Einstein's Moon: Bell's Theorem and the Curious Quest for Quantum Reality - Hardcover

Peat, F. David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0809245124 ISBN 13: 9780809245123

Publisher: Contemporary Books, 1990

Synopsis

The development of the quantum theory is one of the greatest scientific achievements of the twentieth century. It has led to enormous technological innovations, from computer chips to lasers, and each day physicists an engineers around the world use it to predict and exilian new phenomena. What is not understood s why it works. Unlike classical physics, quantum theory totally discards causality, declaring that events on the subatomic level simply happen. Einstein refused to believe in a reality hat precluded cause and effect. "Dod does not play dice with the universe," he declared. He especially objected to the theory's insistence that particles, forces, and events seemed to come into existence only when measurement or observation was made. "Do you really believe," Einstein once asked his colleague Abraham Pais, "that the moon only exists when you're looking at it?" For more than half a century physicists and philosophers debated whether the quantum theory really was a complete and accurate description of reality.Then in 1964, physicist John Bell proposed a brilliant method to resolve the issue. "Bell's Theorem," says the eminent physicist Henry Stapps, "is the most profound discover of science." By the early 1980's a number of elegant experiments applying Bell's Theorem had proved that the quantum theory, which speaks in terms of probabilities rather than actualities, Is indeed a complete explanation of reality- God does play dice with he universe! Einstein's Moon is the story of the development of the quantum theory and of the philosophical problems it poses. The book describes, in layperson's terms, how Bell's Theorem works, as well as the experiments that demonstrate that reality is stranger than any of us could ever have imagined.

Edition details

• Publisher: Contemporary Books
• Publication date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0809245124
• ISBN 13: 9780809245123
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192