Significant items occasionally come in tiny packages. 

In the most recent installment of the extremely-profitable Marvel Cinematic Universe, “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” the title character, played by Paul Rudd shrinks down to the quantum realm to give its despotic ruler, Kang, a massive headache. 

The film clearly got its star, Rudd considering about quantum physics, the field of science that describes physics on the subatomic scale. In a new YouTube video that has been viewed hundreds of thousands of instances, the Ant-Man star spoke to NASA quantum physicist Ethan Elliott. 

Elliot, who functions with NASA’s Cold Atom Lab, the space agency’s very first quantum laboratory in space, very first explained to Rudd what quantum physics is. Elliot touched on some of the counterintuitive functions of the quantum realm, such as the particle-wave duality of quantum systems that permits particles like photons and electrons to have each wave and particle-like qualities. 

Connected: Quantum entanglement: A uncomplicated explanation

Promotional art for “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.” (Image credit: Marvel Studios)

Elliot added that thanks to the probabilistic nature of quantum physics and the wave-like movement of particles, quantum systems can be regarded to exist in two contradictory states at after. Elliot gave an instance of this as particles seeming to be in two areas at one particular time. With that in thoughts, Rudd desires to know how this subatomic science influences our macroscopic lives on a day-to-day basis. 

“Quantum science is behind several of the technologies that we use just about every day, such as your telephone, computer system, GPS, or even MRI scanners for health-related imaging,” Elliot explained. “In the films, you can shrink down and go into the quantum realm. We cannot do that, but what we can do is make the quantum realm itself larger.”

The quantum physicist added that this is the objective of the Cold Atom Lab, which orbits the Earth inside the International Space Station (ISS).

The Ant-Man actor’s subsequent query is a massive one particular, ironically. He wanted Elliot to clarify how quantum physics can address some of the universe’s most significant mysteries.

A photo taken on Earth shows the core of the Cold Atom Lab, exactly where Bose-Einstein condensates are designed. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

“In current decades, scientists have come up with a new way to study the quantum globe,” the NASA physicist mentioned. “Employing lasers and magnetic fields, the Cold Atom Lab can make macroscopic quantum objects. It can amplify quantum effects, and then we place these massive quantum objects into space due to the fact that provides them additional time to interact with gravity.”

Elliot mentioned that by performing this, scientists can probe the mysteries of dark power, the force driving the accelerating expansion of the universe, and dark matter, which interacts with gravity but not light and is hence all but invisible. Elliot says these names are just placeholders for gravitational phenomena that scientists do not comprehend but and that the Cold Atom Lab could aid shed light on these “dark” elements of the universe.

“In ultracold temperatures, they are like a quantum lens that will hopefully one particular day permit us to see additional into the gravitational unknown,” he continued. “Studying quantum mechanics with ultracold atoms are the hardest experiments that you can do on a tabletop on Earth, and they are even tougher to do in space.”

Elliot went on to describe some of the achievements of NASA’s Cold Atom Lab, which was established aboard the ISS and at an altitude of about 254 miles (408 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface in 2018.

“We’ve designed the very first quantum bubbles, which can not be completed on Earth,” he mentioned. “And we’ve not too long ago designed two simultaneously current Bose-Einstein Condensates, two big quantum objects with which we can type exotic molecules or carry out new experiments of gravity.”

Elliot signed off by adding that there are several massive inquiries for this ‘small’ science to clarify and that these will be tackled by NASA’s Cold Atom Lab.

“For almost everything that we do know about quantum mechanics, there is a lot that we do not know,” he concluded. “And space opens up new avenues to discover these.”

Also starring Evangeline Lilly as the Wasp, Jonathan Majors as Kang, Michelle Pfeiffer, Bill Murray, and Michael Douglas, Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania opened in cinemas across the United States on Feb. 17, 2023.

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