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What Is Real?

The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics

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About this listen

The untold story of the heretical thinkers who challenged the establishment to rethink quantum physics and the nature of reality.

Every physicist agrees quantum mechanics is among humanity's finest scientific achievements. But ask what it means, and the result will be a brawl. For a century, most physicists have followed Niels Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation and dismissed questions about the reality underlying quantum physics as meaningless. A mishmash of solipsism and poor reasoning, Copenhagen endured, as Bohr's students vigorously protected his legacy, and the physics community favoured practical experiments over philosophical arguments. As a result, questioning the status quo long meant professional ruin. And yet, from the 1920s to today, physicists like John Bell, David Bohm, and Hugh Everett persisted in seeking the true meaning of quantum mechanics.

What Is Real? is the gripping story of this battle of ideas and the courageous scientists who dared to stand up for truth.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio on our Desktop Site.

©2018 Adam Becker (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc Physics Science Black Hole Mathematics Thought-Provoking Cosmology
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I'm not normally driven to review anything but this book is stunning in content and story and brilliantly read.

superb book and extremely well read.

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A fascinating account of the science, history, philosophy and politics of the foundations of quantum mechanics from its inception to the present. Always interesting, sometime eye-opening. Becker does not get into the mathematics but nonetheless does a good job of explaining some difficult concepts such as Bell's inequality.

A fascinating account

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Not easy digested, but never expected to comprehend it, really. A good history of QP in most respects.

Quite hard going, (for me).

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I was aware of the physics involved before listening to this splendid audio book, having something of a background in it, but what I wasn't aware of was the history of the personalities of all the scientists involved and how their individual contributions sometimes complemented (pun intended) and sometimes interfered with (another pun intended) one another.
A thoroughly engrossing, detailed and enjoyable telling of a most important story.

A marvelloius story, well-told.

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Essentially, quantum mechanics can't be boring. The double slit experiment and delayed choise experiment keep on dazzling the mind. However, this dazzling is why you read a QM book. The title of this book gave me hope that in the last 20 years there might have been found a more suitable answer for the interpretation of QM. Unfortunately, this book does not provide an answer, it just sums up the different historical viewpoints/interpretations from many different theoretical physicists. Essentially, if you read some QM books before there is not much new in here, although the historical in depth story is quite appreciable. For my taste, it would be nice if there were more practical examples as a change. The last chapters tease a bit with modern day applications and explanations of phenomena, but it sticks with mentioning, while explaining would have been nice. In the end, a pretty solid and readable book.

Pretty solid and readable book

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