Helgoland

The Sunday Times bestseller

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Helgoland

By: Carlo Rovelli, Erica Segre - translator, Simon Carnell - translator

Narrated by: David Rintoul

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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

The Number One bestselling author of The Order of Time is back with a stunning book about the enigma of quantum physics

In June 1925, twenty-three-year-old Werner Heisenberg, suffering from hay fever, retreated to a small, treeless island in the North Sea called Helgoland. It was there that he came up with one of the most transformative scientific concepts: quantum theory.

Almost a century later, quantum physics has given us many startling ideas: ghost waves, distant objects that seem magically connected to each other, cats that are both dead and alive. Countless experiments have led to practical applications that shape our daily lives. Today our understanding of the world around us is based on this theory. And yet it is still profoundly mysterious.

In this enchanting book, Carlo Rovelli, one of our most celebrated scientists, tells the extraordinary story of quantum physics and reveals its deep meaning: a world made of substances is replaced by a world made of relations, each particle responding to another in a never ending game of mirrors.

Shifting our perspective once again, Rovelli takes us on a riveting journey through the universe so we can better understand our place in it.

© Carlo Rovelli 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

History

History & Philosophy

Physics

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Critic reviews

With the publication of his million-selling book Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Rovelli took his place with Stephen Hawking and Richard Feynman as one of the great popularisers of modern theoretical physics (Sam Leith)

Modern physics has found its poet. . . Rovelli is a wonderfully humane, gentle and witty guide for he is as much philosopher and poet as he is a scientist (John Banville)

A global superstar. . . Rovelli is making the grammar of the universe accessible to a new generation

The most fun physicist to be with -- as well as the greatest explainer of physics (Bryan Appleyard)

The man who makes physics sexy. . . the new Hawking. . . His writing is luminous. By the time I had finished reading Seven Brief Lessons on Physics I was in serious awe of the author (David Aaronovitch)

Most relevant

I really enjoyed Carlo Rovelli's "There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness" and was keen to read / listen to more from him. Some of the material in this short book was covered in his previous work. Helgoland covers Werner Heisenberg's visits to a German island in the 1920s where his original thinking formed what is now know as quantum physics. I do not mind too much that there is an element of repetition here as the story is told so well. Rovelli does not attempt to explain quantum physics to the reader but he does explain why it is so complex and he writes with the maxim of "never attempt to express yourself more clearly than you can think".
It was interesting to consider that Heisenberg defined objects in the way they interact with others and the amazing concept of entanglement of correlated objects. The certainty of classical physics may have been a comfort to many physicists but it is now found to be merely a probability. And when these concepts are extended to the fields of philosophy and even metaphysics it is not difficult to see why many have lost their minds trying to understand these concepts.
Interestingly, when I came to write this review after having streamed and finished the audio through my smartphone, the Audible account on my laptop told me that I had not listened to sufficient of the audio book to post a review. Maybe this was an example of quantum physics in action? After all, some of these ideas were originally recorded in Buddhist texts of Nāgārjuna four thousand years ago. Or it could just be that I have not updated the software on my phone for a couple of weeks.