#312 Sabrina Pasterski - Theoretical Physicist on the Hidden Code of the Universe

I think I know what string theory is, at least a little bit, but is this, is this like, uh, what are they ca- quantum communication where they-

Oh, so, so basically they're, so like quantum information or like the, kind of like, uh, the sense in which you might be thinking of, like, if you were talking to someone who does quantum computing and, like, uh, those facets is more like in holography, there are definitely connections between, uh, foundational aspects of, like, entanglement and different, like, protocols you can do in a quantum mechanical system, and then mapping it to a gravitational one.

So string theory is not related to that directly, but there's a sense in which the research I do probably is, like, more closely related, if that's what you're asking.

But basically, the whole point is we want to try to, as a field, not individually, understand, like, what the basic rules are, what are the laws of nature.

And if you aren't going out and measuring things, what do you really have at your disposal? You're roughly trying to use mathematical consistency of your frameworks to try to piece together a picture.

And so if you have rules for the very short distance physics and very long distance physics that are kind of in their own [laughs] world, and you want to try to have a framework that connects both of them, you run into various problems, and string theory is one example of a, a route that people have found to kind of avoid the pitfalls of, like, understanding how to have a graviton or how to have, like, a, a quantum mechanical system with gravity.

But in practice, you're roughly studying one little facet of these mathematical frameworks and trying to push it pretty far or generalize it to different situations.

Okay.

What is the...

I read something that China is, was working on communications where they'll, they will vibrate half of an atom, and then no matter what the distance is, the other a- the other half of the atom will mimic exactly what-

You talking about some entanglement or what? I, I don't know-

Yes

... which, which experiment.

That's what I was thinking about, quantum entanglement.

Sure.

So I think that the, I am less of, like, on top of all of the experiments when it comes to trying to see, like, not just entanglement, but maybe, like, some sort of, like, position dependence or whatnot, which is, like, closer to, like, seeing, like, how gravity and quantum interface.

But, um, so I don't know exactly which experiment, but I know that there's a lot on, like, kind of the...

There's a lot of progress on, like, the quantum computing side of things, which I guess is, like, the closest thing to an engineering [laughs] subfield right now within, like, high energy theory, but a little bit not high energy adjacent.

All right.

Yeah.

All right.

Right on.

All right.