Some effects require two similar-looking cards—the eight of spades and eight of clubs, say—to be swapped, often quite brazenly. Methods for simulating free choice are among the oldest tools available to magicians. The idea existed at least as far back as , when Reginald Scot published The discoverie of witchcraft , the earliest known English-language book to provide detailed descriptions of conjuring tricks.
And yet, the insight that irrelevant, invisible factors can influence our decisions in predictable and unnoticed ways is just now getting its due in the academic world, most notably among practitioners of behavioral economics. The field has produced a steady stream of bestselling books, and earned one of its forefathers, Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
For audiences, magic performances often seem more impressive—and impossible—in retrospect. As Lachlan and Thomas have shown, there is clearly loads of interest in quantum physics and quantum optics down under. It is a large and active field in Australia and, like many countries, researchers have developed a strong research focus on quantum science and its wide range of applications.
As mentioned, we should perhaps think about what the future holds for humanity with the development of quantum optics! We are all familiar with computers and digital communications, which are electronic devices that enable us to perform an enormous range of tasks. But all of these technologies are based on the principles of classical physics — quantum optical technologies will run much faster.
If you have broadband in your home, ask your parents if you have optical fibre internet — that has significantly sped up the speed at which you can connect to the internet; there is a similar potential for optical computers, even if they are not quantum computers. Some of them will be very challenging to understand, but the abstracts should give you an idea of what is happening in the field.
Work hard and you have a great chance of success! An understanding of maths and physics is a basic requirement for studying quantum optics, but do try and focus on other subjects that may come in handy, such as English for writing theses, papers and presentations , and IT, which will help give you a greater understanding of computing.
At various times I visited universities for holiday programmes and public lectures, and I was enthralled by all the amazing instruments and lab devices. I think part of my interest in physics is just that I like playing with cool toys! When I was an undergraduate student, I applied for a student travel scholarship to attend the Australian Institute of Physics Congress.
The form had a field for areas of interest and I wrote quantum computing because it sounded cool to me. A professor saw this form and offered me a tour of their research lab, and I was so excited by the things I saw that I ended up doing my PhD under that professor!
After my PhD I moved to Germany to do postdoctoral research for a few years. I was successful in applying for an early-career research fellowship in Australia and came back to work with Thomas. I learned loads of things — but the main scientific tasks I worked on were temperature sensing and optical cavities light bouncing back and forward between two mirrors. We were trying to make a diamond-powered laser to measure tiny magnetic fields. This is very normal for early-career academic research.
I applied for numerous positions over a few years and was delighted to be offered an ongoing job at the University of Newcastle. This is geographically close enough to keep close collaborations with Thomas and other colleagues in the Sydney area. It means my research is interrupted more by having to teach luckily, I enjoy teaching , but it also means that I can make longer-term research plans and really work towards big goals and projects.
It is very much the language of physics, so improving your mathematical fluency will always serve you well throughout your studies and later career. I am lucky that it was an amateur interest of mine throughout school. If you have the opportunity to study some coding or software design, you should take it — I am sure it will benefit your interest in quantum physics. It is important to try and keep on top of the latest developments, so do your best to read science magazines and trawl through science websites.
There are also loads of high-quality YouTube videos explaining scientific concepts, which can help. Great to read about what you are up to these days, congratulations on your success! It's not something that is generally done, or maybe at all -- I'd love to see one funding grant that has a line item for the services of a magician, if somebody out there has one.
But it is long overdue that my peers in the conjuring profession try to take a more active role in the elimination of nonsense science by joining forces with scientists, and that scientists be open to the proposition. We are not scientists -- with a few rare but important exceptions, like Ray Hyman and Richard Wiseman. But our highly specific expertise comes from knowledge of the ways in which our audiences can be led to quite false conclusions by calculated means -- psychological, physical and especially sensory, visual being rather paramount since it has such a range of variety.
The fact that ours is a concealed art as well as one designed to confound persons of average and advanced thinking skills -- our typical audience -- makes it rather immune to ordinary analysis or solutions. This is where magicians can come in. I particularly like the way our associate, magician and skeptic Jamy Ian Swiss , has expressed this point:.
Any magician worth his salt will tell you that the smarter an audience, the more easily fooled they are. Did you ever hear of a sneaky amoeba?
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