Smashing Atoms, Computing the Quantum

The Large Hadron Collider is the world's largest and most powerful atom smasher, but could you control it for yourself? During this high octane, hugely interactive and comedic talk, you will get the chance to find out. Through a series of interactive games and activities, you will become particle physicist for the day. You are at the cutting edge. You are in charge! Can you control the Large Hadron Collider? Please bring your smart device for maximum participation.

Join me on a journey where we challenge classical reasoning and learn to think quantumly. Through live demonstrations—using 3D glasses to show how quantum mechanics encodes information in superposition—we’ll discover how quantum computers explore all possibilities simultaneously and how physics naturally solves problems. Finally, we tie these insights together with an experiment designed to shift your intuition from classical to quantum, unveiling exciting applications in cryptography.

Have you noticed that artificial intelligence (A.I.) has sort of…taken over? Well, that’s as true in science as everywhere else. A.I. is being applied to every field of research, every investigation, such that it’s now effectively impossible to get scientific funding unless you shoehorn A.I. in. So, what is A.I. learning? Shockingly, we scientists generally don’t know!
This talk is a discussion of recent research investigating what it truly means to “know”, and whether our own form of understanding of physics overlaps with that of the machines we are training to be “intelligent” on our behalf.