Thank you so much Paul I was so

overly generous I didn't
recognize myself at all so.

But Paul was a differend from
there's a thirty years ago and

it's wonderful to visit for
the first time Atlanta and

Georgia Tech and having a really
nice time seeing old friends and

meeting some very interesting new
people and learning some new things.

Anyway it's a pleasure to talk about
quantum mechanics I'm a big fan and

I love quantum mechanics and mechanics
is in the popular press a lot and.

Going to black holes quantum gravity
quantum cosmology what I want to do here

though is try to bring quantum
mechanics down to earth.

Not to imply that quantum mechanics
is in any way mundane but

to bring it down to earth quite
literally if you go outside and

dig up some earth some dirt and
look under visually and

then under a microscope one will see
little crystals of ones like E. and

the first part of the talk is about
quantum crystals why these little crystals

require quantum mechanics in order for
us to understand what's going on

inside them and then I am going to talk a
bit about quantum computing which I'm sure

many of you have heard
some things about and

finally I want to leave some time to talk
about something I've been passionately

pursuing in the last two and off three
years which is the possibility that

we may be quantum computers ourselves
that we may in fact have some quantum

processing going on between our
between our ears and I think.

I'd like to believe that's the case
I do feel we're very special and.

So let me see how this goes so.

Krystal's OK I mean beautiful many shades.

Many shapes in California many uses.

We want to look inside crystals and as
you know crystals are made from atoms in

the atoms are in periodic arrays and
they can form

different types of periodic structures and
there's many different types of atoms so

there's many different crystals and
many many crystals so

why quantum why quantum crystals but so

let me first talk about something that's
not quantum mechanics something that's.

Really classical physics there and Amec So
which is heat or thermal energy and

as you know that if you heat something up.

Solid let's say the atoms which are always
vibrating will vibrate more rapidly

as it gets harder they vibrate more and
more faster and faster and

batsman in the late nineteenth century.

Introduce the concept of associating
at a certain amount of energy

with each atom with each atom
that can that can vibrate and

he said that if a system is a temperature
T. the amount of energy associated with

the vibrations of a single atom is
what's now called K. Boltzmann K B times

temperature.

Is a bit so
it was a pretty tragic figure and

I think he was one of the first
proponents of the atomic view and

he believed passionately in atoms and
he believed he committed

suicide later in life and I presume it
had nothing to do with the fact that

people were not accepting his
theories about atoms because.

Life is more important than physics.

But I don't know
the history there actually.

Are.

Sorry they're very disrespectful OK So
Adam vibrations

in a good time are few pluck
the string it will vibrate and

depending on which string it
vibrates with a different frequency.

Typical frequency is one
hundred vibrations per second

hundred cycles per second but
you can imagine if you could go in and

vibrate an atom in a solid which one in
fact can do with neutron scattering for

example the atom being much smaller
will vibrate much much more quickly

at a frequency of ten to the twelfth
cycles per second that's a trillion

cycles per second which is you know
seems very fast and indeed indeed it is.

Well when I was a kid I remember
a trillion seems like an unimaginably

large number and you're now I think if
you take the you know the hundred richest

people in the world they probably own
far more than a trillion dollars So

trillion a trillion is
not really that much.

Then Planck.

Who really was in some sense
the founder of quantum mechanics.

Realized that one can equate
the frequency of the also lation

with an energy and
it's a quantum mechanical energy and

the coefficient of proportionality between
the frequency of the oscillation and

the Quantum Energy is now of course called
H. which is Planck's constant and so

in a quantum system the allowed
energies are discrete or quantized.

And so what I want to first discuss
is just comparing quantum energy

versus thermal energy.

So we're really comparing
Boltzmann thermal energy K.B. D.

with Planck Quantum Energy Planck's
constant times the frequency and when.

The system is behaving
quantum mechanically or

needs to be described pointed
cannot be on the one hand or

can be described classically on the other
hand essentially depends on whether or not

the thermal energy is smaller or
larger than the quantum of energy.

And if this is from his cold the thermal
energy is much smaller than the quantum

of energy quantum mechanics is
manifest and needs to be included to

understand the properties of the
vibrations that one is looking at Whereas

if the temperature is above the quantum
of temperature the system is hot core

mechanics is still present presumably but
it's smeared out and

we can get away with describing most of
the physics that we can access using.

Classical film and
am makes a Newtonian mechanics so

if I want to define a quantum
temperature by acquainting K.B. T.

with Planck's constant times a frequency
so it's a quantum temperature T. star.

Bar F. divided by K. Boltzmann and this
again for a oscillator with frequency F.

sets the temperature scale below
which temperature smaller than

the star the system is behaving quantum
mechanically it's cold and above T.

star it's behaving classically and
it's hot.

Well so what about the atoms
are biting vibrating atoms

you know should we think about those
classically or quantum mechanically

what we need to convert from ten to the
twelve cycles per second to a temperature

when one finds a temperature roughly
of one hundred degrees Kelvin and

as you know room temperature is
is about three hundred Kelvin so

Adams in crystal it fight temperature you
can probably get away with thinking about

them mostly classically maybe there's
a bit of quantum mechanics present but

if one takes a crystal and cools it
down to low temperatures that say in

immerses it in liquid helium
which is at four degree.

Above absolute zero then one is deep
in the quantum mechanical limit and

quantum mechanics holds sway and
one really has to understand the treat

the atoms in the crystal
quantum mechanically.

Well how might one increase the frequency.

Just fine more quantum mechanical behavior
of course in a with a guitar string and

you can either increase the tension of
the string and then the note goes up.

If you make the string lighter
the mass goes down then the frequency

goes up as well light things
vibrate more quickly and

the thing that's lighter than the atom of
course in a crystal is the electrons and

you can ask what is the typical
frequency that an electron

rotates around an atom will move from one
atom to the next what is the how many

rotations per second around an atom
would the electron take and

it's some five three was
a magnitude larger than the atomic.

Frequencies It's up at ten to fifteen
cycles per second and so the temperature

T. star for an electron which separates
the quantum from the classical regime

goes from one hundred degrees Kelvin up to
one hundred thousand degrees Kelvin and

of course then that's much much
higher than room temperature so

what that means is that electrons are so
light that at room temperature

in any rock at room temperature.

The electrons are behaving very quantum
mechanically when I have to understand

the quantum mechanics fully of
the electrons the temperature of room

temperature is well below this quantum
to classical crossover temperature for

the electrons.

OK So the electrons and crystals behave
quantum mechanically so one can think of

them as quantum crystals just take a nice
crystal which is copper cup a penny and.

Many of the electrons in a couple atom
of tightly bound to the nucleus and

are really not doing much of interest but

in Cup It's the outer shell
Aleck drawn in the four S.

atomic shell which is the electron
which moves around in copper and gives

the couple wire its electrical conduction
and in order to understand the electrical

conduction of a piece of copper of
a couple why one has to understand

ultimately the quantum mechanical
motion of not just want to lock one but

ten to the twenty three electrons and.

This is challenging of course and

it's most challenging because
the electrons are quantum mechanical and

quantum particles like electrons
are not really particles that kind

of like ways but they're not really
waves a kind of like particles and.

I mean when I was in high
school taking physics and

the high school physics teacher
you know at the beginning of

the year whether we thought
light was a particle or a wave.

And I mean you know this question
that didn't make any sense really but

I didn't realize that the question didn't
make sense anyway it was really it was

a rhetorical question and we we have
to think of like this somewhere between

a particle in a way where sometimes
it has like a particle of photon and

other times it behaves like a wave and
of course that's the same for

things like particles that we think of as
particles like the electron the electron

has a wave like and a particle like
a nature and more about electrons have

spin you know they spin like little topics
that it's quantum mechanical spin and so

this makes thinking about the electrons
piece of crystal like you know very

very complicated but
the saving grace the reason.

Physicists have been able to describe
the electron motion in metals like

copper is due to the poly exclusion
principle which is you know

that when two family owns.

It.
Try to occupy the same state or

in space try to occupy the same position
they were excluded from doing so so

in real space when electrons are moving
around they at least if they have the same

spin they avoid one another and
this is an enormous simplification and

was really the key.

Reason why leveland.

Famous Russian physics in the one nine
hundred fifty S. was able to extend and

only a theory for electrons and
crystals to really account for

you know the full behavior of electrons
in a crystal such as such as copper and

essentially say it's a poly exclusion
that electrons do their own thing

electrons bounce off the walls of the
crystal of that there and they bounce off

the impurities but at least to us when
electrons don't bounce off one another

they have void one another and this
makes the problem much much simpler to

describe and
of course this theory of quantum Christos.

Then I said explains why copper conducts
electricity explains why Diamond

doesn't conduct electricity explains
why silicon is a semiconductor and

it underlies you know
most of the technology.

You know the computer revolution and
the transistor and.

But sometimes electrons don't do
their own thing sometimes in Crystals

the electrons care about
the other electrons and

these are sometimes called
complex quantum crystals.

And a nice example is Crystal
called manganese oxide it's got

the same crystal structure as sodium
chloride salt with the sodium

chloride there on the two sub lattices
of a cubic lattice and that's true for

the magnesium oxide atoms and
the theory that Landau developed.

The quantum theory of
crystals which suggest that.

Or implied that manganese oxide would be
an electrical conductor should be like

copper but it isn't insulated
the electrons don't move it

insulated to electrical.

You know the electrical voltages
that are put across it and basically

what what happens is that the electrons
get stuck on their respective atoms and

we sometimes call these
type of insulated is.

A very famous English physicist
a certain level Mart and

I particularly like this picture of him
because he looks like the scientists in

back to the future when my.

I didn't meet him I don't know did
you meet him did he look like they're

good Lord.

Well.

Hoops so good OK So so
in some sense these complex Christe

crystals you might think they're simpler
because the electrons don't move and

they're insulators but
the electrons still have their spin and

the spin gives one both a headache and
gives one some interesting physics and

so the spin of the electrons in
these complex crystals often it

is that it develops an ordered pattern or
ordered structure and so here is just

a schematic supposed to represent what's
called an empty feral magnet where

HOF of the electron spins up and
the other half a down in this staggered

Patten we're going to
look at other types of.

Spatial order in such complex insulators

what's sketched here is a if
you will a crystal of these

purple lips it is and what these popular
lips is are supposed to represent is

two electrons which are in neighboring
atoms forming a chemical bomb.

And forming out what's in
what's called a single that.

And.

Physics and I call these valence bonds and
this would be cold but

it is just a valence bomb crystal.

And both the empty foam magnet and the.

Chemical bomb Crystal are examples on of.

Magnetic order or symmetry breaking
order in in these complex.

Insulators But I want to ask is
can the quantum motion be so.

Fierce if you weld that the.

Melts even even that are temporary
just the quantum fluctuations even in

the ground state can they melt the order
and the answer is surprising Yes And

when that happens we call the behavior
spin liquid and spin liquids or

something which you know what about for
some you know twenty or thirty years but

it's really only the last ten years that
any sort of theoretical understanding has

emerged and maybe only the last five years
whether nice experimental candidates which

appeared to be exhibiting
spin liquid behavior and

going to show a movie of a caricature of a
spin liquid So if you might have seen this

but of course a credible physicist and
you know sufficiently old that my use

of the computer is very limited I do
use e-mail and my ten year old daughter

you know gets really angry that I you
know intentionally mix up Face Time and

Facebook but his is my movie so
hold your applause so

what you're supposed to imagine is that
you have this chemical on Crystal and

that due to quantum mechanics
they start fluctuating around so

this is the.

I mean maybe someone can
show me how to make a video.

And maybe someone should make
a You Tube video of all of this spin.

So there's a spinning liquid caricature of
a spin like when you're supposed to think

about these pictures as quantum mechanical
fluctuations quantum states and

it's actually a very complex behavior but

it's behavior that extremely interesting
now you might want what is a spin liquid

OK I mean it has this funny you know
sort of fluctuating pattern Well I've

said that a spinning liquid doesn't have
any magnetic order it doesn't have this

chemical bond order effect it doesn't have
any order whatsoever it's like a liquid

just looks the same everywhere that's
why I call the spin liquid but

what it does have is something called
quantum entanglement and in particular it

has a type of quantum entanglement called
non-local quantum entanglement and

quantum entanglement is a rumored and
has been used a lot in the last ten or

fifteen years and in fact is giving
one a sort of a nice framework to

think about systems with many
quantum degrees of freedom but

it really hard you know many years and

I'm Stein referred to century Department
tangle and as spooky action at

a distance the fact that in a quantum
mechanical system the you know the whole

is not just the sum of
the parts are different parts

of the quantum system really have to be.

Included in the whole sort
of a holistic description.

And so do illustrate that in fact the
non-local and quantum entanglement imagine

a chemical Bawn built from two
electrons on their respective atoms and

those electrons can sort of fluctuate
between two quantum states down up and

up down and that was this purple
chemical bond now you want to imagine

Alison Bauld who are the stars of
quantum information theory and

Alice grabs a hold of one atom and
Bob grabs a hold of the other atom.

That is they'd grab the ends
opposite ends of a chemical bond and

break it into two and you might say
OK well that's fine but then Alice

perhaps has the down spin electron and Bob
on his Adam has the ups and electron but

actually it could be more complicated and
more interesting than that because Alice

could have had the up spin electron and
Bob could have had the downspout electron

and the way one really should be
describing this is that in fact Alice and

Bob share a chemical bond and.

Neither of the spins is either up or
down but if Alice or

spin is up then bobs is down and
vice versa but they're really in something

what's called a quantum superposition so
one would say that Alice's spin and

Bob spin on their respective atoms are
quantum in Tangled and in in a very real

sense then Alice and bad are themselves
quantum entanglement particularly if they

then look at the measure of
the spin of the electrons and so.

I'm saying Alison Bauld by then you
know one together as opposed to

two separate individuals.

So that's fine it's
quite mechanical useful.

Can one make money from it
I mean I know this is the.

Twenty first century and
money is everything.

And the place where quantum entanglement
might make money is in quantum computers

and so I want to talk next
about quantum computers and.

The sort of physical motivation for
quantum computers is that as

the transistors on a silicon
chip get smaller and smaller

which that has to happen in order for the
you know the engineers to cram in more and

more transistors on to the chip they get
smaller and smaller a Quantum Mechanics

becomes kind of a start messing
things up potentially in principle

quantum fluctuations could fluctuate
between a transistor being in the ones.

Or the zero state so
this is a problem and I'm sure you've all

many of you have heard of Moore's Law
Gordon Moore the founder of Intel

suggested I mean I think it was
way back in the seventy's that

as a function of the year the number
of transistors on a chip should grow

exponentially and I remember.

It was a nine hundred eighty when I
had just graduated from college and

I spent a summer at Bell Labs and

there was a lot of excitement around
that Bell Labs at that stage.

People were trying to develop
what was called a V.L.S.I. and

Paul primers what that stands for.

Yeah very large scale integrated
circuits with thirty two thousand

transistors on the chip that's
what that was the goal and but

you know now well in two thousand and
ten transistors

the number of turns of the chip is over
a billion and that's really getting pretty

appreciable in the number of neurons in
our head is about one hundred billion.

So it's really quite remarkable but as I
said the transistors are getting so small

as a crime together that it's
causing a potential problem.

But it also has as well as the prob
potential problem it offers an opportunity

and Richard Fineman back in the early one
nine hundred eighty S. realised that if

one could build a computer
that was processing.

Quantum mechanically that it might
be possible to do calculations and

computations on such a quantum computer
which would be impossibly hard

on a conventional classical computer
like you know the computer and

the silicon chips in our laptops or
our cell phones and this notion of

quantum quantum computer really took off
when in one thousand nine hundred four.

Peter shore is a mathematician
MIT I think it was that

actually at Bell Labs at the time.

He showed that if one had a quantum
computer which we don't but if one had one

that it would be possible to take a very
long number maybe one hundred digit number

and prime factor rise and break it
into a product of its primes and prime

factorization is something which is very
very time consuming and very difficult and

becomes exponentially more difficult
as the size of the number gets

bigger exponential in the number
of bits in the number.

And so.

You realize though that a quantum
computer if one could implement

a particular algorithm which he developed
that it would be possible to factorize.

Prime factor as very low numbers
into a time which grows only

pull in no merely with the with
the number of bits in the number and

this got the attention
all of everybody and

in particular got the intention all of
the international security agents and

other agencies in the United States
because one of the most secure encryption

methods that used called R.S.A. In fact.

Works because it's very difficult to.

Factorize prime numbers and and my
understanding of the R.S.A. is this is as

follows so let's say that Paul and
I meet and we.

Share a.

Fifty or one hundred digit prime number.

And then Paul goes to
his dean's office and

I go into my in the loft in Santa Barbara.

And I want to send a message to
him say this really sucks and but

I somehow don't want anyone
else to see that right so

what I would do is I would take another
prime number and color of my message

in that other prime number prime
number be so we share prime time.

I would multiply A and B. together to get
a two hundred digit non prime number I

would send that over the Internet
openly then we get the two hundred

digit number and he'd divide
through by our shared hundred digit

prime number a to get out the prime
number be that I hadn't coded my message

to send to him so that's you know very
secure in corruption method because it

takes just enormously long amount of
time to try to prime factor rise using

a classical computer and it would take for
example for three hundred to four hundred

digit prime number it would take something
like the age of the universe or longer but

a quantum computer would in principle
be able to prime factorize very

long many digit numbers
you know very rapidly.

That's fine however the challenge then
in building a quantum computer that

could do this is to try to
control quantum entanglement

when really is trying to control the
spooky action at a distance of something

that spooky is hard to control and so
there's been an enormous amount of effort

trying to build what one
might call cubit computers so

in a classical computer the bit is zero or
one.

And it could be an up spin in
your magnetic memory or or

down spin in a little magnetic
Demain in a magnetic memory and

in quantum mechanics in a quantum computer
that's replaced by a cubit which is really

just a quantum spin could be an electron
spin it could be the spin of a proton.

And that spin can be in two states up or

down but a bit as you know a quantum
mechanical spin a Q. cube it can be

can do in the more interesting state it
can be in a linear combination of up and

down where here and B.
are in general and complex numbers and

so the efforts to build a cubic quantum
computer is essentially to take

electron spans or nucleus spins or of the.

Quantum of him.

Nicol.

Elements that behave like that have two
states so they behave like a cubit and

try to put them together to
make a many cubit computer

which then would in principle if one
could control it be a quantum computer

now there are two things about this which
is difficult the first really is one has

to isolate this quantum computer
from the environment and

in addition one has to.

Isolate it one also has to manipulate
it when we see a run a program.

Right so you have to isolate it and

control it and
it's those two things which are sort of.

You know.

Make it extremely difficult to build a
workable quantum workable common computer.

Isolation and control.

But it's worth the effort and
the power of the quantum computer

sensually would be in the fact
that multiple cubits can be

entangled in some very complicated
quantum mechanical States and

they can be known locally entangled so
one could spin on one side of the quantum

computer could be entangled with a spin on
the other side of the quantum computer and

the quantum information that one would be
manipulating could be stored locally and

controlled and on locally and measured and
some non-local fashion as well so

this would be you know
the desired cubit computer but

as I say isolation from the environment
is the would be the big challenge and

you know if you look at the computer and

look at one of the spins it becomes
isolated with with you and that's and

that's a serious serious issue and
so it's a serious issue

because isolation is very hard core
mechanical systems a very fragile and

so they have to be very well isolated and
over the last twenty years there's been

an enormous amount of
effort put into different.

Possible platforms or
hardware for you know for

building up a quantum
computer cube it by cubit.

Electron and nucleus spins in
diamond if you have a nitrogen.

They can see a center a nucleus spins and
solids and liquids

trapped Adams which are cool to very
low temperatures in optical lattices

superconducting junction
those injunctions can.

Serve possible cubit in a superconducting
quantum computer trapped

in ion traps electrons and
charges electron charges and

spins in little metallic quantum dots and
so something that's very hard is of

course very expensive and the kind of
remarkable thing and that's really

the trend as far as I can tell in science
recently is that things are becoming so

expensive that the government
condom forward to fund anymore but

fortunately you have our
Saviour's Google and

Microsoft and I.B.M.
and any C. So big companies.

Even software companies Google software
company the only hardware that they're

trying to build is a quantum computer
I mean it's actually quite remarkable

a colleague of mine at Santa Barbara and
John Martino this is one of the world's

leaders on you know working with
superconducting injunction cubits

Google has now set him up in a lab about
three or four miles off the U.C.S.B.

campus giving him you know I don't know
how many tens of millions of dollars

to try to you know build
a quantum circuits and

computers with injunctions Microsoft
has been putting in you know

tens of millions of dollars over the last
decade probably more like fifty million to

push off what's called a top
a logical a quantum computer and so

what we need more money and there's other
other platforms here that haven't been.

You know found the rich corporate
donors that one would like but

you know I learned about Elisa
new companies adore sorts of

things like Apple Facebook all
Apple I know about Facebook and

Twitter so I want to know you know
Mark Zuckerberg is Facebook right so

which part of which quantum computing
platform is he going to be going to

support I mean it's a I don't
know who runs Twitter is that.

You know what's the name.

OK so which which part of
the hardware is he has.

The thing is I'm not being facetious
that's it's quite remarkable I mean we you

know he these guys could you know throw a
little bit of money in the direction and.

Good OK so in the remaining time I
want to turn to you know something.

Much more speculative.

But in some sense perhaps more
interesting which is the possibility that

there is quantum processing
going on in our own brains and

now Roger Penrose who's you know
famous among other things but

for working with Stephen Hawking and
there's this movie about Stephen Hawking

recently that came out and you know
Roger Penrose character is in there and

in one thousand eight hundred nine
Roger Penrose wrote this book

basically trying to argue
that that consciousness and

this requires But first what
requires quantum mechanics brains or

something beyond a classical Turing
machine argued and that moreover

the rules of quantum mechanics would have
to be augmenting in that the collapse of

the way function somehow had to be
connected with our conscious access.

And then he pushed further and suggested
that quantum gravity effect might be

operative in the brain and
he teamed up with a biologist.

And wrote a couple more
books suggesting that

in the brain it was
the microtubules which is.

Which of these small tubes inside cells
which hold the structure of the cell might

be somehow serving as the holding
the quantum mechanical information.

That was necessary now the skeptics
physicists they lie often

scoff at you know where and
you know things I was too young to be so

confident at law fingers I was I was
twenty nine when I read this and

you know it's a brilliant book I recommend
it to everybody who hasn't read it and

you know it's a you know amazing you know

Bennett suggestion he was only the first
person to suggest that consciousness and

quantum mechanics are somehow connected
I mean you know and in the you know

there's a lot of money being made in
the spiritual world when I was single for

a few years and
I don't live in Santa Barbara and.

You know.

I would basically you know rather than say
I'm a condensed matter physics I'd say I

do quantum mechanics and
usually that was an implication was

taken that I was spiritual and.

I didn't disabuse the.

Anybody of that.

But in the right the loft and the laughter
is basically comes back to what I was

saying earlier is that if
you have some process and

this goes a biological process it could
be even molecules rotating in water or

it could be protein folding or
it could be you know action

potentials you know spiking spikes
trains going down neurons that

the characteristic frequencies are low
one hundred hertz ten to the fourth or

to you know maybe ten to eleven thirty
with these temperature scales the quantum

mechanics below which the point is becomes
important a tiny tent minus eight Kelvin

ten minus six Kelvin and them in
the body temperature is way too hot so

bottle to process is a thermal then
not quantum The body is too hot for

quantum mechanical effects.

And I think.

Most physicists would say
that's the end of the story and

I think I would have said that was the end
of the story until about three years ago

and the reason I think it's not the end of
the story is that what's assumed here is

that the system is in thermal equilibrium
and in the context of quantum computers

the whole business is about isolating
you want to isolate the electron

spin you want to isolate the nuclear spin
or the superconducting junction you don't

want to be in thermal equilibrium with
the environment so what can us and

that's what I've been doing is what
are the degrees of freedom in biology and

in the brain which is sufficiently
isolated that one could imagine some sort

of quantum processing being implemented
with those degrees of freedom and

the only choice are nuclear spins nuclear
spins are very isolated it turns out

particularly in the wet environment and so

to give you an example well first of
all as you know if the proton hasn't

been a HOF and his a so D.M..

Nucleus and has some protons and

neutrons has a spin the sodium Spin of
the sodium nucleus is three high as if so

if you take sodium chloride table salt
throw it in water the sodium chloride

you know separate of a sodium plus iron
and then you know the clever people that

can do nuclear resonance experiments can
measure how long it takes for the nucleus

Spin of the sodium nucleus turn tangle
with everything else in the water and

the time is about a tenth of a second OK
so it's long on microscopic timescales but

it's short on human time scales now.

It turns out if you take lithium chloride
rather than sodium chloride the time scale

rather than a tenth of a second is ten
seconds that's a little bit longer and so

now I want to just discuss with him for
a few minutes and in fact lithium for

me was the segue into this.

Exploration of seeing whether or

not the brain might be quite a process
the nucleus spins so Lithium is a you know

the third simplest atom it's got
three electrons and and it's but

it's addition it's a drug which is
amazingly effective at tempering mania and

bipolar disorder this was discovered in
one hundred forty nine that it could do

this the F.D.A. approved this in the mid
one nine hundred seventy S. and I sat

down you know three years ago and said
I want to understand how lithium works.

I like lithium I take it
tastes good it also works

what does it do when you take high amounts
of with them it flattens your aspect and

when you come down if you know if
you become you know more alert and.

For people and I don't take much but for

people who suffer from serious mania where
their brain is just running rampant.

They often the only drug that helps them
is Lithium and it brings that brain down

so that it can sort of be controlled they
can control it and they can function.

So how does lithium work.

And how does any psychiatric
pharmaceutical work in fact how does

aspirin work if I What is a headache.

I was alcohol work you know
how does any drug list or

elicit work no one understands and the
reason they don't understand is because in

order to understand medications or
drugs or.

What you know aspirin.

How it modifies one's conscious state
the tenor one's concept when it's

in order to really understand that
you have to understand the mechanism

the biological the biochemical
mechanism underlying consciousness

which is a scientific question and I think
it's you know how do we as scientists

to try to not only as this is not only
understand the world that's out there but

to understand the conduit
through which we.

Stan the world out there which is
our brains and our consciousness.

So I started learning about lithium and

you know I learned something which is of
course a well known fact to many people is

that lithium is too isotopes to stabilize
a total of seven in the six the natural

abundance of lithium seven is ninety two
percent and the theme eight is six or

eight percent so C.V.S. pharmacy
lithium is essential the theme seven.

And the difference is one extra
neutron in the From seven and

one less the neutron and
with him six and so I thought why not

buy isotopes separated lithium you
can do Cambridge isotope companies

one company has many companies and take
lithium six and give it to some rats with

him seven and give it to them rats some
control rats we don't give any lithium and

look to see whether any
differences in behavior.

And I was really excited about this
because it was a doable experiment and

it seemed extremely unlikely that would
one would see any effect whatsoever but

I realized that if one did see
an effect it would be remarkable and

what had incredible implications I felt.

And then in the most amazing Damn my
scientific career I stumbled on a paper

one hundred six where
they did this experiment.

And I'll just very briefly describe
this experiment it was done at

the Cornell University Medical School in
York City done by neuroscientists and

psychiatry just and they just want to
they were studying lithium there just

in lithium and this was the norm
that they could turn and so

they took about twenty female rats
divided them into four groups

ten days in their drinking water lifting
six with them seven control rats and then.

They impregnated these female rats
with with lithium three male.

Males and

doing the twenty they just Station
period they continue to feed these.

The Rat female pregnant rats
looking six I think seven and and

they control rats and then they gave birth
to the pups and they looked at two things

one was the mothering behavior of rats of
them of the female rats and other rats and

the other was the development of the pups
but the thing which was interesting

to me with that was the mothering behavior
and here is basically the summary of what

they found and on the one hand it's
remarkable but it's last column here which

I'll show you in a second but so what do
they look at the mothering behavior they

looked at the nest building How much did
the the rats Bill nest How often did they

nurse their pups grooming up pops off into
they you know clean their pups retrieve

the pups the pups were taken away
reaching for food state of alertness.

And the control rats were average.

To worrying that you know did the people
that were looking at these rats and

saying that behavior is average know
that they were they control rats or

was it a blind study did the rats not you
know was it single or double blind or

and not you know it's not clear
from this experiment how cafe.

Things were done I mean it's a reputable
institution but this is the data that they

report although I will say that
sometimes subject subjective.

Descriptions of things are just as helpful
as you know objective numbers you know how

like how many seconds did this rat stay in
that corner of the box as opposed to you

know that rat looked like it was not a
nest building you know absent so any case

Italy's two columns lift him seven and
naturally occurring lithium that C.V.S.

pharmacy lithium which is essentially
what's ninety percent with him seven and

what they found or
reported is that nest building was absent

nursing was infrequent short for
short duration grooming a pup so

infrequent retrieval pups and frequent
grooming a self absent reaching for

food in frequent state of
alertness low OK And this is.

What high doses of lithium does to people
and you know both my own experience and

experience of family members and
other people I know if you

take high doses of lithium your your
affectations flattened it kind of kind of

dumbed you down a little bit so
what lithium six.

Remarkable result they reported is
that the nestling was excessive.

The nursing was very frequent and

long duration the grooming was excessive
Well these were the cleanest pups ever

the retrieval of pups was excessive They
were very safe grooming itself was average

reaching food average the state
of alert is very high.

That's the drug I want.

I want higher learning.

And I now have a patent lithium six or
isotope modified lithium

as a treatment for depression and
other psychiatric illnesses.

Suggesting that lithium six might
be used as a treatment not for

mania but for
depression increasing alertness levels and

I'm basing the premise behind my
desire to get this pattern entirely on

this column in this paper from
one thousand nine hundred six but

I've been trying for two and a half
years to get this experiment redone and

I'm fairly confident now that doing this
for what I'm on sabbatical at Stanford

that this experiment will will be will be
done is probably done in the spring but

it's remarkable if this is right and I am
a skeptic as anyone else it would say that

women best neutron makes
all the difference.

It's really quite incredible and you could
say OK well they have a different mass

seven to six and well but Lithium has
a very tight hydration cloud and but

there is one very big difference in
the theme six and the thing seven and

that is the time it takes the nuclear
spin when the lithium is in more to to

entangle with everything else and
lithium seven it was ten seconds and

that I mentioned that in lithium
six it's five minutes and

when I saw that I go Well you
know my memory is not much long.

In five minutes you know that's a real
human scale time could nuclear stones

be being used as quantum
processing in the brain well.

I said imagine that that are being
used on a process in the brain let

me try to reverse engineering which nuclei
could be responsible which molecules could

be being used what would be
the processing and how would it work and

I don't have time to really talk
about that in any sort of detail but

what I do the sensually did is I wrote
down a list of you know necessary but

surely not sufficient requirements which
would have to be satisfied by biology and

chemistry in order for
the evolution to have you know

discovered if you will processing
with nuclear spans the first and

foremost being a biological I would want
with a very isolated nucleus spin to serve

as the neural cubit a mechanism for
transporting.

The cubit through the brain a mechanism
for untangling pairs of nuclear spins and

then I started saying Life to Live start
learning biology have to start learning

chemistry and I didn't know these
subjects in order to see whether or

not these questions had you know
whether whether they were you know

possible in the biological context so
what about the new a cubit

Well it turns out you can write compelling
arguments that it's that you require

a nucleus spin of magnitude one hot.

That's that's what you need because
then electric fields don't disturb

the nuclear spin and so you can ask of
the common biological elements carbon

hydrogen nitrogen and phosphorus and
software I really like this chair not so

I remember that and the bio electric
Alliance protests in calcium chloride

magnesium you know which ones have
nucleus been a half the proton but

OK we're not going to do
imagine quantum processing

with the cube it in water is a proton but
phosphorus so

fast is the putative neural cube it
has a nucleus and a half its only way.

An isotope Foster is thirty one.

OK the first first works are that's
that's the end no comics in the brain.

Let us prosperous occur in biology right
because it's basically always bonded to

four Oxygen's in a tetrahedral arrangement
that's got the cycle phosphate ion.

This is a sort of a schematic
of what it looks like

the first everywhere in biology
adenine triphosphate and

Di phosphate and the mana phosphate
this fossil limpid this the D.N.A.

backbone has changed there
are two hundred if not more

enzymes which are big proteins which
catalyzed chemical reactions which which

relate which cut off the end phosphate
all of the new triphosphate in grew it

on to some other protein so phosphate to
just you know they're everywhere in us and

they're associated with energy transport
energy storage and then energy use.

Well and I said OK What's the if you
take a fast and stick it in water

what's the nucleus then lifetime of the
phosphorus nuclei How long does it take to

entangle with the water Well it turns out
it's about one second and the reason it's

not five minutes like lithium six which
I thought it might be is that a proton

binds to the negatively charged oxygen
oxygen charge minus one the proton is

positively charged and so a Ph of seven
protons bind to the oxygen in the Proton

nucleus been in the phosphorus nucleus and
talk to each other through the oxygen and

that ends up in tangling the phosphorus
nucleus spin with water and

particularly when they protons hop on and
off the the faucet on what happens so

they said OK that's not good what I
was looking for there is a different

biological Cateye in a positively charged
Ion like the proton which could outcompete

the proton in binding to the oxygen
of these of this phosphate molecule.

And I spent some time thing.

About magnesium but
then I realized that calcium.

Might serve that purpose
bone is calcium phosphate.

Milk main ingredient is
calcium phosphate and

it turns out that there's about three or
four papers.

That I discovered I mean you know found.

In the context of bone growth
where evidence was presented and

pretty strong evidence that.

In simulated biological fluid that
is basically with in which certain

concentrations are added to be appropriate
for the exercise of the fluid in mammals

in us that the calcium phosphates
which is floating around as I and

in the solution bind together to make
calcium one phosphate six so this is.

Calling as opposed to molecule it was
suggested that it might be sort of

an element of bone mineral structural
unit and bone mineral by them and

Posner and I seventy five but
this molecule is remarkable.

It's the number of market things about
it it's one in a meat in diameter

calcium in oxygen don't have any nuclear
spin the festers have nuclear spins of

sixteen hogs are contained in this thing
since it's almost a sphere it can rotate

very rapidly in water which is necessary
to get long nucleus been lifetimes.

The other thing which is a rocket it's
not chemically react with anything.

Except protons it can melt bone melts in
acid I don't know if you've seen all of.

Breaking Bad right there was one scene
where they tried to melt the body and

acid in the bones melt in acid
these molecules will melt in

acid but not a PH of seven.

And because they're small cure is
not reactive not chemically reactive

it may well be in biology and
biologist do not know about it in fact

it was only discovered four or
five years ago.

It's the metal kewl that was necessary for
me to be that in order for

my program that I was pursuing to not
reach a dead end and to continue and

so the story goes on I don't have
time to tell you about it and

it involves these pose of molecules and.

Tangling phosphorous nuclear spins and
binding these poser molecules and

about three or four days ago a week ago I
realized using these personal markers was

a very natural way to get
an exponential speed up in

memory retrieval and something that's
amazing about our brains is that we

you know where mazing that we're treating
memories most of the time I mean

like if you go back to where you were when
you were a kid and if you smell a familiar

smell you like it takes you right back
it's incredible We're very good at pattern

recognition we're it's really memory
retrieval and so it appears that.

In the picture that I'm developing
using these pose of molecules.

That a natural thing that emerges is
a an exponential improvement in the.

In.

Memory retrieval because you know due
to quantum mechanics you know that's

something I was really excited about and
going to push So anyway no kind of process

with nuclear spins you know I'm this
is something I'm very excited about and

going to be continuing for
at least number of years probably and

it's a really a multi-pronged attack.

You know making these pose of molecules
and trying to characterize them and

you know maybe do scattering experiments
on to nuclear magnetic resonance on them

look at the phosphorous nucleus and
lifetime has been looked at putting other.

Purity is put in the tops of
calcium which have nuclear spin and

there's also a set of experiments in vitro
with enzymes that transport phosphate

through ion channels and I've been
visiting with a professor at U.C.

San Francisco the medical Well
you see some disco who doesn't.

Purton and.

Trans membrane protein which transport
phosphate and then there in vivo

experiments like the lithium I should
have experiment which I'm hoping

can be redone and we'll see what happens
so that's pretty much all I have to say so

kind of crystals you
know rocks electrons or

quantum mechanics at room temperature
quantum computing it's all about isolation

it's isolation and yet
control that's what's hard.

And quantum called Mission coming out of
the brain it's also about isolation and

control nuclear spins are very
isolated and in fact in a more nuclear

resonance liquid state quantum
computing was the first

thing that came out to quantum
computing you know hit the presses so

to speak because people doing becoming
that residence on on molecules and

liquid you know they've been doing you
know some sort of quantum processing to

begin with but they ran into problems
about how you could prepare untangle

States and so forth but
if you think about it in biology.

Inside the cell and even outside the cell
biology has you know evolved for

two and a half billion years
to be a molecular machine

you know par excellence I mean just
incredible you know a cell as a city

manipulating molecules around so
you know we've had what twenty or

thirty years to build quantum computers
we've got up to three or four cubits.

You know evolution had two and
a half billion years and

maybe that got up to ten to the fourteenth
cubits in our head or not and

I'm determined to try to find out and
the reason I want to find out is

you know multiple levels one is as
a treatment you know mental illness

if you know if I brains are actually
quantum processing with nuclear spins and

you know that's really what
evokes consciousness then

that if we want to design psychiatric
drugs that's going to be.

You know important to know and also just
from the point of view of physics and

quantum mechanics and and

the notion of what it means for
a quantum kind of away from to collapse.

So anyway that's that's that's where it's
at now and maybe I'll come back in five

years to tell you it didn't work out and
that I raised my lifting DOS

program.

Actually I don't know that work I did I
do find that surprising I do know that

the show was a very tight.

Because lithium is small and
so the electric feels a large.

But I didn't I would be interesting
to hear about that and.

But the thing is you know how
might this can be working well.

It's either chemically or electrical or
both maybe Chemically it's not clear

that it reacts chemically with anything
in liquid or grow so I believe it can

be inside this posed a molecule but that's
a separate thing how about electrically as

an ion that can go through channels where
Lithium the concentration of lithium

a therapeutic dose is a factor of a
hundred smaller than sodium hundreds more

than potassium I mean it's you know tiny
the list in concentration is comparable

to the calcium concentration next or
selling a fluid so that's maybe a clue.

I don't know if you can maybe
email me the reference or

give it to the author
of the pre-shared it.

No list him or isotopes of that.

Either.

Yeah I mean they seem hard a bit but
with people the effects

of lithium are in mood I mean you
know sort of high level behavior.

And.

So rats extremely intelligent much
more intelligent than mice and.

So if one's an interest in behavioral
you know what's behind the behavioral

manifestation of lithium when
really wants to use mammals.

And in the context of what I'm
working on I want to use mammals but

first I want to read a breads because
invertebrates the calcium and

phosphate concentrations are not so finely
regulated as they are in invertebrates and

also you know the main ingredient
of milk is calcium phosphate and

so mammals you know.

But.

Yeah.

Well it would connect with information.

Yeah I mean you know that's I.

Know it's I mean I have a it's
not I mean it is speculation but

it's a precise story that I have but
it can be difficult in thirty seconds but

let me let me say the the main
thing is you have to convert.

Entanglement in the nuclear spins
to chemical reaction rates.

And so if.

So that's the first thing is to.

Think about and fact realize that
a molecule like H. two for example or.

Because of quantum in destroying her
ability the nuclear spin states are in

tangle with the state and rotational
States can affect the chemical reaction

rates so that's that there's a link
potential link between chemical reactions

and within which essentially
classical What's that going and

the entanglement of nuclear spins.

The lever link though is through
those chemical reactions if these

Posner molecules melt
like the costumes and

phosphate just come apart which they
do would in an acidic environment.

Vessels in neurons of a PH or
five point five.

If they melt and those calcium is get
into the pre-set map ignore on that

very low concentrations of calcium
trigger you know transmit a release and

calcium is the you know it's a secondary
messenger One thing I read I liked which

was calcium is the chemical the electrical
to chemical converter in biology because

it can both go through ion channels
carrying you know electricity if you will

and that it can chemically bind as well as
it does inside inside neurons and in and

stimulates you know biochemical activity
and so that those are the you know

the two elements at the story but it's.

In private flush flush it
out much more but thank

you.

Men I do actually I didn't say that I
didn't lift them it's five minutes I think

in this part of the molecule naive
estimates give anywhere from days weeks or

months but but
having said that including computers or

something whatever a correction right
that one's supposed to be able to.

You know store the quantum information.

Redundantly and do every correction and
keep the quantum.

Processing going indefinitely and
the figure of Mary to

this always used is the ratio between
the decoherence time scale and

the time and the you know cubit operation
time scale and in in the you know these.

Efforts to build one of computers
the effort to get it to go up to the ratio

maybe one hundred you know hundred fifty
coherence time you know in units of

the cube it time one thousand
well if you have a the.

The the nucleus been talking
about time is a day or

even Actually even if it's five minutes
the ratio between five minutes and

the microscopic times of the chemical
reactions you know which is maybe you know

and molecules moving around is nanosecond
you know is thirteen orders of magnitude.

So you know I don't think one
would need to have a single

you know the similar person a molecule
the nucleus spends being protected for

fifty years although frankly it that's not
out of the out of the question but that's

something that we're going to try to
measure the phosphorus nucleus man spends

but.

Yeah.

Yeah no that's I mean.

Yeah no I mean many that one can
imagine I mean and you know making.

You know testing and putting in
the enzymes and these POWs in a moment he

was in creating the entanglement and
you know one could imagine doing that and

of course using magnetic fields
nuclear magnetic resonance.

To look at things but
when you ask about the magnetic fields and

the brain this room mysteries
broods navigate some birds on

the Earth's magnetic field
which is hot for gallops.

And you think about the energy scales are
you know tiny compared to K.T. What about

people will listen they call transcranial
magnetic stimulation which is basically

you took a kitchen magnet and you shake it
like this for half an hour by your head.

Three days a week it helps with
depression it's approved by the F.D.A.

for depression.

And another.

Apparent fact is that when and
there's experiments been

done of this system magically worrying
about technicians in functional M.R.I.

rooms is that if you take
a magnetic field of maybe a Tesla

with a great intimate feel and put your
head like this you will feel dizzy.

And.

I don't know if anyone and
them are experimentalist here.

OK So then I can state that every N.M.R.

Experimentally I must say yes when
they were first a student and

they you know had to lean in to
turn something they feel dizzy.

That's

strange.

I don't know whether whether
any other vertebrates or

mammals have posed the molecules.

Yeah I know that exactly.

Right so it is so invertebrates the I mean
you know the things I've looked up to get

data on and like to see elegant or
the fly there the calcium.

To phosphate ratios you know
tend to be all over you know

a factor of ten to one tense.

In.

Vertebrates the cows in the phosphate
ratios have to be sort of fairly finally

regulated the ratio to make sure the bone
just doesn't take over the whole bodies or

dissolve away.

But.

Yeah.

Well OK So but you know if the story is
right one would say that an invertebrate

would not be quantum processing you know
but you know look we should be able to in

principle see if these POWs molecules are
in you know but human extracellular fluid

Are they may other men Malian
fluids are they there in flies or

worms I mean these explosions that can
be done you know they can take some

effort.

Yeah I mean you know
that's I think that's.

The that's.

But I think the simplest
system is in vitro right and

and in a test tube and so I think but.

But if you're going to ask a rat you know
do you feel you know manic or depressed or

something you know so we really I mean
we need to do this right experiment and

then we need you know in
depending on how that works out.

You know I need to know whether if I
switch out lithium six lithium seven as

I'm taking that I can feel differently and
you know only I could tell you.