Audiobook2 hours
Six Impossible Things: The Mystery of the Quantum World
Written by John Gribbin
Narrated by Matthew Waterson
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
5/5
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About this audiobook
Rules of the quantum world seem to say that a cat can be both alive and dead at the same time and a particle can be in two places at once. And that particle is also a wave; everything in the quantum world can described in terms of waves-or entirely in terms of particles. These interpretations were all established by the end of the 1920s, by Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, Paul Dirac, and others. But no one has yet come up with a common sense explanation of what is going on. In this concise and engaging book, astrophysicist John Gribbin offers an overview of six of the leading interpretations of quantum mechanics.
Gribbin calls his account "agnostic," explaining that none of these interpretations is any better-or any worse-than any of the others. Gribbin presents the Copenhagen Interpretation, promoted by Niels Bohr and named by Heisenberg; the Pilot-Wave Interpretation, developed by Louis de Broglie; the Many Worlds Interpretation (termed "excess baggage" by Gribbin); the Decoherence Interpretation ("incoherent"); the Ensemble "Non-Interpretation"; and the Timeless Transactional Interpretation (which theorized waves going both forward and backward in time). All of these interpretations are crazy, Gribbin warns, and some are more crazy than others-but in the quantum world, being more crazy does not necessarily mean more wrong.
Gribbin calls his account "agnostic," explaining that none of these interpretations is any better-or any worse-than any of the others. Gribbin presents the Copenhagen Interpretation, promoted by Niels Bohr and named by Heisenberg; the Pilot-Wave Interpretation, developed by Louis de Broglie; the Many Worlds Interpretation (termed "excess baggage" by Gribbin); the Decoherence Interpretation ("incoherent"); the Ensemble "Non-Interpretation"; and the Timeless Transactional Interpretation (which theorized waves going both forward and backward in time). All of these interpretations are crazy, Gribbin warns, and some are more crazy than others-but in the quantum world, being more crazy does not necessarily mean more wrong.
Author
John Gribbin
John Gribbin's numerous bestselling books include In Search of Schrödinger's Cat and Six Impossible Things, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Royal Society Science Book Prize. He has been described as 'one of the finest and most prolific writers of popular science around' by the Spectator. In 2021, he was made Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Astronomy at the University of Sussex.
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Reviews for Six Impossible Things
Rating: 4.888888888888889 out of 5 stars
5/5
9 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a good summary of Quantum information. It’s a little dense but still good if you have the basic concepts down.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Most kool but needs use of of 3D volumetric time