Macroscopic Quantum Tunneling with John Martinis

Can quantum tunneling occur at macroscopic scales? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice sit down with John Martinis, UCSB physicist and 2025 Nobel Prize winner in Physics, to explore superconductivity, quantum tunnelling, and what this means for the future of quantum computing.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck.

• 0:00Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We bagged another Nobel laureate.

• 0:02Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 0:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 0:03Chuck Nice?

  We're keeping them tied up in a closet.

• 0:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  2025 Nobel Prize in Physics to macroscopic quantum tunneling.

• 0:12Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, man.

• 0:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Coming up on StarTalk.

• 0:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide.

• 0:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. I got with me Chuck Knight.

• 0:36Chuck Nice?

  Hey Neil.

• 0:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. How you doing, man?

• 0:39Chuck Nice?

  I am doing great. I'm feeling good. We got a good show.

• 0:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got a good show. You know what everyone was curious about, announced just a couple of months ago?

• 0:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 0:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics.

• 0:49Chuck Nice?

  Yes. And I can't believe that I didn't get it.

• 0:54Chuck Nice?

  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 Cupid. That's what they call me. I walk in, they say, hey Cupid, figure this out for me.

• 1:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I was kind of surprised as you are.

• 1:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've got on the horn, Professor of Physics at UC Santa Barbara, John Martinis. Did I pronounce your last name correctly, sir? Yeah, that's correct. All right. John Martinis, 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.

• 1:41Chuck Nice?

  It does look like a movie set.

• 1:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like.

• 1:43Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 1:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There was no garbage in the street?

• 1:45Chuck Nice?

  There's no, I mean, it's super clean. All the houses are like pristine. And I was looking around. I was like, well, it's only a matter of time before the cops show up that I'm here.

• 1:54Chuck Nice?

  A black man walking around this place. I know for sure somebody about to call the police.

• 2:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so your, your expertise is deep in the quantum and quantum, people love talking and thinking about quantum physics.

• 2:09Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 2:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not only, of course, in the world of physics, but in the public sector.

• 2:13Chuck Nice?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People love them some quantum.

• 2:15Chuck Nice?

  It's captured the imagination of the world.

• 2:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It captured the imagination. And I have on my notes here, so you led a team at Google to develop their superconducting quantum computer from 2014 to 2020. Are you still with them or were you, were you on the faculty that whole time?

• 2:35Speaker 02

  So I was on the faculty that whole time and had a joint appointment and I still had some students who were working. 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.

• 2:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's, you know, that's, that's a very California thing to do.

• 2:56Chuck Nice?

  It is, yeah.

• 2:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know?

• 2:57Chuck Nice?

  It's a very Google thing to do too.

• 3:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So in 2025, October, that's the Nobel announcement month. You shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Michael Deveray. Did I pronounce his name correctly?

• 3:13Speaker 02

  Michel Deveray.

• 3:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, Michel, excuse me.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  He's from France.

• 3:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From France.

• 3:19Chuck Nice?

  Oh, yes, of course, but of course.

• 3:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But of course.

• 3:23Chuck Nice?

  Well, in the quantum, we have nothing but attitude.

• 3:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And John Clark for, I've got here for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling and energy quantization in an electric circuit.

• 3:39Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 3:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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?

• 3:53Speaker 02

  Well, very simply, we saw an electric circuit where if you look at how it works, 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 quite big. It's the current and voltages of that that obey quantum mechanics.

• 4:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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 superconductivity, that's kind of a macroscopic manifestation of quantum physics, isn't it? Where the, 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 superconductivity? And is that not similar to what you're describing about what you got the award for?

• 5:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, so these, that's actually a good question. These are actually a different phenomenon. This is something that Professor Anthony Leggett, when he first proposed this, kind of described, but I can, I can explain this with an analogy. If you take a crystal, for example, I have one here that I often have on my, my desk. It's, 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

• 5:54Speaker 02

  get a naturally grown crystal with huge planes on it that basically describe

• 6:01Speaker 02

  On a big level, you know, millimeter or centimeter level, what's going on at the atomic level? 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.

• 6:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I see. So this is the buildup of the, the, the geometry, if you will, of the microscopic particles to become a macroscopic. A macroscopic, let's loosely say, you can see it with your eyeballs.

• 6:38Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that a macroscopic?

• 6:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So now...

• 6:43Speaker 02

  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.

• 7:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, we did a whole explainer on crystals.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  On crystals.

• 7:13Chuck Nice?

  And their low energy output.

• 7:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. How they have, you know, the lowest energy state. And people say, I feel this crystal energy. Yeah. It was a direct indictment of California, the state.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and you know, I can, it, it's really, it really comes from something that's quite astounding. So I can see how people get mystified by this.

• 7:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but so does Earth and the solar system and the universe.

• 7:38Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 7:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So...

• 7:40Chuck Nice?

  So can I ask, as a, a layperson who doesn't understand quantum physics at all?

• 7:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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?

• 7:53Chuck Nice?

  Oh, because I want to understand.

• 7:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you want to understand?

• 7:55Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. That's why I'm not a dumbass. See, the people who just don't care and don't wanna understand.

• 8:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're dumbass. Thank you for clarifying.

• 8:03Chuck Nice?

  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.

• 8:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On it.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  Asking questions is so important in science. And I think it's great that you wanna ask a question. And I'm gonna say that in my career, I'm kinda 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.

• 8:30Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 8:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so what's your question?

• 8:32Chuck Nice?

  So, all right, the tunneling part is what has me in the circuit. And maybe this is just...

• 8:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause that's what he got the prize for.

• 8:40Chuck Nice?

  That's what you got the prize for.

• 8:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Quantum, macroscopic quantum tunneling.

• 8:44Chuck Nice?

  In an 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?

• 9:08Speaker 02

  That's exactly right.

• 9:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Two thumbs up on that one.

• 9:11Chuck Nice?

  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, what exactly are you looking at that says, "Oh, I can see tunneling"?

• 9:28Speaker 02

  Okay, so, let me go back to my analogy 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 wanna 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 kinda describe the physics of that. You don't have to think about all the individual atoms, cause they're constrained to be next to each other. And the same kinda thing happens in superconductivity, 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...

• 10:12Speaker 02

  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, in a wire, superconducting wire if you set it up right.

• 10:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  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.

• 10:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cool.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  If you put too much current in the wire, then it kind of breaks the superconductivity. 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 Josephson 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 tunneling through.

• 11:29Speaker 02

  This energy barrier, having to do from going from superconducting to like breaking the superconductivity.

• 11:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Gotcha. So now, now, let me play journal, journalist here, if I may. So, what good is that?

• 11:42Speaker 02

  No, no, that's a good question.

• 11:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm saying, you know, if I'm the Nobel Prize committee, I'm gonna hand out a million dollars. I'm thinking, is that what I'm gonna give a million dollars to?

• 11:57Speaker 02

  People actually at the time, thought, well, of course it's going to obey quantum mechanics, okay? And then, 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 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.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  And the new periodic table that we work with are based on inductors and capacitors and. Do things called transmission lines and these Joseph junctions. And we have a whole new class of quantum devices that we can make. Based on, you know, this new kind of physics here, this macroscopic physics.

• 13:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay, so this this opens up.

• 13:04Chuck Nice?

  I get it.

• 13:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What the kinds of circuits you can design.

• 13:07Chuck Nice?

  So the, okay, so you're really, what you're doing is you're opening the door to an actual quantum computer.

• 13:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, what happened is people explored this over the last forty years. First looking at the basic physics, but in the last, let's say thirty 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.

• 13:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but wait a minute, but you the the research paper. That sort of birthed this path. That dates from nineteen eighty-five, is that correct?

• 13:56Speaker 02

  That's correct, yeah.

• 13:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what's up with the Nobel Committee? What what what?

• 14:01Chuck Nice?

  They're slow readers.

• 14:05Speaker 02

  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 and wrote papers, but. People would wonder, well, what's going on? But after forty 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, and if you like, into a big scientific industry and new field.

• 14:50Speaker 02

  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 the had to sit there for a while.

• 15:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. He's California guy. So he's got the wine vocabulary. Had to age into the mellow. Gotcha. And I might add here, little known fact, the Nobel, 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's makes me wonder why they wait so long. So they don't have to give it. Yeah, definitely.

• 15:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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.

• 15:35Speaker 02

  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 kind of took my whole career, you know, for this for this to happen.

• 16:04Speaker 03

  I'm Brian Futterman, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 16:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Before we go to cosmic queries with our, our, our fan base, I 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?

• 16:37Speaker 02

  Well, we, I, I explained how, um, how it was a quantum mechanical system indifferent, but I maybe didn't describe how tunneling worked.

• 16:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's just, let's get the official word on that then. We'll do that. And then we'll go to Joseph von Junck's 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.

• 17:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Joseph von Junck's and another, another thing here. What's this other term here? A Cooper?

• 17:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bridge?

• 17:12Speaker 02

  Cooper Pairs.

• 17:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cooper Pairs. So, so, start with quantum tunneling, then go to Josephson Junctions, and then give me Cooper Pairs, and tell me what all this is.

• 17:21Speaker 02

  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, another way to explain it. And what happens with quantum mechanics is you can borrow energy and then pay it back because the 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 Planck's constant, which

• 18:05Speaker 02

  in units are 10 to the minus 34. It's a tiny amount of time. So, if you set up an experiment so the barrier's 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 the very low energies, and then, and then it can tunnel.

• 18:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's said of them is that tunneling, it crosses the barrier instantly.

• 18:37Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even if the barrier is spatially separated?

• 18:40Speaker 02

  No, no, they, actually, this is new physics that we did on, that when I did in my postdoc, it takes a little bit of time for it to tunnel.

• 18:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Duh!

• 18:50Speaker 02

  This is not actually well-known. 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 it in my Nobel lecture, so that people know about it. But, uh, yes, this is what happened. It's a good way to think about it.

• 19:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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?

• 19:19Speaker 02

  Yes, that, that's absolutely correct.

• 19:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, how long does it take?

• 19:22Speaker 02

  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.

• 19:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm. You still don't have a word for it?

• 19:52Speaker 02

  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.

• 20:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A little, little too many syllables for me, but T cubed.

• 20:06Speaker 02

  T cubed.

• 20:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And how do you calculate how long it takes?

• 20:09Speaker 02

  Oh, well, so it, what happens is you can't, you connect your superconducting qubit to a, a resistor that you can change the distance from the qubit 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 a resistor tells you the, uh, the tunneling time. And what happens is it, it takes some time for the 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

• 20:53Speaker 02

  delay. There, there'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 affect the tunneling in the same way.

• 21:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what, what impact does this have on, on prevailing research, knowing this fact?

• 21:13Speaker 02

  Um, if, if you have, um, a, a tunneling phenomenon that, um, has some complicated, um, 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, uh, that delay is going to affect the tunneling rate.

• 21:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's going to matter. Okay. Previous paradigm that tunneling was instantaneous.

• 22:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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. And now you you're telling me, no, it takes time. So, you know, calm yourself. So so does what do you say to the instantaneous people? Is that a camp that now has to dissolve?

• 22:37Speaker 02

  So what I would say is if you have a regular particle with mass, okay, and then you put a force on it, it instantaneously accelerates from that force. Okay, because it's just that. But in systems where that electron is that that mass is connected to other masses, maybe far away, it may not instantaneously move with a simple, you know, you know, Newton's law or a simple instantaneous. So for more complicated systems, which you definitely have with these electrical circuits, then then your concept of mass becomes more more

• 23:19Speaker 02

  complicated and and you have to throw in this physics.

• 23:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 23:24Speaker 02

  Is that okay?

• 23:26Chuck Nice?

  No, it's not with me. I'm sorry.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  You're you're stuck on on moving, you know, particles, electrons and atoms or whatever. Quantum mechanics is more general than that.

• 23:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I'm I'm kind of you're making me happy that I'm a macroscopic object, that I can use simple laws to understand causality and everything else.

• 23:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And things only really get weird in in the quantum realm. But people love visiting it. We're about the same age. Did you read Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland? Where he, where George Gamow changed the, the constants of physics? And one of them, he changed Planck's constant, if memory serves? So that it, so that you'd walk through a doorway and you would like refract?

• 24:12Speaker 02

  Oh, yes. My, I did not read the book, but Michelle Deveray read that book and was very inspired by it. Yes.

• 24:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. It's just, it made it real and tangible. 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.

• 24:29Chuck Nice?

  You just see light going by you.

• 24:32Chuck Nice?

  How do you see it? That's wild.

• 24:34Speaker 02

  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 ball, if the ball is kind of a little bit 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.

• 25:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Now Josephian junction. Tell, tell me about those.

• 25:09Chuck Nice?

  Josephian junctions, what's your function?

• 25:13Speaker 02

  So the Josephian junction is just a, it's just two, two metals that are it 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 of 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.

• 25:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So those are, those are Cooper pairs. No, no.

• 25:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With Cooper pairs are the pairs of electrons across that junction.

• 26:00Speaker 02

  Well, the Cooper pairs exist inside the superconductor. Okay. And what happens is when you have 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 in another direction. The net velocity, if you sum those two velocities, it's 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.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  So 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 won the Nobel Prize for understanding this. This is really kind of an amazing conjecture back in the late 50s and early 60s.

• 27:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, quantum, you know, it's mind boggling and that's just why people like it. Yeah. Especially. And last thing before we go to our Q and A. Just catch us up with quantum computing. We did a whole show on quantum computing. Yeah. And I was more confused after than before.

• 27:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tell me, remind us what a qubit is and why it has utility in quantum computing.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  So the basic idea of a qubit, 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 together to show a word or describe a number and you do some logic operations with that. So what a qubit is, is a bit that's made out of a quantum computer. And 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 that's kind of possible. If you take, for example, an atom, hydrogen atom,

• 28:09Speaker 02

  and you have electron and proton, they're different charges and they want to stick together. Right? But. Atoms have size, okay? 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 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.

• 28:49Chuck Nice?

  I got you.

• 28:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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 it can be either.

• 28:58Chuck Nice?

  Possibility.

• 28:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Aren't you really making a probabilistic statement rather than a statement of existence?

• 29:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's the strange thing about quantum mechanics. You would think that it's like moving around, but it's actually at all this place, all the different places at the same time.

• 29:13Chuck Nice?

  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.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right. So it has, it has to be kind of everywhere at the same one. And it's a very definite state. And because it's a definite state, you can do computing on it.

• 29:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  Okay? So you have this zero and one state, and you can think about taking a single qubit 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.

• 29:54Chuck Nice?

  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, countless calculations at, at the same time.

• 30:08Speaker 02

  That's exactly right. Because with one qubit factor two, who cares? Okay? Parallel factor two. But two qubits, there are four states, zero, zero, one, zero, zero, one, one, one. Three qubits, eight, four, sixteen. By the time you get up to fifty-three qubits, which is what we did at Google, that's ten to the sixteen states in parallel. Ten to the sixteen. Damn.

• 30:32Chuck Nice?

  In parallel. That's insane.

• 30:35Speaker 02

  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.

• 30:53Speaker 02

  But nature doesn't make that easy. Okay, and then nature, it's hard to take, take 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, you have to be careful designing it. For now.

• 31:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, well, brute force, and it sounds to me, because I'm about to say something. Tell me if I'm right or wrong, because this is 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.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  Uh, okay, you're, you're making a bold statement. I have to, you know, tell you a little bit more.

• 31:43Chuck Nice?

  Good, because I'm, I'm making this, I'm making, I'm pulling this out my ass.

• 31:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, this was the big algorithm in nineteen nineties by Peter Schorr, saying that in potential you can do that, which was a big thing. And people are now building quantum computers where I can, I can kind of see in the not-so-distant 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, has been around for many decades now. But we're thinking because the quantum computers are nearing the end of life. Okay, just like every other cryptographic system.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  And people have to switch over to something what's called crypto-safe, quantum-safe crypto. And people have algorithms that are working on, and, you know, it, it, it will happen.

• 32:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but the way it was first brought to the public.

• 32:45Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 32:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was, we can never encrypt anything ever again.

• 32:48Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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.

• 32:59Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The computing means, and now that we have quantum computing, we need a next generation.

• 33:04Chuck Nice?

  Of cryptography.

• 33:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cryptography. So that's a fair way to characterize that.

• 33:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, and you know, people have known this for a long time. And there's actually an active program at the NIST 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 gonna take decades, 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 gonna work. This is hard. But people are working on it. There, there are, there are good algorithms there now.

• 33:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So, so you sleep well at night?

• 33:47Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I don't have to worry.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can sleep well at night.

• 33:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Those secrets are carrying that you, the whole world wants.

• 33:52Chuck Nice?

  You know, cause you know, I, I keep, I keep the nuclear codes under my pillow. So, yeah.

• 33:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, last thing, we've heard the term quantum supremacy. Is this just sort of Cold War all over again kind of thing?

• 34:05Speaker 02

  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, a big data center. Okay? And that's what we did in 2019. And, uh, but it was for a mathematical problem. And now what people are doing is working very hard to do something useful in this way. And it's harder, it takes bigger computer and more clever algorithms.

• 34:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's not a geopolitical statement, quantum supremacy?

• 34:43Speaker 02

  Well, some people kind of thought it did. So some people call 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 as originally.

• 34:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're going to go to our Patreon supporters.

• 35:00Chuck Nice?

  This is Scott Oppenlander, who says, or Openlander. Hello, this is Scott Oppenlander, pronounced Scott, really Scott. Thanks. You know, these people. He says, tuning in from Chicago. Hey Neil, John and Lord Nice. As, as quantum computing advances, it seems like its potential power could create risks 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.

• 35:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like that because go back in time, we created the Atomic Energy Commission.

• 35:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which put rules and regulations and guidelines for how we, we obtain, process and use 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?

• 36:10Speaker 02

  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, um, 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

• 36:54Speaker 02

  kind of learn from that and copy from that to, to make sure we're okay.

• 36:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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.

• 37:08Speaker 02

  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 you have an easy answer, but I am. I think we can use these other examples of, on, in computing as a way to guide us.

• 37:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very good.

• 37:31Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, the cat's out the bag. Forget it.

• 37:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. What else you got?

• 37:35Chuck Nice?

  Very cool. Uh, this is Mark Phillips, who says, greetings, Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice, and John. This is Mark from Florissant, Missouri.

• 37:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Missouri.

• 37:45Chuck Nice?

  Missouri. He says, I understand a cubit exists in a state of superposition, almost like it's stuck in the phantom zone.

• 37:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you know, the phantom zone?

• 37:56Chuck Nice?

  I don't know the phantom.

• 37:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the prison in, in this Superman.

• 38:01Chuck Nice?

  The little flat two dimensional.

• 38:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Flat two dimensional thing. It's a phantom.

• 38:04Chuck Nice?

  Face that you're banished to.

• 38:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a prison. It's a prison. It's a phantom zone.

• 38:07Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 38:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're stuck in a two dimensional shape.

• 38:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And when a nuclear blast opened that up and that's when you had.

• 38:14Chuck Nice?

  And that's how they got freed.

• 38:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got the three criminals who came to earth.

• 38:17Chuck Nice?

  Zod.

• 38:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Zod.

• 38:19Chuck Nice?

  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, real world data point that a computer can actually use?

• 38:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like that.

• 38:43Chuck Nice?

  Wow, Mark, you are a real downer.

• 38:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So does a qubit have a lifetime, a life expectancy for it to remain in that state?

• 38:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's the basic thing of the question. The basic idea is that all these qubits are imperfect. And if you send it down, a photon down a fiber optic, it can go kilometers, but eventually 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, is in any quantum system, you always have these imperfections. So there's always errors in a quantum computer.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  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.

• 39:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So part of the challenge then is keeping the quantum computer very cool to reduce the thermal noise that could decohere your quantum phenomena. Is that, that's why we read about this.

• 40:05Speaker 02

  That's right. We go very cold, so there's no noise. No noise, so 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, this is the real challenge to build an experiment is to figure out how to, you know, get around all these problems.

• 40:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But for now, we're not carrying a quantum computer on our hip.

• 40:32Chuck Nice?

  Well, yeah.

• 40:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because we don't have superconducting materials and...

• 40:37Chuck Nice?

  We're not going to see a Texas instrument quantum computer anytime soon.

• 40:42Speaker 02

  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 there's often some fancy data center somewhere.

• 41:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the 1950s and 60s.

• 41:05Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Four-function computers filled a room.

• 41:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With a heavy.

• 41:10Chuck Nice?

  University of Pennsylvania.

• 41:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With a, you know.

• 41:13Chuck Nice?

  The whole, the whole room.

• 41:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The whole room.

• 41:14Chuck Nice?

  Was the computer.

• 41:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was the computer.

• 41:16Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And to say, oh, one day you're gonna carry that on your hip.

• 41:18Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, nobody would have. People would have looked at you like you were crazy back then.

• 41:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right.

• 41:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, well, just give a shout out then to David Drain, who asked the question, hi, Dr. Tyson Lord, nice professor. Um, I've wondered if quantum computing will fit into devices that we have now? Or will it be like terminals and servers?

• 41:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's exactly.

• 41:38Chuck Nice?

  And earlier hardware configurations forever?

• 41:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, that, it, it, terminals, yeah. Yeah, I think it'll be remote, although, you know, you could still, companies could still buy one computer. But I don't think that's necessary to do that unless you're worried about security or something.

• 41:56Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah, you, you'll carry a terminal on your hip. And it'll, it'll speak to the server.

• 42:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 42:01Chuck Nice?

  Which will be out in space. So it can be cold enough.

• 42:07Speaker 02

  Or the backside of the moon, like Elon Musk would say, where it's really cold.

• 42:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, only when the sun isn't shining.

• 42:13Chuck Nice?

  Right, right, right.

• 42:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or at the bottom of a crater where the sun don't shine.

• 42:16Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's, oh, look at that. That's right, where the sun never sees.

• 42:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it's where the sun don't shine, say it right.

• 42:22Chuck Nice?

  Where the sun don't shine. That's right. We call it the moon's butthole.

• 42:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At the bottom of the, at the poles, there are craters that are deep enough.

• 42:32Chuck Nice?

  Deep enough.

• 42:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That the sun's.

• 42:33Chuck Nice?

  They never see the sun's rays.

• 42:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Never gets over the, the ridge of the crater. And so the, it just stays there.

• 42:39Chuck Nice?

  It's dark all the time.

• 42:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's cold, cold, and I, water gets there and never leaves.

• 42:43Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 42:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're called cold traps, actually. But I hadn't, I hadn't considered what a great place to put a computer would be.

• 42:49Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, well, you're right in the cold trap on the moon.

• 42:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, all right.

• 43:16Chuck Nice?

  This is Steven Pello and or Stephen with Steven. He says, Hello, StarTalk family, Neil, John, Lord Nice. My name is Steven Pello from Gloucester City, New Jersey. 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?

• 43:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And let me add to that, given the computing power necessary for current AI needs.

• 43:54Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 43:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that going to be lessened by quantum computing? Because it can do it all in less time?

• 44:02Chuck Nice?

  Or are we all going to be sitting around in the dark? Because of quantum computing and AI?

• 44:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Taking all the energy?

• 44:08Chuck Nice?

  All the energy.

• 44:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so in other words, what is the future marriage of these two frontiers?

• 44:15Speaker 02

  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, you know, how the molecule work or how does NMR work? Or some scientific question that involves quantum mechanics? That's where it might 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, five, 10 years from now, you'll get some quantum computer, you know, aided aided the result, which would be pretty nice.

• 44:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very cool. All right, did we get the last bit of that question too? What was?

• 45:03Chuck Nice?

  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 emergent quality or singularity will happen and consciousness will take place in the computer itself.

• 45:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like Skynet.

• 45:25Chuck Nice?

  Like Skynet.

• 45:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Skynet achieved consciousness in The Terminator.

• 45:28Chuck Nice?

  So, yeah, so you'll have an actual sentient, self-aware, thinking being that emerged from the ability to make these computations.

• 45:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, if you have the number of sort of computational synaptic possibilities, such as what goes on in the human brain. We're pretty sure that consciousness is emergent, right? It wasn't designed into the package, it came out of the package. So, John, do you feel, or think, or see that consciousness might just come out of quantum computing?

• 46:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think people talk about that, it's a possibility. But I'm more of a practical person and I don't necessar-- you know, I'm working on building a quantum computer and not what's gonna happen in 20 years from now. So, but yeah, that's definitely a possibility.

• 46:25Chuck Nice?

  Wow, very cool.

• 46:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's because he's gonna be dead in 20 years, you don't have to care.

• 46:36Speaker 02

  Actually, you joke about that, but that's what I talk about in my, in my talks, that I'm really trying to accelerate the development of quantum computers.

• 46:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it happens in your lifetime?

• 46:46Speaker 02

  So it'll happen before I die.

• 46:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, it's one of the primary rules of a science experiment. 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.

• 47:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we could get the Pluto as quickly as possible. Yep, yep.

• 47:07Chuck Nice?

  And who was sick in the team and on their deathbed that made that decision?

• 47:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Deathbed promise? We'll get there before you.

• 47:14Chuck Nice?

  We'll get there before you go, sir. I promise you.

• 47:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was the fastest rocket ever launched. I mean, it attained higher speeds than anything ever. Yeah, except the rocket that went into the sun, near the sun, but going out to the solar system.

• 47:30Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 47:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It got out there fast. Yeah.

• 47:32Chuck Nice?

  Very cool.

• 47:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, a few more questions.

• 47:34Chuck Nice?

  All right, this is Jibak. He says greetings.

• 47:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jibaka?

• 47:37Chuck Nice?

  Jibak, Jibak, J I B A K, Jibak.

• 47:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jibak, okay.

• 47:42Chuck Nice?

  He says, greetings from London, Dr. Martinez, 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, a genetic, generative computing could be unlocked when we marry the technology with quantum computing. Could you please share your views on this topic? Thanks to you, Dr. Martinez, and many congratulations. And thank you to all you guys for what you're doing. So.

• 48:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we addressed it a little bit.

• 48:23Chuck Nice?

  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.

• 48:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is the thing.

• 48:38Chuck Nice?

  Like, you don't have any other computer. You just have a quantum computer that is charged by AI.

• 48:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You also don't have a life, because it's doing everything.

• 48:46Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 48:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's thinking for you. It's pooping for you.

• 48:49Chuck Nice?

  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.

• 49:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a computing version of Wally.

• 49:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 49:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Remember in Wally?

• 49:04Chuck Nice?

  Wally, yeah.

• 49:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He was just this blob.

• 49:06Chuck Nice?

  They all sat around on hovering beds.

• 49:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just there with nothing to do.

• 49:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 49:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, people are thinking about that. That I mean with our collaboration, we have people who are collaborating with people 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 people definitely looking in that direction.

• 49:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 49:35Chuck Nice?

  Okay. Yeah. Well, there you have it, Jabak. You got it, buddy. Hope you hope you get to stick around until you don't have to do anything.

• 49:46Chuck Nice?

  All right. This is Matt Curtis, who says, Hello, geniuses and Chuck. You know what, Matt? You know what, Matt?

• 49:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Meet me outside.

• 50:00Chuck Nice?

  I got you genius right here, buddy.

• 50:05Speaker 02

  Why are you insulting me already?

• 50:09Chuck Nice?

  So Matt says, Hey, this is Matt from South Carolina here. Quantum computing has made strides in a number of, 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, 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?

• 50:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But what about weather prediction, for example, where the systems are so complex?

• 50:48Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I mean, right. You can only have certain possibilities because you have no idea how the fluid is going to act in the atmosphere, well, the atmosphere is the fluid, but how it's going to act.

• 50:59Speaker 02

  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 the debate and it's kind of interesting.

• 51:22Speaker 02

  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 application. People have talked about solving these differential occasions in some way. Fortunately, I don't know much about about that, but yeah, there's a lot of um um 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 it got more powerful, when all these ideas came out.

• 52:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the Internet itself as well.

• 52:03Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 52:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who would have thought?

• 52:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who who would have thought? So, John, is there a limit to how many qubits can exist in one place?

• 52:14Speaker 02

  Uh, I don't I don't think there is. Um, it's a matter of engineering and practical consideration 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 gonna end.

• 52:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what's the largest one as of this recording?

• 52:35Speaker 02

  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 this is advancing very rapidly now.

• 52:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's this we heard here of a Google Willow chip?

• 53:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that it can do a calculation that would otherwise take ten to the twenty-five years of a traditional computer to accomplish?

• 53:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is very similar to 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 errors. So there's a very good development of the technology. This is very healthy for the field.

• 53:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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 someone 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.

• 54:06Chuck Nice?

  Well, I know one, it could be like the mapping of the human brain, the

• 54:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The neurosynaptic.

• 54:12Chuck Nice?

  Neurosynaptic 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.

• 54:20Speaker 02

  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 going, 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 let's say money goes into the film, the firms, because they're solving useful problems, then you can even develop these more. This is what happened with conventional electronics.

• 54:52Chuck Nice?

  Well, kids, here's your, here's the takeaway from this. Study physics. Because 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. I'm just, physics and engineers, that's it. So.

• 55:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So one last question here before we land this plane. Are 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?

• 55:32Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, like, like if there was a supercomputer that was like the size of Manhattan, a super.

• 55:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why make it big? Keep them little, who cares?

• 55:42Chuck Nice?

  Well, no, because 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.

• 55:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so is that the kind of computer that necessary to simulate our world?

• 55:53Chuck Nice?

  Our universe.

• 55:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or even the universe? Yeah.

• 55:56Speaker 02

  So I would say if if you believe in simulation theory, and now that we can do these really complex calculations of the quantum computer, that whatever's doing the simulation has to have a big quantum computer. So that's my conclusion about simulation.

• 56:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. All right. So there it is.

• 56:15Chuck Nice?

  He's like, no matter what, all roads lead back to me.

• 56:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And even the computer that's simulated the computer has to be a quantum computer.

• 56:25Speaker 02

  Or at least they have to have part of it has to be a quantum computer.

• 56:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's quantum all the way down. That's what it is.

• 56:32Chuck Nice?

  Turtles all the way down.

• 56:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, thanks for taking time out of your day and you're coming to us from your home in Santa Barbara. And this has been a delight. And if if can we keep you on speed dial in the future if we have like quantum?

• 56:46Speaker 02

  Sure. I've had a I had an enjoyable time and I'm glad that it was such a fun conversation. So, yeah.

• 56:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent. Excellent. You'll be all quantum man about town.

• 56:58Chuck Nice?

  There you go. Right. Quantum man all about town.

• 57:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All about town.

• 57:03Chuck Nice?

  In every part of the town at the same time.

• 57:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh. All right. Again, Professor, thank you.

• 57:12Speaker 02

  Thank you very much. It was a real pleasure.

• 57:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Chuck, always good to have you, man.

• 57:15Chuck Nice?

  Always a pleasure.

• 57:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, this has been StarTalk, the Nobel Prize edition.

• 57:21Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 57:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  2025 on quantum tunneling, macroscopic quantum tunneling.

• 57:26Chuck Nice?

  Sweet.

• 57:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. As always, I bid you to keep looking up.