Physics is at a stalemate. Its two best theories\u2014Einstein\u2019s theory of gravity and quantum mechanics\u2014can\u2019t both be right. Vedral, a physicist at the University of Oxford, is placing all his bets on the quantum. Our physics woes, he says, come from our failure to see quantum theory as truly universal, governing everything from atoms to people to the universe. For this he blames proponents of the so-called Copenhagen interpretation for placing observers outside the scope of the quantum, granting them a special status to affect what they observe. Despite what you\u2019ve heard, Vedral insists, nothing depends on the observer. \u201cThe story I want to tell,\u201d he writes, \u201cis actually more beautiful, engaging, and convincing than the versions we have all heard for too long.\u201d The bulk of the book is concerned with possible (if not plausible) experiments to test the reach of the quantum. Can the gravitational field exhibit quantum entanglement? How about living things? Vedral claims that one experiment has already produced quantum entanglement between tardigrades (adorable micro-animals also known as moss piglets) and the components of a quantum computer. (Others claim it merely produced cold tardigrades.) Erwin Schr\u00f6dinger famously (and facetiously) described a cat in a superposition of both dead and alive. Vedral wants to put everything in superpositions: bacteria, physicists, clocks, the flow of time itself. Understanding how truly quantum everything is may require new language, new analogies, new mathematics\u2014even then, Vedral says, we may only accept the truth of the quantum when we ourselves can have quantum experiences. How? By redesigning our neurocircuitry to allow for \u201cquantumly augmented perception.\u201d These are wild ideas, which Vedral delivers with enthusiasm, technical know-how, and a few too many exclamation marks (\u201cHeisenberg decided not to quantize time!\u201d \u201cMaybe the whole of mathematics just follows from the laws of physics!\u201d). Average readers will find the details too abstruse. Readers immersed in popular physics may enjoy a new perspective. Is it more beautiful, engaging, and convincing than the rest? That depends on the observer.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Physics is at a stalemate. Its two best theories\u2014Einstein\u2019s theory of gravity and quantum mechanics\u2014can\u2019t both be right. Vedral, a physicist at the University of Oxford, is placing all his bets on the quantum. Our physics woes, he says, come from our failure to see quantum theory as truly universal, governing everything from atoms to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":4634,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4633"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}