If you were popular actor Paul Rudd and had an afternoon to make a ridiculous film about fake quantum mechanics and chess with Stephen Hawking, Keanu Reeves, and Alex Winter (Bill from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure), sponsored by CalTech's Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, would you? The answer is yes, because that's exactly what Rudd did, and the result is an absurd and arguably educational short called Anyone Can Quantum.
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Prompted by Keanu Reeves—visiting from 700 years in the future—Rudd challenges Hawking to a game of "quantum chess" that, we're promised, will usher in a new age of quantum literacy. Basically, it's the excellent vision of the future Rufus shows Bill and Ted during the course of their excellent adventure.In the course of the short film, Rudd reads books about chess, Hawking's The Theory of Everything, Quantum Physics for Babies, and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. He gets dissed on Twitter by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, gets called a punk by Stephen Hawking, learns what a "legal trap" is, and saves the future timeline from ignorance of quantum mechanics. The whole shebang was directed by Winter, and his reunion with Reeves is as sweet and movie-reference filled as you could ask for. Like most Paul Rudd movies, it's kind of dumb, but we couldn't stop watching. Check it out below.
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