The Schrödinger Sessions: Science for Science Fiction

Last weekend was our APS-funded outreach workshop The Schrödinger Sessions: Science for Science Fiction, held at the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland. The workshop offered a three-day “crash course” on quantum physics to 17 science fiction writers from a variety of media– we had novelists, short-story writers, screenwriters, and at least one poet. The goal was to provide a basic grounding in quantum physics and a look at current research in hopes of informing and inspiring new stories that will, in turn, inspire the audience for those stories to look more deeply into the science.

While this involved the usual complement of scrambling around with the planning– including some locked doors, a canceled tour, and frantic searching for demo equipment– the workshop came off wonderfully. The speakers were uniformly excellent the writers were actively engaged, and everybody got along swimmingly. One or two demos didn’t quite work as intended, but those were handled smoothly enough that I doubt anybody noticed.

Speakers were a mix of faculty from Maryland and JQI (plus me; I split the introductory material with Steve Rolston) and JQI post-docs, and we tried to cover a wide range of topics from the basic theory behind quantum physics to the concrete applications of the technology used to study the cool phenomena. Everybody did a great job, but I was especially impressed by Raman Sundrum, who did a very informal presentation, fielding questions and speaking off the cuff about a variety of theories beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. His presentation spilled over into the lunch hour, and if we hadn’t cut him off at the start of the final talk, they might still be at it.

As I said, the talks were excellent across the board. This was in no small part due to the overwhelmingly positive response from folks at Maryland– my fellow organizers say they’ve never had that quick an affirmative reply to any request for volunteers before. This is a nice counter to two common myths about science: first, that scientists are poor communicators, and second, that scientists only grudgingly take part in communicating their work more broadly.

(Even though I already knew the basic physics being discussed, I found the talks really useful for illuminating new-to-me ways of getting some of these ideas across. I fully intend to steal a bunch of the metaphors and explanations people used, particularly Trey Porto’s Plinko-based explanation of quantum statistics, Andrew Childs’s introduction of Deutsch’s algorithm with an interferometer, and Mohammad Hafezi’s magic-box analogy for quantum measurement.)

Thanks are, of course, due to all our excellent speakers: Mohammad Hafezi, Paul Hess, Elizabeth Goldschmidt, Chris Monroe, Andrew Childs, Steve Eckel, Jim Gates, Jimmy Williams, Raman Sundrum, and Allen Stairs. I’m also very grateful to Steve Rolston for going along with this crazy idea I had. Most of all, though, thanks to Emily Edwards of JQI, who did an amazing job dealing with all the logistics of housing, parking, food, transportation, A/V and demo gear, and all the rest. It very literally could not have happened without her.

We’re going to let the dust settle a bit before deciding when we’ll do this again, but things went well enough that I’m fairly certain it’s “when” not “if.” So, watch this space (and several others) for news of the next time.

And here are a few photos, because I have a fancy camera and I’m not afraid to use it: