The realization that without all these smart people; I would probably be selling carrots out of the back of my medieval cart instead of surfing the internet on a laptop, is humbling.
This, and numerous other videos have really brought home to me just what a helpful addition to physics (and other disciplines') education the Internet has been. I got my undergraduate degree in chemistry in 1971, and it required courses in thermodynamics and quantum mechanics. Having recently switched from a math major, I had a decent handle on the math in these disciplines, but I still remember what a slog it was to get any kind of a conceptual handle on what it was I was trying to regurgitate for each exam. What on Earth did this all MEAN? Honestly, it was a living nightmare. I envy students today, who can use the resources on the Web to gain a purchase on the ideas, which must make it far easier to get a grasp of the still rigorous math. Lucky dogs.
I don't understand how this "artificial atom" can be assumed to be an EXACT enough analogy for a real atom to make assumptions about real atoms. Seems like a...jump
Because it's about energy levels, or rather how much energy is in the system. There is nothing special about atoms per se, it's all about the amount of energy in the system (which is what an atom is - a system of subatomic particles). They recreated the energy levels in an atom with this system and observed the transitions of electrons with greater resolution when more energy is introduced into the system via photons. That's why it's analogous to an actual atom.
The key is that the issue isn't atomic orbital transitions alone, the issue is much more general to any electron energy transition. An electron isn't aware of whether the potential well it is in is due to an atomic nucleus, molecular interactions, or a proton miles away, it simply interacts with the force. It would be even more shocking to science that an electron has some way to differentiate between sources of a potential well, and modify its behavior accordingly.
@@benjaminsmith4058 This is true - the question as to whether the artificial set-up is in any way an exact equivalent to the level transitions experienced by e.g. an electron - and hence whether the 'jump' has _exactly_ the same characteristics - is another question however.
@@benjaminsmith4058 I might ask something stupid, but if you add that little energy to that fake atom, how does that not only change one of the electrons in the fake atom?
From the Space Time Corrections Department: At 9:53, we misidentified the authors of the paper "To Catch and Reverse a Quantum Jump Mid-Flight". The authors of that fantastic paper were in fact: Z.K. Minev, S.O. Mundhada, S. Shankar, P. Reinhold, R. Gutierrez-Jauregui, R.J. Schoelkopf, M. Mirrahimi, H.J. Carmichael, M.H. Devoret arxiv.org/abs/1803.00545
yeah, people often forget to mention the genuine answer from Bohr to Einstein 's philosophical doubts. Einstein then took so much time to try to prove that QM was a "transitionnal theory" and died before he could find better
@@marielizysurourcq Einstein disputed many of the consequences that flowed from his General and Special theories of relativity. Even towards the end of his life he doubted the physical existence of black holes as well as gravitational waves. Scientists have now directly detected both of these phenomena (and in the case of black holes, indirect evidence has been documented for a long time)
Trapped in the past, Doctor Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, putting things right that once went wrong and hoping each time that his next leap, will be the leap home.
Scientists actually found a relativistic process that's faster than a quantum jump A haste with which subscribers rush into their PCs to watch a new PBS Space Time video.
Amazing work, that is a lot to think about! Also, those animations are amazing. Also even when I had heard the story about the atom conceptual evolution, it never gets old, it is always fascinating.
Great video, can't believe i actually understood your explanations! Don't know why i am seeing this one almost a year after being published. I think this is your best one yet! Quantum mechanics is clearly your forte and only you can explain this sort of thing the way you do. Most others would get tongue tied a half minute into explaining this rather subtle yet extremely foundational stuff. Can't wait for the next one on this topic. Also, can you please do a video on how the experimentalists do not get enough recognition for the work they do?
So, a couple of corrections: - It's called a quantum leap - During a quantum leap, Dr. Sam Beckett temporarily takes the place of another person to correct historical mistakes - It occurs at least once per episode
One fundamental question you over looked perhaps was if at any time, Dr. Sam Beckett, might take the place of either Bill or Ted as they travel the past seeking to pull humanoid-shapes of molecular groupings back into the present or future and the damage this might cause to the chronological river that is/isn't time. 🤔
@Truth is the new hatespeech I do mind so I insist, because you don't get the initial joke that *IS* this thread in the first place. Have a good quantum leap into your day though! 😁 Also, it was a show/series. 😅
@Truth is the new hatespeech I suppose it's both then. 😅 Though, who did you think Sam Beckett was and did you think that time travel was real? I know you all have Dr. Who, but both are just shows. 😋
Is anyone else amazed that we live in a time where we can rewind only 100 years and capture the beautiful story and major discoveries of quantum theory?
Thank you Matt and PBS Space Time for making this show, I've always come to PBS to learn and even now, after watching for 20 years, I still keep learning. It makes me so happy during this wave of turbulence in the world.
@@hyperduality2838 Glory be to the One Who created all ˹things in˺ pairs-˹be it˺ what the earth produces, their genders, or what they do not know! Quran 36:36
@@hyperduality2838 well it’s difficult to prove a negative (god) as there is no evidence ! U can tho dismiss anything without evidence if it has no evidence ! The god concept has a baggage claim of supernatural which has no demonstration of truth so it is dismissed until there is evidence not because we can’t prove it not true ! Look up burden of proof
Some (okay, a lot) of it is hard for my mind to grasp, but I definitely understand way more from watching this channel than I did before discovering it!
I share the concerns about how well an "artificial" atom can truely imitate reality. However, what really fascinate and worries me are the possible philosophical ramifications. The argument seems to be between a totally random event and an event which although apparently random is based upon a deterministic cause. this is essentially the same concern that Einstein had. He felt that there was some underlying deterministic process that was as yet undiscovered. If quantum phenomena are deterministic rather than the random that is taught in schools then as thought processes are (assumed) to be based in chemical processes which in turn depend upon electron transitions which are looking at the loss of freedom of choice. Thought becomes deterministic.
Retention of quantum information already deterministic so the conflict with that and random in other quantum ideas hurts my brain. I fall back to Frames of Reference for freedom of choice in that from one's personal frame of Reference one has free will. I take back up from Relativity in that everything is Relative to the observer. And random events also deny what is thought of as freedom of choice. As predestination already a concept in Theology well before science I probably should review some thoughts on freedom of choice vs that concept. Predestination the realization that a all powerful, all knowing, present everywhere God could determine everything that would happen at creation and thus not have to make any adjustments later. This idea later in Christian thought created branches of Christianity with Calvinism. Thus parts of Protestant movement already ruled out Creationism long before Science did. This also explains that after fighting evolution for decades the Catholic Church gave up and accepted evolution as the evidence was too strong and Predestination already a Theological concept in that why would God need to be constantly involved as God could already determine everything at creation. The fact that a degree in traditional Theology is not required to be a preacher in fact maybe even a negative in American Protestants of the right wing is a shame.
Whether thought is based on determinism instead of randomness (freedom), I don't think I would never know/sense/experience the difference. Our emergent consciousness and 'free will' have complete range within our mental domain; complete means it will seem determinedly free to us. The underlying angst that sometimes haunts me is that I have no choice but to choose or not choose.
My brain, coupled with my detector circuitry, is not an infallible window on reality, but it is pretty much correct most of the time. The same circuitry gives me the impression of having free will. I will trust evolution and natural selection to have provided a useful perception. If free will is not real, I cannot conceive what selective advantage it would have provided. Maybe my reasoning is circular, but my impression is that it’s rational.
Does it matter? It's still ultimately random, the only difference is whether we're throwing the dice in real time, or whether the throws were front loaded to when the universe was born.
When I started watching your videos I understood only about 20% of the content now I'm fully comprehending the arguments said, I really can't thank you and the amazing team behind the scenes enough. From the bottom of my heart thank you.
Trapped in the past, Matt finds himself leaping from video to video, putting things right that once went wrong and hoping each time that his next leap, will be the leap home.
Yes. You're right, but really impressive was Issac Newton. At least scientists today have computers to assist. The things Newton did with virtually no assistance?! He had to create the math even!!!
I've always considered Newton the "smartest" human in history. Of course such a person can never be actually defined, but It always amazed me what that man accomplished. Idk if it's true but I always heard that there was no one with a bugger head. He knew he was smarter than everybody and was quick to point it out haha. If i were that level intelligent it would be hard not to be condescending to everyone else though, so its believable ...
@@Tripskull what fascinates me about Newton is that he was all over the place in regards to science. He even did alchemy in his later years. He also decoded biblical dates to determine the end of the world. His conclusion was no sooner than 2030. The thing that fascinates me the most is his research on light. Pretty mind boggling for his time.
It's carzy to think Heisenberg and Bohr understood this subject so well without having the tools to observe it, yet here am I 70 years later not able to wrap my head around it xD
I share your opinion, though there is this one quote: "I think I can safely say that nobody really understands quantum mechanics" - Richard Feynman Its the math that brings us further than our paradigms can take us, and then math only takes us so far before you need measurements.
I think the difficulty lies in the fact that our current epistemology (intellectual operating system) is still in the 19th century and has yet to catch up to any of this. We don't go past Hume despite the fact that Husserl more thoroughly and efficiently explains Hume than Hume could ever explain Husserl. It's like expecting the first version of Windows to run current software. Reliable information that requires the most esoteric of mathematic abstraction to be logically processed indicates a major inefficiency in the process itself.
"Men in their arrogance claim to understand the nature of creation, and devise elaborate theories to describe its behavior. But always they discover in the end that God was quite a bit more clever than they thought." Sister Miriam Godwinson, "We Must Dissent"
Loaded against our inuition. Nearly out of reach of compression. Seems like whatever you believe could be spiratic random manifestation until someone finds an experiment that solidifies the truth of its mechanics.
7:20 The described process does not refer to "fluorescence" that is only applicable to dipole-dipole allowed transitions. From the "third level" taking "many seconds to drop back down", it is evident that the transition is forbidden. Hence, general term "luminescence" or, more precisely, "phosphorescence" shall be used.
This was such a good video. A topic that would have been rather dry if given during a conventional lecture by one of the involved physicists, but that was told as a great story with twists and turns by Matt / Space Time. Woo :) I don’t know how I missed the vid last year. maybe it was during my let-YT-play-when-trying-to-fall-asleep phase.
Something I've wondered about with quantum mechanics is the possibility that the underlying mechanics are actually continuous but the structures that we're able to measure have valleys of stability that are so strong, at least relative to the relevant inertias, that the actual processes of transition have just been impossible to measure, until now possibly that is.
This was one of the most exciting and interesting episodes you've done in years. Theoretical videos are great, but experimental data is the heart and soul of physics that give us actual answers. Would love if you'd cover more of the experimental side of physics (alongside its theoretical backbone of course) in the future.
The problem is there's a general lack of quality experiments happening. And one good experiment leads to half a dozen others. It's like pieces of a puzzle slowly coming together... we can try to tell the story right now, but it won't be as good as the final product.
100% agree. I always get really excited when it seems we are on the verge of answering a deep question in physics. How insanely awesome would it be if this opens the door to understanding whether quantum state transitions are instantaneous or not?
@@Tight_Conduct Bruh, there's plenty of quality experiments happening. Most are just more specific than the kind of thing this channel usually discusses.
NOVA did an episode in 1999 called *Time Travel* and a segment of that episode involved a demonstration of sending Mozart 40 on a microwave carrier frequency. One setup was to send it through a solid block of metal about a foot thick, via tunnelling of the microwave photons. The other setup was identical except for removing the block of metal. Although most of the photons were stopped by the block, _those which successfully tunnelled appeared to arrive instantaneously._ The signal, though much degraded, arrived sooner when the block was present, as was shown on an oscilloscope. The music was still easily recognizable, too. How does this relate to the old and continuing controversy covered in this Jan 12, 2021 edition of PBS Space Time? Simple: Quantum jumps are what happens when a photon or other particle tunnels from one place in spacetime to another place in spacetime. An electron going from one atomic orbital to another displays no spectral signature of passing through intermediate energy levels because _it does not pass through,_ which would be a continuous journey. Instead that electron _tunnels through_ from one energy level to the other, a discontinuous journey, just like the microwaves going "through" the block in the experiment. Therefore, *quantum jumps are instantaneous.*
I loved that calculator. It made indignant cartoony noises every time it got punched. It sometimes seemed to sulk and troll out uncooperatively incomplete answers.
I'm not entirely convinced that this "artificial atom" can accurately represent a real atom. Sure, it has energy levels that can be considered analogous to electron energy levels. But this seems fundamentally different, because the superconducting circuits are comprised of millions/billions/etc of atoms. It seems on the surface like the electromagnetic energy in the circuits could be explained through classical E&M. How do we know that these superconducting circuits can accurately represent a real atom?
yeah. Maybe it is more stable though.. im not sure im understanding correctly but subtitles 11:33 show "The weaker the measurement, the less likely a true quantum jump is to occur".. idk maybe he meant we need more complex systems.." maybe the atom is more trapped/easier in those circuits, maybe they have a way to track somewhat a "radius" around that atom so taht no other atoms interfere ors omething like that n they would know abouta ll the other interferences. But im not sure so i thumbs up too
The real atom does not matter. What scientist want to find out is the process where electrons transition between energy level. The atom is only a historical artifact because it is the study of the atom that pointed to the phenomenon of quantized electron transition or quantum leap. It is like we find out about gravity on earth but the earth does not really matter what matters is how gravity actually works. So you can study gravity in an artificial satellites and your results are still valid even if artificial satellites is not similar to earth.
(4:34) _"It was a reaction against one of the central tenants of Copenhagen."_ Landlords can be quite reactionary at times. 😊 Although I think you meant _tenets._
Very interesting video, I recently read the pages on emission spectra in my old chemistry book and it'll be strange to think some parts of it might change in the future.
In order to understand most of the counter-intuitive crap that quantum mechanics gets away with, it's important to remember one very significant fact: *_Position is not a fundamental property of a particle. Position is an emergent property that only exists when particles interact._* A single particle alone in space effectively inhabits every point within that space; its position can only be constrained by interactions with other particles. The reason this seems so strange to us is because we exist in an environment _swarming_ with particles continuously interacting and constraining each other's positions to near-pointlike precision -- we have no experience with anything else.
Thanks for that. That's just about the best short explanation for much of my confusion. In this case, however, it's _energy_ that is the quantity of concern over whether it leaps instantaneously or not, right? OK, I'm still confused.
I was surprised that you did not mention Bohr's reply to Einstein's "God does not play dice": Bohr replied "Einstein, stop telling God what to do". Which suggests less of a boxing match and more of a "can't we all get along" point of view.
There's something in the details of what those two superconducting circuits that needs explaining. How is what happens in them not going back to being the result of many particles, rather than just a single atom and electron ?
Something they might not be considering: What if each random probability exists deterministically? That is to say for each possible outcome a universe potentially can exist and does but we can only ever observe ONE outcome because we are only in the outcome that occurred to observe it?
I’m sure there’s an answer to this one: if the electron transitions through multiple states, when is the photon emitted? Is it the trigger for (ie simultaneous with) the initial transition or does it happen during transitions? Presumably photon emission/absorption is still instantaneous? If it is there must be a point in time when the electron is transitioning, has lost the photon energy but has more energy than it will end up with in the ground state. And yet it won’t lose anymore through photon emission. So where does the energy go?
I imagine the photon and electron are in a superposition of states until the electron is "observed" in its final state and the superposition is broken.
I strongly doubt that any action is 'simultaneous' because we know that nothing travels faster than the speed of light. (Which includes 'cause & effect')
Well, the differential equations of the quantum waves of electron and photon fields govern how the transition works, as a completely "normal" solution of the differential equations (I guess). It just seems to be that the package of energy that then is in the photon field acts as one quantum (whatever that means in this context, probably means that any process that extracts energy from it changes the whole field such that it cannot be absorbed anywhere else anymore). One should realize that the stable quantum states are also just special solutions of these differential equations which don't "emit photons".
@@laurentgerard5244 No, I don't. I think that we have free will to affect the universe. I decide the angle of my arm, the force with which they're thrown, and when to release.
Electrons can skip onto any of the nodes of it’s resonant harmonic series. Because there are infinite overtones, it appears random but are, in all actuality, absolutely precise destination leaps in time.
Great video. I’m glad you didn’t vote in favour of one theory over the other. The answer is still out there waiting for someone to prove. We may be closer to an answer, but it’s still 50/50 as far as anyone should interpret the data.
I think it is *all* deterministic, just that we don't have the capacity to fully understand _everything_ yet, or maybe even ever, leading to it _appearing_ random
On the one hand, being partial toward a deterministic interpretation of the fundamental laws of the universe could be a consequence of the apparent determinism of the macroscopic world; which the human mind evolved to understand. On the other hand, the macroscopic world could appear deterministic because, well, the underlying laws are deterministic - and of course we would be a part of that system.... And I also share your bias
The states of an electron are the steady-state solutions to the wave equation. It makes sense to me there would be some type of transient solution while transitioning between steady states.
We often use “rocket science” as a benchmark for what is difficult. “It’s not like it’s rocket science.” What do rocket scientists say? “It’s not like it’s... talking to girls.” Social science is real science. Don’t sell yourself short, E.A.Mason. We need you to help us avoid becoming another statistic of Fermi’s paradox. I know you know this and I get what you mean. Something similar occurs when saying those with a doctorate other than MD are not “real doctors.” It’s only accurate to say the aren’t MDs (unless someone also has that degree/licensure). We don’t want to inflate egos at the cost of another’s dignity or right to be proud of all they’ve accomplished. :) In a previous episode, Matt humorously mentioned when he had to explain to people that he’s not “that kind of doctor.” Honestly, if I were in a dire situation on a plane, I’d prefer having a paramedic, nurse, or physicist there to care for me. The first two are very experienced in acute care. The later would do a truly believable job of BSing me into believing that I would live on via quantum uncertainty and that my bones could even one day provide the dust that sparks the expansion of a new bubble universe. Talk about a legacy!
Turns out this an American Problem as in England Doctors are the Phd types like Matt. This also historically correct the term Doctor for phd existed many centuries before medical field borrowed it for the lessor MD and others degree. Lessor as original research or even research not required for a MD and their is a Phd level medical degree that is above the standard degree. In effect a MD somewhere between a Masters and a Doctorate. Same for Law degree normal Law degree of lower rank to the Phd Law degree.
Can you make a video about Lagrangian mechanics? Ive learned a little bit about it in physics/astronomy undergrad so far and it seems like a really interesting and useful thing!
Quantum Jump - the early 2000’s SciFi Channel original where Dr Stan Becker finds himself living the lives of other people, attempting to right the wrongs and constantly screwing up so badly even his friend Mal has given up trying to help.
I interpret 2020 like the third energy level instead. We've bcome stuck in it by chance, only to find it lasts many more months than we are used to. This is the thirtheenth month already, and the end is not yet in sight.
That's the fun part. Schroedinger's Cat was invented to show how ridiculous that idea is but eventually ended up as a prime example for the layman of how quantum states work in theory.
I heard a professor pompously ask a question, to which the answer began with "I believe . . ." Of, course that was when professor boomed "Science is not belief!" Followed by a customary direction to the building on campus where Philosophy is studied. This frequently happens with interdisciplinary discussions, but thank you for your helpful description of some of the fuzziness in physics.
I love the fact that we are getting smart enough to realize that "random" depends on our point of view and prior knowledge to any system. We are learning so much about our system and using clever experiments. What a great time to be alive! The quantum world leaves us so much yet to discover.
A note on revisiting: it is not particularly compelling that these gradual transitions occurred in a macroscopic analog system consisting of many particles across a (comparatively) large space. You could just as easily blame locality for the gradual transition because the system obviously needs to propagate information to accomplish the change on this scale. Still, I think it has to be the same in a single particle, or at least it cannot be observed in an intermediate state, because Copenhagen sucks.
