This monograph identifies the essential characteristics of the objects described by current quantum theory and considers their relationship to space-time. In the process, it explicates the senses in which quantum objects may be consistently considered to have parts of which they may be composed or into which they may be decomposed. The book also demonstrates the degree to which reduction is possible in quantum mechanics, showing it to be related to the objective indefiniteness of quantum properties and the strong non-local correlations that can occur between the physical quantities of quantum subsystems. Careful attention is paid to the relationships among such property correlations, physical causation, probability, and symmetry in quantum theory. In this way, the text identifies and clarifies the conceptual grounds underlying the unique nature of many quantum phenomena.

Named a Best Book of 2021 by the Financial Times and a Best Science Book of 2021 by The Guardian “Rovelli is a genius and an amazing communicator… This is the place where science comes to life.” ―Neil Gaiman “One of the warmest, most elegant and most lucid interpreters to the laity of the dazzling enigmas of his discipline...[a] momentous book” ―John Banville, The Wall Street Journal A startling new look at quantum theory, from the New York Times bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, The Order of Time, and Anaximander. One of the world's most renowned theoretical physicists, Carlo Rovelli has entranced millions of readers with his singular perspective on the cosmos. In Helgoland, he examines the enduring enigma of quantum theory. The quantum world Rovelli describes is as beautiful as it is unnerving. Helgoland is a treeless island in the North Sea where the twenty-three-year-old Werner Heisenberg made the crucial breakthrough for the creation of quantum mechanics, setting off a century of scientific revolution. Full of alarming ideas (ghost waves, distant objects that seem to be magically connected, cats that appear both dead and alive), quantum physics has led to countless discoveries and technological advancements. Today our understanding of the world is based on this theory, yet it is still profoundly mysterious. As scientists and philosophers continue to fiercely debate the meaning of the theory, Rovelli argues that its most unsettling contradictions can be explained by seeing the world as fundamentally made of relationships rather than substances. We and everything around us exist only in our interactions with one another. This bold idea suggests new directions for thinking about the structure of reality and even the nature of consciousness. Rovelli makes learning about quantum mechanics an almost psychedelic experience. Shifting our perspective once again, he takes us on a riveting journey through the universe so we can better comprehend our place in it.

There is a growing understanding that the progress of the conventional silicon technology will reach its physical, engineering and economic limits in near future. This fact, however, does not mean that progress in computing will slow down. What will take us beyond the silicon era are new nano-technologies that are being pursued in university and corporate laboratories around the world. In particular, molecular switching devices and systems that will self-assemble through molecular recognition are being designed and studied. Many labora tories are now testing new types of these and other reversible switches, as well as fabricating nanowires needed to connect circuit elements together. But there are still significant opportunities and demand for invention and discovery be fore nanoelectronics will become a reality. The actual mechanisms of transport through molecular quantum dots and nanowires are of the highest current ex perimental and theoretical interest. In particular, there is growing evidence that both electron-vibron interactions and electron-electron correlations are impor tant. Further progress requires worldwide efforts of trans-disciplinary teams of physicists, quantum chemists, material and computer scientists, and engineers.

Bewildering features of modern physics, such as relativistic space-time structure and the peculiarities of so-called quantum statistics, challenge traditional ways of conceiving of objects in space and time. Interpreting Bodies brings together essays by leading philosophers and scientists to provide a unique overview of the implications of such physical theories for questions about the nature of objects. The collection combines classic articles by Max Born, Werner Heisenberg, Hans Reichenbach, and Erwin Schrodinger with recent contributions, including several papers that have never before been published. The book focuses on the microphysical objects that are at the heart of quantum physics and addresses issues central to both the "foundational" and the philosophical debates about objects. Contributors explore three subjects in particular: how to identify a physical object as an individual, the notion of invariance with respect to determining what objects are or could be, and how to relate objective and measurable properties to a physical entity. The papers cover traditional philosophical topics, common-sense questions, and technical matters in a consistently clear and rigorous fashion, illuminating some of the most perplexing problems in modern physics and the philosophy of science. The contributors are Diederik Aerts, Max Born, Elena Castellani, Maria Luisa Dalla Chiara, Bas C. van Fraassen, Steven French, Gian Carlo Ghirardi, Roberto Giuntini, Werner Heisenberg, Decio Krause, David Lewis, Tim Maudlin, Peter Mittelstaedt, Giulio Peruzzi, Hans Reichenbach, Erwin Schrodinger, Paul Teller, and Giuliano Toraldo di Francia.

“Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.” Since Niels Bohr said this many years ago, quantum mechanics has only been getting more shocking. We now realize that it’s not really telling us that “weird” things happen out of sight, on the tiniest level, in the atomic world: rather, everything is quantum. But if quantum mechanics is correct, what seems obvious and right in our everyday world is built on foundations that don’t seem obvious or right at all—or even possible. An exhilarating tour of the contemporary quantum landscape, Beyond Weird is a book about what quantum physics really means—and what it doesn’t. Science writer Philip Ball offers an up-to-date, accessible account of the quest to come to grips with the most fundamental theory of physical reality, and to explain how its counterintuitive principles underpin the world we experience. Over the past decade it has become clear that quantum physics is less a theory about particles and waves, uncertainty and fuzziness, than a theory about information and knowledge—about what can be known, and how we can know it. Discoveries and experiments over the past few decades have called into question the meanings and limits of space and time, cause and effect, and, ultimately, of knowledge itself. The quantum world Ball shows us isn’t a different world. It is our world, and if anything deserves to be called “weird,” it’s us.

The book will appeal to anyone with an interest in the interpretation of quantum mechanics.

This book is about the epistemology of quantum physics and its interpretation as a scientific theory in its technical form. The contents of the book are essentially of non-formal nature although the formalism of quantum mechanics is also investigated (rather briefly) inline with the needs and requirements of the epistemological investigation and considerations. The reader should note that a general scientific and mathematical background (at the undergraduate level) is required to understand the book properly and appreciate its contents. The book is like my previous books in style and favorable characteristics (such as clarity, graduality and intensive cross referencing with hyperlinks in the electronic versions). However, the book, unlike my previous books, does not contain questions or exercises or solved problems. The book is particularly useful to those who have special interest in the interpretative aspects of quantum theory and the philosophy of science although it should be useful even to those who are interested in the purely-scientific and technical aspects of the quantum theory since the contents of the book should broaden the understanding of these aspects and provide them with qualitative and interpretative dimensions (as well as the added benefit of the brief investigation of the formalism of quantum mechanics).