Transcription
The laws of quantum mechanics can say that it can be both a zero and a one at the same time.
You're making me happy that I'm a macroscopic object, that I can use simple laws to understand causality and everything else.
By the time you get up to 53 cubits, that's 10^ the 16 states in parallel. And by the time you get to, you know, hundreds, that's a number bigger than there are atoms in the universe.
You can become God. This is Star Talk. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. I got with me Chuck Knight. Chuck, baby.
Hey, Neil.
Yeah. How you doing, man?
I am doing great. I'm feeling good. We got a good show.
We got a good show. You know what everyone was curious about? Announced just a couple of months ago, the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Yes. And I can't believe that I didn't get it. No one knows more about physics than I do. As a matter of fact, my brain is a quantum computer itself. My nickname in the White House is Cubit. That's what they call me. I walk in, they cubit, figure this out for me.
Well, I was kind of surprised as you are. So, professor of physics at UC Santa Barbara, John Martinez. Did I pronounce your last name correctly, sir?
Yeah, that's correct.
All right. John Martinez, professor of physics, UC Santa Barbara. I've been to Santa Barbara once. That is not a real town. It's a fake town. It's a It's a movie set.
It does look like a movie set.
It's like there was no garbage in the street.
There's no I mean, it's super clean. All the houses are like pristine. And I was looking around. And I was like, "Well, it's only a matter of time before the cops show up that I'm here." There's a black man walking around this place. I know for sure somebody about to call the police.
So, so your your expertise is deep in the quantum and quantum people love talking and thinking about quantum physics. Uh not only of course in the world of physics, but in the public sector.
Oh yes. People love them some quantum the imagination of the world. that captured the imagination and I I have on my notes here. So you led a team at Google to develop their superconducting quantum computer. Are you still with them or or were you were you on the faculty that whole time?
So I was on the faculty that whole time and had a joint appointment and I still had some students who were uh working uh so I had a joint appointment and then in 2020 I left Google and been thinking about what needs to happen next in the field and decided to start my own company.
That's you know that's that's a very California thing to do.
It is. Yeah.
You know that's a very Google thing to do too. So in uh 2025 October, that's the Nobel announcement month. Uh you shared the Nobel Prize in physics with uh Michael Devet. Did I pronounce his name correctly?
Michelle Devay.
Oh, Michelle. Excuse me.
France. He's from France.
From France.
Oh, yes. Of course. But of course.
But of course.
Well, in the quantum we have nothing but attitude.
And John Clark. uh for I got here for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling and energy quantization in an electric circuit.
Wow.
Now we've had electric circuits for 150 years, dude. So 170 years. What? Let's go back to Faraday. So what are you discovering in an electric circuit that nobody else did?
Well, very simply, we saw an electric circuit where if you look at how it works, you it's obeying quantum mechanics. It's using the laws of quantum mechanics. And what's kind of unusual here is you think of quantum mechanics of how atoms work or molecules work. So, it's usually on the microscopic small objects. And we showed that for electrical circuit which the chip is about you know the size of a dime or so. It's it's quite big. It's the current and voltages of that that obey uh obey quantum mechanics.
But but why didn't they always do that? Why why is this a discovery so long after we've known about currents and electrons moving through wires? What's going on there?
also our understanding of things like superc conductivity.
That's kind of a macroscopic manifestation of quantum physics, isn't it? Where the the the wave function for the electron becomes so large that all the waves match up and then all the electrons behave as though it's one particle. Is that a fair way to characterize superc conductivity? And is that not similar to what you're describing about what you got the award for?
Yeah. So these that's actually a good question. These are actually a different phenomenon. This is something that uh professor Anthony Leget when he first proposed this kind of described but I can I can explain this with an analogy. Uh if you take a a crystal for example, I have one here uh that I happen to have on my uh my desk. Um it's uh this is a quartz crystal and if you take a crystal you have the atoms that are binding together in a certain arrangement due to the microscopic quantum mechanics but because they bind together kind of in the same way over and over again. you can get a naturally grown crystal with huge planes on it that basically describe on a big level, you know, millimeter or centimeter level what's going on at the atomic level.
So, so quantum mechanics, microscopic quantum mechanics can be seen at a macroscopic level uh just by kind of the quantum mechanics repeating itself over and over again. But in the end it's still microscopic.
I see. So this is the buildup of the the the geometry if you will of the microscopic particles to become a macros and macroscopic let's loosely say you can see it with your eyeballs right macroscopic. Okay. So now
well I I want to add something that you might like. The fact that you see what's going on with on the atom level with your eyes is kind of a magic physics uh phenomenon. And you might appreciate here in California that's why so many people think crystals have magic healing powers. Okay. Because it's such a strange it's a strange idea. Okay. But it it it just comes from this fact.
Yeah. No, we did a whole uh explainer on crystals
on crystals
and their low energy output.
Yeah. Yeah. How they have Yeah. the lowest energy state
energy state
and people I feel this crystal energy. Yeah. It it was a direct indictment of California the state.
Yeah. And and you know I can it's really it really comes from something that's quite astounding. So I can see how people get mystified by this.
Yes. But so does Earth in the solar system in the universe. Yeah. So,
so can I ask as a a lay person who doesn't understand quantum physics at all?
Why do you call other people that don't understand things that you do dumbass? And now here's something you don't understand and you're just somebody who doesn't understand it.
Oh, cuz I want to understand.
Oh, you want to understand? That's why I'm not a dumbass.
See, the people who just don't care and don't want to understand, they're dumbass. Thank you for clarifying that.
Yeah, I have no problem with ignorance. I am one of the most ignorant people you're ever going to meet and I'm fine with that. I celebrate my ignorance. I just don't remain in it.
That's all on it.
Yeah. Asking questions is so important in science. And I think it's great that you want to ask a question. And I'm going to say that in my career, I'm kind of not known for sitting in the front row and asking lots of questions to the people. And that's what that's how I learn.
Okay.
Yeah. So, what's your question?
So, all right. The tunneling part is what has me in the circuit. And maybe this is
because that's what he got the prize for.
That's what he got the prize for. Quantum quantum macroscopic quantum tunneling tunneling in a electrical circuit. So I'm interested in the tunneling part and how it's observed in the circuit because if I'm not if I'm mistaken, just let me work this out so I can make sure I'm understanding what I'm asking. But the tunneling is when a particle overcomes a barrier um even though it shouldn't doesn't have enough energy to do so. Right? Is that right?
That's exactly right.
Two thumbs up on that one.
Okay. So, what are you actually observing when you call it tunneling in the circuit? Is it you're because are you looking at the wave particle duality? Are you look what exactly are you looking at that says, "Oh, I can see tunneling."
Okay, so let me go back to my analogy uh for a second. If you take a bunch of atoms and they you cool it down, it condenses into a solid. Okay? And then if you want to describe what's going on with that system, you talk about let's say the center of the the little particle you made and you kind of describe the physics of that. You don't have to think about all the individual atoms because they're constrained to be next to each other. And the same kind of thing happens in superc conductivity where the electrons condense into the superconducting state. And it turns out that there's one variable left which we call the phase. But it turns out that all the electrons are kind of paired up. They all have the same phase. And if you do something to the circuit, they all kind of act together in a way to give you a big current. you know, you can get, you know, amps of current in a in a w superconducting wire if you set it up right.
Wow.
Now, so so what happens in terms of the tunneling you're asking is in a superconducting wire, you basically have the current flow without any resistance. Okay, that's what a superconductor is.
Cool. If you put too much current in the wire, then it kind of breaks the superc conductivity and then you start seeing the voltage across it and then it looks like a regular wire. Okay. Now, it turns out going from the zero voltage state to this voltage state has a potential barrier associated with it. And for the particular circuit we made, there's something called the Joseen equations. And then you can do some mathematics and compute what the barrier is. But there's a barrier. And then through that barrier is what you're kind of uh tunneling through this energy barrier having to do from going from superconducting to like breaking the superconductivity.
All right. Gotcha.
So now let me play journal journalist here if I may. So, what good is that?
No, no, that's a good question.
I'm saying, you know, if I'm the Nobel Prize committee, I'm going to hand out a million dollars. And I'm thinking, is that what I'm going to give a million dollars to?
People actually at the time thought, well, of course, it's going to be quantum mechanics. Okay. And of course, what we did is an experiment to show that it actually worked. And this kind of weird electrical variable obeys quantum mechanics. But the reason it gets practical is you can now build electronic devices that obey quantum mechanics. So the way I like to talk about that is normally people think about the periodic table where uh you can put the various atoms together to make molecules and you can do useful things with chemistry. Well, what we have here is if we want to look at quantum mechanics, we actually have a bigger periodic table now. And the new periodic table that we work with are based on inductors and capacitors and things called transmission lines and these joun. And we have a whole new class of quantum uh devices that we can make based on, you know, this new kind of physics here, this macroscopic physics.
Okay.
Okay. So this this opens up what the kinds of circuits you can design.
So yeah. Okay. So you're really what you're doing is you're opening the door to an actual quantum computer.
Yeah. What happened is people explored this over the last 40 years. First looking at the basic physics, but in the last let's say 30 years or so, people can use this quantum behavior to build a quantum computer. And the reason why that's interesting is is our regular computers are made with electronics. And there's a lot of advantages for doing that. It's small and low power and whatever. And now if you can do a quantum computer with electronics, you can use a lot of the same technology to build it up.
No, but wait a minute. But you the the research paper that sort of birthed this path dates from 1985. Is that correct?
That's correct. Yeah. So, so what's up with the Nobel committee?
What what
they're slow readers.
Slow readers.
No, actually, actually, yeah, I've kind of wondered that myself, but not really. I would say the original experiment was very nice and um you know, showed showed this, but you know, a lot of it's it's your question. A lot of times the you don't know if physics is important until you see what it develops into. So maybe at the time it developed into some nice physics who wrote papers, but people would wonder, well, what's going on? But after 40 years, there's a few thousand physicists really working on this phenomenon to see if they can build upon a computer. And the fact that it's grown, if you like, into a big scientific industry, a new field, and like I say, a new way to make artificial atoms that it's important came out. So, it's kind of like fine wine, right? It had to had to sit there for a while.
All right.
He's California guy, so he's got the wine.
Exactly. Had to get into the mellow.
Got you. And I might add here, little known fact, the no the rules of the Nobel Prize are that if you've already died,
you can't win the Nobel Prize.
Oh no.
Right. So that makes me wonder why they wait so long so they don't have to give it up.
Yeah, exactly.
Wow.
The loophole is if they announce that you won,
right,
and then you die.
Oh, well,
then you then you can still get it.
Oh, well, that's comforting. Well, you know, for me, the funny thing is that I did this as a graduate student. That was my thesis project and then I retired as a professor last year. So, it it kind of took my whole career, you know, for this to for this to happen. Streaming January 15th on Paramount Plus, an all new series, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. Set in a San Francisco of the Future, a bold new class of cadets from across the galaxy begin their journey as they strive to discover who they are and their place among the stars. Starring Academy Award winner Holly Hunter as Captain Nala Ake and Emmy award winner Paul Gomedi as villain Noose Bracka. There's never been a better time to enroll in Star Trek. Starfleet Academy new series streaming January 15th on Paramount Plus.
Before we go to Cosmic Queries with our our our fan base, uh just I just want to make sure we're on the same page with some language here. I think Chuck, would you you'd agree, John, that Chuck correctly described quantum tunneling in his account? Would you agree?
Well, we I I explained how um how it was a quantum mechanical system and different, but I maybe didn't describe how tunneling works.
Let's just let's get the official word on that. Then we'll do that and then we'll go to Joseph's and junctions. And I remembered being taught that in physics class.
Notice how I said that,
right?
I remember being taught it.
Taught it.
Not I don't that I'm not saying I remembered learning it. So, uh, Joseph and Junction and another another thing here. What's this other term here? Uh, a Cooper bridge. What?
Cooper pairs.
Cooper pairs. So, so start with quantum tunneling then go to Joseph from Junctions and then give me Cooper pairs and tell me what all this is.
So, what happens when quantum tunneling is you have this, it's a particle and there's a barrier and it has to go through the barrier in order to tunnel. That's what happens with the tunneling. Now, what I've learned talking to journalists and podcasters is another way to explain it. And what happens with quantum mechanics is you can borrow energy and then pay it back because energy is conserved. But you can do that quantum mechanically for a very short time. And the time that you can borrow the energy for is is given by the equation the energy you're borrowing time to time is roughly equal to what's called planks constant which in units are 10 minus 34. It's a tiny amount of time. So if you set up an experiment so the barrier is low enough and it's kind of fast enough to tunnel through then you can tunnel. And that's what you do in this experiment is you set that up. uh it's a microwave experiment so it's very fast and then these barriers you can continuously set to very low energies and then and then it can tunnel
what's said of them is that tunneling it crosses the barrier instantly
even if the barrier is spatially separated
no actually this is new physics that we did on that that I did in my posttock it takes a little bit of time for it to tunnel
it Wow.
This is not actually wellnown. This is an experiment we did a long time ago. Unfortunately, we didn't publish it in a in a good journal so no one knows about it. But I get to talk about in my Noville lecture so that people know about it. But uh yes, this is what happened. It's a good way to think about it.
Dude, you're telling me I've been misinformed my whole life that a particle that tunnels moves through instantaneously. And you have some obscure research paper that says it's not.
Yes, that that's absolutely correct.
So, how long does it take?
Well, this is what after I got my thesis in 1986, that's something I worked on in 1987 and 88. So, we were able to do this right away. And the funny story is my co-authors and I couldn't decide for a word to call this. We had to invent a word and we kind of got stuck arguing back and forth and never, you know, published it properly. So, it's kind of a sad story, but uh you know, words are important.
You still don't have a word for it.
You can call it the MTA effect.
I I call it the the tunneling traversal time. Okay. Which I think is a pretty good word. That's what I use.
The tunneling traversing time.
Little little too many syllables for me, but t T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T Cubed, you know.
And how do you calculate how long it takes?
Well, so it what happens is you c you connect your superconducting cubit to a resistor that you can change the distance from the cubit from. Ah
and what happens is when when it's close it has one tunneling rate and when it's far it has another tunneling rate and that the distance the time delay it takes from going there to the resistor tells you the uh the tunneling time and what happens is it it takes some time for it to tunnel. If it's really close, then the whole tunneling it it sees that resistor. But if the resistor is far away, it tunnels before it can, you know, it can see the the delay there. It's a the speed of light delay between the junction and the resistor. And uh that speed of light delay um causes the it to not the effect of tunneling in the same way.
So what what impact does this have on on prevailing research knowing this fact?
Um if if you have um a a tunneling phenomenon that um has some complicated u other structure around it then uh you would want to know uh you know if there's a time delay to how it's going to do that. The way I I I've thought about it in the past is you have like a scanning tunneling microscope and you're you're tunneling electrons into some metal or something. If the metal has some weird frequency dependence or it has some weird delay associated with how it responds then that delay is going to affect the tunneling rates.
Doesn't matter. Okay. previous paradigm that tunneling was instantaneous was easy for me to understand that like the wave function just sort of collapsed on the other side of the of the of the barrier because the wave function is kind of everywhere that becomes instantaneous movement and and somehow I was okay with that.
Yes.
And now you you're telling me no it takes time so you know calm yourself.
Uh so so does what do you say to the instantaneous people or is that a camp that now has to dissolve?
Uh so what I would say is if you have a regular particle with mass okay and then you put a force on it instantaneously accelerates from that force. Okay. because it's just but in systems where that electron is that mass is connected to other masses maybe far away it it may not instantaneously move with a simple you know you know Newton's law or simple instantaneous so for more complicated systems which you definitely have with these electrical circuits then uh then your concept of mass becomes more more complicated and and you have to throw in this physics.
All right.
Is that okay?
Uh no, it's not with me. I'm sorry.
You're you're stuck on on on moving uh you know particles, electrons and atoms or whatever. Quantum mechanics is more general than that. But I'm I'm I'm kind You're making me happy that I'm a macroscopic object that I can use simple laws to understand true
causality and everything else
and things only really get weird in in the quantum realm.
But people love visiting it. We're we're about the same age. Did you read Mr. Tomkins in Wonderland where he where George Gamma changed the the constants of physics and one of them he changed plank's constant if memory serves? So that it so that you'd walk through a doorway and you would like refresh.
Oh yeah. Oh yes. My I did not read the book, but Michelle Deere read that book and was very inspired by it. Yes.
Yeah. Yeah. It's just it made it real and tangible for like in one of them the speed of light was like 60 miles an hour. So you're driving down the street and you just see things.
You just see light going by you.
How do you see it? That's wild. So, so, so just to give you an example, you know, we often talk about this macroscopic quantum tunneling is taking a ball and throwing it against the wall and having it tunnel through if if the quantum mechanics was was appropriate, which of course naturally it would just bounce off. And then in our case, if the B if the ball is kind of a little bit uh compressible uh and and you know then you would get a maybe a different tunneling rate if if it could squeeze and deform a little bit.
Okay. Now, Joseph and Junction, tell tell me about those.
Joseph and Junctions, what's your function? So the Joseen junction is just a it's just two two metals that are in separated by a very thin insulating barrier. So for example, you take aluminum aluminum wire and you just leave it out in air for a couple minutes. It'll form a very thin aluminum oxide. It likes to oxidize. You put aluminum on top, but it's thin enough that the actual electrons themselves or Cooper pairs can tunnel through that and give you a current, but it's way smaller because it's the tunneling, you know, doesn't happen very often.
Okay. So, those are those are Cooper pairs.
No junction with Cooper pairs are the pairs of electrons across that junction.
Well, the Cooper pairs exist inside the superconductor. Okay. And what happens is when you have a just a regular metal, there are electrons that are saying going in one direction and there's electrons that are going exactly in the opposite directions and there's other electrons that are going in one direction and another direction. The net velocity if you if you sum those two velocities at zero. And what superconductivity does is connect all these net zero velocity cooper pairs with the other cooper pairs and then it kind of can condense into the superconducting state. So these are this is kind of a magic that happens in metals that you have things that are exactly opposite of each other but then they can pair up. Someone someone win the Nobel Prize for understanding this. This is really kind of an amazing conjecture back in the late 50s and early 60s.
Well, quantum, you know, it's it's mind-boggling and that's just why people like it. Yeah.
Especially. And uh last thing before we go to our Q&A, uh just catch us up with quantum computing. We did a whole show on quantum computing and I was more confused after than before. uh tell me remind us what a cubit is and why it has utility in quantum computing.
So um the basic idea of a cubit it's very much like a bit if you know anything about how your computers work. There's a state that can be in zero and one and you put bits bits together to show a word or describe a number and you do some logic operations with that. So um what a cubit is is a bit that's made out of a quantum computer and the the laws of quantum mechanics can say that it can be both a zero and a one at the same time. Now let me kind of explain why you know that's kind of possible. Uh if you take for example an atom hydrogen atom and you have an electron and proton they're different charges and they want to stick together right atoms have size. Okay, we we you know we know why do we have size? And that's because the electrons aren't just single point particles, but they form kind of a cloud around the the the center nucleus. And the electron is on one side and the other. It's kind of all around at the same time. So So in the same way you can talk about a bit and say it's not zero or one like classically, but it's it can be both of them at the same time. I got you.
But but isn't aren't you making a statistical statement? It's not both of those simultaneously at the same time. It's just statistically can be either possibility.
Yeah. Aren't you really making a probabilistic statement rather than statement of existence?
Yeah, that's the strange thing about quantum mechanics. You would think that it's like moving around, but it's actually at all the pl all the different places at the same time.
Right. Until you determine, right? Because once you determine where it is, then the rest of that information is useless because that's where it is.
That's right. So it has it has to be kind of everywhere at the same and it's a very definite state and because it's a definite state, you can do computing on it.
Right.
Okay. So you have this zero and one state and um you can think about taking a single cubit zero and one state running it through some simple algorithm and then at the end you get the answer for the zero state and you get the answer for the one state and you did all that in parallel because it's not statistical. It's a definite definite thing.
Holy crap.
Yeah. So now if you have if you have that stacked on stacked on stacked on stacked you can run in you can run count count less uh um calculations at at the same time. That's exactly right because with one cubit factor two who cares okay parallel factor two but two cubits there are four states 00 1 0 0 1 1 3 cubits 8 416 by the time you get up to 53 cubits which is what we did in Google that's 10^ the 16 states in parallel
damn
10^ the 16
damn in parallel that's insane
yeah and by the time you get to you know hundreds That's a number bigger than there are atoms in the universe. Okay. So you can do you do you can do tremendous let's say parallel computation.
You can become god
but nature doesn't make that easy. Okay. And then nature it's hard to take take um advantage of all those states. So you have to build special algorithms so that even though it's doing everything in parallel, it kind of points to your answer. And that's why, you know, only certain things work with a quantum computer, but they're important things, but you could you have to be careful designing it
for now.
Yeah. Well, brute force and it sounds to me because I'm about to say something. Tell me if I'm right or wrong. This is out just out of my mind. I never read it anywhere, but it sounds to me like brute force encryption busting is child's play from what you just described. Like there is no more key to anything anywhere on Earth if you crack this.
Uh, okay. You You're making a bold statement. I I have to, you know, tell you a little bit more.
Good. Because I'm making this I'm make I'm pulling this out my ass.
Yeah. This was the big algorithm in 1990s by Peter Shore saying that in potential you can do that which was the big thing and people are now building quantum computers where I can I can kind of see in the notsodistant future that you may be able to break what's called RSA just as you said. Now this this is the thing people have to remember. All cryptography systems have a finite lifetime. So this RSA what people are using right now it's been around for many decades now but we're thinking because of quantum computers they're nearing the end of life okay just like every other cryptographic system and people have to switch over to something what's called cryptosafe excuse me quantum safe crypto and people have algorithms they're working on and you know it it will happen.
Yeah. But the way it was first brought to the public, okay, it was we can never encrypt anything ever again. But what they what they really meant was the encryption algorithms that were previously established were unbreakable.
But now that by the means available at the time, the computing means and now that we have quantum computing, we need a next generation cryptography of cryptography. So that's a fair way to characterize it.
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. and and you know people have known this for a long time and there's actually an active program at the NIS government agency that's you know taking examples and doing all the analysis. What what surprises me as someone who's building a quantum computer which is really hard it's going to take decades um is that writing the software and doing the math they think you know takes longer or takes a long time. So uh but you have to do it in a way where you really believe that it's going to work. This is hard but people are working on it. There there are there are good algorithms there now.
Yeah. So so you sleep well at night. You don't have to worry.
Yeah. You can sleep well at night.
Those secrets you're carrying that you the whole world wants.
Yeah. You know cuz you know I I keep I keep the nuclear codes under my pillow. So you know.
So last thing. We've heard the term quantum supremacy. Is this just sort of cold war all over again kind of thing?
This was a nice term developed by a theorist proposing it. And then we did an experiment. It's basically showing that we could do with a quantum computer, something that would take way longer for a regular computer, a big data center. Okay. And that's what we did in 2019. And uh um but it was for a mathematical problem. And now what people are doing is working very hard to do something useful in this way used doing and and that's harder. It takes bigger computer and more clever algorithms.
So it's not a geopolitical statement quantum supremacy.
Well, some people kind of thought it did. Uh so some people called it quantum advantage. Somehow the word supreme and supremacy was kind of not not good. But anyway, that's that's what it was branded at originally. We're going to go to our Patreon supporters. This is Scott Oppenlander who says, uh, or Openlander. Hello. Uh, this is Scott Oppenlander, pronounced Scott. Really, Scott? Thanks. You know, these people. He says, I'm tuning in from Chicago. Hey, Neil, John, and Lord Nice. As as quantum computing advances, it seems like its potential power could create risk even greater than the AI challenges we're already wrestling with. Do you see quantum technology as something that might require the same level of early government control as the development of the atomic bomb, at least until we understand it well enough to regulate it responsibly?
I like that. Go back in time. We created the Atomic Energy Commission,
right?
which put rules and regulations and guidelines for how we we obtain, process and use uh nuclear fuel basically that would become atomic energy. So do you foresee John a just echoing this question a need for a quantum computing commission so that it doesn't become our overlords?
That's right. um you know this is happening in real time right now with AI and large language models and this has always been the case for supercomputers and that has been controlled in some way. Um, I think we can take uh what's going on with AI, modern AI and and the like and there's profound societal impacts there uh and I think we need to use the same structure that you're seeing there um to uh you know govern govern what quantum is doing. Quantum is behind. It's probably where AI and large language models were 10 15 years ago. But I I think we already have the things in place and we should just kind of learn from that and copy from that to to make sure we're okay
as an early model of how to think about the problem. But but presumably you're not one of those who says put a ban on further research. That wouldn't make any sense to a research scientist.
Well, it's kind of like would you put a ban on AI research and then have other countries or adversaries uh you know it's it's kind of the same problem as that and and these are hard problems. I'm not saying I have an easy answer but I am I think we can use these other examples uh on in computing as a way to guide us.
Very good.
Yeah.
Yeah. The cat's out the bag so there's forget it.
All right. What else you got?
Very cool. Uh this is Mark Phillips who says, "Greetings Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice, and John." This is Mark from Florison, Missouri. Uh
Missouri,
Missouri.
He says, "I understand. A cubit exists in a state of superp sition almost like it's stuck in the phantom zone."
Do you know the Phantom Zone?
I don't know the Phantom.
That's the prison in in this Superman.
Little flat two dimensional flat two dimensional thing. space that you're banished to.
That's a prison. It's a prison. It's a phantom zone. They stuck in a two-dimensional shape, right? And when a a nuclear blast opened that up and that's when you
That's how they got freed.
You got the three criminals who came to Earth.
Zod.
Zod.
Kneel before Zod. Yeah. He says, "My question is about the hardware. How do you physically transmit that fragile quantum state through fiber optic light or copper wiring without it collapsing? And how does that ghostly probability signal eventually translate into a hard realworld data point that a computer can actually use?
I like that.
Wow, Mark, you are a real downer.
So, does a Cuban have a have a lifetime a life expectancy for it to remain in that state?
Yeah. And and that's that's the the basic thing of the of the question. The basic idea is that all these cubits are imper imperfect. And if you send it down a a photon down a fiber optic, it can it can go kilometers, but eventually it it gets absorbed and removed. Copper wire, it's even much worse. It's why we use superconductors. And all I can say is we've spent decades now understanding this problem and figuring out how to engineer so that we don't lose the quantum energy. But the thing to remember is in any quantum system you always have these imperfections. So there's always errors in a quantum computer whereas in a classical computer you can design your bits so that they can last a long time and you don't have to worry about it. And that's what makes it so hard to build. So part of the challenge then is keeping the quantum computer very cool to reduce the thermal noise that could uh um decoher
your quantum phenomena is that that's why we we read about this.
That's right. We we we go very cold so there's no noise and we use superconductors so there's no dissipation. But you know if it's a microwave circuit it can radiate. it acts like an antenna and the energy can get lost that way. So this is a this is the the real challenge to build an experiment is to figure out how to you know get around all these problems.
But for now we're not carrying a quantum computer on our hip.
Well, yeah,
because we don't have superconducting
materials and
we're not going to see a Texas Instrument quantum computer
anytime soon. What's funny is we all carry our quantum computer on our hip now or computer. But that's just a terminal to a big data center where all the crunching is doing. So I kind of feel like quantum computers will be that way. We have a data terminal and we use it and then it's often some fancy data center somewhere. In the 1950s and60s, right,
four function computers filled a room,
right,
with a heavy
University of Pennsylvania
with a, you know,
the whole the whole room was the whole room was the computer
was the computer and to say, "Oh, one day you're going to carry that on your hip." No.
Yeah. Nobody would have people would have looked at you like you were crazy back then, right?
Yeah. Well, just give a shout out then to David Drain who asked the question, "Hi, Dr. Tyson Lord, nice professor. um have wondered if quantum quantum computing will fit into devices that we have now or will it be like terminals and servers? That's exactly
and earlier hardware configurations forever.
Yeah, that it the terminals and Yeah. Yeah. I think it'll be remote. Although, you know, you could still companies could still buy quantum computer, but uh I don't think that's necessary to do that unless you're worried about security or something.
Yeah. Yeah. You you'll carry a terminal when you're hip and it'll it'll speak to the server, right?
Which will be out in space so it can be cold enough
or or the back side of the moon like Elon Musk was saying where it's really cold.
Well, only when the sun isn't shining.
Right. Right.
Or at the bottom of a crater where the sun don't shine.
Ooh, that's Oh, look at that. Where the sun never sees.
No, it's where the sun don't shine. Say it right.
Where the sun don't shine.
That's right. We call it the moon's butthole
at the bottom of the at the poles. They're craters that are deep enough that the sun's
they never see the sun's
angle never gets over the the ridge of the crater
and so the it just stays there. Just
stays dark all the time.
It's cold cold and I water gets there and never leaves.
Wow.
They're called cold traps actually. But I had I had considered what a great place to put a computer would be just right in a cold trap on the moon. All right. This is Steven Pello and or Stefan what Stephen he says uh hello Star Talk family Neil John Lord nice my name is Steven Pello from Gouster city New Jersey uh the Dan Brown book origin touches on the idea of quantum computing driving future AI and changing humanity's trajectory how do you see the real advancements in quantum computing influencing the next wave of scientific discoveries or even our understanding of our own consciousness.
And let me add to that, given the computing power necessary for current AI needs.
Yeah.
Is that going to be lessened by quantum computing because it can do it all in less time or
or are we all going to be sitting around in the dark because of quantum computing and AI
taking all the energy?
All the energy.
Yeah. So, in other words, what is the future marriage of these two frontiers?
Well, yeah, When I worked at Google, we were in the quantum AI AI lab and people were thinking just that because AI is so important to Google. Right now, if you want to use AI to ask a quantum question, uh, you know, how a molecule work or how does NMR work or some scientific question that involves quantum mechanics. that's where it might uh answer these AI might be really powerful and answer these questions first but then eventually you know it'll it'll be better. So yeah it could be that when you query something on your phone in you know 5 10 years from now you'll get some quantum computer you know aided uh aided the result which would be pretty nice.
Very cool.
All right. Did we get the last bit of that question too? What was
um the last bit was how will it affect our understanding of our own consciousness. There's a lot of people who believe that the quantum computing will reach a point where the computing state will be so advanced that this emerging quality or singularity will happen and consciousness will take place in the computer itself
like Skynet
like Skynet
Skynet achieved consciousness in the Terminator. So yes, so you'll have an actual sensient self-aware thinking being that emerged from the ability to make these computations.
Yeah. If if you have the the number of sort of uh computational synaptic possibilities such as what goes on in the human brain, right?
We pretty sure that consciousness is emergent,
right? It wasn't wasn't designed into the package. It came out of the package. So, uh, do John, do you feel or think or see that consciousness might just come out of quantum computing?
Yeah, I I think people talk about that. It's a possibility, but um I I'm more of a practical person and uh I uh don't necess you know I'm I'm working on building a quantum computer and not what's going to happen in 20 years from now. So, but yeah, that's definitely a possibility.
Wow. Very cool. That's cuz he's going to be dead in 20 years, so you don't have to care about
Actually, you joke about that, but that's what I talk about in my in my talks that I I'm really trying to accelerate the development of quantum computers
so it happens in your lifetime.
So, it'll happen before I die. Okay.
Yeah. Yeah. It's one of one of the primary rules of a science experiment. Right.
Make sure it finishes before you die.
You know, the mission to Pluto,
that was a payload that was very low mass put on the most powerful rockets we had
so we could get to Pluto as quickly as possible.
As quickly as possible.
Yep. Yep.
Right. And who was sick in the team and on their deathbed that made that decision?
But a deathbed promise. We'll get there before.
We'll get there before you go, sir. I promise you. That's It was the fastest rocket ever launched. I mean, it's obained higher speeds than anything ever. Yeah. Except the rocket that went into the sun
near the sun, but going out to the solar system,
right?
It got out there fast. Yeah.
Very cool.
Okay. Cool. A few more questions.
All right. This is Jibbach. He says, "Greetings from Jubac." Jibbach. G J I B A K. Jabbach.
Jabbach. Okay.
Yeah. He says, "Greetings from London, Dr. Martinez." Uh, Dr. Tyson Lord Nice. Quantum computing is, I believe, approaching a stage where it's commercially viable for use for enterprise or even consumer use. Intel recently showed off one of their
mass producible chips. I believe the true power of AI, uh, a genetic, uh, generative, uh, computing could be unlocked when we marry the technology with quantum computing. Could you please share your views on this topic? Uh, thanks to you, uh, Dr. Martinez, and many congratulations, and thank you to all of you guys for what you're doing.
So, >> so we we addressed it a little bit >> a little bit, but really what he's saying is >> are we ever going to get there where >> because it would make sense >> AI and the quantum >> just go together hand in hand like that is your computer, like you don't have any other computer, you just have a quantum computer that is charged by AI. >> You also don't have a life, cuz it's doing everything for you. >> Yeah. >> It's thinking for you. It's pooping for you. >> Right. It's running the robot that does all the physical work for you, right? It's driving for you. It's doing everything. You don't need governments because it is the government. Uh >> it's a computing version of Wall-E, right? >> Remember in Wall-E? >> He just he was just this blob. >> They all sat around on hovering beds >> just there with nothing to do, >> right? >> Yeah. Um, you know, people are thinking about that. I mean, with our collaboration, we have people who are uh collaborating with people who are building supercomputers and they know about GPUs, and I think that's the natural way to go. I think you want to think about a quantum computer as a co-processor to a supercomputer, you know, with the GPUs and language models, but yeah, that, that people are definitely looking in that direction. >> Okay. >> Okay. Yeah. Well, there you have it, Jabbach. You got it, buddy. Hope you hope you get to stick around until you don't have to do anything. All right. Uh, this is Matt Curtis who says, "Hello, geniuses and Chuck." You know what, Matt? You know what, Matt? >> Meet me outside. >> I got your genius right here, buddy. >> Why, why is he insulting me already? So Matt says, uh, "Hey, this is Matt from South Carolina here. Quantum computing has made strides in a number of uh, in the number of qubits available and appears to be accelerating that number. What is the threshold at which quantum computing becomes useful for things like encryption, uh, uh, for more than things like encryption and breaking and creating, and other realms where the concept shows promise? We know the encryption part, but how do we go beyond that? And what can quantum computing do for us in the other realms?" >> But what about weather prediction, for example, where the systems are so complex? >> Yeah. I mean, right, you can only have certain possibilities because you have no idea how the fluid is going to act in the at, well, the atmosphere is the fluid, but how it's going to act. >> Yeah, that's kind of a good question. You know, there's actually debate in the community whether you can build a small quantum computer, let's say a thousand qubits, if they're good enough, you can solve some problems. And other people say, "No, you have to go to a million qubits and get the error corrected for a general purpose." So, there's still a lot of debate, and it's kind of an interesting time because people are building things and testing it and trying to figure it out. I think the weather prediction is kind of an interesting uh application. People have talked about solving these differential equations in some way. Fortunately, I don't know much about about that. But yeah, there's a lot of um, um, a lot of different interests. My personal view is that once we build a quantum computer that's better and bigger and start seeing these applications, then more people, creative people will jump into the field and uh and do it. It's kind of what happened with regular computers. Once you started building them, once they got more powerful, then all these ideas came out. >> And the internet itself as well. Exactly. Who would have thought? >> Who, who would have thought? >> So, John, is there a limit to how many qubits can exist in one place? >> Uh, I don't, I don't think there is. Um, it's a matter of engineering and practical considerations on how big you can make it and still not have it lose the energy. And, you know, right now we're at a hundred thousand, and people, you know, I don't know where it's going to end. >> And what's the largest one at, as of this recording? There are qubit counts of about a hundred or so in the superconducting case, and people in neutral atoms are now building thousands of of qubits, and that's really exciting to see that. But besides the number, you also have to make them good. There's a lot of other things you have to worry about. But, uh, this is advancing very rapidly. Now, >> what's this we heard here of a Google Willow chip and that it can do a calculation that would otherwise take 10 to the 25 years of a traditional computer to accomplish? Yeah, this is very similar to the the results that I was involved in when I was at Google in 2019, and in the intermediate time, they made it bigger and they've made it better, less, less errors. So there's a very good u development of the technology. This is very healthy for the field. >> The universe is only 10 to the 10 years old. And so to say that a traditional computer would take 10 to the 25 years, that's, I don't even know what we would have to compute to have to be do it that fast. So I mean, other than weather forecasting, what else needs that level of computing, or some clever person is going to say, "Here's something no one thought of because they couldn't have ever calculated it, and here it is, and now it's done routinely by quantum computers." Well, I know one. It could be like the mapping of the human brain. The uh, neurosaptic functions of the human brain are so varied, and there's so many of them, like that'd be kind of a cool way to figure out. >> And these are applications that people are, you know, have to discover and work on. And the real problem right now is taking whatever quantum computer we have, which has some, you know, limits to its wing, and then taking the algorithms and try to match them together and do something useful. But as soon as you solve really useful problems all the time, and say money goes into the film, the the firms because they're solving useful problems, then you can even develop these more. This is what happened with, uh, the conventional electronics. Well, kids, here's your here's the takeaway from this. Um, study physics, cuz guess what? There's going to be no other jobs, okay? If you're not studying physics, you are wasting your time. Okay? Computers are going to do everything else. Nobody's going to be working except physicists. So, you better do it. Just physics and engineers, that's it. So, >> so one last question here before we land this plane. Uh, the discussions of whether we live in a simulation. Could the complexity of our world be sort of a trivial calculation on a Willow chip in some alien kid's basement? >> Yeah. >> Like, like if there was a supercomputer that was like the size of Manhattan, a a super, uh >> Why make it big? Keep them little. Who cares? Well, no, cuz I'm saying that's that shows you the side, the number of qubits that are at work, and they're all stabilized, and they're all doing their calculations. >> And so is that the kind of computer that's necessary to simulate our world? >> Our universe. >> Or even the universe. Yeah. >> So I would say if, if you believe in simulation theory, and now that we can do these really complex calculations with a quantum computer, that whatever is doing the simulation has to have a big quantum computer. So that's my conclusion about the simulation. >> Okay. All right. So there it is. >> He's like, "No matter what, all roads lead back to me." >> And even the computer that simulated the computer has to be a quantum computer. Yeah. >> Or, or at least they have to have part of it has to be a quantum computer. >> It's quantum all the way down. >> That's what it is. >> Turtles all the way down. Well, thanks for taking time out of your day, and you're coming to us from your home in Santa Barbara, and I, this has been a delight, and if, if can we keep you on speed dial in the future if we have like quantum >> Sure. I, I've had a, I had an enjoyable time, and I'm glad that it was such a fun conversation. So yeah. >> Excellent. Excellent. You'll be all quantum man about town. >> There you go. >> Right. Quantum man all about town. All about town. >> In every part of the town AT THE SAME TIME. >> OH. >> All right. Uh, again, professor, thank you. >> Thank you very much. It was a real pleasure. >> And Chuck, always good to have you, man. >> Always a pleasure. >> Yeah. This has been Star Talk, the Nobel Prize edition. >> Yeah. >> 2025 on quantum tunneling. Macroscopic quantum tunneling. >> Sweet. >> All right. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. As always, I bid you to keep looking up.