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.
這是一個代表你大腦的圖像。 而你的大腦可以分成兩個部分。 左半邊,這是掌控邏輯的一邊, 然後是右半邊, 它掌控直覺。 所以如果我們有一個尺度去衡量這兩邊, 那麼我們可以繪製我們的大腦。 譬如,這是一個完全靠邏輯的人的大腦。 這個人是完全直觀。 那麼,你會把你的大腦放在這個尺上的哪裡? 有些人可能會選擇其中一個極端, 但我認為,對大多數在台下的人, 你們的大腦是這樣的 -- 兩個腦半球同時有著很高的潛力。 不是說它們會互相排斥或什麼的。 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.
我自認為是一個和很多 其他的量子物理學家一樣, 有很好的邏輯思維 能把這些複雜的想法串連起來。 但同時,我們也需要很好的直覺 讓實驗能切實的進行下去。 我們如何啟發這種直覺呢?嗯,我們喜歡研究東西。 所以我們會去研究東西,然後我們會看它怎麼反應。 接著我們從中提升我們的直覺力。 實際上你也做同樣的事情。
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.
所以有一些直覺, 你可能培養了很多年, 像一個事物只能同時出現在一個方位。 我的意思是,這聽起來很奇怪去考慮 一個事物可以同時出現在兩個不同的地方, 但是你不是天生就有這種概念,你是後天培養的。 我記得看到過一個小孩在阻車器上玩。 他還只是個小朋友,而且非常不擅長玩這個,他一直摔倒。 但是我打賭跟阻車器玩耍給他上了很有價值的一課, 就是大型的物體不會輕易的讓你穿過, 而且它們停留在一個地方。
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.
這是世上擁有的一個很具備概念性的模型, 除非你是粒子物理學家。 對於粒子物理學家這會是一個很糟糕的模型, 因為他們不研究阻車器, 他們研究那些很小的奇怪微粒。 當他們研究這些微粒的時候, 他們發現他們都在做各種很奇怪的事情-- 比如他們能穿牆, 或者他們能同時出現在兩個地方。 他們寫下這些觀察記錄, 然後他們把它起名為量子力學理論。
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.
而幾年前的物理學就是這樣; 你需要量子力學 來描述細小,微小的粒子。 但是你不需要 它來描述那些巨大的、生活周遭的尋常物體。 這並不是很符合我的直覺認知, 也許只是因為我不太時常研究微粒的緣故吧。 我有時候也會玩這些, 但不是常常。 而且我從來沒有看過他們。 我的意思是,沒有人看過這些微粒。 但這跟我的理性不大相符。 因為如果所有東西都是由微小微粒組成的 而且所有微粒 都遵守量子力學, 那不是所有東西都應該符合量子力學嗎? 我看不出為什麼不會。 所以我覺得 如果能夠讓 周遭所有東西都遵守量子物理 會讓我覺得更好過一點。 所以在幾年前,我開始這麼做。
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.
所以我製造了一個東西。 這是第一個 你可以看得見 且可以表現得如量子力學解釋那樣。 所以我們這裡看到的是 一個很小的電腦晶片。 而且你可以稍微看到這中間的綠點。 那就是我接下來要講的金屬。 這是這個物件的照片。 放大一些看。我們現在看到的是在正中間。 這是非常非常接近地看這塊小金屬。 所以我們看到的是這塊小金屬, 它的形狀像潛水板,而且它的周圍稍微凸出一些。 我用製造電腦晶片幾乎一樣的手法 製作這個東西。 我拿一個矽晶圓進到一個無塵室, 然後跟那些機器工作了大約一百個小時。 在最後的時候,我自己做了一個機器 來製造下方這個 游泳池形狀的洞。 這個器具 可以在量子的形態存在, 但它需要經過一些加工。
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.
現在,讓我給你們一個比喻。 像是在很擠的電梯裡會感到不適, 我的意思是,當我自己一個人在電梯時,我會做很多奇怪的事, 但當有其它人進到電梯時, 我停止做這些事, 因為我不想要打擾他們, 或是說嚇壞他們。 所以量子力學說, 無生命物體也這麼認為。 對無生命物體來說, 乘客不只是人, 也包括了光源、 風和房間裡的熱。 所以我們知道,如果我們想要看 這塊金屬以量子力學的方式呈現, 我們需要把所有乘客都趕出去。
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.
我們就是這麼做的。 我們把燈關掉, 然後用吸塵器把氣體吸掉, 然後讓它冷卻 至比絕對零度高好幾分之一的溫度。 現在,自己一個在電梯裡, 這個小金屬可以做任意的事。 所以我們量測它的活動。 我們發現它以奇怪的方式運動。 它沒有靜止不動,而是在震動。 而且它震動的方式是有點像這樣的: 像是吸氣吐氣的風箱。 當我們給它一點能量, 我們能夠使它同時震動 及不震動 在同一時間 -- 這只有在量子物理中是被容許的。
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.
所以我在這裡告訴大家的這是一件真的奇妙的事情。 一個東西 的同時在震動也不震動, 這是什麼意思? 讓我們考慮一下原子。 舉例而言: 所有萬億個形成金屬片的原子 正保持靜止狀態 然後在此同時,同樣的這些原子 正在上下移動。 只有在特定精確時間,它們是一致的。 餘下的時間它們則是不定域的。 這意味著每個原子 在同一時間在兩個不同的地方, 進一步說明整個金屬片 在兩個位置。 我認為這真的很酷。 (笑聲) 真的。
(Applause)
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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?
我這些年把自己鎖在無菌室所做的事都是值得的。 因為,看看這個, 一個原子和一塊小金屬 在尺度上的不同 就跟你和這塊小金屬的不同 差不多。 所以如果一個原子可以同時在兩個地方, 那塊金屬可以同時在兩個地方, 那為什麼你不能? 我的意思是,這只是我的合理推測。 所以想像你可以同時在不同的地方, 那會是怎麼樣的呢? 你的意識 能夠接受你同時在不同地方嗎?
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.
這個故事還有另一個部份。 就是當我們給這個東西加熱, 且我們把燈打開來看這個盒子裡面, 我們看到那塊金屬還是在那裡的。 所以我必須發展另一個直覺, 就是看起來像是電梯裡所有的東西 都是量子物體, 只是放在一個狹小的空間裡。
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.
你們聽過很多說法 說量子力學是在說每個東西都有交互作用。 這並不是完全正確的; 應該說,是更深奧的。 是這些交互作用, 你和你周圍東西的交互作用, 事實上定義著你。 而這正是量子力學奇怪的地方。
Thank you.
謝謝。
(Applause)
(鼓掌)