If “The Universe Isn't Real..." Then What Is It? 

Most of this flew over my head but one thing I did get out of it was: Albert Einstein, a man whose name is synonymous with intelligence and scientific accomplishment, was wrong about something, yet his legacy isn't tarnished or belittled. Just shows it's OK to be wrong about some things, it doesn't discredit you forevermore

Sometimes, I think your patreons request you cover topics as a brain-damaging prank. I have to say, though, you did a good job on this one; I'm not a physicist, but I followed along pretty well.

*You did a good job describing it.* When I was in grad school I accidentally bumped into Bell's inequality while reading a QM textbook. I immediately recognized that it was special and took it to my professors to talk about it. Oddly enough neither one of them had ever seen it before and they took the day to look it up in order to verify it. Both men came back as elated as I was. This work cleared up for me a decade of headaches. Arguably the best thing I've ever read in a textbook.

"When it comes to quantum entanglement ... I'm a filmmaker." Felt that. I'm a code monkey with a layman's grasp of the subject. I understand it at the baby level, but I've long maintained you really can't understand it without getting hip-deep into the math, and I'm not qualified to get even toe-deep into it. But this was genuinely fascinating. The idea that particles aren't "real" except at the point of interaction doesn't give me existential dread, but that's only because I know the whole universe is a figment of my imagination anyway.

My background is in quantum physics and science communication and found this a very clear and accurate synopsis of the paper and associated theory - great job

You're a figment of my imagination and when I come out of this coma, I am definitely going to start reading better literature.

Joe Scott reminds me of Scott Manley. Both make very complex things simple for other humans. Takes a lot of intelligence to bring down a huge data set into something much easier for the rest of us to actually use.

If you haven’t been told this already, I think you and The Why Files are basically cousins now. Similar length in videos, smart well written script with just the right amounts of humor, solitary placement on screen for the most part, takes topics and indulges in them before coming back to a more realistic grounding. I’ve been watching you for a while now but it’s nice having something similar to yours that dives into the more zanier stuff. I’m calling it now that your team and his will collaborate at some point.

“When it come to quantum entanglement, I’m a filmmaker”. PRICELESS. Great vid!

I’ve been telling people lately that I’m not a visual learner, but the graphics on this were excellent. Especially the quantum cow!

Joe Scott is so impressive. I heard and understood every word he said. Every single one. And I understood absolutely nothing of what they meant when grouped together in a sentence. He could’ve been speaking Mandarin Chinese and I wouldn’t have understood it any less... Yet I still watched the whole thing. Such a captivating speaker. Thanks, I think 😅

Great job on this one! Really nice balance of simplifying it for understandability while giving hints and clues about _where_ it was dumbed down, and that there's something deeper to be delved into if the viewer wants. Loved it!

The way I understand it, “physically real” has no meaning when you get down to the level of elementary particles; even at the subatomic level it’s a bit fuzzy … one might say even cloudy.

I'll see your dictionary of terms and raise you an aneurysm of trying to follow along :)

JOE, thank for not letting the literalists get you down! Your channel is thoroughly entertaining, and thought provoking! Keep it up!

I love that you used an image of Rocko's Modern Life. I haven't seen that episode in probably 20 years, but it just came back to me that the guy keeps asking Rocko to pull his pants up by saying "Can you get that?". Memories and the brain are odd, I have a hell of a time remembering peoples names that I've met a bunch of times, but I can remember a random line from a cartoon episode that I probably only saw a few times decades ago.

Joe, I’m always impressed by how clearly and accurately (according to my own junior amateur understanding) you explain these massively complicated and convoluted topics, AND by how thoroughly you disclaim that you’re not a scientist and there’s much more to this than you understand or can explain. You make it as clear as you can what you and the science ARE saying and what you both AREN’T saying. You may not be a scientist, but you’ve become a heck of a science educator. Well done!

I don't know if you like making this kind of videos or not, but I enjoy the hell out of this stuff. Please make more spaceflight or theoretical science-related videos. here in India, the syllabus of science in high schools is very high level. so like the first 6 or so min of stuff, I already knew from school. I Just Love This Stuff !!

I love the 3 polarised lenses demonstration, blows my mind and is so fun to play with .

As always, great video. Thank you for sharing!

You still crack me up Joe. Not to belittle the interesting subjects, which are great, it's the Joe Scott quips and interjections that hit me right between the eyes.

Each of us are a condensed piece of the universe while being blissfully oblivious to this... Thanks for great vid

These have always been my favorite videos from you! More please 😊

Your best work ever Joe … and love the smooth background music… thanks for that 🙏🏾 I could never get tired of listening to it

You're awesome Joe! The mixture of humor and knowledge is perfectly balanced 🤘

Huge, huge props to Joe and the team for this vid. Very approachable, entertaining, and informative

Thank you for this! I'm a passionate ameture to these sort of things, as in a study a ton, but it is clearly not my profession. So when I do my limited studies about all of this, I wasn't getting any clear answers but I knew I was being presented scientific news in a click-bait sort of way. This cleared up a lot for me! Amazing stuff.

Thanks for the discount on Nebula and Curiosity Stream! I should have signed up ages ago, but glad I could support you.

I remember seeing the articles about this, but when I read them, they didn't make ANY sense. So I'm very glad you're covering this!

A lot of this went over my head, but I really appreciate the work you put in to keep it real

Wow as someone that has spent months trying to puzzle out what this discovery truly means, this was an excellent synopsis. You always do a good job but this really is outstanding giving the subject matter. For those that want a similarly clear but deeper explanation of Bell's inequality I highly recommended Tim Maudlin's 'What Bell Did.'

wassup Joe, great video rlly enjoy ur vids

Spacetime has a wonderful mini-series on hidden variables, the bell test and the subsequent experiments, results and what those results tell us.

The universe is real. I can see it, I live in it, it acts on me and I act on it. Now, the _nature_ of that reality may be different from what we intuitively understand as "real", but it is still _real_

I feel like you did a great job explaining this!

Love ya Joe. Thank you for making things a bit more understandable for those of us that are mathematically or quantum mechanically challenged. ..Or those of us who don’t have the time to, or just don’t want to, read entire physics studies .. along with a dictionary, to understand the words used in said research.

My favorite Joe videos are these ones where he explains really difficult stuff to us.💕

Really good video, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Very clearly explaining some difficult to understand topics. Thank you for your work!

You genuinely make learning the most fun part of the day Mr Joe

Caught a few of your subtle references love you joe

Hey man. I don't comment nearly enough but I just wanna say I love this channel. Been watching for years now. You always make interesting content and it always manages to make me laugh. Thanks man. Keep up the good work :D

I reached that conclusion years ago under the influence of edibles, I didn’t publish my conclusions though so I guess I can’t complain about not getting the Nobel Prize.

The idea of spin was always one that eluded me. Do you think you could do a video on it "dumbing it down"? 😅 You always had the skill to convey komplex ideas to be easy understandable. Just maybe you could do it for such a complex thing like spinn of particles, or the "properties" 😁👍

Once again, super work trying to dumb it down enough very lay people who have a tricky time following along👏👏👏

A great video and explanation on a very difficult topic. Well Done!

Damn this is too advanced for me... and I love it. I specially loved the part where you explain entanglement, twice. It's like that "why don't you explain it to me like I'm 5" from Michael.

Succinctly you covered numerous massive topics with with your usual great wit. Bravo!

Fantastic video. I didn't understand it but well presented

Hi, Joe! Thanks for putting this out! And thanks for your vulnerability -- "I know my limits!" -- which is refreshing to see when the Internet is so polarised by the urge to be right (at the expense of others being wrong!). Keep up the good work!

Great video! If anyone wants to hear more about Clauser and Zeillinger (Aspect is briefly mentioned), I recommend the NOVA series, "Fabric of the Cosmos", based on Brian Green's book with the same title.

I found your content via Nebula, and decided to track you down here on RU-vid. Thanks for your content, definitely enjoying it. 😊👍

Brit living in California and fan of Civvie 11 and shouted 'NO PYTHON' at the screen twice on this one. And then he pulls the Doug Adams reference... I actually teared up a bit. AND Civvie covered Starship Titanic (Douglas's interactive game). Joe, there is a reason we love you. Next video you HAVE to explain why 42 is the meaning of life. I'm pretty sure Deep Thought's earth computer calculations are done now and you have the answer. THAT should be next video. Love ya my friend.

I love videos about thought experiments or science futurism

Glad to see Joe covering physics again. It's what drew me in to begin with.

Thanks for the video! 🎉

So well written and narrated! 😊

Love the vid, and the effort ya put into trying to research, explain/present, convey everything that ya do mate =D

I think I have an answer to this.. possibly... to not bury the lead, the gist is that "particles" only have real defined properties in regions of space-time that share equivalent probabilities... so places where probabilities are entangled at the moment measured. Or put another way, there exists a wave function reference frame. To elaborate, What if the idea that the wave function and the probabilities associated with it are observer-dependent is more consequential than currently believed, and are in some way subjective features, not just objective mathematical entities?. It is my hypothesis that, despite the assertion that the properties of particles are reference frame invariant, observer-dependent probabilities must have some role in the construction of reality beyond simply being a mathematical construct. Or put more plainly, reality must depend to an extent on the "reference frame" of the observer, all the way down to quantum properties. This is not the same reference frame as Einstein's relativity, but one tied to the wave function rather than inertia, so a "wave function reference frame". This would imply that reality is only true "locally", as in for any given point or points in spacetime where the wave function and the probabilities associated with it are all coherent. This is not to be confused with local realism, ie. "realism plus relativistic limits on causation". I want to be clear that the locality I am referring to is specifically the points in space-time that share entangled wave functions, even if they are not adjacent. This line of thinking stems from the results of the experiments that lead to the recent Nobel prize in physics, plus the various other experiments such as the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment. Time, causality, and information seem to be intrinsic to this issue. The fact is that we can only ever know anything after that thing has taken place, and causality requires a progression of events over time. For all sorts of reasons, we can't even be aware of a "thing" that is "happening" as it "happens". We only ever see outcomes, so we experience any current state as the information about that state in the form of a sum total of all sequential causes over time that led to that state. Even our eyes lag behind reality by several milliseconds. Let's look at our experience with photons for example. From our perspective (reference frame), a photon leaves its source, travels through space, and interacts with some object. This is a process that took time, is measurable, has defined properties, changes of energy states, etc... Yet the photon experiences no time. Without time, it could not travel through space, it could not have interacted with anything, and its properties can not be defined... From the photon's perspective, the is no perspective as there is no time to exist in... (I realize it's a perturbation of the electromagnetic field, not a little ball, but that's kind of the point, without time you can't have a perturbation of a field) So let's break this down, what do we actually observe?... When we look at the results at the end of the experiment, what are we actually looking at? We are looking at information about past states as represented in the present state. Did we see the photon leave its source? Maybe, in a roundabout way, but we could not have seen that specific photon, or it would have been altered, so the experience of actual observation must be indirect, plus that experience is just "information about the past" when looking back from the end of the experiment. Did we observe its travel? No. Did we directly observe its interactions? No. What we see is the outcome of the interaction presented as the present state. So did it ever actually exist? From our reference frame, yes, from the reference frame of the photon, no. Somehow both are true. Something can't be right with our picture of reality. But if reframe to a wave function reference frame, and accept that reality is probabilistic, all of this weirdness goes away, and let's face it, this is actually far more in line with our experience of reality compared to a strictly deterministic reality and can marry the strangeness of the quantum world to the classical one seamlessly.

Awesome video…… and I love your shirt!!

I appreciate the sincere humility while still being informative

i was hoping you would go over this! it’s a lot easier to follow a video than the papers because i, unfortunately was not blessed with any semblance of an attention span 😊

Thank you, Joe, for deep diving on such complicated topics.

Joe - I applaud you for taking on this topic. I've watched & read tons of material on Quantum Physics; Particle vs. Wave conditions; Energy Strings; Membranes; Planck limits & Quantum Foam...but having stopped my Math education after Calculus I and Statistics - I don't really understand any of this. But I love it. And we love you. 😉

You are legit one of the reasons I have Nebula, Joe. :) I just wish it had some kind of method of figuring out what I like to watch, and recommending videos I might like to see next. Also, some sort of community engagement system would be great! I dunno, a comments section or something like that. Ooh, and some easy way for people to give feedback! The whole thumbs-up/thumbs-down thing is pretty cliche, but I mean, if it works... It might also be a good idea to set up a system by which you could notify people who are interested when you post new videos, some kind of... hmm... let's call it a "subscribe button"? And while we're at it, maybe a few different degrees of notification so people can customize whether they get poked for _all_ of your videos, just the ones that recommendation system thinks they care about, or none if they just want it to act like Nebula acts now. Just spitballing here, but some sort of a bell icon? It could be filled in for all notifications, an outline for recommended ones, and have a line through it for none.

It's cold and raining. I was so happy to see you posted something new to brighten my day. I promise I'll watch it as your fan, not your critic. I think you're the coolest, man. Keep up the good work!!

I left this video more confused than before, well done.

That's a ccoooolll lesson Man I'm going too watch the rest of your set. I don't even know how you got on my to watch list bro. I think it's the way you present yourself bro and your research is on point. Nz Maori out

I did not understood much of it but you put the effort into a complex topic, thanks.

I must salute you! I've been enjoying your videos since the beginning of your career, and I will flatter myself by thinking that we were roughly at the same level at the beginning of your RU-vid career, but you have learned so much more than I have in that time! I know you work your ass off at that, and I'm pretty sure that you treat your brain better than I have in my life. I live sort of on the wild side, or at least I used to, and I've thrown a lot of strange chemicals at my brain. I don't regret it, but I recognize the cost. I've also gotten kind of lazy about learning new stuff and keeping my brain nimble. Anyway, I also salute your courage in addressing an impossible idea. Anytime I try to talk to people about reality not being real, I have not been able to find anywhere to go with that. The ground kind of disappears under your feet if you start out with a topic like that. You manage to bring some real substance to the concept!

Have you done a presentation on the Fine Structure Constant? If not, please do. I want to know how many formulae in physics incorporate alpha and why.

Recently, another test was done for Bell's Theorem: Two large telescopes were pointed, one at each, at two very distant quasars and the signals from each were used to generate random numbers during the test equipment adjustments, There was no possible way the the quasars were communicating with each other to screw up the random probabilities required to give the final results. Again, QM random wave-functions won.

Well explained Joe. Thanks

Joe, love your channel mate. Clicking on one of your uploads is like coming home to a warm, raging hearth in a intellectually cosy cottage... yes, I know how that might sound. But it's honestly how I feel... thank you Mate!

This video incidentally serves as a great introduction to quantum mechanics, better than I've heard it summarised anywhere else!

Thank you for the content.

Ooooo you've changed your background music! I like it i found the old one sumut jarring.

Great video trying to make sense of a mysterious facet of reality. One way I've heard quantum properties explained uses a quantum information approach. Imagine an electron only has one bit to represent its spin, i.e., 1 = up and 0 = down or 1 = right and 0 = left. Which basically means if you measure an electron's up/down spin with a Stern-Gerlach device, the electron will consistently demonstrate its spin in the up or down direction (let's assume up), and if you then have a second Stern-Gerlach device and measure the same electron as left/right, the electron is forced to randomly choose its left or right response (let's assume right) to that measurement because it's currently using its only spin-bit to represent up from the previous measurement. Okay, so now let's measure the electron up/down again, and while you might expect its response to be up because the initial up/down measurement indicated up, you would be wrong 50% of the time. You can do this over and over again, and each time you change the orientation of the Stern-Gerlach device, the electron will randomly choose a new response in the new orientation. Bell showed that the realist notion (that the electron somehow knew it was spin up before the first up/down measurement was made) is incorrect because prior to being measured, the electron is in a superposition of all spins. Subsequently, when you have maximum certainty in one orientation, you have minimum certainty in a perpendicular orientation. So, when two electrons are entangled, i.e., represented by the same wave function, they can be thought of as sharing or splitting a spin-bit, and when one electron is measured as spin up, the other is necessarily spin down, and this correlation happens over any distance instantaneously at the exact moment that the wave function collapses due to a measurement, much to Einstein's chagrin. Any trained physicist can feel free to kick my butt on anything I got wrong.

"Just remember I'm not a scientist" yeah, well you're the next best thing we got so keep it coming lol

I love the music joe it's very soothing

Subscribed! Excellent content and the way you communicate it!

I rarely feel the needs to correct something on this channel. It's gone on par and above my knowledge base in some cases. Certainly less mistakes than early on. I think that's awesome.

Good work in conquering the Mt. Everest of scientific topics. Pretty much everything you said flew right over my head.

Thanks for this one. Well done, and great fodder for or dinner time conversation tonight.

thx Joe. another great video.

Can you do a video on time, some of the illusion of time stuff really freaks me out sends me in a spin. I have OCD and a theme of mine is existential ocd and for periods of the last few years I’ve been really stuck on it. Periods though it’s been better I think if got a solid framework in my head to make sense of things. I just had like a relapse and it sends me into a really horrible state of mind. But I think I’ve got it sorted and a better way of making sense of things in a more nuanced less dogmatic less catastrophic kinda way.

Once I learned about the Moon Paradox, I knew things had become...fluid. Chalk it up to quantum superfluidity, since as soon as I look away I feel like it's watching me again.

Awesome time transitions!

Great job, Joe! I am not a physicist but I have been reading about this stuff for decades (I particularly like Brian Greene). As far as I can tell you did a very good job presenting this VERY tricky material. You did a fine job of deemphasizing some very destracting details so as to make your point clearly, but mentioning the existance of those details so that critics couldn't say "you didn't even mention [some crucial peice of physics that they love]." Again, well done!

Joe Scott never fails to put a smile on my face with his cheesy jokes! x Much love from the UK

@Joe - love Nebula, but can you try to tell your Nebula friends that we'd absolutely LOVE to see a native app for Samsung TVs? Keep up the great work guys!

I thought this was an excellent and entertaining breakdown of an incredibly complex topic. Thank you.

You did an amazing job researching these subjects and you cleared a line of questions linking in my mind. You should really get a medal for getting correct information and being able to explain it (lay it out) in 'the most' logical matter without going hyper math or hyper theoretical. Thank you Joe Scott - one of the true real guys :D been enjoying your channel quite a lot. cheers! I will ad the big question tho: energy moves as a particle or as a wave depending on the scale of observation but as a law of physics say. no matter can move at the theoretical speed of light. so if energy is movement of 'something' what is moving? everything is either a particle or a waveform made by particles moving at the speed of light right.. ? and no matter can move at the speed of light right? .. so what is moving..?

My question is how do they get particles entangled? Like how do you entangle 2 particles, and then send them away from each other to test the spooky action at a distance? Every body seem to just skip that part and I always find this part fascinating. Can you try explain that in a future video?

You almost make QM understandable. That's a huge compliment.

Great Job!

Thanks Joe, you made something unclear, surprisingly easy for me to get.

I am one of those who were "warming the hands";). But I must say you've come a long way when it comes to physics since your early days on RU-vid. No wonder this channel has grown so much. Great job!

“Nothing is real, strawberry fields…” 🍓

Commenting here because I can’t on the most recent nebula one. Was sad you’d be gone a while. But I’ve never laughed so hard at any video. It was also super informative and interesting. Thanks! Also I really want to know what happened to the Linkin Park sticker that used to be on the bookshelf, since I’m guessing it won’t ever come back now.

Joe I wanted to let you know that I just signed up for Curiosity Stream and Nebula using your discount code. Very excited to explore both. Thanks! 16:45