Quantum physics is among humanity's finest scientific achivements. It explains why the sun shines and how our eyes see ; it powers the nuclear hearts of the most distant space probes and the circuitry in your phone. Yet for all its power, it's notoriously hard to decipher what quantum physics says about the real world around us. Since the 1920s, the predominant way of thinking about the meaning of quantum physics has been Danish physicist Niels Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation. A mishmash of solipsism and poor reasoning, Copenhagen ultimately claims that questions about the fundamentals nature of reality are meaningless. Buoyed by political expediency, personal attacks, and the priorities of the military-industrial complex, the Copenhagen interpretation has enjoyed undue acceptance for nearly a century. All the while, however, there have been physicists and philosophers who demanded a better description of reality, often at great personal risk. In What is Real ?, Adam Becker introduces us to the many brave researchers whose quest for truth led them to challenge Bohr's status quo. Among a cast of dozen scientists and thinkers spanning from Albert Einstein to Steven Weinberg are David Bohm, persecuted in a McCarthy-era witch hunt, who picked up Einstein's mantle and sought to make sense of the quantum world ; Hugh Everett, who found an infinite number of parallel universes lurking in the mathematics of quantum physics ; and John Bell, whose radically profound work brought the quantum debate into the laboratory and spawned the quantum information revolution. A gripping human story of the pursuit for scientific truth, whatever the cost, What is Real ? is intellectual history at its passionate best.

Auteur

Adam Becker

Éditeur

BASIC

ISBN

9780465096053

Langue

anglais

Année de publication

2018

Catégorie

Livre anglais, Science

Nombre de pages

370

Condition

Très bon état