Content area
Full Text
QUANTUM PHYSICS A trek through the probable universe Beyond Weird: Why Everything You Thought You Knew About Quantum Physics Is Different PHILIP BALL Bodley Head: 2018.
Natalie Wolchover enjoys Philip Ball's grapple with slippery questions about the quantum revolution.
It takes care to handle the paradox of describing something that no one truly understands. The fastidious, plainspoken science writer and former Nature editor Philip Ball mostly achieves this ambition in his 23rd book, Beyond Weird, a clear and deeply researched account of what's known about the quantum laws of nature, and how to think about what they might really mean.
Quantum theory, developed in the early twentieth century by Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr and other luminaries, strips 'reality' of its usual meaning by seeming to say that nothing is certain about atoms or elementary particles until they are measured. A particle's location, for example, is a matter of probability. It is defined by a spread-out, abstract 'wavefunction' until the act of looking for the particle somehow collapses the wavefunction to one spot, inducing a single reality. We inhabit, as theoretical physicist J ohn Wheeler said, a "participatory universe" - and confusion stems from there. Ball tells us that quantum theory is "cognitively impenetrable". Yet he convincingly argues that the questions about it have sharpened and even changed profoundly over time - progress, in lieu of answers.
Along with the historic discoveries, Ball brings readers up to speed on todays "quantum renaissance". This active intellectual period is fuelled by quantum-computing research and the rise of quantum information theory, pioneered by...