About the Book
A daring new vision of quantum theory from one of theleading minds of contemporary physics Quantum physics is the golden child ofmodern science. It is the basis of our understanding of atoms, radiation, andso much else, from elementary particles and basic forces to the behavior ofmaterials. But for a century it has also been the problem child of science: ithas been plagued by intense disagreements between its inventors, strangeparadoxes, and implications that seem like the stuff of fantasy. Whether it’sSchrödinger’s cat–a creature that is simultaneously dead and alive–or a beliefthat the world does not exist independently of our observations of it, quantumtheory challenges our fundamental assumptions about reality.
In Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution, theoretical physicistLee Smolin provocatively argues that the problems which have bedeviled quantumphysics since its inception are unsolved and unsolvable, for the simple reasonthat the theory is incomplete. There is more to quantum physics, waiting to bediscovered. Our task–if we are to have simple answers to our simple questionsabout the universe we live in–must be to go beyond quantum mechanics to adescription of the world on an atomic scale that makes sense.
In this vibrant and accessible book, Smolin takes us on ajourney through the basics of quantum physics, introducing the stories of theexperiments and figures that have transformed our understanding of theuniverse, before wrestling with the puzzles and conundrums that the quantumworld presents. Along the way, he illuminates the existing theories that mightsolve these problems, guiding us towards a vision of the quantum that embracescommon sense realism.
If we are to have any hope of completing the revolution thatEinstein began nearly a century ago, we must go beyond quantum mechanics tofind a theory that will give us a complete description of nature. In Einstein’sUnfinished Revolution, Lee Smolin brings us a step closer to resolving one ofthe greatest scientific controversies of our age.
About the Author:
LEE SMOLIN is a founding faculty member of the Perimeter Institute in Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Ontario. A theoretical physicist and writer, he has greatly advanced to our understanding of space, time and cosmology. A co-inventor of loop quantum gravity and deformed special relativity and the inventor of cosmological natural selection, his work has contributed significantly to the fields of quantum theory, particle physics, theoretical biology, economics and the philosophy of science.
He is a member of the philosophy department at the University of Toronto. Previously, he held faculty positions at Yale, Syracuse and Penn State. On a popular level, he has written thee previous books, Time Reborn, The Trouble with Physics, and Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, which bring to the public his reflections on cosmology and physics. He lives in Toronto with his wife and son.