Rick tells Morty, “That book has everything they need to create snake time travel” set to a backdrop containing markings reminiscent of odd hieroglyphics on a chalkboard. These markings are actually redrawn from diagrammatic equations appearing in Jacob Biamonte’s book, Quantum Tensor Networks.
For reasons described in the book, certain classes of equations admit a formal diagramatic calculus. The equations appearing on the board prove what is known as the “snake equation”. This is fitting since Rick and Morty, Season 4: Episode 5, “Rattlestar Ricklactica” was centred around snakes that invent time travel.
When asked about the situation, Biamonte said: “So what if they copied the equations down wrong, Rick and Morty is the best thing to happen to the world since the Simpsons.”
The diagrams can be found on page 24, Equations (4.5) and (4.6) of
Quantum Tensor Networks: a pathway to modern diagrammatic reasoning
Jacob Biamonte
Book in review, 178 pages (2020).
The diagrams first appeared in
Tensor Networks and Graphical Calculus for Open Quantum Systems
Chris Wood, Jacob Biamonte and David Cory
Quantum Information and Computation 15, 0579 (2015)
