Cosmic Tumbles and Quantum Leaps at the March Meeting

At this year’s meeting in Las Vegas, circus performers embodied mind-boggling quantum concepts on the stage.

By Sophia Chen | April 13, 2023

Credit: APS Physics

The Le Petit Cirque troupe’s physics-themed performance at the March Meeting.

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The APS March Meeting 2023 took place in star-studded Las Vegas, complete with an Albert Einstein impersonator (an APS hire with a pan-European accent) and 2022 Nobel Laureates John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger (they regaled an audience with quantum mechanics).

But the most eminent celebrity to make an appearance? Schrödinger’s cat.

The famous feline made an appearance in an APS-commissioned circus act titled “Cosmic Tumbles and Quantum Leaps” that kicked off the meeting on Sunday, March 5, in Caesar’s Forum, the conference venue. In a half-hour program, acrobats and contortionists leapt, spun, and threw each other in the air in choreography inspired by physics concepts. Nathalie Yves Gaulthier, who directed the performance, described the program as “Cirque du Soleil meets Lion King meets quantum physics.”

The performers were part of Le Petit Cirque, a Los-Angeles based youth circus troupe whose ages ranged from 9 to 16. They train between 20 and 30 hours a week, said Gaulthier, while also attending school, sometimes through homeschooling when they have to travel. “Even on this trip, they are being monitored by a labor board-certified studio teacher,” said Gaulthier.

The group calls themselves a “Youth Humanitarian Circus,” as their performances often raise money for important causes, including for people injured in land mines. The group performed at the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize concert in Oslo, Norway, as well as the Dalai Lama’s 80th birthday at the University of California, Irvine. “Our next goal is the pope,” said Nathalie Yves Gaulthier, the director of the troupe, before the show. The audience chuckled. “Not joking. I’m not kidding,” she said.

“People asked me, ‘Are you going to encourage our physicists to gamble?’” said Smitha Vishveshwara of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, who, as program chair of the meeting, helped produce the performance. “No. Las Vegas has an amazing performance scene. ‘That’s what we’re going to tap into,’ I said.”

Vishveshwara had read in APS News about a physicist, Julia Ruth, who had left a graduate school program in geophysics at Scripps Institute of Oceanography to become a full-time circus performer. Last August, Vishveshwara and other meeting organizers emailed Ruth to ask if she could help them produce a circus act for the meeting.

“They sent me a really long email, and I didn’t read it right away because it said ‘Dear Dr. Ruth,’” said Ruth. “Usually when someone sends that, they think I finished my PhD because of my publications from forever ago, and they want me to subscribe to something.”

Fortunately for Vishveshwara, Ruth still read the message. “I was like, ‘Yes. This has to happen. I have to be a part of this,’” said Ruth. She connected the APS meeting organizers with Le Petit Cirque, which Ruth used to coach for. Gaulthier, who founded the troupe, jumped at the opportunity. Gaulthier, Ruth, and Vishveshwara met over Zoom several times to plan.