Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution: The Search for What Lies Beyond the Quantum

In this deep dive into quantum theory, Smolin (The Trouble with Physics), a Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics faculty member, explains what’s missing from the field and what’s needed to unify physics as a whole. Aiming to show that “conceptual problems and raging disagreements that have bedeviled quantum physics since its inception are unsolved and unsolvable, for the simple reason that the theory is wrong,” Smolin discusses the “puzzles at the heart of quantum mechanics.” He breaks down alternative interpretations, testing how well they express a realist theory of the universe, where reality does not depend on observers being present. From pilot wave theory and its eerie concept of how paths not taken in life “are traced by an empty wave function, ready to guide [one’s] atoms, which, however, are elsewhere,” the many worlds interpretation, and wave-function collapse, Smolin elucidates complex science without equations. Readers end with Smolin’s own work on the “causal theory of views,” which posits a universe consisting “of nothing but views of itself, each from an event in its history,” where scientific laws act to make views as diverse as possible—a potential way forward. Occasionally, necessarily, textbook-dry, Smolin’s work nonetheless demonstrates there isn’t a thing in nature whose “contemplation cannot be a route to a wordless sense of wonder and gratitude just to be a part of it all.” Agent: John Brockman, Edge. (Apr.)