"An elegant and accessible" investigation of quantum mechanics for
non-specialists--"highly recommended" for students of the sciences,
sci-fi fans, and anyone interested in the strange world of quantum
physics (Forbes)
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.
