So that's that's
something that would have to be,
be fought out e even before we get
to the idea of quantum AI. It's bad
enough for just AI.
Yes. You know, we're I look at the
world, and I'd I'd I don't necessarily think
that all the people in all the countries
should be the people in power. Right? I
think there could be better options than that.
Yes. It's a very uncontentious
question. People could draw their own conclusions as
to who I'm referring to. But if that's
what we do as humans, why why shouldn't
we give it over to, you know, something
that maybe new Northern Us? Why shouldn't we
give power over
our lives,
our world, our universe to something that maybe
could understand things better than me? I keep
changing my mind on this very topic. I
think, you know, look at the state of
the world today, and I think, well,
we're we're electing in some countries. We elect,
individuals, and then,
they seem to make a hash of things.
And then I think to myself, well, the
people I I know who I really admire
and who wants to change the world for
the better are not gonna do it through
the political process. They
do it through through writing or developing new
technology
or starting foundations or something.
And so it is getting to the stage
where you think, would we be better off
as a species,
being managed
by
AI? So but I tell you what the
danger is.
We're now developing, as it were, the first
generation of AI. So maybe QAI
is not far behind.
And,
I think everybody recognizes there are dangers of
sort of unrestrained
AI development, that we ought to have a
framework,
ethical framework,
practical framework, the you know, don't let these
things loose,
if they're gonna go berserk and destroy us,
or don't put them in charge of
battlefield or anything. That's all people worry about
all that.
So we can imagine,
constructing
the necessary,
software,
for these things,
which would embed,
roughly speaking, human values. And, Isaac Asimov was,
the great visionary. He writes
about robotics way back in the fifties, and
there are the three laws,
Asimov's
laws of robotics.
And you think, well, okay. We could we
could design this first generation
of ARs,
to to do no evil.
We'd we'd argue over what that means, but
we could imagine doing it. But the trouble
is the technology is moving so fast that
AI is already developing the next generation of
AI and the next generation and so on.
So supposing we surrender,
the
management of the planet
to,
a a system of AIs, and we sit
back thinking, well, we can enjoy all this
now. You know, it's
we can just have a good life and
let the AIs worry about
climate change or,
supply chain management or all of the things,
starvation. It would well outsource it to them.
But then,
the the the next generation
of AIs,
if if you you know, I think about
evolution. You know that with each generation, there
are accidents and glitches and things don't get,
passed on quite right. And,
over a million generations,
can we really believe that in the far
future,
that the AI is running things, are going
to still embed those human values? I think
it's very, very unlikely. So once you unleash
this AI world with its downstream
consequences for
end generation AIs,
that's starting to look really scary,
but it may be unstoppable. I feel like
every conversation, every podcast that I'm doing at
the moment could end up in, you know,
a black hole of,
what is AI going to bring to us.
So I wanna just get back to the
the quantum side of things.
And with this being the International Year of
Quantum, it we've we've covered a few different
areas of it over the course of the
year, including,
you know, conversations
with
quantum physicists, but also
artists who have delved into the world of
quantum in their work. People like Serena Scappanini,
who was in a podcast with us recently,
and Fliss Inkpen
as well.
And there's something in your book about quantum
music. Could you tell me just a bit
about that?
Well, this I I have to admit this
is a little bit of a gimmick, but
some people have,
decided that they,
would like to
couple musical instruments to a quantum computer.
And,
the thing about
quantum mechanics is that it's got, intrinsic
elements of of randomness to it, but it's
not, like chaos.
And so,
if you play your music,
through or in collaboration with a quantum computer,
it's going to be a very,
novel type of jazz
innovation because there'll be some unexpected elements, and
then there'll be some coherence,
to it and so on.
And so I think that, you know, it's
a little bit of an effort to try
to,
I guess, the bigger thing is that we've
been talking science a lot about the technology
that comes from it. But great scientific revolutions
always have implications for the arts as well.
And quantum music is probably just the first,
of the way in which,
quantum information science. Because when we get to
the information,
we're combining it with things like
creativity and knowledge and understanding,
and art.
So, quantum information science will impact
the arts, I think, right across. So I
can imagine,
even,
with drama and the performing arts
where,
you'd embark on a play, but you wouldn't
know how it's going to end,
partway through because you'd have a a quantum
AI or something would be the or more
modestly just a capital quantum computer
that would be sort of rewriting the script
as he went along. So, you know, I
think there's there's a lot of an entertaining
aspect that could come out of quantity.
No. Absolutely. Now the book,
is or I think entertaining is definitely a
word I would use,
to describe it. And I think that when
you described the person for whom it is
meant, I felt like you were describing me,
to be perfectly honest with you.
But my my my feeling is that
it doesn't really matter whether I understand this
stuff. It gives me great joy to try
and understand it and to read the book.
Right? But does it actually
matter if people like me
know about the quantum realm that's got, you
know,
permeating through everything?
Well,
the
so it's often being said where when people
say nice things about my writing, they say,
well, you know, that was wonderful. And then
I read I read your book or I
read your article, and and I thought, oh,
now I understand this obscure subject. But, you
know, the following day when I tried to
explain to my mother, I realized
there is there is an art in,
dealing with very technical and very
intellectual challenging subjects,
to find analogies and shortcuts and ways of
sort of conveying the spirit of something,
without having to get into the weeds of
the technicalities.
And I think that this book I mean,
I'd probably get more into the weeds with
this book I have with previous books because
some of the experiments are the delayed choice
experiments and the quantum erase and so on,
I'll go into in quite some detail because
they're so bizarre when you if you take
the trouble to to,
go through them. The nature of reality is
so weird,
that I felt it was worth spelling all
that out.
Now as to whether,
it matters
whether members of the public have grasp of
this,
I think I'm writing for people for whom
this subject is sort of intriguing and entertaining
and also pushes the boundaries for them to
think about what what is my place in
the world? How should I understand the world?
But there's also the sense in which because
we live in a world that's dominated by
quantum technology,
people have some idea what is this thing.
Because they used to work quantum,
you know, as if that explains everything. Oh,
it's quantum. Oh, yeah. I I know what
you mean. But but I I think people
should have some understanding of
of how those ideas
came into society over a hundred years ago,
and
and how important it is.
And and it's not just a label. I
mean, it is actually
a a scientific discipline.
And as I said earlier, the most successful
scientific theory,
in in history.
So I think people ought to know something
about it. It's you know, it it there
was famous
writer,
Charles Snow, c p Snow, who wrote about
their two cultures,
some decades ago.
I'd bemoan the fact that,
at high table
at, at a college,
where you're mixing people from different disciplines,
you would be appalled if one of the
scientists said,
well, I don't know anything about William Shakespeare.
You know? Was he a poet? I think
he wrote plays, didn't he? But, yeah,
I know nothing about it. You you really
would feel that that was a
a a terrible commentary on their education.
But if, you know, Shakespearean scholar said,
I've never heard of the second law of
thermodynamics.
You know, one of the most
arguably the most profound
of the laws of physics,
then they get away with that. They could
almost be proud. Like, oh, I never involved
myself before. Like like, second law of thermodynamics.
So I see see quantum physics now as
playing the same role as the second order
of thermodynamics did in previous generations.
It is something so central to our society
and to our technology and to but more
than that, to, understanding
what what is the nature of reality and
and human observation, and how do we fit
in to the universe as systems in in
its it's the universal material system that deep
down, it's got all this weird stuff going
on, and peep people need to know that.
I'd like to thank Paul Davies for talking
to me for this episode of the Physics
World Stories podcast. You can find out much
more about quantum mechanics from quantum origins to
quantum cosmology
in Paul Davies' new book, Quantum two point
o, the past, present, and future of quantum
physics. You'll also find a review of that
book by Physics World's editor, Matin Jirani,
in the opinion and review section of the
Physics World website. But, of course, we'll also
post a link to it from the podcast
pages. And, of course, there's plenty more quantum
science and everything else shaping the future of
physics over at physicsworld.com.
We'll be back next month for the final
episode of twenty twenty five, and thank you
very much for listening.