232 attoseconds
Chinese scientists may have measured the frame rate of the universe
Everyone thought quantum entanglement happens instantly
Two particles
no matter how far apart they are
one of them changes
and the other changes at the same instant
Zero delay
zero time
like the whole universe did a synchronized refresh in the same frame
Einstein called this spooky action at a distance
meaning this thing is absurdly fast
fast like magic
but in October 2024
scientists from Shenzhen University Peking University and TU Wien
jointly published a paper
in the top journal of physics
Physical Review Letters
They did something nobody had ever done before
they timed the formation of quantum entanglement
the result was 232 attoseconds
Hello
hi everyone
I'm Wang Lijie
What does 232 attoseconds even mean
one attosecond equals a quintillionth of a second
232 attoseconds
is the time light takes to travel about 70 nanometers
70 nanometers is about one thousandth the diameter of a human hair
In our everyday world
this time is so short it basically doesn't exist
but in the world of quantum physics
these 232 attoseconds
may be the first time humans have touched the frame rate of the universe
Let me first make clear what this experiment actually did
To understand this experiment
you need to know some background first
the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics went to three scientists
Pierre
Agostini Ferenc
Krausz and Anne L'Huillier
their contribution was inventing the experimental method to produce attosecond light pulses
Before them
the shortest timescale humans could control was the femtosecond
that is one quadrillionth of a second
they pushed this limit down by three more orders of magnitude
entering the attosecond era
this is like giving physicists a super high speed camera
fast enough to capture every frame of an electron's motion
Shenzhen University's Jiang Weichao and his collaborators
used this super high speed camera to film the birth of quantum entanglement
They shone ultra short femtosecond laser pulses on helium atoms
why helium
because a helium atom has only two electrons
it's the cleanest model for studying quantum entanglement
Two electrons
one system
no extra noise or interference
The laser knocks one of the electrons out of the atom
the electron that flies away and the one that stays
form a quantum entangled state
their fates are locked together from then on
measure one and you know the state of the other
Here comes the key discovery
the electron that flies away
its birth time is not fixed
if the electron left behind is in a lower energy state
the flying electron is born about 232 attoseconds later
In other words
the establishment of entanglement is not a timeless jump
but a process with a temporal structure
which energy state the remaining electron ends up in
in turn affects how early or late the flying electron is born
these two things are not independent
they are through a 232 attosecond time window
tightly woven together
What does this mean
it means entanglement is not a switch like instant event
it has a process
it has a temporal structure
when the universe creates the quantum correlation between two particles
it takes a tiny bit of time to render that correlation
You can imagine it like this
you're playing an online multiplayer game
your character makes a move
and another player's character needs to respond in sync
you think this sync happens instantly
but if you had a precise enough timer
you'd find the server needs a tiny amount of time to process this sync
this processing time
is 232 attoseconds
Now here's the question
does this prove the universe has a frame rate
before I answer
I need to clear up something a lot of people get confused about
you may have heard of a concept called Planck time
Planck time is the smallest unit of time derived from theoretical physics
about ten to the minus forty three seconds
I talked about this in an earlier video
if the universe is a simulation
Planck time is like the clock cycle of this computer
the most fundamental hardware frame rate
so what's the relationship between 232 attoseconds and Planck time
232 attoseconds is ten to the minus sixteen seconds
Planck time is ten to the minus forty three seconds
the two differ by nearly twenty seven orders of magnitude
roughly a factor of ten to the twenty seventh
so 232 attoseconds is definitely not the most fundamental frame rate of the universe
but it is something else
it is the first thing humans have ever measured experimentally
the render time of a quantum process
here's an analogy
if Planck time is your computer's CPU clock cycle
say one clock cycle is a fraction of a nanosecond
then 232 attoseconds is more like your graphics card
the total time it takes to render one frame
the CPU runs through many many clock cycles
to finish rendering this one frame
the render time of one frame is far longer than one clock cycle
but it's exactly this render time
that reveals a key fact
the picture is not continuous
it's pieced together frame by frame
it's just that the frame rate is so high
so high your eyes can't detect any flicker
this is the truly revolutionary meaning of this paper
before this
physicists generally believed the formation of quantum entanglement was instantaneous
costing no time
but now the experiment says
no
the formation of entanglement takes time
even though that time is as short as 232 attoseconds
it is not zero
if even quantum entanglement the process thought to be the most instantaneous
is not truly instantaneous
then is any physical process truly zero time
if the answer is no
then it means the timeline of the universe is not continuous
it is discrete
frame by frame
this discovery reminds me of a concept that is central in Buddhism
the kshana or instant
in the Buddhist Abhidharma texts there is a precise time unit called kshana
the Abhidharmakosha records
that a single finger snap contains sixty five kshanas
by modern estimates
one kshana is about a dozen milliseconds
of course this number is nowhere near the same order as 232 attoseconds
off by more than ten orders of magnitude
but the point is not the number itself
the point is Buddhism made a core claim two thousand five hundred years ago
time is not continuous
all phenomena arise and perish instant by instant
the you that you think exists continuously that table that planet
are all constantly arising and perishing at extremely high speed
in every instant
the old you perishes
a new you arises
you are never the same you
you can do an experiment right now
close your eyes for three seconds
think of nothing
then open them
you'll find
you can't think of nothing
in those three seconds
thoughts fly by like a stream of comments
each thought arises stays for an instant then vanishes
the next thought immediately fills the gap
your consciousness is not a smooth river
but a dense string of dots
it's just that the dots are packed too close together
you mistake it for continuous
ancient practitioners had no attosecond lasers
but they had a more direct observation tool
their own attention
they sat down
tuned their attention to the highest precision
and watched thoughts arise and perish frame by frame
in the end
they reached a conclusion strikingly consistent with modern physics
this is the real meaning of the emptiness of the five aggregates
the five aggregates are form sensation perception mental formation and consciousness
form is matter
sensation is feeling
perception is concept
mental formation is volitional activity
consciousness is awareness itself
the Buddha said the five aggregates are empty
not that these things don't exist
but that they have no lasting unchanging substance
each of them arises and perishes in an instant
like the individual frames on a strip of film
played at high speed creating the illusion of continuous motion
you think your hand is solid
that's because the atoms that make up your hand
vibrate and reassemble in the quantum field at extremely high frequency
the hand at each instant is not the hand of the previous instant
you think your consciousness is coherent
that's because your brain
refreshes your conscious picture at gamma wave frequencies of tens of hertz
the gaps between every two frames are seamlessly bridged
the emptiness of the five aggregates is not about nothingness
it says
all the continuity you experience
is the result of high frame rate rendering
In 2016
Musk said something very famous at a tech conference
he said
the odds that we are in base reality
are only one in billions
Musk's logic is simple
if a civilization becomes advanced enough
it can create simulations indistinguishable from reality
then the number of simulations will far exceed base reality
a random conscious being
is most likely inside a simulation
not in base reality
this argument was first made by Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom
rigorously formulated in 2003
but the simulation hypothesis always had a classic rebuttal
if the universe is simulated
it should have a resolution limit
just like video games have a smallest pixel
but our physics seems to allow infinite continuity
you can divide a ruler infinitely small
now
this rebuttal is falling apart
Planck length tells us
space has a smallest pixel
Planck time tells us
time has a smallest frame rate
and this 232 attosecond paper tells us
even quantum entanglement the most supernatural looking phenomenon
has a measurable render time
the universe looks more and more like a program running on some substrate
but I want to remind you
I covered this in an earlier video
the correspondence between the Planck scale and the Yogacara school
you might think
232 attoseconds is the experimental version of Planck time
it's not
232 attoseconds is nearly ten to the twenty seventh times larger than Planck time
they are not the same thing
the correct understanding is this
Planck time is the CPU clock cycle of the universe as a computer
232 attoseconds is this computer's
processing time to render one instance of quantum entanglement
just like your computer
the CPU clock runs at 3 gigahertz
each cycle is 0.3 nanoseconds
but rendering one frame of a game might take 16 milliseconds
the two differ by tens of millions of times
but they both tell you the same thing
this machine works frame by frame
not flowing continuously
this is what's truly exciting about this discovery
232 attoseconds is not the underlying frame rate of the universe
but it's the first time humans have caught experimental evidence of frames
if you place this discovery in the context of the emptiness of the five aggregates
you'll notice something very interesting
the Buddha said all conditioned things are like a dream an illusion a bubble a shadow
we've heard this line for two thousand five hundred years
most people read it as a literary sigh like life is but a dream
but if you reread this line from a physics perspective
its precision will send a chill down your spine
dream and illusion
means reality is like the brain with no external input
rendering images on its own
bubble and shadow
means all appearances are temporary with no lasting substance
arising and perishing in every frame
this is not literary rhetoric
this is a precise description of a discrete universe
have you ever thought about this question
why have you never actually seen the present moment
when light reflects off an object onto your retina
the retina converts light signals into electrical signals
the signals travel to the visual cortex and are processed into an image
this whole process takes about 80 to 100 milliseconds
in other words
everything you see right now
is actually the world of 80 milliseconds ago
you always live in the past
but you never feel this delay
why
because your brain is a prediction machine
it doesn't passively receive reality
it actively renders reality
it predicts what the next frame should look like based on past data
then presents the predicted image to you
when the sensory data finally arrives
if it doesn't match the prediction
only then does the brain update the picture
this works exactly like a game engine
a game doesn't render every detail of every object in real time
no graphics card could handle that
it only renders the direction the player is looking
the things within that distance range
the rest just keeps the data
without rendering the image
and one of the strangest findings in quantum mechanics
is that when a particle is not being observed
it is not in a definite state
only when you observe it
does it collapse from a probability wave into a definite particle
isn't this exactly rendering on demand
where you're not looking
the universe doesn't waste computing power rendering
the emptiness in the emptiness of the five aggregates
is not nothingness
its precise meaning is
there is no independent lasting observation independent substance
and what quantum mechanics says
is the very same statement
at this point
you might ask
isn't the idea of rendering on demand too bold
actually the physics community's discussion of this direction
is far more serious than you'd think
in 2024 a review published in Nature
Reviews Physics pointed out
attosecond science is revealing the role of entanglement in quantum processes
effects that had long been overlooked
in other words
when we studied quantum mechanics before
we always assumed measurement was instantaneous and entanglement formed instantly
but once experimental precision entered the attosecond range
these assumptions started showing cracks
232 attoseconds is the first crack
the significance of this crack is not how wide it is
but that it proves cracks exist
once there's a first
there will be a second
there's a deeper question worth thinking about
we all know the speed of light is the universe's speed limit
no information can travel faster than light
but have you ever wondered
why does the universe set this limit
in a continuous infinite universe
a speed limit is a strange thing to have
why exactly three hundred thousand kilometers per second
no more no less
but if the universe is a rendering system with a frame rate
the speed of light limit becomes very natural
any simulation has a bandwidth limit
the speed at which information propagates in the system
cannot exceed the system's own processing speed
the speed of light is the maximum data transfer rate of this cosmic computer
it's not that physical law happened to pick this number
it's that the underlying architecture makes it impossible to go faster
of course
I have to be honest with you all
reading 232 attoseconds as evidence of the universe's frame rate
is a reasonable conjecture
but it is not yet a confirmed scientific conclusion
the authors of the paper themselves made no such claim
what they found was a delay in the electron's birth time during entanglement
not a direct measurement of the universe's clock cycle
but this is exactly what's exciting about science
every new measurement
tears open a gap in old understanding
ten years ago
no one thought quantum entanglement could be timed
in 2023
the three pioneers of attosecond laser technology won the Nobel Prize in Physics
in 2024
Chinese scientists used this technology
to capture a 232 attosecond time window
what's next
here's an exciting timeline
in 1987
scientists first observed high harmonics
planting the seeds for the birth of attosecond pulses
in 2001
humans first produced a 250 attosecond light pulse
in 2023
attosecond technology won the Nobel Prize
in 2024
we used it to measure the temporal structure of quantum entanglement
the pace along this path is accelerating
maybe in another twenty years
experimental precision could advance ten more orders of magnitude
maybe one day
we really will directly reach the scale of Planck time in experiments
on that day
whether the universe is a simulation
may no longer be a philosophical question
but a physics question you can answer yes or no
but before that
I'd like to ask you a question
if the universe really is rendered frame by frame
then in the gap between two frames
what is there
the Buddha called that gap Nirvana
physics has not yet given it a name
if you have any thoughts on this question
or if you think this 232 attosecond discovery
has angles I didn't cover
tell me in the comments
I'm Wang Lijie
see you next time