Vlatko Vedral - From Micro To Macro: Adventures Of A Wandering Physicist

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Published by

World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

5 Toh Tuck Link, Singapore 596224

USA office: 27 Warren Street, Suite 401-402, Hackensack, NJ 07601

UK office: 57 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9HE

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Vedral, Vlatko, author.

Title: From micro to macro : adventures of a wandering physicist / Vlatko Vedral (University of Oxford, United Kingdom, National University of Singapore, Singapore).

Description: Singapore ; Hackensack, NJ : World Scientific, [2018] |

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017035579| ISBN 9789813229518 (hardcover ; alk. paper) |

ISBN 9813229519 (hardcover ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9789813231405 (pbk. ; alk. paper) |

ISBN 9813231408 (pbk. ; alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Physics--Miscellanea. | Science--Miscellanea.

Classification: LCC QC75 .V43 2018 | DDC 530--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017035579

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Copyright 2018 by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any means,electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrievalsystem now known or to be invented, without written permission from the publisher.

For photocopying of material in this volume, please pay a copying fee through the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. In this case permission to photocopy is not required from the publisher.

For any available supplementary material, please visit

http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/10696#t=suppl

Printed in Singapore

Judy - 10696 - From Micro to Macro.indd 1

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To my children

Mikey, Mia and Leo We are the Road Crew

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CONTENTS

Prologue: The Point of It All

Chapter I: Physics and its Troublesome Gap

The Big Gap

A Possible Solution

Information 23

Thermodynamics 25

Chapter II: Chemistry and Computing: Lost in Translation

Computers: Chemistrys Big Gap

Conclusion 55

Chapter III: Biology: The Biggest Gap of Natural Science

Quantum Nature

Indeterminism 88

Life and No Life

Conclusion: Can We Bridge the Social-Natural Science Gap?

Epilogue: The World, the Flesh and the Devil

Index 179

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PROLOGUE

The Point of It All

This book was born on a sticky, humid night in Beijing, but its

conception took place a few years earlier on a very different

evening. An Oxford dinner party, Hertford College. Think

mahogany, suits, free-flowing laughter and even freer-flowing wine.

Will Hutton was our host with the most a political economist,

writer and television presenter who is deeply concerned with the wealth

and education gaps that are ever-widening in the developed world. Wil s political instincts are left and liberal, his concerns about the future very much in tune with a majority of the young western generation.

Will is a man of many hats, and this particular night donned the

hat of college principal. He is a rare breed of human with impeccable

leadership skil s subtly underpinned by a friendly and thoughtful charm.

Everyone gets on with Wil . I challenge you not to.

The dinner was his idea: a gathering of twenty people and a lot of

hats business figures, media people, natural and social scientists. The discussion banner we were gathered under was Disruptive Technologies.

A major concern of Wil s is that the rising technological tide lifts only 1

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From Micro to Macro

a minority of boats and threatens to sink the majority of others. New

technologies, while empowering a large fraction of population, also tend to focus the wealth they generate into a much smaller minority. And this, apart from being unjust, is possibly the best recipe for creating social unrest.

Mind you, I say all of this with post-dinner hindsight. This was the

first time I had heard the phrase disruptive technology (it took me a couple of minutes to figure out that the drums which my thirteen-year-old son is so fond of playing is not one of them). I am not much of a geek (though

some of my friends may disagree) and I am certainly not an economist.

My only possible connection to the rest of the participants at Wil s

dinner, or so I thought, was my research into quantum information and its biggest potential application the worlds smallest and fastest computer, known as the quantum computer.

Quantum computers, once they are made (notice I am not saying

if), will most likely count as disruptive. By disruptive, I mean that

quantum technology would lead to a completely new set of problems.

It will solve some big existing problems of course, but as with any new

technology, it would in turn generate fresh problems of its own. And

these new problems, most of which we cannot even anticipate at this

stage, would likely require society to readjust in a big way (which would be rather disruptive).

As a physicist, I am more interested in the physics (obviously) the

why more than how these new technologies work. I am certainly far from tech-savvy. I must admit a lack of interest in following new business or media trends and typical y for a guy from Generation X, my children (all Millennials) have a far greater command of their mobile devices than me.

Dad, you still have a Blackberry? Whats that about? they cry, as if Im Ronnie Corbett in his fruit and veg shop. (Do you want your Blackberry

on Orange? he asks, holding up the two pieces of fruit.)

But at this dinner, I was real y a bit of an outsider. Fluid and enjoyable, the conversation meandered between various topics, from food shortage

to global warming to popularisation of science and politics. These are all big and complicated topics, especial y for a quantum physicist. We reside largely in the micro domain, and these are certainly macro topics. All I real y contributed was my well-versed thoughts about the importance of

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Prologue

communicating science to as wide an audience as possible in this age

of technology, it is essential to understand science if we want to know our world and our future. But otherwise, I was lost for words.

Then at some point, Will turned to me. Vlatko. What do you think

is our next big challenge? The room went quiet.

What on earth can a run-of-the-mill quantum physicist tell people