Navigating with Quantum Entanglement

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We often think of quantum mechanics as only affecting only the smallest scales of reality, with classical reality taking over at some intermediate level. But in his 1944 book, What is Life?, the quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger suggested that “incredibly small groups of atoms, much too small to display exact statistical laws, do play a dominating role in the very orderly and lawful events within a living organism.” Schrodinger was a visionary - and perhaps very specifically in this case. Because it turns out we might need all the weirdness of quantum mechanics to explain birds.

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Hosted by Matt O'Dowd
Written by Dan Garisto & Matt O'Dowd
Graphics by Leonardo Scholzer, Yago Ballarini, Pedro Osinski, Adriano Leal & Stephanie Faria
Directed by Andrew Kornhaber
Assistant Producer: Setare Gholipour
Executive Producers: Eric Brown & Andrew Kornhaber

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[flyingskyward]

I look forward to CERN's large pigeon collider.

[nickvoelker]

I love these videos. They give me that old "I skipped the previous three days, and didn't do the assigned reading" feel.

[richardwilliamsiv]

So birds have the most advanced heads up display in the known universe.

[Canadian_Ry]

"... swallows, European especially."
I heard that African swallows are non-migratory from a guy who was on some ramparts.

[MrSchrodingersCat]

Let me rephrase that opening line for ya, Matt. No quantum weirdness required.

“Some theories have suggested that birds have iron structures in their beaks, [...] but today we are going to talk about an increasingly favored hypothesis, [...] birds aren’t real.”

[immko]

Feels like we are in the process of "Quantum Mechanics are too small to have any effect on macro world" transforming into "QM is everywhere, all the time".

[colintidwell]

As an ornithology student who has been watching this show since the literal beginning I am so happy. This video was made for me....not actually but it feels like it!

[TheFojar]

4:50 “So they can tell the direction to the nearest pole, but don’t know which pole it is.”
So, if the Earth’s magnetic field switched polarity, the birds actually wouldn’t care, or even notice, except for a brief weird period in the middle of the transition.

[matthewluecke]

At least no one is suggesting MRI-ing coconuts to see if they have structures allowing them to migrate with the swallows.

[SamuelLiJ]

There is a slight inaccuracy when taking about singlet and triplet states. In fact both the singlet state and the triplet state with zero S_z are superpositions of |up, down> and |down, up>. The difference is only in the relative sign between the states. The third state in the "triplet" of states you mentioned is not linearly independent of the first two, so the four states you mentioned don't form a complete basis for the four-dimensional state space of two electron spins.

To summarize:
Singlet = (|up, down> - |down, up>)/sqrt(2)
Triplet = |up, up> or |down, down> or (|up, down> + |down, up>)/sqrt(2)

[chrisfrolik]

Birds have the cryptochrome browser extension installed

[garethdean]

When Russel's teapot turns into an iron kettle, it can call itself black.

[maddycarbuncle]

"Birds of many a feather using quantum physics to flock together to navigate the hidden lines of a geomagnetic spacetime" - Poetry

[stateoftheart]

Can't believe we get this super high quality content for free.

[MrRolnicek]

That quantum photosynthesis is a REALLY interesting one to me.
I'd hope to see a full video on that but I don't think there's enough research out there to make a full video.

[tahamohiuddin]

Gives a whole new meaning to a "bird eye's view".

[danhitchcock]

Sometimes I have no idea what you're talking about but I still end up watching the whole video nodding my head.

[nemethdaniel]

Quantum biology is quite fascinating! A few years ago I've heard a lecture about the quantum mechanics of photosynthesis. It seems, that depending on the polarization of the incoming photon, it can get trapped inside a molecule of a leaf, causing some funny effects.

[NewMessage]

That explains all the birds in the Kurzgesagt vids.... 🤔

[JJ-frki]

I have a double CPhil (meaning completed coursework and exams) in a double PhD program, and am over and over again impressed with this channel. O'Dowd and team are careful, accurate and excellent explainers--not the case with other physics populizers. I've learned so much, that I'm putting aside time for 3 days a week of Physics Study in 2021.