A Thin Foil Universe

According to some theories, time is an illusion, there's just a perennial present and we are like actors playing a part in a movie: we can think we are making decisions, but the script has already been written, we can only play our part. I don't like this point of view and I don't even think it's true, but I think every possibility can have a silver lining. I have seen a tabby cat yesterday morning sitting in the sun, below a little tree, happy for this autumn so similar to a summer. Returning home, the same cat was in my garden, but after giving me a sort of stare, he slowly went away, disappearing around a corner. Could it be that maybe I am in a Miyazaki movie? This all life just a premise to this very moment? That would be the only kind of predetermined destiny I could somewhat accept. (P.S: why does it seem nobody can think about determinism without mentioning a cat?)

I have enough books and I’ve forgotten so many of them, that I probably could pass the rest of my life simply rereading the books I already have. What really suprise me at times is the complete sense of disbelief I feel when I see a book on my shelves that the current person I’m now wouldn’t have looked twice and I’m nearly sure maybe I didn’t bought it at all (honestly sometimes I think the multiverse theory is real just for that!).

And then, there are books I love and remember and I could read until they break in pieces: I’ve read most of them when I was really young and they are all classics. They are like old friends, but even for those books, every time I read them again, there’s something new I didn’t notice before: I grew older and wiser, maybe a bit meaner and the books too!

The title of this book, as you can see above, is long as a chapter itself, so I’ll refer to it in this review more shortly as “Totally Random”. “Totally Random” has the ambitious intent of making Quantum Entanglement clear for everyone.

But what is Quantum Entanglement? If I can explain it without errors, you’ll have the proof the book works, so I’ll try my best.

Some quantum particles (photons or electron for example) can be induced in a state called “entanglement” in which their behavior is striclty correlated, they become like a single particle.

If you call your particles Alice and Bob, whatever thing Alice does, Bob seems to know instantly, even if they are separeted in space and cannot comunicate by any known mean, so if Alice and Bob were real people and not particles, if Alice is having tea for breakfast on Earth, then Bob is having tea for breakfast wherever he is, even on Jupiter. If Alice wakes up and wants an espresso with cocoa, well Bob wants the same (no matter if Bob prefers tea), and viceversa. The point is: if you observe Alice doing something, whenever you observe Bob you get the same result. Bob and Alice can also decide to do always the opposite thing of the other one, but the point is: they follow a pattern, they seem to communicate faster than light, but you all know that nothing in this universe can travel faster than light which is strictly equivalent to say “Nobody puts Einstein in a corner”.

Fundamentally quantum entanglement is simply the most puzzling thing in all quantum mechanics, the more exciting, the more promising and sometimes it seems really like magic. Many phyiscs have been fashinated by this phenomenon and the most important ones and their theories are illustrated in the book. The authors of “Totally Random” are father and child, namely Jeffrey Bub (a professor at the University of Maryland who studied physics with Bohm and philosophy with Popper) and Tanya Bub who got a degree in philosopy and studied art and had the courage to coauthor a book with her father (I suppose it isn’t easy to get the last word in such a scenario). The comic has a simple style, functional to the argument, so no fancy scenes Marvel-style with maybe a superhero Schrödinger and his loyal cat in a cape fighting with some kind of enemy, but the most important scientists of the field appear in the book, illustrating their different point of views about entanglement ( and yes, Schrödinger and his cat appear in the book, but not with a cape). The books tries to explain also important possible applications of entanglement like quantum teleportation or quantum cryptography. The most of the book is dedicated to explain Bell’s inequality: a mathematical theorem that shows that entanglement cannot be caused by any kind of rigging of the experiments and I think the authors do really a good job about it, explaining the correlation between quantum particles as the toss of Quoins, special coins correalted through a machine called Super Quantum Entangler PR01. The book is a very likeble read, but despite being funny, it has a very serious long list of references at the end, including the source of all the phrases attributed to scientists. I really enjoyed this reading: I saw a video about quantum entanglement and I got mesmerized by the idea of mysterious communication faster than light, and searched for list of books about it, one of which listed many university books and this comic. As any serious person raised with bread and comics would do, I choose the comic book as first read about the argument and I think I did well.

The book has page dedicated with extra material:

and a page on the publisher website:

IBM has launched a series of free course for learning the basics of quantum computing and how to use the IBM Quantum services (here the link).

At the moment I’m writing there are four courses:

Basics of quantum information

First unit in the series, the course explains the basis of quantum computing at a detailed mathematical level, it requires knowing a bit of linear algebra, but also fascinating subjects like: quantum teleportation (no, sadly it’s not like Star Trek) and superdense coding.

Fundamentals of quantum algorithms

This second unit explores the advantages of quantum computers over classical computers

Variational algorithm design

This course teaches how to write variational algorithms and how to use Qiskit, the IBM API for quantum computing.

If you were asked “Does God play dice with the Universe?”, what would be your answer?

It is well reknown the answer Einstein gave to this question, basing mostly his belief on his theory of relativity: a sound NO, a firm convition that everyhing in the universe is following an already written story.

In fact what is the consequence of saying that time isn’t something equal for everyone, but it depends on the obsever and its relative velocity?

It means that someone who is fast enough is already in the future respect to someone who is stationary.

Maybe while I’m writing this blog post, a super fast flying saucer in a point of the space is looking back at the Earth a hundred of years from now, when everything I’ll do or every stupid I’ll say in my own future, is something that has already happened.

According to Einstein time is a dimension where past, present and future are illusions of the mind: time and space are the same thing, every point in the room where I am right now coexist in a continous space, exactly like yesterday, today and tomorrow coexist in time.

The consequence is that my free will seems something not really relevant: if I’m already in the past for someone else, am I deciding anything in reality?

Again, Einstein would say that yes, free will is another illusion, better than that, he said the following:

“If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the earth, were gifted with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord on the strength of a resolution taken once and for all. So would a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man's illusion that he was acting according to his own free will. “

But what can I say to console myself about the fact that passing an hour choosing the right font for an article is better than choosing the first one at random, because the universe has already decided that font for me?

Well it can be a small consolation, but when philosopy crosses science everyone can have their saying. So like a detective searching for clues, I’ll search what I can say to save my right to make mistake that are only my fault and not decided by some equation running in the background of the stars, so I’ll point to the fact that in his honoured career Einstein wasn’t always right.

Nicolas Gisin

(quote from the comic book "Totally Random: Why Nobody Understands Quantum Mechanics")

...there was a social network I liked a lot, but an evil emperor killed it and put a cross (X) on its grave. Dark shadows were all over the place and the only sounds were the whirls of cold winds. As many have done before in similar situations, I had no choice other than take my spaceship to a safer placer (and later on maybe join some kind of resistance). So here I am, writing in pieces longer than a few hundred characters for the first time in years. Will I find a place of new hope, a better life and, more important, good books to read? Time will say it.

For now I’ll share my current readings: