Popular cultural caricatures of physicists are doubtless familiar. They can be academic boffins; male nerds with limited social skills; odd bods who write incomprehensible symbols on blackboards or perhaps even (think Big Bang Theory) whiteboards. Yet in recent years, an increasing number of films and TV series based around the theories of Quantum Physics have emerged at the heart of popular culture, becoming Box Office successes and making physicists of us all. The Ant-Man (2015, 2018, 2023) franchise is set in what the film calls the Quantum Realm, a term coined by physicist Spyridon Michalakis to avoid the copyright implications of Marvel’s term the Microverse. This year’s release, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, has already been commercially successful. The German TV series Dark (2017-2020) focused on the existence of worm-holes, Interstellar (2014) on space travel and time dilation, and Everything Everywhere All at Once, one of the most, absurd, mesmerising, and successful films of 2022, detailed the interactions between countless parallel universes.
For many enthusiastic viewers, it seems unlikely that the events of these films and series could ever be anything but fictional. They offer other elements that speak to well-established genres such as the epic, the heroic and the picaresque. Their plots may at times seem entirely implausible, and their implications beyond our limited comprehension and experiences of our world and universe. Yet they harness the improbable partners of theoretical physics and imaginative fantasy. A knowing nod to this was made in a passing moment in Everything Everywhere All at Once. Having moved through many different dimensions, the protagonist Evelyn and her daughter, Joy, are depicted in the form of two rocks in a lifeless universe. This does not seem a promising way to continue the fast-paced plot. But the ‘rocks’ engage in voiceless conversation that is presented onscreen in a series of written messages:
Joy: We’re all stupid! Small, stupid humans. It’s like our whole deal. For most of our history, we knew the Earth was the center of the universe. We killed and tortured people for saying otherwise. That is, until we discovered that the Earth is actually revolving around the Sun, which is just one sun out of trillions of suns. And now look at us, trying to deal with the face that all of that exists inside of one universe out of who knows how many. Every new discovery is just a reminder-
Evelyn: We’re all small & stupid.
This is the cinematic equivalent of breaking the fourth wall. The characters speak not just to each other, but to the viewers, imaginatively moving away from the action itself to focus on how the film’s events are possible. We are often encouraged to think about binary divisions between the arts and sciences, but films like Everything Everywhere All at Once challenge this by showing how cultural forms of storytelling represent, engage with, and popularise cutting edge science in important and radical ways. These two forms of intellectual inquiry aren’t distinct, but are at their best when they work together, harmoniously. So, leaving behind questions about the plausibility of these films, let’s think about some of the technological advancements which we – small and stupid as we might be – are currently making by harnessing some of the weird and wonderful phenomena and particle behaviour that underpins quantum physics.
Without understanding the quantum behaviour of electrons, scientists wouldn’t have been able to develop the silicon-based transistors and microchips which enable the functioning of familiar and everyday technologies such as phones and computers. However, in order to develop more advanced technology, we need to learn how fully to control individual quantum systems. This is where things get more interesting.
In simple terms, the premise which underpins quantum physics is superposition – the idea that particles don’t exist in a single state, but in multiple states at the same time. However, when a particle is directly observed or recorded, the superposition collapses and it falls into a single state. The fact that this change of state is instantaneous means that, if harnessed properly, it can have important implications for data transmission. If we can create a system which stores information in a superposition of states, we can transmit information significantly faster than a conventional computer, for example, could ever hope.
Exploiting these effects is leading to the development of quantum computers with much higher processing capacity and powers than those that currently exist. The smallest units of data in our everyday computers are called bits (binary digits). Everything we use a computer for (emailing, watching Youtube, and so on) is effectively represented as a long string of 0s or 1s. A quantum computer can store information in a superposition of these states, which means that one quantum bit (qubit) can contain more information than a usual bit.
This capacity becomes further increased by another baffling quantum phenomenon, known as entanglement. Once entangled, separate particles can be described as existing in a single quantum state. This means that a change of state in one will cause an instantaneous change of state in the others, even if they are on opposite sides of the universe. Therefore, knowing information about one particle also directly tells us information about another. Because of this, a qubit stores more information than a bit. In technical terms, their relationship is exponential, and N qubits contain 2 to the power of N bits of information. Therefore, a quantum computer can solve a long calculation rapidly because it can sift through many potential outcomes simultaneously, rather than one at a time.
This exponential relationship also means that it is far easier to increase the processing power of a quantum computer: unlike in a classical computer, we wouldn’t have to double the number of bits to double its power. Currently, however, these computers only exist in their early stages of development, and there are many barriers which need to be overcome before they reach their full potential. Further, while quantum computers wouldn’t replace our existing computers or be particularly useful in our day to day lives, the effects of them would be felt by us all.
Quantum computers might seem as unreal and distant as the plots of various films and TV series currently attracting millions of viewers. However, they are currently being developed, and this has considerable and ground-breaking implications. Their capacity to process significant amounts of data rapidly gives them invaluable potential across a whole range of fields. Quantum computers would aid drug development and speed up data analysis, enabling everything from behaviours in the stock market to changes in the weather to be modelled and predicted more precisely.
Effectively, they would revolutionise anything that requires vast amounts of data to be processed, and this means everything (everywhere, all at once). Communicating the complexities of such developments to future users requires sophisticated storytelling skills that effectively translate complex abstractions into familiar forms. Thus, it has never been so vital to possess both innovative scientific knowledge and the ability to communicate this in meaningful and dynamic ways, using all the ancient resources of storytelling.