And for a theory that was pretty much formulated by 1927 that is more than a bit embarrassing. They know how to use it to design new technology or predict the outcomes of experiments, but they do not truly understand it. Are you ready to get down and dirty with quantum mechanics?Ĭarroll’s opening salvo, and one of the main reasons to write this book, is that physicists do not understand quantum mechanics. And theoretical physicist Sean Carroll’s previous books have been lauded, some even winning prizes. Then again, the hallmark of good communicators is that they make complex topics understandable. It might thus seem foolhardy for a biologist to try and tackle a book like this. Where I have encountered it so far, I have admitted it went straight over my head. I guess it was inevitable that in my wider reading on subjects such as astronomy and physics I would eventually bump into quantum mechanics. We are on the threshold of a new understanding – of where we are in the cosmos, and what we are made of. Rarely does a book so fully reorganize how we think about our place in the universe. Step-by-step in Carroll's uniquely lucid way, he tackles the major objections to this otherworldly revelation until his case is inescapably established. The Many Worlds Theory of quantum behavior says that every time there is a quantum event, a world splits off with everything in it the same, except in that other world the quantum event didn't happen. Many of every one of us.Ĭopies of you are generated thousands of times per second. We just have to accept that there is more than one of us in the universe. Putting his professional reputation on the line with this audacious yet entirely reasonable book, Carroll says that the crisis can now come to an end. Academics discourage students from working on the 'dead end' of quantum foundations. Science popularizers keep telling us how weird it is, how impossible it is to understand. Quantum mechanics has always had obvious gaps – which have come to be simply ignored. Most physicists haven't even recognized the uncomfortable truth: physics has been in crisis since 1927.

His reconciling of quantum mechanics with Einstein's theory of relativity changes, well, everything. Already hailed as a masterpiece, Something Deeply Hidden shows for the first time that facing up to the essential puzzle of quantum mechanics utterly transforms how we think about space and time. Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist and one of this world's most celebrated writers on science, rewrites the history of 20th century physics.

Deeply hidden