Physics World Stories Podcast · Physics World

Quantum steampunk: we explore the art and science

·40 min·3 clips

Bruce Rosenbaum found 'quantum steampunk' through a Google alert, leading to an unexpected art-science partnership.

Host Hamish Johnston explores the fusion of art and science with theoretical physicist Nicole Yunger Halpern and steampunk artist Bruce Rosenbaum. Nicole pioneered the scientific field of quantum steampunk, while Bruce creates sculptures blending history, art, and technology. Their collaboration centers on a physical sculpture of a quantum engine exhibited at the American Physical Society's Global Physics Summit. The episode defines steampunk as a reimagined history where Victorian-era innovators had futuristic technology, citing Charles Babbage's 19th-century mechanical computer design. Bruce describes the quantum engine sculpture as a fusion of classical thermodynamics elements, like pistons, with a central trapped-ion chamber inspired by an armillary sphere. Nicole explains the sculpture incorporates a Bloch sphere and arrow to represent a qubit's state, along with representations of a battery, clock, and hot and cold reservoirs. Quantum steampunk is presented as both an aesthetic and a term for quantum thermodynamics, a field examining how thermodynamic laws apply to small, quantum systems. Quantum thermodynamics asks how quantum phenomena like entanglement can enhance thermodynamic tasks such as extracting work, and it explores the divide between classical and quantum realms. The field differs from traditional quantum statistical mechanics by focusing on operational tasks and efficiencies, similar to how Victorian engineers sought better engines. A quantum heat engine, like the one depicted, takes heat from a hot environment, expels some to a cold one, and transforms the rest into work, with early proposals dating to the 1950s. These engines can be as simple as a single atom or ion undergoing a four-stroke cycle, with recent designs exploring many-body systems. Bruce set a Google alert for "steampunk" which led him to Nicole's work, and their collaboration began with a $10,000 grant. Nicole consulted with University of Maryland ion trapper Elena Green to ensure the sculpture's scientific realism. Bruce notes physicists at the summit initially thought the sculpture was a real, functioning engine. Nicole shares that writing her book's epilogue on the future of quantum thermodynamics directly inspired a new line of her research on autonomous quantum machines. The tone is conversational and educational, blending interview questions with detailed scientific explanations and personal collaboration stories. Listeners interested in interdisciplinary projects, the crossroads of physics and art, or accessible explanations of quantum thermodynamics would enjoy this episode. Those seeking purely technical physics discussions or skeptical of aesthetic approaches to science might find it less engaging.

As heard by us

A sculpture of a quantum engine frames a careful move from a physics summit into thermodynamics.

Hamish Johnston follows a visit to the Global Physics Summit in Anaheim into a discussion of quantum steampunk, with Bruce Rosenbaum's sculpture of a quantum engine serving as the episode's clear anchor.

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Why you'd press play

For when quantum steampunk starts with a sculpture of a quantum engine and opens into actual physics.

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