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.
这是大脑的描绘图。 你的大脑可以被分为两个部分。 左脑,主要负责理性方面, 而右脑, 主要负责直觉。 如果我们用刻度线来测量脑半球的能力的话, 并标记我们的大脑。 比如说,这表示某人完全的理性。 这就表示着某人完全的感性。 那你会把你的大脑放在线上的哪里呢? 一些人可能会选这极端情况的一种, 但是我觉得大多数听众, 你的大脑位置应该大致像这样-- 两个脑半球同时有着很高的潜力。 它们不太可能会互相的排斥或其他什么的。 你可以既理性又感性。
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.
我自认为是一个 和大多数其他的实验量子物理学家一样, 有着很好的逻辑思维 能把那些复杂的想法串连起来。 但是同时,我们也需要一个好的直觉 让实验能切实的进行下去。 那我们如何来提高这种直觉力呢?嗯我们喜欢研究东西。 我们本身研究和捣鼓东西,然后我们会看它怎么反应。 接着我们从中提升我们的直觉力。 实际上你也做同样的事情。
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.
有一些你可能 培养了很多年了的直觉 像一个事物只能同时出现在一个方位。 我的意思是,这会很奇怪,要你去考虑一个事物可以 同时出现在两个不同的地方, 但是你不是天生就有这种概念,你是后天培养的。 我记得看到过一个小孩在阻车器上玩。 他还只是个学步而且并不擅长这个的小孩,他就一直摔倒。 但是我打赌和阻车器玩耍给他上了很有价值的一课, 就是大型的物体不会让你轻易的穿过, 而且它们停留在一个地方。
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.
这是世上拥有的一个很具备概念性的模型, 除非你是粒子物理学家。 对于粒子物理学家这也会是一个很糟糕的模型, 因为他们不研究阻车器, 他们研究那些很小的奇怪的微粒。 当他们研究他们的微粒的时候, 他们觉得他们在做各种真正奇怪的事情-- 好像他们能穿墙, 或者他们能同时出现在两个地方。 他们记录下这些发现的时候, 他们以此起名为量子力学理论。
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.
这就是几年前物理学的前沿; 你需要量子力学 来描述细小,微小的粒子。 但是你不需要它 来描述那些巨大的,周围日常的物体。 这并不很符合我的直觉认知, 也许是因为我不太时常研究微粒的缘故吧。 嗯,我还是有时候研究它们的, 只是不太平常而已。 而且我也从来没有看到过它们。 我指,没人能看见微粒。 但是这也不符合我的逻辑认知。 因为如果所有事物都是由微粒组成的 而每个微粒 都遵循量子力学理论的话, 那所有事物不也应该遵循量子力学理论吗? 我找不到为什么它不遵循的原因。 所以我对于整件事情会了解的更好 如果我们用某种方式来表明 日常的每件事物 也都遵循量子力学理论。 不久之前,我开始着手。
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.
我制造出了这个。 这是第一个你能看的见 同时也是 量子力学叠加的产物。 这里我们看到的 是一个电脑微型芯片。 在中间你大概能看到的那个绿点。 那就是我接下去要讲的金属。 这是它的照片。 聚焦一点。我们看到正中心的那点。 这则是一个很近,很近距离观测到的金属片。 我们看到的是一小块金属, 它的外形像一个跳水板,并且它伸出了一端。 我用几乎和制造电脑芯片 同样的方法制造出这金属。 我在无菌室操作一片硅晶片, 接着我周转于所有这些大型机器中大约100个小时。 为了最后的结果,我不得不制造自己的机器-- 让这泳池型的洞 在设备的下方。 这个设备有能力 来进行量子叠加, 但是它需要些帮助来完成这步骤。
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.
来,让我给你打个比方。 你知道在一个拥挤的电梯里是多么不舒服吗? 我指,当我一个人在电梯里,我能做各种奇怪的事情, 但是当其他人进来的时候 我就停止做这些事, 因为我不想打扰到其他人, 或者,实话说,吓到其他人。 所以量子力学表明 非生命体也变现出同样的情况。 那些非生命体的乘客 不仅仅是人, 但是它还包括照射它的光 吹拂过它的风和空间内的热度。 所以,如果我们想目睹 这片金属表现出量子力学的特性, 我们就不得不剔除所有其他的乘客。
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.
这就是我们曾做的。 我们关闭灯光, 接着我们把它放入抽真空机中并抽出所有的空气, 接着我们将它冷却 到绝对零度以上一点点。 现在,在电梯里, 小金属片可以做任何它想做的事。 我们测量了它的运动。 我们发现它用很古怪的方式在运动。 它是在震动,而不是完全的静止。 它震动的方式是像这种-- 像一张一合的风箱。 只要给它一个轻微的撞击, 我们就能让它震动 的同时 也不震动-- 某些只在量子力学范围下才会发生的事。
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.
我在这里告诉大家的是一些很奇妙的事情。 一个事物震动的 同时也不震动 这是什么意思? 让我们考虑下原子。 一个例子: 所有万亿个形成金属片的原子 正保持静止 同时同样的这些原子 正在上下移动。 只有在特定精确时间,它们是一致的。 余下的时间它们则是不定域的。 这意味着每个原子 在同一时间在两个不同的地方, 进一步说明整个金属片 在两个位置。 我认为这个真的很酷。 (笑声) 真的。
(Applause)
(掌声)
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?
我这些年把自己锁在无菌室所做的事都是很值得的。 因为,看这个, 单个原子 和金属片的比例差 大约和整片金属片和你这个个体的 比例差是一样的。 所以如果单个原子能同时处于不同的两个位置, 那金属片也能处于不同的两个位置, 那么为什么你不能呢? 我指的,这只是我的理性思考的逻辑。 那想想如果你能同时处于多个位置, 那会是什么样子的? 你的认知将如何处理 你自身在空间中的不定域问题呢?
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.
这是故事的一个部分。 当我们把它加热, 并打开灯光观察盒子里面的时候, 我们看到金属片依旧只是一块。 所以我不得不形成一个新的直觉, 似乎所有电梯中的物体 实际上都被塞进一个极小空间中的 量子物体。
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.
大家听过很多 关于量子物理学如何解释万物是互相联系的。 嗯,这不是完全正确的; 它要比这个更广泛,更深奥。 正是这些联系, 你和你周边的这些联系, 真正的定义了你是谁。 这才是量子力学的深奥和不可思议。
Thank you.
谢谢
(Applause)
(掌声)