Shadowing Practice: Physicist Brian Cox explains quantum physics in 22 minutes - Learn English Speaking with Video

I think it's important to say

that there aren't different rules of the game in the subatomic world and the world that we observe.

This world of common sense, let's say, that we perceive.

And it's pretty well understood, I would say it's well understood,

how the world that we see emerges from this rather strange but well -defined behaviour that we see in the subatomic world.

And it's not only a subatomic world, by the way, we have an increasing number of quantum technologies that are really based on this behaviour,

the quantum computers being a good example.

And so you see that this is not just something that you can say, well, we don't need to think about it really, because it's in the world of atoms,

because we're using that behaviour now in technologies and so

so it really does become a an important theory to try to to understand

why is it important that we seek to solve the mysteries of quantum physics

you could argue

that even today the interpretation of what the theory is telling

us about the nature of reality itself is not universally agreed upon

One of the big changes actually that's happened in teaching quantum mechanics in universities over the last few decades is

that it was always when I learned it, so back even in the 1990s, it was common to teach it historically.

So you go through the things that we've talked about, you go through the photoelectric effect and the structure of atoms,

you get to Niels Bohr and his early explanations of how atoms might work,

following on from Ernest Rutherford in Manchester detecting the atomic nucleus.

And so this idea that an atom is a nucleus, a dense positive charge, it wasn't known exactly what the structure was at

that time with electrons let's say orbiting in inverted commas around it

so that there's a picture of almost like a solar system

but it was known that doesn't work

because you have charged particles moving in the vicinity of other charged particles

and that means that they radiate and they would not be stable

and so there's all these things going on confusion

and then Bohr suggests that electrons can only take certain energies

which we now call orbitals around the atomic nucleus and all this stuff is going on.

And it used to be that we would teach it like that in university.

But if you do that, you pick up all the confusion, the confusion, decades and decades of confusion

that these great physicists felt in trying to come to terms with this counterintuitive picture of the world.

So now I think it's more common in universities to start with the theory as we understand it today and just say, well, this is the way the world works.

And perhaps the best introduction would be to think of a property of particles called spin.

So you might call these things a qubit.

So what is a qubit?

So you think of a coin which you would toss in the air and it can be either heads or tails.

So that's a kind of an intuitive picture of the world.

This thing is either heads or it is tails.

Now a quantum coin could indeed have the property

that it would be heads or tails but the difference between quantum mechanics

and classical theory is that an object like that a coin,

a quantum coin, can also be in what we call a superposition of heads and tails.

So that means that it can be in a state where it is let's say

if we observe the thing we'll talk about that a bit later

but it can be in a state where it could be 30 heads

and 70 tails or 40 heads and 60 tails

or any combination any mixture of heads and tails and

that is a perfectly legitimate description of the state of the configuration of this thing.

Just to give you a sense of a real physical object that would behave that way,

particles like electrons for example have a property called spin which can be up or down, it's like heads and tails.

But that's the key thing that objects like electrons can not only have definite values of some property,

some thing that you can measure but they can be in a mixture of those things and it's not a probability

theory in the sense that we would usually think of probability theories

so usually we'd say well there's a 50 chance it's going to rain tomorrow

and why do we say that where we would say such a thing it's

because we have incomplete knowledge of the system in this case the weather And so we have incomplete understanding of where,

I suppose, at the most basic level, all those water molecules are in the clouds and so on.

But we don't have enough knowledge to precisely calculate what is going to happen.

And so we assign probabilities to it, which that reflects our ignorance of the situation.

The key difference in quantum theory is that these probabilities are fundamental.

They are fundamental to the description of nature.

So it is not the case that if we have an electron in some kind of configuration,

then our theory predicts probabilities because we don't quite know exactly how this thing is configured.

The probabilities are intrinsic to the theory itself

and pretty much all of the the intellectual challenges

and the confusion around quantum mechanics comes from that very simple property

if you look at pretty much any book on quantum mechanics there is one experiment

which you can describe it's a very simple experiment

which encapsulates all the uh I was going to say weirdness

but it's all let's say all the properties of the quantum world it's called the double slit experiment

and by the way i'll strongly recommend i think it's almost

universally accepted the best description of the double slit experiment is

freely available it's in the Feynman lectures volume three first chapter

and and i've read quantum mechanics textbooks that um

that say go away

and read the first two chapters of the Feynman lectures on physics volume three

because it's all in there can't be done any better so i could recommend that if you find this interesting.

The double slit experiment is essentially, let's say you have something that will emit, let's say electrons, so particles,

electrons, electron gun that emits particles, and then you have a barrier that has two slits cut in it and a screen.

So that's the setup of the experiment.

So we have something that emits electrons, two slits, cutting a screen, and a detector, another screen, that the electrons will hit.

So you fire the electrons out.

So what will that look like?

Well if you think of the electrons as just little particles, little bullets let's say, that are emitted from this gun,

then you would imagine that the electrons can go through one slit or the other one, depending on how they come out, and you can imagine that they might get deflected around a little bit

when they go through the slits

but basically on the screen you would expect most of the electrons to appear opposite one

or the other of the slits with maybe a bit of a spread

because they rattle around a bit when they go through

so you get lots here lots here and pretty much none in the middle

but that's not what you see what you see is a

very clear pattern on the screen you see sort of stripes

a stripe on the screen where you get lots of electrons

and then a stripe where you get very few or none

and then another stripe where you get lots

and then a stripe where you get very few or none and then another stripe and then very few or none.

So you get this stripey pattern.

That pattern is exactly the same pattern that you would get if you sent waves through the slit.

Let's say water waves, any kind of waves, then it's easy to understand.

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Because what's happening then, and this fellow, physicists knew this back in the 1700s,

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right, is that you can consider each slit as a source of new waves.

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And the waves come out, and waves have the property that they can interfere with each other.

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So you can get the peak of one wave arriving at the screen from one slit, and a trough of a wave arriving at the screen from another slit

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and if everything's lined up correctly the peak and the trough cancel out

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and you get nothing

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so you get this property where where something from each slit it's very easy to understand

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if it's a big extended wavy thing

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lines up in such a way that it cancels out

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and then it could line up in such a way that it

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reinforces and you get a big disturbance there and then it cancels out again and then it reinforces again.

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So you can imagine this stripy pattern on the screen, that's what you get with waves.

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The fact that you get it from particles is interesting, but here's another interesting thing.

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You still get that pattern if you send one particle at a time through the slips.

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So it is, and let me use my language carefully I was going to say it is as

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if the electron can somehow explore both paths just like a wave can and then interfere with itself.

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to control where it lands on the screen, as if is something that people might object to.

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Many physicists would say no, it does.

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So the statement is that the electron explores both roots at the same time,

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at once, let's say, on its root from the electron gone through the slits to the screen.

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So that's a very strange picture of reality.

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We surely think of particles as following definite paths

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and it might be that you don't know quite

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which path it's going to take but surely you would say in reality it will go one route or the other route.

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But that experiment which I emphasize has been done now many times, tells us that nature is not like that.

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It tells us that the electron must,

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in some sense, explore all routes on the way from the gun to the screen.

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And so the question then becomes, well, what do I mean by in some sense? what you'll

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see in the Feynman lectures is he gives you two pictures of how to think about physics.

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One is he gives you the way that you would calculate what you're going to see on the screen.

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And that's really simple, as Feynman points out.

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So what you can do is you can assign,

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calculate what's called a complex number for every route that the particle, the electron, can take from gun, through the slits, to the screen.

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So every route, every path it can possibly take.

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A complex number, for those that don't know about complex numbers, can be pictured as a little clock face.

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So a complex number has a clock hand, there's a length of the clock hand, and there's the time on the clock face.

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And you can calculate how those clock faces kind of evolve

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and change and spin around from the moment the electrons emitted to the moment it hits the screen

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and the prescription is very simple you can calculate what those clock faces look like what those complex numbers are

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and every point on the screen you have to take them all every possible path to

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that point and just add them up

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and the length of the clock hand gives you the probability

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to find the electron there it's actually the squared length of the clock hand

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but whatever it's the length of the hand that's it

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so you can see

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that you have this property you can have interference you could have one clock arriving at 12 o 'clock

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and one clock arriving at six o 'clock and they cancel out

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and so on you just do that you calculate it then you get the right answer

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so it's a very very simple prescription but i suppose the problem comes

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when you say well what does it mean does it really mean is it just calculation

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or is it is this just mathematics or does it really mean that the electron explores every possible route?

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By that, I mean every possible route.

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You might consider it going to the Andromeda galaxy and back.

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Every possible route on its journey from when it's emitted to when it's detected.

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And I think many physicists now would say that that is a correct description of reality.

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The particle does.

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But I just wanted to emphasize that the mathematics, the way that you make the calculation, is pretty simple.

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It's a prescription for making a calculation and you get the right answer to the experiment.

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The problem with quantum mechanics, I suppose, is when you try to interpret what the calculation means for the nature of reality.

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I think it's important to say

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that there aren't different rules of the game in the subatomic world

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and the world that we observe this world of common sense let's say

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that we perceive there aren't different rules

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and it's pretty well understood I would say it's well understood how the the world

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that we see emerges from the from this rather strange but well -defined behavior that we see in the subatomic world.

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And it's not only the subatomic world, by the way.

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This is now, maybe you could have argued 50 years ago that this is just our philosophy, it doesn't really matter, whatever.

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But now we have an increasing number of quantum technologies that are really based on this behavior,

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the quantum computers being a good example and so you see

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that this is not just something

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that you can say well we don't need to think about it really

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because it's in the world of atoms and it's all a bit whatever

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and we but and we can just do some calculations

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because we're using that behavior now in technologies and so

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so it really does become a an important theory to try to to understand Now, you go back a few decades,

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then I think you could say that the interpretations of quantum mechanics are very interesting

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and very important because we're talking about the nature of reality.

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But you might say, well, it doesn't really matter so much practically, right?

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Now, I have a lot of colleagues in physics who would, I think, rightly hate that description because what we're trying to do is understand reality, what physics is.

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But now, particularly, I think, with the possibility of building quantum computers,

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this attempt to understand how large systems of quantum mechanical objects behave is becoming extremely important

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because a quantum computer is a device which is built out of qubits.

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Remember a qubit, an example would be an electron which has this property that when you make an observation of the spin,

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let's say, of this electron it behaves like a coin.

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It can be up or down, heads or tails, however you want to describe it.

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But that thing can also exist in a superposition, a combination of these things.

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It's a perfectly valid configuration and you you use that.

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That's the kind of property that you use in building a quantum computer.

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You can also then ask the question, well what happens if I get another one, two electrons together?

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These can be in what's called an entangled state.

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So then you have a much richer structure of this physical system.

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So an example of an entangled state, a very famous thing called a bell state, would be where you set these things up.

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So the system of these two qubits, let's say they're up and down these spins, right?

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So I can have the state up, down, plus, down, up, like that.

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A complete description of this state, up, down, plus, down, up.

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What does that mean?

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So let's say I take one of these electrons and separate them.

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It's a very famous paper written by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen that first considered this in the 1930s, and they get very upset by the behaviour.

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So we've got a system, a state, and it's up -down plus down -up, let's say.

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And I separate these electrons.

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I take one to, let's say, to Pluto and leave one on planet Earth.

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So what's the description of this thing in that state?

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Well, it's got, But in the way I described it, there's a 50 -50 chance that when I make a measurement of this electron,

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the up or downness of it, then there's a 50 -50 chance it'll be either up or down.

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And the same for the other one.

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That's what that state means.

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But if it's up, down, plus down, up, then it means that if I make a measurement of that one, if I say, well, OK, I know what that is.

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It's up.

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The other one has to be down.

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up, down, or down, up.

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It can't be up as well.

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Same for the other one.

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If I go to Pluto and have a look at this one, and it's down, then this one definitely is up, right?

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So this is called quantum entanglement.

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And the reason it bothered Einstein and others is it would appear that something is instantaneously changing.

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And it's not just your knowledge of the system that's instantaneously changing it would seem

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that the system itself is instantly configuring itself when you make some measurement

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so you might say well this is nonsense there must be something else

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and it turns out that as far as we can tell um

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that a nobel prize was awarded for some of this research

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a few years ago then no there's nothing hidden there this is this is the way

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that the system is but you think about

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that system of two qubits i think about it

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so there are you've got these two things which can be up

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or down there are four possible combinations of that of

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that system you can have up down down up up up

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or down down four for the two qubit system for a three qubit system you think about it ups

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and downs you'll find out there are eight possible combinations

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and all mixtures of them for four qubits then it's two to the power four there's 16 possible combinations.

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We're talking about building quantum computers now in which we have 100,

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200, 300 qubits, all in principle entangled together.

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The number of possible descriptions of that system then, you have numbers that describe it.

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If there are 100, it's 2 to the power of 100.

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different configurations and any mixture of those things that are states of the system.

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So pretty soon 2 to the power 100 for 100 qubits.

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What's the number of atoms in the universe?

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If you had 2 to the 500 you'd far exceed 500 qubits.

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The number of numbers you need to describe that system exceeds the number of atoms in the observable universe.

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But it's a thing

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that we can build we can build just about we're not

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far off being able to conceive at least of a network

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of 500 qubits they're physical things they're kind of like

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that big some of them right you go 500 them in this room um

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so the the power that's hidden in the description of a system like

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that is immense and the thing that a quantum computer does is it uses

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that power some of that power some of that vast computational

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or configurational power of the thing very very difficult to do

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and we've not been able to do it particularly well at

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the moment you'll read many papers online where obviously companies like

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google microsoft ibm are investing a lot of money in these devices

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because potentially they are that they can carry out computations

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that no conceivable classical computer could make within the lifetime of the universe

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because of this tremendous freedom in the description of the structure of the system

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so quantum mechanics and quantum entanglement these properties of matter of nature are becoming very real

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because we're getting we're beginning to be able to access this

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this tremendously complicated configuration space to do useful things to make calculations that are useful to us.

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Brian Cox, Quantum Physics, and Real-World English

In the video, physicist Brian Cox breaks down quantum physics in relatable terms, blending complex ideas with everyday analogies. His clear, conversational tone makes it a goldmine for English learners—perfect for practicing shadow speech and improving fluency. Whether you’re into science or just want to boost your speaking skills, this dialogue offers a unique mix of technical vocabulary and natural phrasing.

Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication

"It's important to say that..." – A great way to introduce key points in discussions.
"You could argue that..." – Useful for presenting alternative viewpoints politely.
"Let's say..." – Perfect for simplifying ideas or giving examples, like Cox does with the quantum coin.
"The key difference is that..." – Essential for clarifying contrasts, a common skill in English speaking.
"It's almost universally accepted that..." – Ideal for citing common knowledge in debates or explanations.

Step-by-Step Shadowing Guide for This Video

Ready to practice shadow speak? Follow these steps to master Cox’s rhythm and clarity:

Listen once, then repeat immediately: Pause after 5-10 seconds and mimic his tone—he often slows down for emphasis. This builds instant recall and pronunciation.
Focus on "filler" words: Notice how he uses "well," "so," and "by the way" to connect ideas. These make your speech sound natural, not robotic.
Break down complex phrases: Phrases like "counterintuitive picture of the world" can be tricky. Repeat them slowly, stressing each word, then speed up. A shadowing site can help loop these sections.
Record yourself: Compare your version to the video. Check if you’re matching his pauses—Cox uses them to let ideas sink in, a key trick for clear communication.
Practice daily for 10 minutes: Consistency beats length. Even short sessions with this video will boost your confidence in English speaking practice.

Quantum physics might be complex, but improving your English with Cox’s dialogue is simple. Start shadowing today and watch your speaking skills quantum leap forward!

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result	if we observe the thing we'll talk
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	are really based · wasn't known · was known
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	we've talked · have charged · i've read
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	spin which can · device which is · electron which has

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

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