1 00:00:04,800 --> 00:00:08,920 Beneath the complexities of everyday life, 2 00:00:08,920 --> 00:00:12,920 the rules of our universe seem reassuringly simple. 3 00:00:14,840 --> 00:00:18,120 This solid bridge supports my weight. 4 00:00:18,120 --> 00:00:21,880 The water flowing underneath always goes downhill 5 00:00:21,880 --> 00:00:23,880 and when I throw this stone... 6 00:00:25,760 --> 00:00:29,400 ..it always flies through the air following a predictable path. 7 00:00:31,000 --> 00:00:32,640 But as scientists peered deep 8 00:00:32,640 --> 00:00:35,000 into the tiny building blocks of matter... 9 00:00:37,760 --> 00:00:39,600 ..all such certainty vanished. 10 00:00:42,720 --> 00:00:47,320 They found the weird world of quantum mechanics. 11 00:00:47,320 --> 00:00:50,800 Deep down inside everything we see around us, 12 00:00:50,800 --> 00:00:55,000 we found a universe completely unlike our own. 13 00:00:55,000 --> 00:00:57,560 To paraphrase one of the founders of quantum mechanics, 14 00:00:57,560 --> 00:01:01,520 everything we call real is made up of things 15 00:01:01,520 --> 00:01:04,920 that cannot be themselves regarded as real. 16 00:01:08,600 --> 00:01:12,320 Around 100 years ago, some of the world's greatest scientists 17 00:01:12,320 --> 00:01:16,880 began a journey down the rabbit hole into the strange and the bizarre. 18 00:01:19,080 --> 00:01:21,840 They found that in the realm of the very small, 19 00:01:21,840 --> 00:01:24,320 things could be in two places at once... 20 00:01:27,120 --> 00:01:29,720 ..that their fates are dictated by chance... 21 00:01:31,960 --> 00:01:36,120 ..and that reality itself defies all common sense. 22 00:01:38,680 --> 00:01:41,120 And at stake, that everything we thought 23 00:01:41,120 --> 00:01:45,560 we knew about the world might turn out to be completely wrong. 24 00:01:48,920 --> 00:01:53,120 The story of our descent into scientific madness 25 00:01:53,120 --> 00:01:55,600 begins with the most unlikely object. 26 00:01:58,640 --> 00:02:01,400 Berlin, 1890. 27 00:02:03,640 --> 00:02:08,280 Germany is a new country, recently unified and hungry to industrialise. 28 00:02:10,120 --> 00:02:12,400 In this newly-unified Germany, 29 00:02:12,400 --> 00:02:14,920 a number of new engineering companies were founded. 30 00:02:14,920 --> 00:02:18,200 They'd spent millions buying the European patent 31 00:02:18,200 --> 00:02:20,560 for Edison's new invention, the light bulb. 32 00:02:24,160 --> 00:02:27,200 The light bulb was the epitome of modern technology, 33 00:02:27,200 --> 00:02:30,200 a great optimistic symbol of progress. 34 00:02:33,720 --> 00:02:37,160 Engineering companies quickly realised there were fortunes 35 00:02:37,160 --> 00:02:40,600 to be made building streetlights for the new German Empire. 36 00:02:43,880 --> 00:02:47,200 But what they didn't realise was that they would also unleash 37 00:02:47,200 --> 00:02:49,120 a scientific revolution. 38 00:02:50,360 --> 00:02:51,600 Strangely enough, 39 00:02:51,600 --> 00:02:54,560 this humble object is responsible for the birth 40 00:02:54,560 --> 00:02:57,680 of the most important theory in the whole of science - 41 00:02:57,680 --> 00:03:01,720 quantum mechanics, a theory that I've spent my life studying. 42 00:03:03,960 --> 00:03:06,560 And that's because, back in 1900, 43 00:03:06,560 --> 00:03:09,680 the light bulb presented a rather strange problem. 44 00:03:11,200 --> 00:03:14,520 Engineers knew that if you heated the filament with electricity, 45 00:03:14,520 --> 00:03:15,680 it glowed. 46 00:03:17,840 --> 00:03:21,880 The physics that underpinned this, though, was completely unknown. 47 00:03:24,040 --> 00:03:26,400 But something as basic as the relationship 48 00:03:26,400 --> 00:03:28,680 between the temperature of the filament 49 00:03:28,680 --> 00:03:32,120 and the colour of light it produces was still a complete mystery. 50 00:03:34,240 --> 00:03:36,640 A mystery they were obviously keen to solve. 51 00:03:37,720 --> 00:03:40,080 And, with the help of the new German state, 52 00:03:40,080 --> 00:03:43,120 they saw how to steal a march on their competitors. 53 00:03:51,400 --> 00:03:55,600 In 1887, the German government invested millions 54 00:03:55,600 --> 00:03:59,040 in a new technical research institute here in Berlin, 55 00:03:59,040 --> 00:04:03,240 The Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt, or PTR. 56 00:04:03,240 --> 00:04:06,080 Then, in 1900, they enlisted a bright 57 00:04:06,080 --> 00:04:09,360 if somewhat straight-laced scientist to help work here. 58 00:04:09,360 --> 00:04:11,440 His name was Max Planck. 59 00:04:17,680 --> 00:04:20,880 Planck took on a deceptively simple problem - 60 00:04:20,880 --> 00:04:25,160 why the colour of the light changes as the filament gets hotter. 61 00:04:28,720 --> 00:04:31,160 To get a sense of the puzzle facing Planck, 62 00:04:31,160 --> 00:04:34,520 I'm going to ride this bicycle with an old-fashioned lamp 63 00:04:34,520 --> 00:04:36,680 powered by an old-fashioned dynamo. 64 00:04:48,080 --> 00:04:51,240 Obviously the faster I go, the brighter the light. 65 00:04:51,240 --> 00:04:54,720 The more I pedal, the more electricity the dynamo produces, 66 00:04:54,720 --> 00:04:57,880 the hotter the filament in the lamp and the brighter the light. 67 00:04:59,440 --> 00:05:03,400 But the light the bulb makes isn't just getting brighter, 68 00:05:03,400 --> 00:05:05,200 it's changing colour, too. 69 00:05:07,880 --> 00:05:12,680 As I speed up, the colour shifts from red to orange to yellow. 70 00:05:13,800 --> 00:05:15,840 Right, now I'm going to really belt it. 71 00:05:19,440 --> 00:05:22,240 Now the bulb's filament is getting even hotter, 72 00:05:22,240 --> 00:05:24,120 but although it certainly gets brighter... 73 00:05:26,000 --> 00:05:29,760 ..the colour seems to stay the same - yellow-white. 74 00:05:33,880 --> 00:05:36,400 Why doesn't the light get any bluer? 75 00:05:41,240 --> 00:05:44,640 To investigate, Planck and his colleagues built this, 76 00:05:44,640 --> 00:05:46,960 a black-body radiator. 77 00:05:46,960 --> 00:05:50,920 It's a special tube they could heat to a very precise temperature 78 00:05:50,920 --> 00:05:53,600 and a way to measure the colour or frequency 79 00:05:53,600 --> 00:05:55,760 of the light it produced. 80 00:06:00,800 --> 00:06:05,720 Nowadays, over 100 years later, the PTR still do exactly 81 00:06:05,720 --> 00:06:09,560 this kind of measurement, just much more accurately. 82 00:06:11,160 --> 00:06:15,280 The temperature inside here is 841 degrees centigrade. 83 00:06:17,920 --> 00:06:20,920 I can feel the heat coming off and it's glowing 84 00:06:20,920 --> 00:06:23,200 with a lovely orangey-red colour. 85 00:06:27,680 --> 00:06:31,520 It's about the same colour as my bike light when I'm cycling slowly. 86 00:06:34,280 --> 00:06:37,760 But I want to see something hotter still. 87 00:06:37,760 --> 00:06:41,520 The temperature inside here is about 2,000 degrees centigrade... 88 00:06:46,640 --> 00:06:50,480 ..and it's glowing with a much brighter, whiter-coloured light. 89 00:06:50,480 --> 00:06:53,080 To produce light of this intensity and colour 90 00:06:53,080 --> 00:06:56,200 requires a power of about 40 kilowatts. 91 00:06:56,200 --> 00:07:01,080 Now, that's equivalent to about 400 mes on a bike cycling very fast, 92 00:07:01,080 --> 00:07:04,360 or the combined output of the entire Tour de France. 93 00:07:06,640 --> 00:07:10,080 Although the light is whiter, it's red-white - 94 00:07:10,080 --> 00:07:12,600 there's very little blue. 95 00:07:12,600 --> 00:07:15,760 Why is blue so much harder to make than red? 96 00:07:17,800 --> 00:07:20,920 And further up the spectrum, beyond blue, 97 00:07:20,920 --> 00:07:24,920 the so-called ultraviolet, is hardly produced at all - 98 00:07:24,920 --> 00:07:27,920 even when we look at things as hot as the sun. 99 00:07:32,280 --> 00:07:36,840 Even the sun, at a temperature 5,500 degrees centigrade, 100 00:07:36,840 --> 00:07:39,520 produces mostly white visible light 101 00:07:39,520 --> 00:07:42,280 and makes remarkably little ultraviolet light, 102 00:07:42,280 --> 00:07:44,760 given how hot it is. Why is this? 103 00:07:44,760 --> 00:07:47,840 Why is ultraviolet light so hard to make? 104 00:07:51,080 --> 00:07:55,520 This remarkable failure of common sense so perplexed scientists 105 00:07:55,520 --> 00:07:59,600 of the late 19th century that they gave it a very dramatic name. 106 00:07:59,600 --> 00:08:02,440 They called it the ultraviolet catastrophe. 107 00:08:04,840 --> 00:08:08,400 Planck took a crucial first step to solving this. 108 00:08:08,400 --> 00:08:10,800 He found the precise mathematical link 109 00:08:10,800 --> 00:08:15,200 between the colour of light, its frequency and its energy. 110 00:08:15,200 --> 00:08:17,400 But he didn't understand the connection. 111 00:08:19,520 --> 00:08:22,000 However, it was another weird anomaly 112 00:08:22,000 --> 00:08:24,720 that would really put the cat amongst the pigeons. 113 00:08:26,440 --> 00:08:29,680 In the late 19th century, scientists were studying 114 00:08:29,680 --> 00:08:33,640 the then newly-discovered radio waves and how they were transmitted. 115 00:08:33,640 --> 00:08:36,520 And to do that, they were building experimental rigs 116 00:08:36,520 --> 00:08:40,080 very similar to this one. Basically, by spinning this disc, 117 00:08:40,080 --> 00:08:43,600 they could generate huge voltages that caused sparks 118 00:08:43,600 --> 00:08:47,040 to jump across the gap between the two metal spheres. 119 00:08:50,280 --> 00:08:51,520 But, in doing so, 120 00:08:51,520 --> 00:08:56,120 they discovered something very unexpected to do with light. 121 00:08:56,120 --> 00:09:00,080 They found that, by shining a powerful light source 122 00:09:00,080 --> 00:09:04,960 on the spheres, they could make the sparks jump across more easily. 123 00:09:04,960 --> 00:09:08,680 This suggested a mysterious and unexplained connection 124 00:09:08,680 --> 00:09:10,960 between light and electricity. 125 00:09:17,200 --> 00:09:21,080 To understand what was happening, scientists used this. 126 00:09:21,080 --> 00:09:23,640 It's called a gold leaf electroscope. 127 00:09:23,640 --> 00:09:28,480 It's basically a more sensitive version of the spark gap apparatus. 128 00:09:28,480 --> 00:09:30,920 Now, first of all, I have to charge it up. 129 00:09:35,080 --> 00:09:37,640 What I'm doing is adding an excess of electrons 130 00:09:37,640 --> 00:09:40,680 that are pushing the two gold leaves apart. 131 00:09:40,680 --> 00:09:43,320 Now, first I take red light 132 00:09:43,320 --> 00:09:46,320 and shine it on the metal surface 133 00:09:46,320 --> 00:09:47,760 and nothing happens. 134 00:09:47,760 --> 00:09:50,200 Even if I increased the brightness of the light, 135 00:09:50,200 --> 00:09:52,200 still the gold leaves aren't affected. 136 00:09:53,800 --> 00:09:57,840 Now I'll try this special blue light, rich in ultraviolet. 137 00:10:00,280 --> 00:10:02,600 Immediately, the gold leaves collapse. 138 00:10:12,520 --> 00:10:17,400 Light can clearly remove static electric charge from the leaves. 139 00:10:17,400 --> 00:10:20,680 It can somehow knock out the electrons I added to them. 140 00:10:22,520 --> 00:10:27,000 But why is ultraviolet light so much better at doing this than red light? 141 00:10:30,080 --> 00:10:34,840 This new puzzle became known as the photoelectric effect. 142 00:10:36,520 --> 00:10:40,560 The ultraviolet catastrophe and the photoelectric effect 143 00:10:40,560 --> 00:10:43,400 were big problems for physicists, 144 00:10:43,400 --> 00:10:47,720 because neither could be understood using the best science of the time. 145 00:10:49,040 --> 00:10:52,400 The science that said, quite unequivocally, 146 00:10:52,400 --> 00:10:54,600 that light was a wave. 147 00:10:58,560 --> 00:10:59,920 All around us, 148 00:10:59,920 --> 00:11:04,360 we see light behaving in a perfectly common-sense wavy way. 149 00:11:04,360 --> 00:11:08,120 Look at the shadow of my hand. It's fuzzy round the edges. 150 00:11:09,800 --> 00:11:13,800 We understand this as the light hitting the side of my hand 151 00:11:13,800 --> 00:11:16,760 and bending and smearing out slightly, 152 00:11:16,760 --> 00:11:19,680 just like water waves around an obstruction. 153 00:11:19,680 --> 00:11:22,880 Perfectly common-sense, wave-like behaviour. 154 00:11:26,120 --> 00:11:29,720 And here's something else, something rather beautiful. 155 00:11:29,720 --> 00:11:31,760 Look at these soap bubbles. 156 00:11:31,760 --> 00:11:33,240 Shine a light on them, 157 00:11:33,240 --> 00:11:37,080 and gorgeous coloured patterns emerge from nowhere. 158 00:11:37,080 --> 00:11:42,120 And this was easily explained if you accept that light was a wave, 159 00:11:42,120 --> 00:11:46,520 reflecting off the outer and inner layers of the thin soap film 160 00:11:46,520 --> 00:11:49,040 and breaking up into the colours of the rainbow. 161 00:11:50,280 --> 00:11:53,840 Rather like ripples on the surface of water, 162 00:11:53,840 --> 00:11:58,840 light was simply ripples of energy spreading through space 163 00:11:58,840 --> 00:12:02,720 and this was as firmly accepted as the fact that the earth was round. 164 00:12:04,400 --> 00:12:08,200 But although this wave theory works perfectly well for shadows 165 00:12:08,200 --> 00:12:11,960 and bubbles, when it came to the ultraviolet catastrophe 166 00:12:11,960 --> 00:12:13,440 and photoelectric effect... 167 00:12:15,400 --> 00:12:17,800 ..the wheels started coming off. 168 00:12:17,800 --> 00:12:21,800 The problem was this - how could light do this? 169 00:12:21,800 --> 00:12:25,840 To truly grasp how absurd this phenomenon was, 170 00:12:25,840 --> 00:12:29,680 it might be useful to consider how waves in water behave. 171 00:12:31,120 --> 00:12:32,320 Hey! 172 00:12:37,120 --> 00:12:41,480 This is the wave tank at the RNLI's headquarters in Dorset. 173 00:12:41,480 --> 00:12:45,560 It's used to train lifeboat teams to deal with a range of different 174 00:12:45,560 --> 00:12:51,920 kinds of water waves. First, small waves, just 30 centimetres high. 175 00:12:51,920 --> 00:12:54,280 These waves don't have much energy, 176 00:12:54,280 --> 00:12:58,120 hardly enough energy to knock this top can off the other. 177 00:13:01,400 --> 00:13:05,280 But when the waves grow to over a metre and a half, 178 00:13:05,280 --> 00:13:08,400 it's a very different proposition. 179 00:13:08,400 --> 00:13:11,040 And they're really throwing me about. 180 00:13:11,040 --> 00:13:14,680 There's no way I can keep this can balanced on the top. 181 00:13:23,400 --> 00:13:26,720 It's clear what water waves are telling us - 182 00:13:26,720 --> 00:13:29,400 bigger, more intense waves have more power. 183 00:13:32,080 --> 00:13:34,560 They easily knocked me and the cans around. 184 00:13:40,000 --> 00:13:41,680 So if light was a wave, 185 00:13:41,680 --> 00:13:46,560 more intensity should knock out more electrons. 186 00:13:46,560 --> 00:13:49,120 But that's not what happened. 187 00:13:49,120 --> 00:13:52,160 Remember, no matter how intense the red light was, 188 00:13:52,160 --> 00:13:55,640 it still didn't budge electrons from the metal. 189 00:13:55,640 --> 00:14:00,880 But, weirdly, weak ultraviolet worked within seconds. 190 00:14:00,880 --> 00:14:04,360 So thinking of light as a wave just wasn't adding up. 191 00:14:08,640 --> 00:14:12,120 To resolve this, someone needed to think the unthinkable 192 00:14:12,120 --> 00:14:16,320 and, in 1905, someone did. You may well have heard of them. 193 00:14:16,320 --> 00:14:18,200 His name was Albert Einstein. 194 00:14:28,640 --> 00:14:32,480 This is the Archenhold-Sternwarte Observatory in Berlin. 195 00:14:34,400 --> 00:14:40,120 Perched on top is a strange, huge iron and steel construction, 196 00:14:40,120 --> 00:14:43,800 but it's not a gun, it's actually a telescope. 197 00:14:47,760 --> 00:14:52,280 Built in 1896, the telescope was one of the largest of its kind 198 00:14:52,280 --> 00:14:56,360 in the world and made the observatory the go-to place 199 00:14:56,360 --> 00:15:00,000 to engage and astound the public in new science. 200 00:15:01,400 --> 00:15:04,560 Albert Einstein gave a very famous public lecture here 201 00:15:04,560 --> 00:15:08,960 on his theory of relativity which is of course what he's most famous for. 202 00:15:08,960 --> 00:15:12,200 But it's not the work that won him the Nobel Prize. 203 00:15:18,920 --> 00:15:23,520 In 1905, he'd also come up with a new theory to explain 204 00:15:23,520 --> 00:15:29,320 the photoelectric effect and what he suggested was revolutionary 205 00:15:29,320 --> 00:15:31,120 and even heretical. 206 00:15:35,440 --> 00:15:39,840 He argued that we have to forget all about the idea that light is a wave 207 00:15:39,840 --> 00:15:45,360 and think of it instead as a stream of tiny, bullet-like particles. 208 00:15:45,360 --> 00:15:49,720 The term he used to describe a particle of light was a quantum. 209 00:15:52,280 --> 00:15:56,360 To Einstein, a quantum was a tiny lump of energy 210 00:15:56,360 --> 00:15:59,800 and although in 1905 the word wasn't new, 211 00:15:59,800 --> 00:16:03,480 the idea that light could be a quantum seemed crazy. 212 00:16:06,920 --> 00:16:09,800 And yet following Einstein's heretical line of thought 213 00:16:09,800 --> 00:16:11,920 to its logical conclusion 214 00:16:11,920 --> 00:16:15,600 solved all the problems with light at a single stroke. 215 00:16:22,880 --> 00:16:26,480 I'll try to explain how this helps using a rough analogy. 216 00:16:26,480 --> 00:16:29,600 Of course, like all analogies, it's far from perfect 217 00:16:29,600 --> 00:16:32,720 but hopefully it'll give you a sense of the physics 218 00:16:32,720 --> 00:16:37,720 to help you understand why thinking of light as a stream of particles 219 00:16:37,720 --> 00:16:40,320 solves the mystery of the photoelectric effect. 220 00:16:44,640 --> 00:16:49,640 In this analogy, these red balls represent Einstein's light quanta. 221 00:16:50,720 --> 00:16:54,520 'And those cans over there are the electricity held in the metal.' 222 00:16:54,520 --> 00:16:56,400 Now, in the original experiment, 223 00:16:56,400 --> 00:16:59,560 they made electricity flow from the surface of the metal 224 00:16:59,560 --> 00:17:03,040 by shining light on it. In my analogy, I'm going to try 225 00:17:03,040 --> 00:17:06,440 and knock those tin cans over using these red balls. 226 00:17:18,120 --> 00:17:20,720 'Absolutely no effect. 227 00:17:23,400 --> 00:17:25,320 'That's just like red light.' 228 00:17:28,280 --> 00:17:30,120 According to Einstein, 229 00:17:30,120 --> 00:17:34,000 each particle of red light carries very little energy 230 00:17:34,000 --> 00:17:37,280 because red light has a low frequency. 231 00:17:37,280 --> 00:17:42,000 'So even a very bright red light with many red light particles 232 00:17:42,000 --> 00:17:45,760 'can't dislodge any electrons from the metal plates, 233 00:17:45,760 --> 00:17:48,440 'just like the red balls.' 234 00:17:48,440 --> 00:17:52,960 Now I'm going to use heavier balls like these blue golf balls 235 00:17:52,960 --> 00:17:56,000 and I'm going to try and knock off the tin cans with these. 236 00:18:00,480 --> 00:18:03,760 'They're like the ultraviolet light in the experiment. 237 00:18:06,440 --> 00:18:12,480 'Now, each individual light particle carries more energy 238 00:18:12,480 --> 00:18:16,160 'because ultraviolet light is higher frequency.' 239 00:18:22,720 --> 00:18:26,000 Just a few of them, like a dim ultraviolet light, 240 00:18:26,000 --> 00:18:29,360 are enough to knock the electrons out of the metal plate 241 00:18:29,360 --> 00:18:31,320 and collapse the gold leaf. 242 00:18:33,720 --> 00:18:38,760 So Einstein's idea that light is made up of tiny particles or quanta 243 00:18:38,760 --> 00:18:42,200 is a wonderful explanation of the photoelectric effect. 244 00:18:42,200 --> 00:18:44,360 I remember when I first learnt about this, 245 00:18:44,360 --> 00:18:47,680 being blown away by its sheer elegance and simplicity. 246 00:18:50,560 --> 00:18:54,720 But what's more, Einstein's nifty idea also helped solve 247 00:18:54,720 --> 00:18:57,600 Planck's mystery of the light bulb. 248 00:18:57,600 --> 00:19:00,080 There was more red than ultraviolet 249 00:19:00,080 --> 00:19:04,640 because ultraviolet quanta took so much more energy to make, 250 00:19:04,640 --> 00:19:07,680 about 100 times more energy. 251 00:19:07,680 --> 00:19:09,600 No wonder there are so few of them. 252 00:19:12,240 --> 00:19:15,120 That moment at the beginning of the 20th century 253 00:19:15,120 --> 00:19:17,760 signalled a genuine revolution 254 00:19:17,760 --> 00:19:21,960 because it demonstrated that the kind of physical science 255 00:19:21,960 --> 00:19:24,880 that people were doing right back to Newton and Laplace, 256 00:19:24,880 --> 00:19:28,320 and people like that, that you needed a completely new approach. 257 00:19:30,560 --> 00:19:33,160 Physics has never recovered from that moment 258 00:19:33,160 --> 00:19:35,520 in the sense that it's built on that moment, 259 00:19:35,520 --> 00:19:37,840 that's where modern physics really began. 260 00:19:40,400 --> 00:19:44,880 But Einstein's theory also left physicists with a dizzying paradox 261 00:19:44,880 --> 00:19:48,040 defying all common sense. 262 00:19:48,040 --> 00:19:52,280 Light was definitely a wave which explained shadows and bubbles. 263 00:19:54,360 --> 00:19:57,400 And now it was definitely a particle too - 264 00:19:57,400 --> 00:20:00,520 Einstein's quanta explaining the photoelectric effect 265 00:20:00,520 --> 00:20:02,440 and the ultraviolet catastrophe. 266 00:20:04,080 --> 00:20:09,520 Then just a few years after Einstein's brilliant, crazy idea, 267 00:20:09,520 --> 00:20:13,600 the paradox got a lot deeper and a whole lot weirder. 268 00:20:16,000 --> 00:20:20,240 Because what seemed to be a curious mystery about light 269 00:20:20,240 --> 00:20:25,000 was about to become a battleground about the nature of reality itself. 270 00:20:34,560 --> 00:20:36,600 1922. 271 00:20:36,600 --> 00:20:40,960 The Western world was in the grip of a revolution, a cultural revolution. 272 00:20:42,280 --> 00:20:45,080 James Joyce's Ulysses is published, 273 00:20:45,080 --> 00:20:47,760 Stravinsky is at the height of his powers 274 00:20:47,760 --> 00:20:50,960 and Chaplin has just released his first serious movie. 275 00:20:50,960 --> 00:20:54,280 The Ottoman Empire collapses. 276 00:20:54,280 --> 00:20:57,720 Europe is still recovering from the war to end all wars 277 00:20:57,720 --> 00:21:00,320 in which millions of men lost their lives. 278 00:21:00,320 --> 00:21:02,400 Russia is newly communist. 279 00:21:02,400 --> 00:21:06,480 Meanwhile, America is exporting jazz to the world. 280 00:21:06,480 --> 00:21:08,760 Thank you. MUSIC PLAYS 281 00:21:14,840 --> 00:21:18,440 'In arts, politics, literature, economics, 282 00:21:18,440 --> 00:21:21,880 'there was an insatiable appetite for change. 283 00:21:21,880 --> 00:21:24,920 'This was the birth of modernism.' 284 00:21:24,920 --> 00:21:29,120 # You've got a heart that there's no way of knowing 285 00:21:29,120 --> 00:21:33,040 # Can see where you are but can't see where you're going 286 00:21:33,040 --> 00:21:35,800 # And I'm stuck here still 287 00:21:35,800 --> 00:21:39,600 # I'm tangled up with you 288 00:21:43,360 --> 00:21:48,280 # This whole world can be so uncertain... # 289 00:21:48,280 --> 00:21:51,960 But, and I might get into trouble for saying this, 290 00:21:51,960 --> 00:21:55,000 I would argue that the upheaval that took place in physics 291 00:21:55,000 --> 00:21:58,280 at this time would eclipse them all 292 00:21:58,280 --> 00:22:01,440 and have far longer lasting consequences. 293 00:22:01,440 --> 00:22:04,600 It had begun with the discovery of the weird 294 00:22:04,600 --> 00:22:08,200 and contradictory wave/particle nature of light, 295 00:22:08,200 --> 00:22:12,360 it ended up as an epic battle fought between the greatest minds 296 00:22:12,360 --> 00:22:15,440 in science for the highest possible stakes - 297 00:22:15,440 --> 00:22:17,600 the nature of reality itself. 298 00:22:19,400 --> 00:22:24,240 # I know I deserve you, I know you're my saviour 299 00:22:24,240 --> 00:22:28,280 # But when I observe you, you change your behaviour... # 300 00:22:28,280 --> 00:22:32,360 'On one side, a new wave of modernist revolutionary scientists 301 00:22:32,360 --> 00:22:36,600 'and their leader, the brilliant Danish physicist, Niels Bohr. 302 00:22:38,120 --> 00:22:41,800 'On the other side, the voice of reason, Albert Einstein, 303 00:22:41,800 --> 00:22:45,440 'at the height of his powers and now world-famous, 304 00:22:45,440 --> 00:22:47,360 'a formidable adversary.' 305 00:22:47,360 --> 00:22:50,400 # Tangled up with you... # 306 00:22:52,400 --> 00:22:54,800 The battle raged for decades. 307 00:22:54,800 --> 00:22:57,440 Actually, in some ways, it still does. 308 00:22:57,440 --> 00:23:01,600 It was fought across the world in universities, at conferences, 309 00:23:01,600 --> 00:23:05,840 in bars and cafes, it would reduce grown men to tears 310 00:23:05,840 --> 00:23:11,280 and it began with a deceptively simple experiment. 311 00:23:11,280 --> 00:23:16,280 # This whole world can be so uncertain... # 312 00:23:16,280 --> 00:23:20,320 'But weirdly, it was an experiment that wasn't even about light, 313 00:23:20,320 --> 00:23:23,520 'it was about the particles that make electricity.' 314 00:23:23,520 --> 00:23:29,160 # To somebody else... # 315 00:23:29,160 --> 00:23:32,520 In the mid-1920s, an experiment was carried out 316 00:23:32,520 --> 00:23:35,360 at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey in America 317 00:23:35,360 --> 00:23:39,720 which uncovered something entirely unexpected about electrons. 318 00:23:39,720 --> 00:23:42,240 Now, at the time it was accepted without question 319 00:23:42,240 --> 00:23:45,280 that electrons were these tiny lumps of matter, 320 00:23:45,280 --> 00:23:49,400 small but solid particles, like miniature billiard balls. 321 00:23:49,400 --> 00:23:53,240 In the experiment, they fired a beam of electrons at a crystal 322 00:23:53,240 --> 00:23:55,240 and watched how they scattered. 323 00:23:55,240 --> 00:23:59,440 Now, that's entirely equivalent to taking a beam of electrons, 324 00:23:59,440 --> 00:24:01,640 say from an electron gun, 325 00:24:01,640 --> 00:24:06,400 and firing it at a screen with two slits in it 326 00:24:06,400 --> 00:24:10,320 so that the electrons pass through the slits 327 00:24:10,320 --> 00:24:13,080 and hit another screen at the back. 328 00:24:15,360 --> 00:24:17,440 What the Bell scientists found 329 00:24:17,440 --> 00:24:20,200 shocked the physics world to the core. 330 00:24:22,480 --> 00:24:26,960 To understand why, consider a similar experiment with water waves. 331 00:24:28,320 --> 00:24:30,600 I've set up a simple experiment. 332 00:24:30,600 --> 00:24:34,880 I have a water ripple tank placed on top of an overhead projector, 333 00:24:34,880 --> 00:24:40,000 I have a generator producing waves that pass through two narrow gaps. 334 00:24:40,000 --> 00:24:44,800 The projector beams the image of the waves onto the back wall. 335 00:24:44,800 --> 00:24:47,440 You can see as the waves come in from the left 336 00:24:47,440 --> 00:24:49,680 and squeeze through the two gaps, 337 00:24:49,680 --> 00:24:53,880 they spread out on the other side and interfere with each other. 338 00:24:53,880 --> 00:24:57,000 What this means is that when you get the crest from one wave 339 00:24:57,000 --> 00:25:01,160 meeting the crest from another, they add up to make a higher wave. 340 00:25:01,160 --> 00:25:05,000 But when the crest from one meets a trough, they cancel out. 341 00:25:07,560 --> 00:25:10,800 This gives rise to these characteristic lines 342 00:25:10,800 --> 00:25:13,760 leading to the signature wave pattern. 343 00:25:16,040 --> 00:25:17,760 Bands of light and dark. 344 00:25:20,440 --> 00:25:22,760 Whenever you see these light and dark bands, 345 00:25:22,760 --> 00:25:24,360 the signature wave pattern, 346 00:25:24,360 --> 00:25:28,240 you know without doubt that you've got wave-like behaviour. 347 00:25:36,480 --> 00:25:39,640 So guess what they saw in New Jersey. 348 00:25:39,640 --> 00:25:44,720 Now it seemed that firing electrons, tiny solid particles, 349 00:25:44,720 --> 00:25:49,040 through the two gaps produced exactly the same kind of pattern, 350 00:25:49,040 --> 00:25:51,400 bands of light and dark. 351 00:25:53,920 --> 00:25:56,880 First, light, for a long time believed to be a wave, 352 00:25:56,880 --> 00:25:59,520 was found to sometimes behave like particles 353 00:25:59,520 --> 00:26:02,640 and now electrons, for a long time believed to be particles, 354 00:26:02,640 --> 00:26:05,160 were behaving like waves. 355 00:26:05,160 --> 00:26:07,720 But it was actually stranger than that. 356 00:26:07,720 --> 00:26:10,480 The wave pattern wasn't merely some result 357 00:26:10,480 --> 00:26:13,560 of the entire beam of electrons. 358 00:26:13,560 --> 00:26:16,120 More recently this experiment has been repeated 359 00:26:16,120 --> 00:26:21,480 in labs around the world by firing one electron at a time 360 00:26:21,480 --> 00:26:24,040 through the slits onto the screen. 361 00:26:27,360 --> 00:26:31,680 At first, each electron seems to land randomly on the screen. 362 00:26:33,920 --> 00:26:40,360 But gradually a pattern forms, the signature wave pattern. 363 00:26:40,360 --> 00:26:44,160 Let me be quite clear about just how weird this is. 364 00:26:44,160 --> 00:26:46,280 Remember from the wave tank experiment 365 00:26:46,280 --> 00:26:49,560 where the signature wave pattern only exists 366 00:26:49,560 --> 00:26:53,360 because each wave passes through both slits 367 00:26:53,360 --> 00:26:56,840 and then its two pieces interfere with each other. 368 00:26:56,840 --> 00:26:59,480 But here, every individual electron, 369 00:26:59,480 --> 00:27:03,160 each single particle is passing alone through the slits 370 00:27:03,160 --> 00:27:05,600 before it hits the screen. 371 00:27:05,600 --> 00:27:09,280 And yet, each single electron is still contributing 372 00:27:09,280 --> 00:27:11,040 to the signature wave pattern. 373 00:27:12,720 --> 00:27:16,400 Each electron has to be behaving like a wave. 374 00:27:21,280 --> 00:27:24,120 To explain this strange result, 375 00:27:24,120 --> 00:27:27,960 Niels Bohr and his colleagues created quantum mechanics, 376 00:27:27,960 --> 00:27:32,640 a crazy theory of light and matter that embraced contradiction 377 00:27:32,640 --> 00:27:35,800 and didn't care that it was almost impossible to understand. 378 00:27:35,800 --> 00:27:37,760 As Niels Bohr himself said, 379 00:27:37,760 --> 00:27:41,760 anyone who isn't shocked by quantum theory hasn't understood it. 380 00:27:41,760 --> 00:27:44,800 So, viewers, I'm going to take our tiny electron 381 00:27:44,800 --> 00:27:48,040 and use it to delve deep into the heart of reality. 382 00:27:49,360 --> 00:27:51,440 And, yes, prepared to be shocked 383 00:27:51,440 --> 00:27:54,920 because this is the only way to explain what we observe 384 00:27:54,920 --> 00:27:57,480 when a single electron travels through the slits 385 00:27:57,480 --> 00:27:59,760 and hits the screen. 386 00:27:59,760 --> 00:28:01,840 Quantum mechanics says this... 387 00:28:03,200 --> 00:28:06,720 ..we can't describe what's travelling as a physical object. 388 00:28:08,520 --> 00:28:10,040 All we can talk about 389 00:28:10,040 --> 00:28:12,760 are the chances of where the electron might be. 390 00:28:14,720 --> 00:28:19,960 This wave of chance somehow travels through both slits 391 00:28:19,960 --> 00:28:23,560 producing interference just like the water wave. 392 00:28:24,760 --> 00:28:27,040 Then when it hits the screen, 393 00:28:27,040 --> 00:28:30,560 what was just the ghostly possibility of an electron 394 00:28:30,560 --> 00:28:33,680 mysteriously becomes real. 395 00:28:35,560 --> 00:28:39,800 Let me try and capture just how weird this is with an analogy. 396 00:28:39,800 --> 00:28:41,920 If I spin this coin... 397 00:28:46,520 --> 00:28:49,160 Then all the time it's spinning, it's a blur, 398 00:28:49,160 --> 00:28:51,520 I can't tell if it's heads or tails 399 00:28:51,520 --> 00:28:57,080 but if I stop it, I force it to decide and it's heads. 400 00:28:57,080 --> 00:29:02,360 So before it was sort of not heads or tails but a mixture of both 401 00:29:02,360 --> 00:29:06,000 but as soon as I've stopped it, I've forced it to make up its mind. 402 00:29:06,000 --> 00:29:08,280 This is what Bohr and his supporters 403 00:29:08,280 --> 00:29:11,120 claimed was happening with our electrons. 404 00:29:15,240 --> 00:29:20,880 In a sense, as it spins, the coin is both heads and tails. 405 00:29:20,880 --> 00:29:24,640 Similarly, the electrons' wave of chance 406 00:29:24,640 --> 00:29:29,480 passes through both slits, two paths at the same time. 407 00:29:31,280 --> 00:29:34,040 Our coin then stops at heads. 408 00:29:35,680 --> 00:29:39,440 The ethereal wave of probability hits the screen 409 00:29:39,440 --> 00:29:43,400 and only then becomes a particle. 410 00:29:43,400 --> 00:29:47,680 The quantum world was unlike anything ever seen before. 411 00:29:49,720 --> 00:29:53,440 It's hard to overstate just how crazy this is. 412 00:29:53,440 --> 00:29:57,040 Bohr was effectively claiming that one can never know 413 00:29:57,040 --> 00:30:01,240 where the electron actually is at all until you measure it 414 00:30:01,240 --> 00:30:04,640 and it's not just that you don't know where the electron is, 415 00:30:04,640 --> 00:30:09,160 it's weirdly as though the electron itself is everywhere at once. 416 00:30:11,480 --> 00:30:14,440 Bear in mind that electrons are among the commonest 417 00:30:14,440 --> 00:30:17,720 and most basic building blocks of reality 418 00:30:17,720 --> 00:30:21,160 and yet here's Bohr saying that only by looking 419 00:30:21,160 --> 00:30:24,360 do we actually conjure their position into existence. 420 00:30:25,480 --> 00:30:29,800 It's like there's a curtain between us and the quantum world 421 00:30:29,800 --> 00:30:34,280 and behind it there is no solid reality... 422 00:30:35,640 --> 00:30:38,360 ..just the potential for reality. 423 00:30:40,800 --> 00:30:45,720 Things only become real when we pull back the curtain and look. 424 00:30:45,720 --> 00:30:48,360 And this view, ladies and gentlemen, 425 00:30:48,360 --> 00:30:51,400 became known as the Copenhagen interpretation. 426 00:30:51,400 --> 00:30:53,360 APPLAUSE 427 00:30:59,360 --> 00:31:01,160 Persuasive as it might seem, 428 00:31:01,160 --> 00:31:05,880 many people couldn't stomach Niels Bohr's outlandish ideas. 429 00:31:05,880 --> 00:31:10,200 And they found a natural leader in the most powerful man in science. 430 00:31:11,560 --> 00:31:14,400 Albert Einstein hated this interpretation 431 00:31:14,400 --> 00:31:16,760 with every fibre of his being. 432 00:31:16,760 --> 00:31:18,120 He famously said, 433 00:31:18,120 --> 00:31:21,520 "Does the moon cease to exist when I don't look at it?" 434 00:31:22,760 --> 00:31:26,760 He was very unhappy because it gave limits to knowledge 435 00:31:26,760 --> 00:31:28,880 that he didn't think should be final. 436 00:31:28,880 --> 00:31:32,600 He thought there should be a better underlying theory. 437 00:31:36,560 --> 00:31:41,240 Over the next ten years, Einstein and Bohr would argue passionately 438 00:31:41,240 --> 00:31:45,040 about whether quantum mechanics meant giving up on reality or not. 439 00:31:49,160 --> 00:31:54,040 Then, with two other scientists, Nathan Rosen and Boris Podolsky, 440 00:31:54,040 --> 00:31:58,240 Einstein thought they'd found a way to win the argument. 441 00:31:58,240 --> 00:32:00,440 He was convinced he'd found a fatal flaw 442 00:32:00,440 --> 00:32:04,440 in the Copenhagen interpretation and it's claim that reality 443 00:32:04,440 --> 00:32:08,600 was summoned into existence by the act of looking at it. 444 00:32:08,600 --> 00:32:10,480 At the heart of Einstein's argument 445 00:32:10,480 --> 00:32:14,240 was an aspect of quantum mechanics called entanglement. 446 00:32:14,240 --> 00:32:18,600 Now, entanglement is this special, incredibly close relationship 447 00:32:18,600 --> 00:32:22,960 between a pair of quantum particles whose fates are intertwined. 448 00:32:22,960 --> 00:32:25,800 For example, if they were created in the same event. 449 00:32:31,120 --> 00:32:32,400 Let me try and explain this 450 00:32:32,400 --> 00:32:35,840 by imagining the two particles are spinning coins. 451 00:32:41,360 --> 00:32:43,880 Imagine these coins are two electrons 452 00:32:43,880 --> 00:32:49,560 created from the same event and then moved apart from each other. 453 00:32:49,560 --> 00:32:52,920 Quantum mechanics says that, because they're created together, 454 00:32:52,920 --> 00:32:54,760 they're entangled. 455 00:32:54,760 --> 00:32:57,960 And now many of their properties are for ever linked, 456 00:32:57,960 --> 00:33:00,240 wherever they are. 457 00:33:00,240 --> 00:33:02,880 Remember, the Copenhagen interpretation says that 458 00:33:02,880 --> 00:33:07,240 until you measure one of the coins, neither of them is heads or tails. 459 00:33:07,240 --> 00:33:09,880 In fact, heads and tails don't even exist. 460 00:33:09,880 --> 00:33:13,800 And here's where entanglement makes this weird situation even weirder. 461 00:33:15,560 --> 00:33:18,920 When we stop the first coin and it becomes heads... 462 00:33:20,840 --> 00:33:23,680 ..because the coins are linked through entanglement, 463 00:33:23,680 --> 00:33:27,520 the second coin will simultaneously become tails. 464 00:33:29,640 --> 00:33:31,240 And here's the crucial thing. 465 00:33:31,240 --> 00:33:35,000 I can't predict what the outcome of my measurement will be, 466 00:33:35,000 --> 00:33:37,800 only that they will always be opposite. 467 00:33:37,800 --> 00:33:39,280 Einstein seized on this. 468 00:33:40,880 --> 00:33:44,920 Because it meant that something was happening between the two coins 469 00:33:44,920 --> 00:33:47,320 that was almost too crazy to imagine. 470 00:33:49,000 --> 00:33:52,960 It's as if the two coins are secretly communicating. 471 00:33:52,960 --> 00:33:57,120 Communicating instantaneously across space and time. 472 00:33:57,120 --> 00:34:00,360 Even if the first coin was on Earth and the other was on Pluto. 473 00:34:02,040 --> 00:34:03,880 Einstein refused to believe 474 00:34:03,880 --> 00:34:07,840 this instantaneous, faster-than-light communication. 475 00:34:07,840 --> 00:34:12,040 His theory of relativity said that nothing could travel that fast. 476 00:34:12,040 --> 00:34:13,320 Not even information. 477 00:34:14,400 --> 00:34:18,000 So, how could one coin instantaneously know 478 00:34:18,000 --> 00:34:20,480 how the other would land? 479 00:34:20,480 --> 00:34:24,920 He disparagingly called it "spooky action at a distance" 480 00:34:24,920 --> 00:34:29,440 and claimed it was a fatal flaw in the Copenhagen interpretation. 481 00:34:29,440 --> 00:34:31,920 What's more, he had a better idea. 482 00:34:34,200 --> 00:34:37,480 Einstein believed there was a simpler interpretation. 483 00:34:37,480 --> 00:34:41,240 That somehow the destiny of the two coins, whether or not they 484 00:34:41,240 --> 00:34:45,520 ended up heads or tails, was already fixed long before we observed them. 485 00:34:47,920 --> 00:34:50,160 He said that although it seemed the coin 486 00:34:50,160 --> 00:34:54,600 was deciding to be, say, heads, at the moment of observation, 487 00:34:54,600 --> 00:34:58,080 actually, that decision was taken long before. 488 00:34:59,160 --> 00:35:00,840 It was just hidden from us. 489 00:35:03,920 --> 00:35:05,280 In Einstein's mind, 490 00:35:05,280 --> 00:35:09,200 quantum particles were nothing like spinning coins. 491 00:35:09,200 --> 00:35:13,320 They were more like, say, a pair of gloves, left and right, 492 00:35:13,320 --> 00:35:16,200 separated into boxes. 493 00:35:16,200 --> 00:35:21,400 We don't know which box contains which glove until we open one, 494 00:35:21,400 --> 00:35:25,160 but when we do, and find, say, a right-handed glove, 495 00:35:25,160 --> 00:35:29,240 immediately, we know that the other box contains the left-handed glove. 496 00:35:29,240 --> 00:35:33,440 But, crucially, this requires no spooky action at a distance. 497 00:35:33,440 --> 00:35:37,080 Neither glove has been altered by the act of observation. 498 00:35:37,080 --> 00:35:38,480 Both of them were either 499 00:35:38,480 --> 00:35:41,320 left or right-handed glove from the beginning. 500 00:35:41,320 --> 00:35:44,080 And the only thing that has changed is our knowledge. 501 00:35:45,880 --> 00:35:49,640 So, which is the true description of reality? 502 00:35:49,640 --> 00:35:53,520 Bohr's coins, which only become real when we look at them... 503 00:35:56,520 --> 00:35:59,680 ..and then magically communicate to each other, 504 00:35:59,680 --> 00:36:02,720 or Einstein's gloves, which are hidden from us, 505 00:36:02,720 --> 00:36:06,520 but are definitely left or right from the beginning? 506 00:36:06,520 --> 00:36:09,600 In other words, is there an objective reality, 507 00:36:09,600 --> 00:36:12,880 as Einstein believed, or not, as Bohr maintained? 508 00:36:14,400 --> 00:36:17,480 In the late 1930s, as the world plunged into war, 509 00:36:17,480 --> 00:36:20,320 there was no way to answer this question. 510 00:36:20,320 --> 00:36:24,080 The battle to understand the nature of reality was deadlocked. 511 00:36:30,680 --> 00:36:33,000 The war rolled across Europe 512 00:36:33,000 --> 00:36:36,520 and many of the leading scientists fled to the United States. 513 00:36:39,000 --> 00:36:42,520 Then, as the Second World War led inextricably to the Cold War... 514 00:36:45,040 --> 00:36:47,680 ..American science, backed by dollar bills 515 00:36:47,680 --> 00:36:50,120 and a new vision of the future, boomed. 516 00:36:52,080 --> 00:36:55,760 Remember, after the war, physicists came back raring to go 517 00:36:55,760 --> 00:37:00,640 and tried to apply the ideas of quantum theory to atoms, 518 00:37:00,640 --> 00:37:04,320 the interaction between electrons and light and what have you, 519 00:37:04,320 --> 00:37:07,280 you didn't need to worry about the philosophical side of things 520 00:37:07,280 --> 00:37:09,080 to make progress with that. 521 00:37:09,080 --> 00:37:11,680 So, as you say, it really took a back seat. 522 00:37:14,160 --> 00:37:18,600 Quantum mechanics led to a profound understanding of semiconductors, 523 00:37:18,600 --> 00:37:21,360 which helped create the modern electronic age. 524 00:37:23,520 --> 00:37:26,800 It produced lasers, revolutionising communications, 525 00:37:26,800 --> 00:37:29,120 breathtaking new medical advances. 526 00:37:33,280 --> 00:37:35,400 And breakthroughs in nuclear power. 527 00:37:39,760 --> 00:37:43,920 Quantum mechanics was so successful that most working physicists 528 00:37:43,920 --> 00:37:48,520 deliberately chose to ignore Einstein's objections. 529 00:37:48,520 --> 00:37:52,560 It simply didn't matter to them because it worked. 530 00:37:52,560 --> 00:37:56,560 They even coined a phrase for it, "Shut up and calculate." 531 00:38:00,640 --> 00:38:04,560 And the price for this success was that Bohr and Einstein's debate 532 00:38:04,560 --> 00:38:08,800 on the reality of the quantum world was simply brushed under the carpet. 533 00:38:12,760 --> 00:38:15,640 And amidst all this success and pragmatism, 534 00:38:15,640 --> 00:38:18,440 there were few who still worried what it all meant. 535 00:38:19,600 --> 00:38:24,040 But as the '50s rolled headlong into the '60s, one lone dissenter 536 00:38:24,040 --> 00:38:27,840 worked out how to settle the argument once and for all. 537 00:38:39,640 --> 00:38:41,960 John Bell, I think it's fair to say, 538 00:38:41,960 --> 00:38:45,000 isn't well known to the general public. 539 00:38:45,000 --> 00:38:49,040 But to physicists like me, he's, well, an hero. 540 00:38:49,040 --> 00:38:53,160 He was an original thinker with real courage in his convictions. 541 00:38:53,160 --> 00:38:57,720 And the story of his rise to become one of the greats of physics 542 00:38:57,720 --> 00:39:01,960 is made even more remarkable when you consider how he started. 543 00:39:01,960 --> 00:39:06,720 He was born in Belfast in the 1920s into a poor, working-class family. 544 00:39:06,720 --> 00:39:08,800 His father was a horse dealer. 545 00:39:08,800 --> 00:39:10,480 And they really struggled to get him 546 00:39:10,480 --> 00:39:14,280 into Queen's University Belfast to study physics. 547 00:39:14,280 --> 00:39:17,720 He was the only one in his family to even finish school. 548 00:39:17,720 --> 00:39:23,160 This, I believe, made him insatiably curious, fiery and stubborn. 549 00:39:28,920 --> 00:39:33,360 I remember meeting John Bell in 1989, a year before he died. 550 00:39:33,360 --> 00:39:35,880 We were both at a conference in America 551 00:39:35,880 --> 00:39:39,280 and we happened to be sharing a lift just after both attending 552 00:39:39,280 --> 00:39:41,600 a talk on quantum mechanics. 553 00:39:41,600 --> 00:39:46,280 Keen to say something to the great John Bell, I said I thought 554 00:39:46,280 --> 00:39:50,360 that the speaker's conclusions were completely crazy. 555 00:39:50,360 --> 00:39:53,600 He stared at me with his piercing blue eyes and, for a moment, 556 00:39:53,600 --> 00:39:57,360 I thought my fledgling physics career was going down the drain. 557 00:39:57,360 --> 00:40:00,840 But as the lift doors opened and he was about to leave, he said, 558 00:40:00,840 --> 00:40:02,560 "Yes, I completely agree with you. 559 00:40:02,560 --> 00:40:05,360 "Haven't they heard of the helium problem?" 560 00:40:05,360 --> 00:40:08,640 To this day, I'm not quite sure what the helium problem is, 561 00:40:08,640 --> 00:40:11,880 but I was just so relieved that John Bell and I agreed. 562 00:40:23,680 --> 00:40:25,480 For many years, he worked here, 563 00:40:25,480 --> 00:40:28,720 at Britain's atomic energy research centre, Harwell, 564 00:40:28,720 --> 00:40:32,520 who built this early experimental nuclear reactor called DIDO. 565 00:40:37,280 --> 00:40:40,040 It was here that he started pondering the deep 566 00:40:40,040 --> 00:40:43,880 and worrying questions quantum mechanics raised. 567 00:40:43,880 --> 00:40:47,560 Did the quantum world only exist when it was observed? 568 00:40:47,560 --> 00:40:51,280 Or was there a deeper truth out there, waiting to be discovered? 569 00:40:53,360 --> 00:40:56,080 In fact, he was so troubled, he began to wonder 570 00:40:56,080 --> 00:40:59,400 if there was a problem at the heart of quantum mechanics. 571 00:41:01,720 --> 00:41:06,080 He famously said, "I hesitate to think it might be wrong, 572 00:41:06,080 --> 00:41:08,920 "but I know it is rotten." 573 00:41:08,920 --> 00:41:11,600 And so, in the early 1960s, Bell decided to try 574 00:41:11,600 --> 00:41:14,800 and resolve the crisis at the heart of quantum physics. 575 00:41:14,800 --> 00:41:16,720 It was an epic challenge. 576 00:41:16,720 --> 00:41:20,360 After all, how do you check if something is real, 577 00:41:20,360 --> 00:41:24,680 if something is or isn't there, all without looking? 578 00:41:24,680 --> 00:41:28,040 How do you look behind the curtain without pulling it open? 579 00:41:29,280 --> 00:41:34,320 But John Bell came up with a brilliant way of doing exactly that. 580 00:41:37,200 --> 00:41:39,560 I think this is one of THE most ingenious ideas 581 00:41:39,560 --> 00:41:41,960 in the whole of physics. 582 00:41:41,960 --> 00:41:45,200 It's certainly one of the most difficult to understand and explain. 583 00:41:45,200 --> 00:41:47,440 But I'm going to try and have a go and, yes, 584 00:41:47,440 --> 00:41:50,200 I'm afraid I'm going to use another analogy. 585 00:41:50,200 --> 00:41:53,440 This time, I'm going to play a game of cards. 586 00:41:53,440 --> 00:41:57,000 But it's one for the highest possible stakes, 587 00:41:57,000 --> 00:41:59,240 the nature of reality itself. 588 00:42:01,160 --> 00:42:05,440 The card game is against a mysterious quantum dealer. 589 00:42:05,440 --> 00:42:09,640 The cards he deals represent any subatomic particles, 590 00:42:09,640 --> 00:42:12,120 or even quanta of light, photons. 591 00:42:13,440 --> 00:42:16,800 And the game we'll play will ultimately tell us 592 00:42:16,800 --> 00:42:19,480 whether Einstein or Bohr was right. 593 00:42:21,200 --> 00:42:24,360 Now, the rules of the game are deceptively simple. 594 00:42:24,360 --> 00:42:28,160 The dealer's going to deal two cards face down. 595 00:42:28,160 --> 00:42:31,360 If they're the same colour, I win. 596 00:42:31,360 --> 00:42:33,640 If they're different colours, I lose. 597 00:42:40,200 --> 00:42:45,040 So I have a red, so I need another red to win. 598 00:42:45,040 --> 00:42:47,680 That's black. I lose. 599 00:42:50,760 --> 00:42:54,080 Again, opposite colours. I've lost both those. 600 00:43:01,400 --> 00:43:03,680 That's four in a row. 601 00:43:09,160 --> 00:43:13,680 That's six pairs in a row that I've lost. OK. 602 00:43:13,680 --> 00:43:16,240 I think I know what the dealer's doing here. 603 00:43:16,240 --> 00:43:18,840 Clearly, the deck has been rigged in advance 604 00:43:18,840 --> 00:43:23,080 so that every pair came out as opposite colours. 605 00:43:23,080 --> 00:43:26,800 But there's a simple way to catch the dealer out. 606 00:43:26,800 --> 00:43:30,760 So what we can do now is change the rules of the game. 607 00:43:30,760 --> 00:43:35,320 This time, if they are the opposite colour, I win. 608 00:43:41,120 --> 00:43:45,960 But once again, every time, my evil quantum opponent beats me. 609 00:43:54,400 --> 00:43:57,760 But again, I can see what the crafty dealer could have done. 610 00:43:57,760 --> 00:44:00,680 Maybe while I wasn't looking, he's switched the pack 611 00:44:00,680 --> 00:44:04,400 and rigged it so that it always lands in his favour. 612 00:44:04,400 --> 00:44:06,480 Now every pair is the same colour. 613 00:44:11,200 --> 00:44:14,200 Rigged decks, remember, were what Einstein thought 614 00:44:14,200 --> 00:44:17,640 was really happening in the entanglement experiment. 615 00:44:17,640 --> 00:44:22,240 He said that, just like the gloves were already placed in the box, 616 00:44:22,240 --> 00:44:26,400 so the evil dealer stacked the cards before we played. 617 00:44:27,600 --> 00:44:31,080 But Niels Bohr's idea was very different. 618 00:44:31,080 --> 00:44:37,360 He said red and black don't even exist until you turn them over. 619 00:44:37,360 --> 00:44:41,000 Bell's genius was that he came up with a way of deciding once 620 00:44:41,000 --> 00:44:45,440 and for all who was right - Einstein or Bohr. 621 00:44:45,440 --> 00:44:47,080 This is how he did it. 622 00:44:47,080 --> 00:44:51,200 I'm now not going to tell the dealer which game I want to play, 623 00:44:51,200 --> 00:44:54,240 same colours wins, or different colour wins, 624 00:44:54,240 --> 00:44:56,840 until after he's dealt the cards. 625 00:45:00,680 --> 00:45:06,240 Now, because he can never predict which rules I'm going to play by, 626 00:45:06,240 --> 00:45:08,640 he can never stack the deck correctly. 627 00:45:10,280 --> 00:45:13,880 Now he can't win...or can he? 628 00:45:15,120 --> 00:45:19,080 So now the rules are, different wins. 629 00:45:22,240 --> 00:45:24,000 They're the same. OK. 630 00:45:25,080 --> 00:45:26,720 Same colour wins. 631 00:45:30,040 --> 00:45:33,080 This gets to the very heart of Bell's idea. 632 00:45:33,080 --> 00:45:36,600 If we now start playing and I win as many as I lose, 633 00:45:36,600 --> 00:45:38,520 then Einstein was right. 634 00:45:38,520 --> 00:45:42,320 The dealer is just a trickster with a gift for slight of hand. 635 00:45:44,200 --> 00:45:48,600 Reality may be tricky, but it does have an objective existence. 636 00:45:52,320 --> 00:45:53,960 But what if I lose? 637 00:45:53,960 --> 00:45:58,800 Well, then I'm forced to admit that there is no sensible explanation. 638 00:46:01,800 --> 00:46:05,920 Each card must be sending secret signals to the other 639 00:46:05,920 --> 00:46:11,160 across space and time, in defiance of everything we know. 640 00:46:11,160 --> 00:46:15,280 I'm forced to accept that, at the fundamental quantum level, 641 00:46:15,280 --> 00:46:18,080 reality is truly unknowable. 642 00:46:23,200 --> 00:46:28,280 Bell reduced this idea into a single mathematical equation 643 00:46:28,280 --> 00:46:33,680 that tells us once and for all what seemed unanswerable. 644 00:46:33,680 --> 00:46:36,120 How reality really is. 645 00:46:37,360 --> 00:46:42,320 John Bell published his idea in 1964 and the extraordinary thing is, 646 00:46:42,320 --> 00:46:46,360 at the time, the entire physics community ignored him. 647 00:46:46,360 --> 00:46:50,840 Total silence. It seems the world simply wasn't ready. 648 00:46:53,280 --> 00:46:57,040 Perhaps it was because his equation seemed untestable, 649 00:46:57,040 --> 00:47:00,720 or just because nobody thought it was worth investigating. 650 00:47:00,720 --> 00:47:04,120 But that was about to change. 651 00:47:04,120 --> 00:47:07,440 And the change would come from a very unexpected place. 652 00:47:10,520 --> 00:47:15,560 # This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius 653 00:47:15,560 --> 00:47:20,040 # Age of Aquarius 654 00:47:20,040 --> 00:47:25,560 # Aquarius 655 00:47:25,560 --> 00:47:30,440 # Aquarius. # 656 00:47:31,560 --> 00:47:34,560 America was in crisis over Vietnam, 657 00:47:34,560 --> 00:47:37,840 Watergate, feminism, the Black Panthers. 658 00:47:37,840 --> 00:47:41,280 And while all this was going on, a small group of hippy physicists 659 00:47:41,280 --> 00:47:44,280 were working at the University of Berkeley in California. 660 00:47:44,280 --> 00:47:46,040 They did all the hippy things - 661 00:47:46,040 --> 00:47:48,000 they smoked dope, they popped LSD, 662 00:47:48,000 --> 00:47:51,400 they debated things like Buddhism and telepathy. 663 00:47:51,400 --> 00:47:53,720 # When the moon 664 00:47:53,720 --> 00:47:57,440 # Is in the Seventh House... # 665 00:47:57,440 --> 00:47:59,880 And they loved quantum mechanics. 666 00:47:59,880 --> 00:48:02,240 In its weird version of reality, 667 00:48:02,240 --> 00:48:05,200 they saw parallels with their own esoteric beliefs. 668 00:48:08,200 --> 00:48:11,760 # And love will steer the stars 669 00:48:11,760 --> 00:48:14,280 # This is the dawning of...# 670 00:48:16,360 --> 00:48:18,800 Their hippy, New Age-style physics 671 00:48:18,800 --> 00:48:21,320 also caught the attention of the public, 672 00:48:21,320 --> 00:48:23,440 who read their crazy hippy books 673 00:48:23,440 --> 00:48:27,080 that mixed quantum mechanics with Eastern mysticism. 674 00:48:27,080 --> 00:48:30,080 Books like The Tao Of Physics, 675 00:48:30,080 --> 00:48:32,640 The Dancing Wu Li Masters 676 00:48:32,640 --> 00:48:36,480 and my personal favourite, Space-Time And Beyond - 677 00:48:36,480 --> 00:48:38,920 Towards An Explanation Of The Unexplainable. 678 00:48:40,560 --> 00:48:42,640 But more importantly for our story, 679 00:48:42,640 --> 00:48:44,560 the story of quantum mechanics, 680 00:48:44,560 --> 00:48:47,640 these hippy physicists also turned their attention 681 00:48:47,640 --> 00:48:50,480 to Einstein's now-famous thought experiment 682 00:48:50,480 --> 00:48:53,680 and what it told us about the nature of reality. 683 00:48:55,560 --> 00:48:58,560 They saw Niels Bohr's secret signalling 684 00:48:58,560 --> 00:49:02,360 as proof that physics supported their own ideas. 685 00:49:02,360 --> 00:49:06,520 Because if two particles could spookily communicate across space, 686 00:49:06,520 --> 00:49:12,520 then ESP, telepathy and clairvoyance were probably true as well. 687 00:49:12,520 --> 00:49:16,120 If only they could prove it really existed. 688 00:49:16,120 --> 00:49:18,280 Then, in 1972, they realised that, 689 00:49:18,280 --> 00:49:21,960 with a bit of mathematical slight of hand, 690 00:49:21,960 --> 00:49:27,000 they could take Bell's equation and experimentally test it. 691 00:49:27,000 --> 00:49:29,480 One of their group, John Clauser, 692 00:49:29,480 --> 00:49:32,200 borrowed some equipment from the lab he was working in 693 00:49:32,200 --> 00:49:37,120 and set up the first genuine and ultimate test of quantum mechanics. 694 00:49:40,240 --> 00:49:43,080 This is a picture of that first experiment, 695 00:49:43,080 --> 00:49:46,200 built of leftovers and stolen equipment. 696 00:49:46,200 --> 00:49:49,880 Over the next few years, it was improved by a team 697 00:49:49,880 --> 00:49:54,040 led by Alain Aspect in Paris, making its results more reliable. 698 00:49:55,440 --> 00:49:59,520 Over ten years after Bell first proposed his equation, 699 00:49:59,520 --> 00:50:03,000 finally, it could be put to the test. 700 00:50:03,000 --> 00:50:05,320 This is a modern version of the experiment 701 00:50:05,320 --> 00:50:08,600 first carried out by John Clauser and then Alain Aspect. 702 00:50:12,880 --> 00:50:15,520 Here, a crystal converts laser light 703 00:50:15,520 --> 00:50:19,200 into pairs of entangled light quanta, photons, 704 00:50:19,200 --> 00:50:21,560 making two very precise beams. 705 00:50:27,560 --> 00:50:30,960 These photons are passed around and bent back again 706 00:50:30,960 --> 00:50:33,640 until they pass through these detectors. 707 00:50:33,640 --> 00:50:36,040 The two photons are like the two cards 708 00:50:36,040 --> 00:50:38,160 the evil dealer places in front of me. 709 00:50:40,440 --> 00:50:44,320 We'll measure a property of the photons called polarisation, 710 00:50:44,320 --> 00:50:48,400 which is equivalent to the colour of the playing cards in my game. 711 00:50:48,400 --> 00:50:53,000 So, for instance, winning with two matching red cards might be the same 712 00:50:53,000 --> 00:50:56,480 as two photons with matching polarisation. 713 00:50:56,480 --> 00:50:58,440 But because this is quantum mechanics, 714 00:50:58,440 --> 00:51:01,360 it's more complicated than my simple card game. 715 00:51:01,360 --> 00:51:03,520 And these dials here allow me 716 00:51:03,520 --> 00:51:06,520 to measure a second property of the photons as well. 717 00:51:06,520 --> 00:51:08,000 Now that's equivalent to me 718 00:51:08,000 --> 00:51:11,240 not only trying to guess the colour of the face of the cards, 719 00:51:11,240 --> 00:51:14,880 but also trying to guess the colour of the back of the cards. 720 00:51:14,880 --> 00:51:18,360 OK, so we're now going to switch on the laser and start the experiment. 721 00:51:24,360 --> 00:51:26,560 So this number here gives me 722 00:51:26,560 --> 00:51:29,720 the number of photon pairs coming through the experiment. 723 00:51:29,720 --> 00:51:32,920 That's equivalent to the pairs of cards in my game. 724 00:51:32,920 --> 00:51:34,440 The graph here, dropping down, 725 00:51:34,440 --> 00:51:38,680 gives me the probability that I can win, that I'm guessing right. 726 00:51:38,680 --> 00:51:41,600 The more photons, the more accurate it becomes. 727 00:51:41,600 --> 00:51:44,520 I'll stop at an uncertainty of about 1%. 728 00:51:46,200 --> 00:51:50,760 And the final answer is 0.56, so if I... 729 00:51:52,040 --> 00:51:53,880 ..put that into my equation, 730 00:51:53,880 --> 00:51:56,920 I now need to run the experiment three more times, 731 00:51:56,920 --> 00:52:01,760 corresponding to the four different settings of these dials. 732 00:52:01,760 --> 00:52:07,280 Each run is now like a different set of rules for the quantum dealer. 733 00:52:07,280 --> 00:52:09,480 And when I add them up and get the answer, 734 00:52:09,480 --> 00:52:12,600 if it's less than two, then Einstein was right. 735 00:52:12,600 --> 00:52:15,960 If it's greater than two, then Bohr was right. 736 00:52:15,960 --> 00:52:18,480 OK, so now for the second setting. 737 00:52:18,480 --> 00:52:20,920 Just remember what the experiment will show. 738 00:52:22,520 --> 00:52:25,640 If the numbers come out less than two, 739 00:52:25,640 --> 00:52:29,000 then it's proof the dealer has been stacking the deck. 740 00:52:29,000 --> 00:52:31,040 This was Einstein's view. 741 00:52:31,040 --> 00:52:34,920 OK, so the number I get this time is 0.82. 742 00:52:40,080 --> 00:52:42,880 Now, reset for run three. 743 00:52:45,880 --> 00:52:48,360 But if the result is greater than two, 744 00:52:48,360 --> 00:52:53,000 then the deck cannot be stacked and something else is at work. 745 00:52:53,000 --> 00:52:56,920 OK, so the run three result is -0.59. 746 00:52:56,920 --> 00:52:59,440 And finally, run four. 747 00:53:02,880 --> 00:53:05,720 This last number will finally reveal 748 00:53:05,720 --> 00:53:10,760 if the world follows common sense, or something much more bizarre. 749 00:53:10,760 --> 00:53:14,800 OK, so our final result is in and it's 0.56. 750 00:53:14,800 --> 00:53:16,640 So if we turn the laser off... 751 00:53:19,000 --> 00:53:21,880 Right, I'd better just work out the answer. 752 00:53:27,520 --> 00:53:30,400 And there we have it, 2.53. 753 00:53:31,800 --> 00:53:33,840 It's a number greater than two. 754 00:53:33,840 --> 00:53:37,080 Absolute proof that Albert Einstein was wrong 755 00:53:37,080 --> 00:53:39,520 and Niels Bohr was right. 756 00:53:48,840 --> 00:53:52,560 The significance of this result is simply enormous. 757 00:53:52,560 --> 00:53:54,160 Just remember what it means. 758 00:53:54,160 --> 00:53:57,760 Einstein's version of reality cannot be true. 759 00:53:57,760 --> 00:54:01,320 No amount of clever jiggery-pokery with our experiment 760 00:54:01,320 --> 00:54:03,080 can cheat nature. 761 00:54:03,080 --> 00:54:05,360 The two entangled photons' properties 762 00:54:05,360 --> 00:54:08,080 couldn't have been set from the beginning, 763 00:54:08,080 --> 00:54:12,160 but are summoned into existence only when we measure them. 764 00:54:14,880 --> 00:54:17,920 Something strange is linking them across space. 765 00:54:17,920 --> 00:54:21,240 Something we can't explain or even imagine 766 00:54:21,240 --> 00:54:23,760 other than by using mathematics. 767 00:54:23,760 --> 00:54:28,720 And weirder, photons do only become real when we observe them. 768 00:54:30,480 --> 00:54:33,360 In some strange sense, it really does suggest 769 00:54:33,360 --> 00:54:36,280 the moon doesn't exist when we're not looking. 770 00:54:37,800 --> 00:54:40,000 It truly defies common sense. 771 00:54:41,800 --> 00:54:45,320 No wonder towards the end of his life, Einstein wrote... 772 00:54:59,320 --> 00:55:01,840 The experiment only confirms this. 773 00:55:01,840 --> 00:55:05,360 Whatever is happening, we just don't understand it. 774 00:55:07,920 --> 00:55:10,320 But it doesn't mean we should stop looking. 775 00:55:12,160 --> 00:55:15,480 While it's true that Einstein's dream of finding 776 00:55:15,480 --> 00:55:19,840 a reasonable, common-sense explanation was shattered for good, 777 00:55:19,840 --> 00:55:22,160 my own personal view is that this 778 00:55:22,160 --> 00:55:25,360 doesn't necessarily banish physical reality. 779 00:55:25,360 --> 00:55:29,440 Like Einstein, I still believe there might be a more palatable 780 00:55:29,440 --> 00:55:33,880 explanation underlying the weird results of quantum mechanics. 781 00:55:33,880 --> 00:55:38,800 One thing is clear, whether there are physical, spooky connections, 782 00:55:38,800 --> 00:55:40,760 whether there are parallel universes, 783 00:55:40,760 --> 00:55:44,840 whether we bring reality into existence by looking, 784 00:55:44,840 --> 00:55:46,720 whatever the truth is, 785 00:55:46,720 --> 00:55:50,920 the weirdness of the quantum world won't go away. 786 00:55:50,920 --> 00:55:53,360 It'll rear its ugly head somewhere. 787 00:55:56,920 --> 00:56:01,320 120 years ago, the greatest scientific revolution ever 788 00:56:01,320 --> 00:56:03,360 was brought about by a light bulb. 789 00:56:07,040 --> 00:56:10,240 And scientists are still using powerful light sources 790 00:56:10,240 --> 00:56:13,680 like x-rays to unlock nature's mysteries. 791 00:56:18,480 --> 00:56:21,160 This is the Diamond Light Source. 792 00:56:21,160 --> 00:56:24,760 It's Britain's single largest science facility. 793 00:56:24,760 --> 00:56:29,080 The x-rays produced here are ten billion times more powerful 794 00:56:29,080 --> 00:56:30,800 than a hospital x-ray. 795 00:56:30,800 --> 00:56:34,880 With that's sort of power, scientists can slice into matter 796 00:56:34,880 --> 00:56:37,240 and glimpse those quantum secrets inside. 797 00:56:45,800 --> 00:56:49,440 Researchers here are using this powerful light beam 798 00:56:49,440 --> 00:56:53,320 to investigate new materials which may have the potential 799 00:56:53,320 --> 00:56:57,320 to bring about an electronics breakthrough as great as any before. 800 00:57:02,400 --> 00:57:05,600 Just as the quantum pioneers of the '20s and '30s 801 00:57:05,600 --> 00:57:09,800 ended up bringing about a scientific and technological revolution, 802 00:57:09,800 --> 00:57:14,560 so this generation of physicists are set to usher in a new quantum era. 803 00:57:16,480 --> 00:57:20,320 An era where Einstein's hated quantum entanglement 804 00:57:20,320 --> 00:57:24,240 now produces unbreakable computer security. 805 00:57:24,240 --> 00:57:28,080 New kinds of communication systems, superfast computers 806 00:57:28,080 --> 00:57:31,080 and other advances we can't yet even imagine. 807 00:57:40,560 --> 00:57:45,520 And this is why quantum mechanics thrills and frustrates me. 808 00:57:45,520 --> 00:57:48,240 It's capricious, it's counterintuitive, 809 00:57:48,240 --> 00:57:51,240 it even sometimes feels just plain wrong. 810 00:57:51,240 --> 00:57:55,720 And yet it still surprises us every day. 811 00:57:55,720 --> 00:57:59,280 And I, for one, believe that our knowledge of the quantum world 812 00:57:59,280 --> 00:58:01,480 is still far from complete. 813 00:58:01,480 --> 00:58:06,040 That there are greater truths about nature yet to be discovered. 814 00:58:06,040 --> 00:58:09,600 And that's still what keeps me awake at night. 815 00:58:13,440 --> 00:58:17,480 Next week, join me as my journey into the quantum world 816 00:58:17,480 --> 00:58:19,640 gets even more surprising. 817 00:58:19,640 --> 00:58:23,760 I investigate how its weird rules are crucial for life 818 00:58:23,760 --> 00:58:26,960 and how the bizarre behaviour of subatomic particles 819 00:58:26,960 --> 00:58:30,320 might even influence evolution itself. 820 00:58:39,320 --> 00:58:43,960 # I know I deserve you I know you're my saviour 821 00:58:43,960 --> 00:58:46,000 # But when I observe you 822 00:58:46,000 --> 00:58:48,160 # You change your behaviour 823 00:58:48,160 --> 00:58:50,920 # So I'm stuck here still 824 00:58:50,920 --> 00:58:55,680 # I'm tangled up with you. #