Schrodinger's Kittens and the Search for Reality : The Quantum Mysteries Solved - Softcover

John Gribbin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1857994027 ISBN 13: 9781857994025

Publisher: Phoenix Paperbacks, 1996

Synopsis

Following on from his bestseller, SCHRODINGER'S CAT, John Gribbin presents the recent dramatic improvements in experimental techniques that have enabled physicists to formulate and test new theories about the nature of light. He describes these theories not in terms of hard-to-imagine entities like spinning subnuclear particles, but in terms of the fate of two small cats, separated at a tender age and carried to opposite ends of the universe. In this way Gribbin introduces the reader to such new developments as quantum cryptography, through which unbreakable codes can be made, and goes on to possible future developments such as the idea that the 'entanglement' of quantum particles could be a way to build a STAR TREK style teleportation machine.

About this title

Review

Astrophysicist John Gribbin first introduced the general public to the world of quantum physics in 1984 with his book In Search of Schrödinger's Cat. A dizzying, counterintuitive domain, the quantum world is so strange that Richard Feynman, the greatest physicist of his time, admitted, "nobody understands quantum physics."

Science has not stood still in the years since In Search of Schrödinger's Cat was written, and in this new book, Gribbin brings us up to speed on the latest developments. New interpretive models have been put forth about the nature of particles and light; experimental evidence has turned over many of the basic precepts of the Copenhagen interpretation, which says that until it is observed, the subatomic world exists only as a probability wave, lacking any objective reality independent of observation. The new models offer not only a paradigm independent of an observer, but also begin to unite quantum phenomena with relativity and Newtonian mechanics. This is not to say that the quantum realm has become more comprehensible. With particles existing simultaneously as particles and waves, feedback loops, and waves that move forward and backward in time, the quantum world is still a strange, strange place; it's just a little less solipsistic.

As in his previous books, Gribbin deftly translates the abstruse mathematics of these new theories into a highly readable narrative that informs as it entertains. Schrödinger's Kittens and the Search for Reality is a book that can be enjoyed by expert and layman alike.

From the Back Cover

"Nobody understands quantum theory", said Richard Feynman, and in the 1980s that was true. Now John Gribbin presents exciting new evidence about the nature of light that pulls together quantum theory and relativity theory into a coherent explanation of reality - solving the quantum mysteries. John Gribbin's bestselling In Search of Schrodinger's Cat, heralded as "absolutely fascinating" by Isaac Asimov, was the first book to present the quantum's many riddles. Now he returns with Schrodinger's "kittens", the offspring of his famously indeterminate cat. As a way of visualizing the many perplexing paradoxes of the new view of reality, Gribbin carries them to opposite ends of the universe, where their fate is determined by signals that travel faster than light and backwards in time. Elsewhere in the mysterious quantum world there are photons capable of being in two places at the same time. All this has much more than just theoretical interest. The practical applications are equally astounding. They provide for the serious possibility that quantum theory could eventually be used to develop a Star Trek-style teleportation machine, and how it has already found applications in uncrackable codes.

Edition details

• Publisher: Phoenix Paperbacks
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1857994027
• ISBN 13: 9781857994025
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272