00:00Space, a vast, empty ocean, where a planet like ours is a remote island, alone in the void, or is it?
00:17New research is beginning to unveil a hidden force, one that shakes the entire universe
00:24and penetrates space with trillions of invisible connections.
00:30Instantly linking every place in our world and joining our future with our past.
00:39Now we're beginning to grasp these mystical powers.
00:44Is the Force with us?
00:52Space, time, life itself.
00:56Space, time, life itself.
00:57Space, time, life itself.
00:58Space, time, life itself.
00:59The secrets of the cosmos lie through the wormhole.
01:03Space, time, life itself.
01:07Space, time, life itself.
01:12Space, time, life itself.
01:16Space, time, life itself.
01:17You know the story.
01:18A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there was a mysterious force surrounding us, penetrating us, binding the galaxy together.
01:24surrounding us penetrating us binding the galaxy together if you could wield
01:31this force you could do astonishing things seem like a Hollywood fantasy
01:42well scientists now wonder whether something like the force could be real
01:47could there actually be a mystical power that spans the universe connecting and
01:54binding all things
02:00astrophysicist Jamie Rollins has spent his career listening to the universe trying to
02:07detect a mysterious force one we've never been able to see over the course of the
02:14history of astronomy light has essentially been our only way of learning
02:19about the universe what we see out there is influenced by forces coming from
02:25things that we don't actually directly observe it's like walking around without
02:31being able to hear we know that there are sounds and we know that we could learn a
02:35lot from them if we could hear them there is no sound in the vacuum of space but according to Albert
02:45Einstein gravity affects space in a very similar way to sound we've been able to demonstrate many of
02:55the predictions of Einstein's general theory of gravity the one big one that we
02:59haven't is the fact that there should be waves of gravity gravitational waves are
03:05one of Einstein's most elusive predictions he believed that space is not truly empty but
03:12acts like a kind of substance that can be warped by masses like stars and galaxies
03:18and when massive objects move suddenly they send ripples across space squeezing and stretching
03:28everything they encounter from planets to the people living on them detecting these gravitational waves
03:37would prove that we are physically joined to the cosmos by a fabric of space and that events
03:44across the universe exert a tangible force on us but detecting this force is no
03:49easy task the waves that pass through the earth are essentially unfathomably small we
03:56have to make incredibly sensitive detectors to be able to experience this effect LIGO the
04:04laser interferometer gravitational wave observatory is one of the world's biggest
04:10scientific experiments each of its arms is four full kilometers long to rule out earthquakes and other
04:20local forces LIGO has two separate detectors one in Louisiana one in Washington state LIGO compares the way
04:30two high-powered laser beams move up and down each of its long arms mirrors at the end of each one
04:37bounce the laser beams back to the center where they're compared by computers as long as the links
04:44of the two arms are exactly the same then the light going into the two arms will come back and be exactly
04:50in sync if a gravitational wave passes through the earth it would cause the arms to squeeze and stretch
04:58throwing the lasers out of phase with each other Jamie is one of LIGO's more than 1,000 scientists and for
05:07him the principle by which the detective works is very familiar as a former DJ he's used to
05:17listening to tiny discrepancies in sounds let's say I've got two identical records that I've started
05:24at the exact same time such that the songs are exactly synchronized together we were to disturb one
05:30by say dragging my finger along the side then this record would fall out of phase with the other one which
05:37would produce a shift in the sound that we can hear if you're listening to one record you might not notice that
05:45effect now if we were to beat up one record and slow down the other the songs come in and out of phase with each other this is very
05:57similar to what happens to the light in the arms of the interferometer the changes in length that
06:05we're looking for are so minuscule they're smaller than the nucleus of a single atom it's completely
06:13imperceptible to the normal physical world that we experience but in September 2015 after more than two
06:21decades of development and more than a billion dollars LIGO finally detected a ripple in space it sensed a
06:30staggeringly violent event one that took place a long time ago in a galaxy a billion light years away
06:39what we detected was a binary black hole system which is two black holes that are in a tight orbit around
06:49each other in fact at the very end of their lifetime as a binary system as the two black holes spiraled
06:57together and collided the fabric of space shuddered and a billion years later LIGO felt it
07:08to Jamie that ripple in space is truth that gravity connects everything in the universe it was incredibly
07:16gratifying but it's also the excitement to know that there's so much to be learned by having this new
07:25sensory perception in the universe it's really as if we're connected to the rest of the universe in a
07:31totally different way one omnipresent force the force of gravity binds the universe together but how
07:40does gravity actually connect planets stars and people cosmologist Claudia Durang is taking aim at the
07:53the elusive substance of gravity itself for all the forces that we know there's a particle
08:02associated with that force which is responsible for carrying the force through empty space when
08:08i bring that magnet close to the horseshoe i can feel the magnetic force and for the magnetic force
08:14electric force the particle is the photon it's not visible light but it's there nonetheless
08:20and one of the great mysteries of physics today is whether there's a particle associated with the
08:26gravitational force
08:34Claudia is obsessed with finding gravity's hidden mechanism how does this mysterious force stretch
08:41across the cosmos silently tugging on everything but gravity is not easy to study because of all the
08:49forces we know gravity is the weakest we think of gravity as this huge powerful force that keep us glued to
08:58the surface of the earth but actually it's remarkably easy to overcome all it takes is a few fans
09:03right now a powerful wind is pushing claudia away from the earth molecules of air are hitting her body and forcing it upward but something else is forcing her down
09:18you could almost picture a tractor beam pulling me down and the funny thing is in physics we're having a huge debate on whether gravity is a force or not
09:34according to einstein there is no force of gravity pulling on these skydivers the huge mass of the earth
09:42simply distorts the shape of space near it and they follow the contours of that shape
09:48but quantum mechanics has a different approach according to this theory of the most fundamental particles
09:56something really is passing between the skydivers and the earth identical little chunks of gravity called
10:03gravitons right now i'm exchanging gravitons with the earth they're traveling between the earth and me
10:13if we could see gravitons we'd see tractor beams everywhere making hidden connections between everything that has mass
10:23claudia believes these graviton tractor beams keep us all stuck to the earth at least when we're not in a wind tunnel
10:33but they have never been detected in any scientific experiment it's extremely hard to catch a graviton
10:40when a graviton comes it just goes straight through me
10:44to detect the particles which carry forces we build particle accelerators
10:50but if those forces are weak we must build enormous particle accelerators
10:55and gravity is trillions of times weaker than electromagnetism
11:03you could think of needing to have a detector of the mass of jupiter parked in orbit around a neutron star
11:11to have enough mass there to have maybe the chance of detecting one or two gravitons every century
11:18and that's being very optimistic but if we could find the graviton and learn to manipulate it
11:25we'd have in our hands a seemingly supernatural force just as we focus photons into laser beams
11:33we could focus gravitons into beams of gravity it's a new world manipulating the photon on an everyday
11:41basis so who knows what would be possible if we were able to capture the graviton
11:49and then manipulate it
11:55gravity holds everything in our universe together
11:58but the gravity between anything with giant objects is incredibly weak
12:03a tiny action over here could never create a reaction over here or could it
12:18distance it's such a basic idea we don't even think about it but because we have distance
12:25that object is too far away for me to knock over but now suppose i had a double someone i'm truly deeply connected to
12:38i could cause something far away to happen instantly
12:45could such a power exist in the universe
12:48quantum physicist anton zeilinger studies a strange phenomenon called entanglement entanglement
13:01means that two particles which have interacted are connected in a very interesting way such that
13:07measurement on one changes the quantum state of the other one the particles of the quantum world are as
13:15unpredictable as playing cards they can spin and vibrate in many possible directions when we measure
13:23these properties we get random results but according to quantum theory when two particles are entangled
13:31their results will always match as if the particles could somehow talk to each other in a nutshell we have
13:39two particles and i make measurements on them the result on each of them is completely random but the two are the same
13:51how can two random events always be the same strangers still entangled particles seem to remain connected
14:01no matter how far apart they are the idea that objects must be nearby to affect each other
14:09is what physics calls locality so if we consider a stack of papers then locality would mean that if i kick
14:17one over the others also fall over but entanglement appears to be non-local which means that distance is
14:26irrelevant non-locality would mean that if these papers fall over by themselves something else might happen
14:34like this picture falling over at the end of the room on the roof of his institute in vienna anton has
14:45deployed a powerful laser to test entanglement over long distances what we do here is we create photon pairs
14:53we keep one photon locally and the other one is sent to a measurement station which is about three miles away
15:01after moving his entangled photons far apart anton measured them both at the exact same time
15:13every time he does this he sees the same eerie coincidence the particles give matching answers
15:21to see if it matters how far apart they are anton has performed this experiment over ranges longer than 90 miles
15:31if the theory of non-locality is correct the connection between entangled particles is literally
15:41instantaneous even if they're across the universe
15:44to one of the greatest minds of the 20th century the idea of instant connections seemed to defy the laws
15:53of physics einstein was always critical about quantum mechanics for two reasons one was the randomness
16:01of individual events and the second was entanglement he said that there cannot be spooky action at a distance
16:06he saw in his experiments was a genuinely spooky force at vienna's hofberg palace he found a sprawling sub
16:22basement that gave him room to work and we are here in the second basement in the lowest basement which we
16:29chose because it has long hallways these are the longest hallways in vienna and furthermore the environment
16:37is very stable very little vibrations it's very quiet this hallway is so long that even light takes a full
16:46billionth of a second to cross it when anton shoots entangled photons toward the opposite ends of this hallway
16:53his super fast equipment has time to measure both photons faster than light can beam a message between them
17:02we measure them really simultaneously so fast that there's no time that they could have talked to each
17:09other and told each other what happens
17:15anton proved that entanglement makes an instant connection
17:19somehow two far away places can be linked in a way that defies explanation could a spooky distant
17:29force also affect us and the events in our lives according to this man it can in fact it could be the
17:40reason reality exists we are made of tiny magic particles entanglement gives every one of them the power to make
17:53connections that reach instantly across the universe but if the particles in our bodies can do this
18:02why can't we do it ourselves and why does our world look so ordinary
18:10if a mystical force is connecting distant points in the universe where do we fit in
18:23good morning toronto your weather forecast today a 50 chance of rain
18:30tiny quantum events are all around us happening at every single moment
18:35quantum physicist ephraim steinberg can't see them any better than the rest of us
18:44but he believes we feel that the facts we all go and listen to the weather forecast
18:49and at best they tell us 50 chance of rain 60 chance of rain we just don't know enough
18:55according to the standard view of quantum mechanics there's a kind of quantum weather out there where we're
19:00always doomed to have predictions that are only probabilistic 50 chance of this 50 chance of that
19:07according to ephraim there's reason to suspect we don't fully understand the quantum world
19:13and that reason is its randomness
19:18it's these random particles of the quantum world that can entangle with each other making instantaneous
19:25connections we know that entanglement means there's a sort of hidden connection
19:29it's a mysterious kind of connection that we can't describe mechanistically no one understands
19:35why it should be that the universe seems capable of speaking to itself instantaneously across huge
19:40distances while whenever we try to communicate we're limited to speaking no faster than the speed
19:45of light if i leave home in my car in the morning and i get to work half an hour later
19:51we all believe that you could tell me where my car was every instant of the way along that path
19:56quantum mechanics is different it doesn't have this concept of a trajectory
20:02it was in a famous experiment called the double slit where the trajectories of quantum particles first
20:09went missing in this experiment light travels towards a pair of slits so that each photon each particle
20:16of light might be expected to choose either take the left slit or the right slit but offer a photon a
20:22choice of two slits and it appears to choose both of them if it was a car we could determine that car would
20:30either turn left or turn right it couldn't do both but cars and photons are different in another way
20:38you could watch a car but you can't watch a photon so we'd all love to see how the photon pulls
20:44off this trick but when you think about what it takes to observe something you realize that there's
20:48no such thing as passive observation for you to see an object you must bounce light off of it but if
20:55what you're trying to see is a particle of light you destroy what you're looking at the normal view of
21:04quantum mechanics is to say that we simply cannot ask which slit an individual particle goes through
21:10we can't talk about how they get from place to place all we can talk about is the probabilities
21:15for where they end up when we observe them at the end of the day
21:22while we move in predictable paths we are made of particles that seem to skip around at random
21:29or so quantum theory asks us to believe but it's not the only interpretation of what's happening
21:35back in 1952 a physicist named david bohm proposed that quantum particles might actually follow
21:43predictable paths but only if we accept that faraway forces are shaping their trajectories
21:51ifram decided to investigate this idea he set out to redo the double slit experiment to see whether the
21:59faraway force called entanglement might offer a more sensible explanation of how particles move nowadays
22:05we have techniques that allow us to actually measure what a photon's doing while it's in flight we don't
22:10want to do this by catching the photon and interrupting its trajectory if it has one instead we do it using the
22:16magic of entangled particles when two particles entangle they become perfect mirrors of one another
22:24so one can tell you what the other is doing imagine two cars that are identical in every way even down to
22:32the turn signal maybe as car a rides off into an intersection we can't follow it and see which way it turns
22:39but we can always look at car b and if its right blinker is turning we conclude that car a should turn to the right
22:45like the two slits in the experiment two roads lead away from this intersection turn left and you get to a
22:57church turn right and you get to a fountain ifram can't watch which road his car will choose
23:07but by watching the car it's entangled with he can guess its destination
23:12but once again photons aren't like cars even knowing which way they turn will steer you wrong
23:20half the time does randomness win the day after all or is something happening after the intersection
23:29ifram used entanglement to keep on watching it's as though even though i can't follow the car through
23:35the intersection and measure exactly where it is at every instant i can get just a little bit of
23:40information about where it is now where it is a moment later and build up a trajectory as the photon
23:47moved toward its destination ifram watched his entangled partner it didn't just tell him where the other
23:54photon went it actually influenced the other's trajectory it was as if they were connected by an unseen
24:03force the two particles were collaborating to form a trajectory just like the ones we see we know
24:10based on the theory of entanglement that entangled particles are forever influencing one another
24:15to understand what one entangled car is doing we must also know what the other entangled car is doing
24:21i can't lift up my hand and cause an apple on the other side of the quad to rise up off the ground
24:27and yet the world is simply interconnected the universe seems to be busy talking to itself
24:32instantaneously all the time remember how in star wars the force is with you even if you aren't aware
24:41of it while i stand here experiencing plain old reality the particles i'm made of might be communicating
24:49with particles billions of light years away it's a magic trick we do in every moment and science is
24:57starting to get an idea how it works
25:07hello hello oh you again yeah i was hello
25:13when we humans communicate over distance there has to be something connecting us whether it's a phone
25:23line or radio signal but entanglement doesn't seem to work that way it just happens there is no phone line
25:34or can we just not see the cord
25:50theoretical physicist daniel cavett thinks a lot about distant connections
25:55and the hidden ways they might work quantum entanglement is one of the most mysterious properties
26:02of quantum mechanics you might think that two things that are widely separated would have their
26:07own independent existence but according to quantum mechanics that's really not true objects don't
26:12have an independent existence of their own quantum mechanics ties them all together in quantum mechanics
26:19instant connections are everywhere but we can't use those connections when we want to go somewhere
26:26we still have to walk our concepts of distance and time are so fundamental that we don't think of them as concepts at all
26:38we think of them simply as reality the set of rules which everything in the universe must follow
26:45hey i called in an order uh daniel
26:49pastrami rubin excellent thanks enjoy if we want to get somewhere we have to pass through space
26:58i got the cheesecake if we change our minds about a lunch order hello juniors we have to cross that
27:05same space again can i get a slice of cheesecake but according to some physicists there are faster ways to go
27:12a wormhole is like a filament of space that connects into distant points not by the route that we'd normally travel
27:23it's a shortcut where you'd go out of our ordinary space and then reappear somewhere else
27:29i got my cheesecake wormholes connect two distant places faster than light could move between them
27:36while there's no direct evidence wormholes exist the same kind of connection links two entangled particles
27:44one idea is that this connection is actually a reflection of quantum entanglement wormholes and
27:51quantum entanglement are very similar to each other could well be two different sides of the same coin
27:58daniel thinks wormholes might be the secret shortcuts by which entangled particles communicate
28:03and if these connections exist the universe may be filled with them
28:15you could think about the early universe as a hot molten blob
28:19as it expanded and cooled the space we see began to take form
28:24the surface of the globe is the universe we experience there is nothing inside or outside at least that's the
28:36usual portrayal the yearly universe started out small hot and dense filled with particles as they
28:45interacted with each other this created entanglements quantum connections between the different particles that
28:51were present in the early universe and as the universe expanded those connections weren't lost they left traces behind
29:01like the threads passing through this globe the hidden legacy of creation might be a network of wormholes
29:10but if wormholes are everywhere why don't we sense their existence
29:15daniel thinks we do let's imagine that we had a huge number of particles
29:22all with quantum entanglement and then we'd have a very dense network of wormholes connecting
29:27all of these particles if you looked at that network
29:31and looked at it a bit from a distance it might look to you very much like the space and time that we observe
29:37the space around us might be filled with hidden connections dating back to the creation of the universe
29:46but could new connections still be forming
29:50one scientist thinks gravity itself could be making them
29:56in the universe's darkest places
29:59two vastly different powers are at work in our universe
30:11while gravity can warp the space between distant galaxies
30:16entanglement acts like space and distance do not exist
30:21today science is seeking a theory of everything that ties together gravity and the forces of the quantum world
30:29could gravity and entanglement be manifestations of the same thing
30:36could there be a master force
30:43for astrophysicist damien eason the first step towards the theory of everything
30:49is a strange one figuring out what empty space is made of nobody really knows what empty space is
30:56but we know that at least what we would think of as empty space is filled with energy
31:03damien works on a theory called loop quantum gravity which contends that nothing is not really
31:11nothing the core idea in loop quantum gravity is that empty space itself is made out of small quantum
31:16bricks of nothing the size of these bricks is incredibly small much much much smaller than an electron
31:24or proton or other particles that we know about but we believe nothing can actually collapse any smaller than that
31:31physicists think a lot about collapsing because there are places in the universe where the force of gravity
31:38is said to crush things down to nothing black holes are one of the great mysteries of science
31:46scientists they form when massive stars run out of fuel without the outward push of nuclear combustion
31:54they collapse under the pull of their own gravity around the black hole the gravitational pull is so
31:59strong that even light can't escape hence we call it a black hole inside a black hole many scientists think
32:08matter is crushed down to no size at all but how could that be possible if space itself is made of
32:17uncrushable bricks of nothing in places like this junkyard you'll find some powerful man-made forces
32:27this industrial size crusher applies more than a ton of pressure to every inch of the car inside
32:32but as the car gets more compacted the machine becomes less and less effective
32:43gravity is different if it was only up to gravity this car would collapse and get smaller and smaller
32:50and smaller eventually some people believe so small that it would be an infinitely dense point
32:56and that's what we call a singularity if singularities are real they'd be great places to make connections
33:06inside one the distance between things shrinks down to nothing everything overlaps with everything else
33:14distance and time simply cease to exist but could this actually happen in black holes
33:21in black holes damien is not certain when we fall into a black hole according to conventional wisdom
33:28the forces of gravity become so strong that things are ripped apart and the laws of physics as we
33:33understand them break down we know however though that since the singularity is an incredibly small space
33:41some other theory some theory of quantum gravity must have to kick in
33:45black holes are like the clown cars of the universe where everything gets uncomfortably close together
33:57damien thinks that when the force of gravity meets the tiny quantum world
34:01some funny things might happen all right now imagine this part of the balloon represents the space inside
34:07of a black hole if we fall into the black hole gravity becomes stronger and stronger space becomes more and
34:14more compressed and more compressed and this is the point where a passageway opens up into a new universe
34:20the passage between the old universe and the new universe is what we call a wormhole
34:26where some people see a singularity damien sees a wormhole a secret door to another realm
34:35while we know gravity brings things close together
34:38it may also do what entanglement does build connections between distant places according to this
34:47theory entanglement and gravity may work together as a single force connecting everything and joining our
34:56universe with many other ones we believe that there are black holes on the inside of all the hundred billion
35:02galaxies that we observe it's quite possible then that within each of these black holes is an entirely new
35:09universe connected to our universe by a wormhole our universe may be just one among billions all bound
35:19together by a single master force but this scientist thinks that same force also unites all times
35:29and we could use it to send messages to the future
35:38ever have that feeling that the past isn't really gone or that someone you've lost is right here with you
35:47those mysterious feelings of connection are what keep fortune tell us in business
35:51others but entanglement and gravity tell us things are eerily connected
36:01in star wars you can use the force to hear the voices of people who aren't here anymore
36:08when we feel the presence of things gone by
36:11have they really gone by or are they still with us
36:31boys estate physicist jay olson thinks we never walk alone because in the entangled universe
36:37everything that has ever happened is still with us so this stadium is almost half a century old
36:46teams have played here many games have been won and lost just being around it you can feel that
36:51there's a lot of history that is played out here jay likes to watch football scrimmages
36:59he doesn't attend them religiously but the way he understands the universe you don't have to
37:08go to just one scrimmage and you'll experience many others the universe is all of space and all of
37:15time simultaneously the past is correlated with the future and so that information never really goes
37:22away it's always encoded throughout all time think of the universe at this very moment like this stadium
37:33fast cold and virtually empty a really big game the big bang itself happened here 13 billion years ago
37:45a lot of entanglement was generated early on because the density was high there were lots of particles
37:50bumping into each other flying off carrying these deeper than normal connections
37:58and as the universe spreads out the matter spreads out too even these particles that are
38:02separated by vast distances can still be entangled with one another and after the big bang the
38:08connections keep on multiplying as entangled particles swap their experiences
38:14to swap entanglement in the lab scientists start with two pairs of entangled particles
38:22by introducing just one particle from each pair they can entangle their distant partners
38:32you could think of this in terms of human couples
38:36jay met his wife ping because they were in the same town at the same time
38:41they decided to get entangled but ping sometimes skips the football scrimmages
38:49now suppose things get exciting at a particular practice
38:54and jay entangles with his neighbor not only are they late but so are the partners they were entangled with
39:02even though they'd never met each other they are now instantly connected weird as still connections
39:11like this can form between the future and the past entanglements don't just cross space they can also
39:17cross time and we call this time-like entanglement suppose it was 10 years earlier jay's football buddy was
39:26entangled back then but jay wasn't fast forward 10 years and a lot of things are different jay met ping
39:37while his buddy got divorced our human perspective says we can only share experience if we are there
39:44at the same time that moment wouldn't affect your wives at all especially if one of you is no longer
39:52marriage but to entanglement time doesn't matter it simply connects one wife from the present with
39:59the other from the past this is true even though they never had the opportunity to meet and something
40:04that happened to buddy's ex 10 years ago could happen to my wife today
40:12the entangled universe is a timeless place
40:15where the present is deeply connected to the future and the past
40:23jay thinks we could see those connections if we built a special detector it's possible to generate
40:29a detector that kind of looks at time slightly differently it doesn't see exactly what your eye
40:35sees it sees something else like a jedi uses the force to see people who aren't here anymore
40:42we too could see the instantaneous links uniting all of time and jay thinks we could tap this hidden
40:50network what we know is that this is a an interesting property that nature is giving us you could send
40:57information into the future while skipping the time in between to send his message across time jay would
41:06encode it in a quantum state and pass it to a particle entangled with the future the message disappears
41:14but it's not gone it's merely skipping over what we humans experience as time it could be two billion
41:21years or it could be two years we could say two years if i want to be around to see it two years later
41:27omaha its moment is approaching with her special detective ping can now receive the message jay left
41:36for her two years ago
41:42if we can send messages across time could we someday send ourselves the fact that that entanglement exists
41:49between time people have barely begun to think of what that might be able to do if you could send the
41:54state of one atom in principle you could do two or ten or a million or even an entire human body or mind
42:05will we someday harness the power to skip across time and space or the power to move distant objects
42:13without ever touching them sounds like make-believe but such powers do exist and they're already at work
42:22inside us as we seek to understand gravity and entanglement we are taking our first steps toward
42:31abilities we have only dreamed about toward deeper understanding of our oneness with the universe
42:39abilities there may be no such thing as the force from star wars
42:48but we have our own that's just as amazing
42:56the force is truly with us
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