QUANTUM - A Guide for the Perplexed

Jim Al-Khalili

W&N

2003

280 páginas

9h 20m

ISBN-10: 1841882380

Quantum mechanics is the most fundamental and important theory known to man. It underpins mordern science and technology and even provides us with a blueprint for reality itself. And yet it has been said that if you are not shocked by it, you quite clearly don't understand it. But its quantum physics really so unknowable? Is reality really so strange? And just how can cats be half-alive and half-dead at the same time?
Our journey into the quantum world begins with a simple experiment, nature's own conjuring tick, in which we discover that atoms - contrary to the rules of everyday experience - can exist in two locations at once. To understand this we travel back to the dawn of the twentieth century and witness the birth of quantum theory which, over the next one hundred years, was to overthrow so many of our most deeply held notions about the nature of our universe. Scientists and philosophers have been left grappling with its implications ever since.
From Schrödinger's cat and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle to quantum genes and quantum computers, this book untangles the weirdness of the quantum world. With short essays from quantum pioneers such as Michael Berry, Paul Davies and Anton Zeilinger, it explains the theories, explores their consequences and presents a cutting-edge guide to the current, and future, state of the science.