AaS! 112: Why can't I quantum tunnel myself?
Ask a Spaceman!
Paul M. Sutter
4.8 • 853 Ratings
🗓️ 17 September 2019
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Where does the quantum world begin? Why do we have a hard time fundamentally understanding quantum systems? What connects quantum and classical physics? I discuss these questions and more in today’s Ask a Spaceman!
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Music by Jason Grady and Nick Bain. Thanks to Cathy Rinella for editing.
Hosted by Paul M. Sutter, astrophysicist at The Ohio State University, and the one and only Agent to the Stars (http://www.pmsutter.com).
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Let's say you want to break out of prison, and I'm not going to get into how you |
| 0:12.1 | ended up in prison in the first place. |
| 0:14.8 | That is the subject of an entirely different podcast, certainly not Ask a Space man. |
| 0:19.5 | Right now we are focusing on getting you out. |
| 0:23.3 | What are your options? You don't want to be in prison. One, you could go on parole, be released for good behavior. |
| 0:30.8 | Fair. Two, you could dig a hole. Good luck. Three, you could steal a key from the guard because I'm sure that's still a thing in the |
| 0:40.6 | 21st century. |
| 0:42.1 | Maybe I could bake you a cake and I could put a saw inside of a cake and I've only ever |
| 0:47.1 | seen this in movies and even in the movies it doesn't work. |
| 0:49.4 | Does this actually work in real life? |
| 0:50.9 | I don't know. |
| 0:51.3 | Okay, it seems your options are limited. |
| 0:55.1 | What about quantum mechanics? See, we've all heard about quantum mechanics. We've heard about this funny thing |
| 1:03.0 | called quantum tunneling. Maybe you could just, you know, quantum mechanically tunnel outside of the prison. |
| 1:16.0 | Why does this sound ridiculous? |
| 1:18.7 | Why does it sound ridiculous for you to wait inside of a prison and then one day spontaneously be outside the prison? |
| 1:27.0 | You know, just like an electron does, quantum tunneling wherever it pleases. |
| 1:33.8 | This sounds ridiculous because you and me, as far as I'm aware, are not quantum things. |
| 1:41.5 | We're classical things. |
| 1:42.8 | We're bound by the rules of classical physics. |
| 1:46.4 | And in classical physics, quantum tunneling doesn't exist. It's impossible. It's a joke. |
| 1:53.6 | If you don't have enough energy to cross the barrier, you simply never cross the barrier. Period. |
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