Quantum Leaps, Cancer Drugs, Cat Cameras. June 7, 2019, Part 2
Science Friday
Science Friday and WNYC Studios
4.4 • 6.3K Ratings
🗓️ 7 June 2019
⏱️ 47 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. |
| 0:02.9 | Later in the hour, we'll be talking about new advances in cancer drugs and what your cats do when you're not there. |
| 0:10.6 | But first, the spooky physics of the quantum world has long been marked by two key ideas. |
| 0:18.2 | There's the idea of superpositioning, meaning that a quantum particle can exist in multiple |
| 0:23.6 | states simultaneously, and the idea of randomness, meaning that it's impossible to predict where certain |
| 0:31.3 | quantum transitions will take place. But now researchers say that they may be able to make the |
| 0:37.2 | quantum behavior slightly less |
| 0:39.4 | mysterious. By using a sensitive form of continuous monitoring, they have been able to identify |
| 0:45.4 | signs that a quantum leap is imminent in an artificial atom. The timing of the leap is still |
| 0:51.1 | completely random. The researchers cannot predict when it will happen, but they do get a warning flag of an upcoming jump a few microseconds before it occurs. |
| 1:02.2 | Let me introduce my guests who will explain it. |
| 1:04.8 | Slackomenev is a research scientist at IBM quantum computing in Yorktown Heights, New York. |
| 1:10.9 | He did his work as part of his postdoctoral dissertation at Yale, published this week in the journal Nature. |
| 1:17.3 | Welcome to Science Friday, Dr. Minniff. |
| 1:20.2 | Ira, it's a pleasure to be on Science Friday. |
| 1:22.4 | It's our pleasure to have you. |
| 1:23.7 | Thank you. |
| 1:24.8 | Set this scene for us. |
| 1:26.1 | What is a quantum leap? That's a great question. |
| 1:31.8 | Well, that goes back to the very founding of quantum physics and Boar's ideas that in quantum physics, |
| 1:39.0 | unlike in classical physics, the energy of an atom can only take discrete levels. For instance, it can only |
| 1:48.0 | be measured to ever be zero, one, two, or three. And it can never be, so to speak, in the |
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