Beyond Weird
Why Everything You Thought You Knew about Quantum Physics Is Different
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Beyond Weird
Why Everything You Thought You Knew about Quantum Physics Is Different
“Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.”
Since Niels Bohr said this many years ago, quantum mechanics has only been getting more shocking. We now realize that it’s not really telling us that “weird” things happen out of sight, on the tiniest level, in the atomic world: rather, everything is quantum. But if quantum mechanics is correct, what seems obvious and right in our everyday world is built on foundations that don’t seem obvious or right at all—or even possible.
An exhilarating tour of the contemporary quantum landscape, Beyond Weird is a book about what quantum physics really means—and what it doesn’t. Science writer Philip Ball offers an up-to-date, accessible account of the quest to come to grips with the most fundamental theory of physical reality, and to explain how its counterintuitive principles underpin the world we experience. Over the past decade it has become clear that quantum physics is less a theory about particles and waves, uncertainty and fuzziness, than a theory about information and knowledge—about what can be known, and how we can know it. Discoveries and experiments over the past few decades have called into question the meanings and limits of space and time, cause and effect, and, ultimately, of knowledge itself. The quantum world Ball shows us isn’t a different world. It is our world, and if anything deserves to be called “weird,” it’s us.
Since Niels Bohr said this many years ago, quantum mechanics has only been getting more shocking. We now realize that it’s not really telling us that “weird” things happen out of sight, on the tiniest level, in the atomic world: rather, everything is quantum. But if quantum mechanics is correct, what seems obvious and right in our everyday world is built on foundations that don’t seem obvious or right at all—or even possible.
An exhilarating tour of the contemporary quantum landscape, Beyond Weird is a book about what quantum physics really means—and what it doesn’t. Science writer Philip Ball offers an up-to-date, accessible account of the quest to come to grips with the most fundamental theory of physical reality, and to explain how its counterintuitive principles underpin the world we experience. Over the past decade it has become clear that quantum physics is less a theory about particles and waves, uncertainty and fuzziness, than a theory about information and knowledge—about what can be known, and how we can know it. Discoveries and experiments over the past few decades have called into question the meanings and limits of space and time, cause and effect, and, ultimately, of knowledge itself. The quantum world Ball shows us isn’t a different world. It is our world, and if anything deserves to be called “weird,” it’s us.
384 pages | 14 halftones, 19 line drawings | 5-1/2 x 8-1/2 | © 2018
Physical Sciences: History and Philosophy of Physical Sciences, Physics and Astronomy, Physics--Popular Books, Theoretical Physics
Reviews
Table of Contents
No one can say what quantum mechanics means (and this is a book about it)
Quantum mechanics is not really about the quantum
Quantum objects are neither wave nor particle (but sometimes they might as well be)
Quantum particles aren’t in two states at once (but sometimes they might as well be)
What ‘happens’ depends on what we find out about it
There are many ways of interpreting quantum theory (and none of them quite makes sense)
Whatever the question, the answer is ‘Yes’ (unless it’s ‘No’)
Not everything is knowable at once
The properties of quantum objects don’t have to be contained within the objects
There is no ‘spooky action at a distance’
The everyday world is what quantum becomes at human scales
Everything you experience is a (partial) copy of what causes it
Schrödinger’s cat has had kittens
Quantum mechanics can be harnessed for technology
Quantum computers don’t necessarily perform ‘many calculations at once’
There is no other ‘quantum’ you
Things could be even more ‘quantum’ than they are (so why aren’t they)?
The fundamental laws of quantum mechanics might be simpler than we imagine
Can we ever get to the bottom of it?
Acknowledgements
Notes
Bibliography
Index