This is a representation of your brain, and your brain can be broken into two parts. There's the left half, which is the logical side, and then the right half, which is the intuitive. And so if we had a scale to measure the aptitude of each hemisphere, then we can plot our brain. And for example, this would be somebody who's completely logical. This would be someone who's entirely intuitive. So where would you put your brain on this scale? Some of us may have opted for one of these extremes, but I think for most people in the audience, your brain is something like this -- with a high aptitude in both hemispheres at the same time. It's not like they're mutually exclusive or anything. You can be logical and intuitive.
Ovo je prikaz vašeg mozga. Vaš se mozak može podijeliti na dva dijela. Tu je lijeva polovica, koja predstavlja logički dio, zatim i desna polovica, intuitivni dio. Ako bismo imali ljestvicu za izmjeriti raspon sposobnosti svake od polovica, mogli bismo grafički prikazati svoj mozak. Na primjer, ovo bi bio netko tko je u potpunosti logičan. Ovo bi bio netko u cijelosti intuitivan. Dakle, gdje biste postavili svoj mozak na ovoj ljestvici? Neki od nas su se možda odlučili za jednu od krajnosti, ali mislim da za većinu ljudi u publici vrijedi, da vam je mozak otprilike ovakav -- s velikim rasponom sposobnosti obiju polovica u isto vrijeme. Nije tako da se međusobno poništavaju ili nešto slično. Možete biti i logični i intuitivni.
And so I consider myself one of these people, along with most of the other experimental quantum physicists, who need a good deal of logic to string together these complex ideas. But at the same time, we need a good deal of intuition to actually make the experiments work. How do we develop this intuition? Well we like to play with stuff. So we go out and play with it, and then we see how it acts, and then we develop our intuition from there. And really you do the same thing.
Smatram se kao jednim od tih ljudi, zajedno s većinom drugih kvantnih fizičara eksperimentalista, koji trebaju dobar udio logike da povežu te složene ideje. No, u isto vrijeme, trebamo i dobar udio intuicije da bismo uspijevali izvršiti eksperimente. Kako razvijamo tu intuiciju? Pa, volimo se igrati sa stvarima. Odemo negdje i igramo se, a zatim promatramo kako se stvari ponašaju. Svoju intuiciju razvijamo od tu nadalje. U stvari, vi radite istu stvar.
So some intuition that you may have developed over the years is that one thing is only in one place at a time. I mean, it can sound weird to think about one thing being in two different places at the same time, but you weren't born with this notion, you developed it. And I remember watching a kid playing on a car stop. He was just a toddler and he wasn't very good at it, and he kept falling over. But I bet playing with this car stop taught him a really valuable lesson, and that's that large things don't let you get right past them, and that they stay in one place.
Pa je tako neka intuicija koju ste možda razvili tijekom godina ta da je jedna stvar samo na jednom mjestu u jedno vrijeme. Mislim, može zvučati neobično pomisliti da jedna stvar može u isto vrijeme biti na dva različita mjesta, ali niste rođeni s ovom intuicijom, razvili ste je. Sjećam se kako sam gledao dijete dok se igralo uz ležećeg policajca. Tek je bio prohodao i nije bio baš uspješan, neprestano je padao preko ležećeg policajca. No, kladim se da ga je ovo igranje podučilo zaista vrijednoj lekciji, a ta je da ne možeš samo tako proći preko velikih stvari, i da one ostaju na jednom mjestu.
And so this is a great conceptual model to have of the world, unless you're a particle physicist. It'd be a terrible model for a particle physicist, because they don't play with car stops, they play with these little weird particles. And when they play with their particles, they find they do all sorts of really weird things -- like they can fly right through walls, or they can be in two different places at the same time. And so they wrote down all these observations, and they called it the theory of quantum mechanics.
To je izvrsna koncepcija poimanja svijeta, osim ako se bavite fizikom elementarnih čestica. Bio bi to vrlo loš model za jednog takvog fizičara, jer se oni ne igraju s ležećim policajcima, igraju se s malim, neobičnim česticama. A kad se igraju sa svojim česticama, otkriju razne vrste neobičnih stvari -- na primjer, da mogu proletjeti kroz zidove, ili mogu biti na dva mjesta u isto vrijeme. Takva su promatranja zabilježena, i nazvana teorijom kvantne mehanike.
And so that's where physics was at a few years ago; you needed quantum mechanics to describe little, tiny particles. But you didn't need it to describe the large, everyday objects around us. This didn't really sit well with my intuition, and maybe it's just because I don't play with particles very often. Well, I play with them sometimes, but not very often. And I've never seen them. I mean, nobody's ever seen a particle. But it didn't sit well with my logical side either. Because if everything is made up of little particles and all the little particles follow quantum mechanics, then shouldn't everything just follow quantum mechanics? I don't see any reason why it shouldn't. And so I'd feel a lot better about the whole thing if we could somehow show that an everyday object also follows quantum mechanics. So a few years ago, I set off to do just that.
U takvoj je poziciji bila fizika prije nekoliko godina; kvantna mehanika je bila potrebna da se opišu malene, sićušne čestice. Ali nije bila potrebna da se opišu veliki, svakodnevni predmeti koji nas okružuju. Ovako nešto se zaista nije moglo složiti s mojom intuicijom, i možda je to bilo zato što se ne igram s česticama dovoljno često. Pa, ponekad se igram, ali ne baš često. I nikad ih nisam vidio. Mislim, nitko nije nikad vidio česticu. Ali, nikako se to nije slagalo ni s mojom logičnom prirodom. Jer, ako je sve izgrađeno od malenih čestica i sve te malene čestice ponašaju se prema kvantnoj mehanici, zašto se onda ne bi sve ponašalo prema kvantnoj mehanici? Ne vidim razlog zašto ne bi. Imao bih puno bolji osjećaj za to sve ako bismo nekako mogli pokazati da se neki svakodnevni predmet također ponaša prema zakonima kvantne mehanike. Zato sam prije nekoliko godina krenuo napraviti upravo to.
So I made one. This is the first object that you can see that has been in a mechanical quantum superposition. So what we're looking at here is a tiny computer chip. And you can sort of see this green dot right in the middle. And that's this piece of metal I'm going to be talking about in a minute. This is a photograph of the object. And here I'll zoom in a little bit. We're looking right there in the center. And then here's a really, really big close-up of the little piece of metal. So what we're looking at is a little chunk of metal, and it's shaped like a diving board, and it's sticking out over a ledge. And so I made this thing in nearly the same way as you make a computer chip. I went into a clean room with a fresh silicon wafer, and then I just cranked away at all the big machines for about 100 hours. For the last stuff, I had to build my own machine -- to make this swimming pool-shaped hole underneath the device. This device has the ability to be in a quantum superposition, but it needs a little help to do it.
I napravio sam jedan takav predmet. Ovo je prvi predmet kojeg možete vidjeti a da je bio u kvantnoj superpoziciji. Ono u što gledamo ovdje jest sitni kompjuterski čip. Možete vidjeti ovu zelenu točku upravo u sredini. To je taj komad metala o kojem ću pričati za minutu. Ovo je fotografija tog predmeta. A ovo je uvećani prikaz. Gledamo točno u sredinu. A ovo je jedan zaista, zaista uvećani prikaz malog komada metala. Znači, gledamo u ovaj komadić metala, koji je oblika daske za skakanje i koji strši preko ležišta. Napravio sam ovaj maleni predmet gotovo na isti način na koji biste napravili kompjuterski čip. Otišao sam u čistu sobu s novom silikonskom pločicom, a zatim samo uključio velike strojeve u vremenu od otprilike 100 sati. Za završne radove, morao sam izgraditi svoj stroj -- da bih napravio ovu rupu koja nalikuje bazenu ispod uređaja. Ovaj uređaj ima sposobnost biti u kvantnoj superpoziciji, ali mu je potrebna mala pomoć da bi to postigao.
Here, let me give you an analogy. You know how uncomfortable it is to be in a crowded elevator? I mean, when I'm in an elevator all alone, I do all sorts of weird things, but then other people get on board and I stop doing those things because I don't want to bother them, or, frankly, scare them. So quantum mechanics says that inanimate objects feel the same way. The fellow passengers for inanimate objects are not just people, but it's also the light shining on it and the wind blowing past it and the heat of the room. And so we knew, if we wanted to see this piece of metal behave quantum mechanically, we're going to have to kick out all the other passengers.
Evo, dopustite mi da vam to usporedim s nečim. Znate kako je neudobno biti u prepunom liftu? Mislim, kad sam sam u liftu, radim svakakve čudne stvari, no, onda mi se pridruže neki ljudi i prekinem raditi takve stvari, jer ih ne želim gnjaviti, ili, iskreno, preplašiti ih. Kvantna mehanika kaže da se neživi predmeti jednako osjećaju. Drugi ljudi u liftu za nežive predmete nisu samo ljudi, to je također svjetlost koja ih obasjava i vjetar koji puše oko njih i toplina prostorije. I zato smo znali da ako hoćemo vidjeti kako se ovaj komad metala ponaša kvantnomehanički, morat ćemo izbaciti sve druge ljude iz lifta.
And so that's what we did. We turned off the lights, and then we put it in a vacuum and sucked out all the air, and then we cooled it down to just a fraction of a degree above absolute zero. Now, all alone in the elevator, the little chunk of metal is free to act however it wanted. And so we measured its motion. We found it was moving in really weird ways. Instead of just sitting perfectly still, it was vibrating, and the way it was vibrating was breathing something like this -- like expanding and contracting bellows. And by giving it a gentle nudge, we were able to make it both vibrate and not vibrate at the same time -- something that's only allowed with quantum mechanics.
I to smo učinili. Ugasili smo svjetla, i zatim ga stavili u vakuum i isisali sav zrak, onda smo ga ohladili na djelić stupnja iznad apsolutne ništice. Sada, potpuno sam u liftu, mali je komadić metala bio slobodan da se ponaša kako god želi. Pa smo izmjerili njegovo kretanje. Otkrili smo da se kretao na vrlo čudne načine. Umjesto da je samo savršeno mirno stajao, vibrirao je. I način na koji je vibrirao je bio sličan disanju, nešto kao ovo -- kao širenje i skupljanje mijeha sa zrakom. Dajući mu nježan poticaj, bili smo u stanju potaknuti ga da i vibrira i ne vibrira u isto vrijeme -- nešto što je dozvoljeno jedino u kvantnoj mehanici.
So what I'm telling you here is something truly fantastic. What does it mean for one thing to be both vibrating and not vibrating at the same time? So let's think about the atoms. So in one case: all the trillions of atoms that make up that chunk of metal are sitting still and at the same time those same atoms are moving up and down. Now it's only at precise times when they align. The rest of the time they're delocalized. That means that every atom is in two different places at the same time, which in turn means the entire chunk of metal is in two different places. I think this is really cool. (Laughter) Really.
Ono što vam govorim ovdje je nešto uistinu fantastično. Što to znači za jednu stvar da vibrira i ne vibrira u isto vrijeme? Razmislimo zato o atomima. U jednom slučaju: svi trilijuni atoma koji čine komad tog metala stoje mirno i u isto vrijeme ti isti atomi pomiču se gore-dolje. Samo je u određenim vremenima tako da se poredaju. Ostatak vremena su delokalizirani. To znači da je svaki atom na dva mjesta u isto vrijeme, što zatim znači da je čitav komad metala na dva različta mjesta. Ja mislim da je ovo stvarno kul. (Smijeh) Zaista.
(Applause)
(Pljesak)
It was worth locking myself in a clean room to do this for all those years because, check this out, the difference in scale between a single atom and that chunk of metal is about the same as the difference between that chunk of metal and you. So if a single atom can be in two different places at the same time, that chunk of metal can be in two different places, then why not you? I mean, this is just my logical side talking. So imagine if you're in multiple places at the same time, what would that be like? How would your consciousness handle your body being delocalized in space?
Ovo je bilo vrijedno zatvaranja u čistu sobu svih tih godina. Jer, pogledajte ovo, razlika u mjeri, omjer između jednog atoma i tog komada metala je otprilike isti kao omjer između tog komada metala i vas. Pa ako jedan atom može biti na dva različita mjesta u isto vrijeme, taj komad metala može biti na dva različita mjesta, onda zašto ne biste i vi? Mislim, ovo se ispoljava moja logična strana. Znači, ako zamislite da ste na više mjesta u isto vrijeme, kako bi to izgledalo? Kako bi se vaša svijest mogla nositi s vašim tijelom delokaliziranim u prostoru?
There's one more part to the story. It's when we warmed it up, and we turned on the lights and looked inside the box, we saw that the piece metal was still there in one piece. And so I had to develop this new intuition, that it seems like all the objects in the elevator are really just quantum objects just crammed into a tiny space.
Postoji više od jedne strane priče. A ta je da kad smo ga zagrijali, i upalili svjetla i pogledali u kutiju, vidjeli smo komad metala koji je bio tamo još uvijek u jednom komadu. Stoga sam morao razviti ovu novu intuiciju, da izgleda da su svi predmeti u liftu zaista samo kvantni predmeti samo nagurani u malen prostor.
You hear a lot of talk about how quantum mechanics says that everything is all interconnected. Well, that's not quite right. It's more than that; it's deeper. It's that those connections, your connections to all the things around you, literally define who you are, and that's the profound weirdness of quantum mechanics.
Čujete mnoge priče o tome kako kvantna mehanika tvrdi da je sve međusobno povezano. Pa, to nije potpuno ispravno; tu ima nešto više, dublje. To je da su te veze, vaše veze sa stvarima koje vas okružuju, doslovno ono što određuje tko ste. I to je ta duboka čudnovatost kvantne mehanike.
Thank you.
Hvala vam.
(Applause)
(Pljesak)