YouSaid · the spoken record

Jim Al-Khalili

lines on the record: 62
first: 2021-01-29
most recent: 2021-01-29
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Crazy way, and in a sense the way a quantum system decoheres is similar to the way a hot object loses, dissipates its heat to its colder surroundings. So quantum thermodynamics is really about trying to understand how a quantum system interacts with its environment, even when there isn't an experimentalist doing a measurement, sticking a Geiger counter at it, just, you know, a quantum system in the air somewhere, a particle bumping into air molecules, how does it lose its quantum behavior? And there are parallels between how a hot object loses its heat. So I think that's the starting point. And quantum thermodynamics is all about how we shouldn't treat quantum systems in isolation in the real world. They're always embedded in some surrounding.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Someone needs to write that or write a song with that title. But put it very crudely, a quantum system that's behaving quantum mechanically will carry on doing this weird stuff all the time it's in isolation. Once it's embedded within a larger environment its quantum properties leak out into its surroundings, what's called decoherence and it starts behaving in a non-”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How can One of the big puzzles in quantum mechanics is how do you get from the quantum world to the classical world or another way of saying it when stuff is behaving quantum mechanically, particles being in two places at once, and yet when you make a measurement, you don't see particles being in two places. You see them in one place or the other. So what has happened when you interacted with the particle? Where has all the quantumness gone? And to put it very crudely, have you written it?”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“certain tasks much more effectively efficiently and quickly than the most powerful computers we have. But it's only in certain areas, certain tasks. There's the difficulty of building quantum computers, then there's finding uses for it. We have lots of uses lined up, particularly modeling quantum effects, complicated processes in chemistry, for example, that require quantum mechanics. A quantum computer is needed to simulate the quantum world. And I think we'll get there in the next decade or two.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, you talk to some people and certainly companies like Google are already would say we've reached a threshold in developing quantum computers, but there are still hurdles to be got over to build a workable quantum computer. It's very difficult because in order for a quantum computer to reach down and make use of the properties of the quantum world, which are very ephemeral, they're very delicate. They disappear very quickly. How do you get the inards of this machine to behave quantum mechanically and yet still give you sensible answers? We are getting there. I would say a prediction would be 10, 20 years from now. We would have workable quantum computers that can solve certain, they're not going to replace our laptops. They're not going to replace our standard computer, but they're going to be able to solve.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, okay. So E8 theory, I think, refers to something called supergravity. I'm not an expert in it, but I think, and I may be completely wrong, keep checking the comments coming up because Jim's talking a load of nonsense. But I think super gravity was an idea that was around in the 80s and it was a candidate idea towards a theory of everything. At the moment, the main candidate is superstring theory. There's another area called loop quantum gravity, a future guest on intelligent squared, Carlo Ravelli, is a proponent of and in fact developed himself. But I think E8 refers to another version. It's a highly mathematical theory, multidimensions that is a way of unifying essentially quantum mechanics and relativity theory. But I may be talking complete rubbish here. The answer is.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think different areas of science, different fields of, they are not a hierarchy. One is not reducible to the other. Certainly, if we want to try and understand what is the secret of life, what is the difference between living matter and inanimate matter? Well, ultimately there's no magic. Ultimately, if you do want to break it down and reduce it down, it comes down to physics and chemistry. There can't be anything else. But that doesn't mean physics and chemistry is enough to explain the more complex behavior certainly of the complexity of human behavior. It's ridiculous. I mean, even in physics, you don't need to understand the standard model to fix your washing machine, right? You don't need to understand that your washing machine is ultimately made of quarks and electrons. That's not going to help you at all. So even within physics, there isn't this hierarchy, let alone once you spread out to other areas of science.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's sadly, and I think there are still physicists who think this way, that everything can be reduced, you know, that sociology, human behavior, well, ultimately that's down to individual humans and how our brains work. There's really ultimately psychology, which is really ultimately biology and biochemistry, which is ultimately chemistry, which is basically physics. So everything can be explained by physics. And of course, that's complete nonsense. When physicists talk about a theory of everything, they don't mean a theory that explains the rules of rugby, all right? They don't explain love.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Being curious about the word. I mean, you know, we're all naturally natural born scientists. Children are curious. They want to ask the why questions. And sadly, for most people, the everyday world and the pressures of everyday life take over. And that curiosity is dampened down, it's deadened. And you stop asking questions because you're too busy thinking about other things. And it's maintaining that curiosity. You know, you and I and scientists, you know, we are those lucky ones who didn't stop being curious. We wanted to carry on that curiosity about the world around us. And it's that keeping that going, keeping the keep asking questions. And I think it's easier now when kids ask teachers or ask their parents, you know, why is this? Why is that? There are resources. You know, we do have the internet and there are places you can go to find out answers to it. You don't need to be just fobbed off and say, oh, I don't know, go away and do something else.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know, feel and touch and experiments that they can do that show how beautiful and fascinating physics is because it is fascinating. You don't have to go jump into a black hole to find something fascinating in physics. You know, it's all around us, just I wrote something recently about how rainbows form, you know, and it's, you know, then the light going, the sunlight going through a raindrop and refracting and total internal reflection coming back again and the angles and so on. And if you are floating in the sky, you wouldn't see just an arc rainbow. You'd see a whole circle. This beauty and fascination all around us that physics can help us understand. We just need to find those examples that can inspire.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If certainly when I meet other physicists, you know, if they've done well in physics and gone on to a career in physics and say, how did it all start? Well, I had a good physics teacher. And likewise, those who've been turned off by science say, well, you know, I didn't have a very good science teacher, so I didn't find it very interesting. So I think it's how do you inspire them? Well, you find the examples that they can...”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think I'm not just trying to flatter you. I think, you know, in a sense, there's the exciting stuff in physics, you know, the quantum mechanics and relativity and black holes and entanglements and all that stuff. And the stuff sort of I talk about in my book, which is all very fascinating, but it is very esoteric and it is very far removed from everyday life. I think the sorts of examples in the books that you've written show that there's a fascination, there's a beauty in what we might otherwise think is mundane. And it's not the sort of physics. The physics that we do at school, I think it's a lot better now. And, you know, physics teachers are having to find novel ways of teaching what might be a boring subject and bring it alive. And that's what a good teacher, never mind physics, any subject.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The region of space where matter interacts with other matter and matter tells other objects how to move. Einstein explains how the gravitational field is spacetime. Without gravity, there would be no spacetime, which is not the way we learn. We think we have space, we have time, and then put stuff in it, right? And that stuff interacts gravitationally. You can't have space and time without gravity. You can't have a gravitational field without giving us space and time. So, I mean, I'm not.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With this one Einstein didn't update the main text. What he did was add appendices at the end and it goes all the way out to appendix number five, which for me is the famous one, the beautiful one, which he actually added just, I think, a year before he died in the mid-50s. And in it, he talks about what space-time really is. That space-time isn't, you know, space isn't just where stuff happens and time goes by. It is what the gravitational field, which is, you know,”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I hadn't appreciated it until recently. It's called the Theories of Special and General Relativity. So Einstein, so he had two theories, special relativity developed in 1905, so that's the one that says nothing travels faster than light, e equals mc squared, all that business. His general theory of relativity is his theory of gravity, which replaces Newton's law of gravity. But together, that's Einstein's two theories of relativity. And within a year or so of him publishing his general relativity papers, he wrote this book, which essentially almost a popular science book. It's non-technical. It came out during the First World War. It came out in German. It was quickly translated into English. And usually with books, particularly in science where a field develops and gets modified and added to, later editions of the book tend to be updated.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But a lot of quantum mechanics, and when physicists look at quantum mechanics, they treat it like engineering. Well, it works, it's fine, let's just use it. For me, as a physicist, that's not enough. And the misconception I have is that physicists, you should really be thinking about what this means. It's not enough just to say, well, it works, get on with it. And in that sense, I follow in Einstein's footsteps, which is quite nice footsteps to follow in really wanting us to understand the meaning of quantum mechanics rather than just using it.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's probably the misconception among my fellow physicists that we don't have to worry about what quantum mechanics means. Again, it's back to my hobby horse that physicists seem to be quite happy to use quantum mechanics. I mean In no way, I should say, in no way, do I disparage engineers here, but there's a distinction between science and engineering, which is that science develops the knowledge and engineering puts that knowledge to use, right? And you can argue that putting it to use is far more important than just developing it and sitting down knowing stuff.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Information because essentially down at the quantum particle level, information is everything, you know, particles are identical and so you don't have to transmit the particle, you just transmit the information of the property of one such that it endows the other one with that property. And it says though you've moved this particle across.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In principle, it's not impossible. You'd have to have all the raw material that would make up a human being in the other place because you're not sending the material, the atoms of your body down there. You're sending the information about how they're constructed. And you can use quantum entanglement to do that. But given that we're made of trillions and trillions of atoms and the information of how they're fitted together is so vast, there's lots of zeros involved, whatever calculation you do, it's as good as impossible to be able to do that. But down at single particle level, yes, we can quantum teleport.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Measure this one, you force it to choose one direction or another because you don't ever see particles spinning both ways at once. By forcing it to choose, the other one is instantaneously also forced to choose the other direction of spin. And it's that idea of quantum entanglement that we can use in teleportation because it's a means of sending information from one point to another. Now it's not going to be completely it's not going to be like Star Trek and the transporter room and beaming down up and down from the enterprise to plan.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, to a quantum teleportation relies on this more fundamental idea of quantum entanglement, that you can have two particles that were together at some point in the past, that we say are quantum entangled. So they are basically treated as a single system as far as the mathematics of quantum mechanics are concerned, such that what you do to one can give you information about the other, that it didn't have before. You're forcing it to make up its mind if the two particles, for example, are spinning, one spinning clockwise and one spinning anticlockwise, well, you know if you measure the clockwise one or the other one must have been anticlockwise all the time. But in quantum mechanics, particles can spin clockwise and anticlockwise at the same time and don't even try to imagine. I'm just using words in the English language to try and convey something complicated called quantum spin. But if this particle spinning clockwise and anticlockwise, so is the other one.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a lot of commonality. Yeah, no, absolutely. There's a lot of the scientific method is important. Having a numerate background, computing skills, being able to solve equations, do probability and statistics, all that stuff that is important, for example, in epidemiology, well, those are skills, mathematical skills that all scientists are trained in. And so in that sense, we can cross from one field to another. And I think that brings in fresh perspectives. And sometimes that can be very useful compared with a group that's siloed and only thinking about the problem from their own point of view.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The stock market. But these equations that we use in physics that are being used to show how air circulates inside a building and therefore how well ventilated the building is to prevent transmission of the virus through what's called aerosols just through breathing in air that an infected person has breathed out. So even that transmission of the virus can be studied using equations taken from physics.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Physicists, they're not at the forefront. The vaccinologists and immunologists and epidemiologists, other people who are doing the main work. But like so many areas of modern science and technology, it's very interdisciplinary. People coming from lots of different areas, certainly, for example, writing computer codes, doing the mathematical modeling involves lots of different areas, involves maths and physics and computer science and engineering. For example, You mentioned at the start I present Life Scientific on Radio 4. Well, my guest last week was studying how the virus is transmitted in the air. And so Kath Noakes, her background is fluid mechanics, right? Fluid mechanics involves equations that we use in physics. They also happen to be equations that are used in finance, for example, predicting.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Certainly in trying to the fight against COVID is multifaceted. There's developing a vaccine, there's studying the structure of the virus, there's the epidemiology, there's doing the modeling statistics of how it spreads.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that was Einstein's view. So I think that argument about reality deterministic or indeterministic. Is there fuzziness inherently there or is that fuzziness just because of our inability to measure precisely? That is still an open question. And that's part of what bugs me so much about quantum mechanics, even though the maths work so beautifully.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Again, the need for an interpretation that is the correct interpretation of quantum mechanics, because the standard view is that it's not the clumsiness of our measuring techniques that don't allow us to find out how fast electron is going and where it is at the same time to infinite accuracy. That electron really doesn't have a definite position and momentum until you measure it. And you measure its position, you find out where it is. If you want to measure its momentum, you find out how fast it's going. But you can't do the same measurements at the same time. But there are other ways of explaining quantum mechanics. There's a version due to an American, British physicist David Bohm, which says that, no, the electron does have a definite position and momentum. It's just that we can't ever know it precisely. We can never pin it down. It's just inherently impossible for us to know that.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so What quantum mechanics ultimately is about is it tells us, it gives us predictions about what we will find, what we will see when we make a measurement, when we do an experiment. You can do all the maths you want. At the end of it comes a number which says, if you look over there, there's a 20% chance you'll find the particle that you've been studying. It's going to be in that region of space. So quantum mechanics makes predictions about the results of measurement. When you do the measurement, There are different ways of looking at what it's telling you. Did that particle before you looked, was it really spread out as a probability inside a box somewhere? And when you looked, you forced it to make up its mind where it was going to be, or the more common sense explanation would be, well, it was somewhere we just didn't know. Well, quantum mechanics says, no, it's more than that. But this comes back to...”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you think there's fuzziness, you just haven't looked deep enough. If you look deeper, you'll find some deeper level of reality where everything is precise and makes sense. And right to the end of his life, Einstein wouldn't accept those aspects of quantum mechanics. He wasn't denying that quantum mechanics was a powerful and correct theory, but he felt to some extent it wasn't complete.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I don't know. Is there true randomness in physics we call indeterminacy down at the tiniest levels of building blocks of reality? The uncertainty principle developed by Werner Heisenberg suggests that once you get down to the quantum level, things become fuzzy. You can't control them. You cannot know where a particle is at a precise moment in time and how fast it's moving, for example. So there's an inherent uncertainty that is not to do with the clumsiness of our experiments to try and pin that particle down. It really is indeterminate. There really is this built-in fuzziness. Einstein didn't like that. Einstein didn't like the idea that there was randomness built in at the core of quantum mechanics. And he was arguing that God doesn't play dice, that there isn't this random.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think what is dark matter made of is something that I'm probably happy to wait for. I suspect it's going to be what we touched on earlier. What is the correct interpretation of quantum mechanics? And of course that relies on the fact that one believes there is a correct interpretation, that all others are wrong. But I think either there are parallel universes or there aren't. Either there's a quantum field pervading the universe or there isn't. Either what we call the wave function collapses spontaneously or it doesn't. So I think there is a way of explaining the weirdness of quantum mechanics. I'd like to know how the real world does it.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. Oh, okay. Much more interesting if we are wrong, because that means new things to discover, more Nobel Prizes all round”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's no embarrassment to say that you were wrong because that's how we learn. That's how we develop our understanding by changing our view in the light of new evidence.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“scientific advice particularly where it comes to sort of public health policies for example surrounding the pandemic are starting to acknowledge that you know when you have an incomplete picture as almost always the case in science you know you have to express uncertainty and doubt you cannot be certain and you have to be prepared to change your mind in the light of new evidence and you have to admit that you're wrong i think so those ideas which i i touch on in that last chapter of the book very much as you say prophetically what carl sagan wrote about in demon haunted world one of my favorite all-time books but today with social media with all the misinformation with the deluge of data that we are all bombarded with and conspiracy theories and so on more than ever I think we need probably to get across to wider society all these aspects of the scientific method that are so important”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it may be one of the very few silver linings that come out of the horrible pandemic that we're still living in today, in that society really has understood the importance of scientific data, of evidence, of uncertainty in a way that probably many people weren't aware of before. We have a long way to go. And if you look on social media, when everything's black and white and everyone shouts at everyone else and the reasonable person in the middle who's probably not the person who shouts loudly on Twitter saying, hang on a minute, you've got a point and you've got a point. Let's try and find the nuance, which is the way, you know, scientists behave. I think we shall have a long way to go. But these lessons, I think we are starting to get across. Even politicians who would never in the past be prepared to admit they've made a mistake because they're relying on scientists.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, these are not just pie in the sky ideas. Absolutely. Already there's a lot of research going on to develop quantum computers. We're not there yet. We don't have a quantum fully working quantum computer that can solve problems much more quickly than the most powerful supercomputer of the normal type that we use today. They're starting to be developed. I mean, I think they're moving more quickly than many people thought. They certainly think quantum teleportation, quantum entanglement is being used in encrypting, in communication ideas. So, yeah, these are not... Getting to the point that we know the steps that we need to take to bring them to fruition. So it's not going to be, they're not going to be that far off.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Computers, quantum cryptography, quantum teleportation, quantum sensors. So these are devices that reach down, make use of these more counterintuitive ideas and quantumic acts, and make use of them. And we're going to see in the coming decades A huge array of these new technologies that would have seemed like magic a few decades ago.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, Ideas from quantum mechanics. So we wouldn't have understood semiconductors and therefore wouldn't have developed silicon chips were it not for the rules of quantum mechanics and the way electrons move and things called quantum tunneling, for example. And so most of modern electronics is based on standard quantum mechanics, but there are the more counterintuitive ideas and quantum mechanics, quantum entanglement, the idea that two separated particles are instantaneously somehow connected. ideas are now being put into practice in a new generation of technologies, what we call quantum technologies now, and certainly as a lot of research around the world developing these quantum technologies, do rely on much more exotic, much more weird and wacky ideas that are still part of quantum mechanics, but we're now developing them into something useful like quantum mechanics.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But then there are other physicists who work in something like cosmology or string theory. They are of the type that you just described. They come up with theories which we don't yet know how to test. So they're fanciful and many people say, well, that's just pretty maths. That doesn't describe the real world. Mathematicians, that's what mathematicians do. They say, we don't care about the real universe. Look at my lovely equations. It might or might not describe the real world. I don't care. I'm a mathematician. But I don't think we should give up on some of these ideas. I think what we should do is try harder to find ways of testing and falsifying these ideas. We don't not do them. We just have to be more imaginative about how to test them.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I sort of straddle both sides of this argument. Certainly, my research background is from nuclear physics. So as a theoretical nucleophysicist, what I'm trying to do is develop mathematical models that describe the behavior of atomic nuclei. Now, luckily for theoretical nuclear physicists, we have experimental nuclear physicists who can carry out the experiments to study those nuclei in accelerators. What happens if you collide these two nuclei together? How do they break up? How do they scatter? How do they get excited and give off alpha beta gamma radiation? And we can compare our theories with experiments. And if they're falsifiable, we say, oh, that theory's wrong. Ditch it because this is what reality tells me.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are either fooling themselves or they're not I don't know certainly my PhD advisors were puzzled why it would concern me so much. Why are you worried about the nature of an electron is an electron is an electron? Don't worry about whether it's a particle or a wave. It's an electron. Look, there's the equation that describes it.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Involve signaling back in time. There's all sorts of weird each one of them does my head in, right? But one of them has to be a racket, but one of them has to be right. Everyone's headed. And I think physicists who say, no, I'm not bothered by it.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Describe a way of explaining the mathematics which allows us not to worry about it too much. But I think most physicists, if they think about it, they'll say, well, you know, even though I use the equations of quantum mechanics and they work and they're very powerful, I don't let that slow me down, when I'm away from the calculations, I do worry about it. And, you know, I've had that concern ever since my student days. What does it all mean? I don't have the answer to it. I know there's half a dozen different ways of explaining, you know, there's things with the many worlds interpretation. There are parallel universes in which all options play out. That's one way of explaining it. There are other explanations, some quantum field that pervades all of space connecting everything instantaneously, their interpretation.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Cross about that. It does. I mean, it shouldn't do because, you know, I was trained, there was taught quantum mechanics, I was trained in the traditional way, which is what's called the Copenhagen view. All the textbooks are quantum mechanics.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That I've said this, but I do genuinely mean it. I don't think physicists can tackle these deep questions now at the forefront of our field alone. We need the help of philosophers as well.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Technology quantum mechanics has allowed us to develop. And I think we're getting to the point now where we do feel that quantum mechanics, we need to find the interpretation of quantum mechanics. And even that in itself is a philosophical issue because we can't even agree on whether that is necessary. My stance about science is on what's called a science realist. So I believe there's a real world out there and we have to describe it. And our theories of physics are about getting as close as possible to some ultimate truth about the nature of reality. We may never reach it, but it's there and we need to find it. And I think in order to do that, it's tied in with trying to bring quantum mechanics relativity and thermodynamics together, a theory of everything. We need to have the right interpretation of the mathematics. And for that, we need, I think, the help of philosophers. So, you know, my philosophy friends will be very pleased.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Physicists like to try and enthuse people about. Quantum mechanics really gives us modern day technology. So it's important, it's precise, it's powerful, but we still don't know what it actually means. What is actually going on? In science, normally we have Certainly in theoretical physics, we have the mathematical description equations, we then have to have the narrative, the story, the translation of what those symbols, those equations mean in the real world. And all theories have to have that, the interpretation of that theory. Quantum mechanics is the only theory, I think, in all of science that seems to have somehow got away with it. It doesn't need a unique interpretation. And to the extent that physicists will say, oh, don't worry, don't worry about explaining what it all means. Just use it. Just use the equations. They work. Look, look at all the wonderful shard.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's so easy. I enjoy doing it, yeah, exactly. Absolutely. But quantum mechanics, you know, if we look at, I mean, here we are talking over the internet using laptops and computers, we use smartphones. Most of the technology, the electronics that we use today, is thanks to quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics isn't.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As part of their education. And they did understand the nature of reality at a deeper level and could compose the right questions to ask. And to some extent, we've forgotten that now. And I think we're getting to the point where we do need sort of philosophical ideas about what is the nature of reality. Quantum mechanics is a good example. It's the most successful theory, I would argue in all of science. We have friends, mutual friends like Adam Rutherford that you know very well, who gets very annoyed when I say, you know, quantum mechanics is the most important theory in science. It's not, it's Darwinian theory of natural selection. So physicists and biologists have this.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's a lot of physicists are coming round to the idea, certainly at the sort of the frontiers, fundamental physics, that philosophy is important. There have been physicists, I mean even Stephen Hawking, and he was saying this just to wind people up because that's what Stephen Hawking did. He just enjoyed just getting people's backs up. But he, in other words, say things like, oh, philosophy is dead. We don't need philosophers, physicists are answering all the important questions. My view is that, yes, I think it needs physics, it needs science to answer the questions, but philosophy is about asking those questions. Physicists might want to look for the answers. Philosophers compose the questions we need to ask. And if you look back at the pioneers of modern physics, early 20th century, Einstein and Niels Bohr and Heisenberg and Schr ⁇ dinger, these guys did study philosophy of science.”
2021-01-29 · Intelligence Squared · Jim Al-Khalili on The World According to Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source