An explosive collision between a pickup truck and a Volvo erases two momentous scientific discoveries. Quantum probability results in complex emotional entanglements. Voices return from the dead. A blood-stained piano becomes an heirloom. Although a picture-perfect family, Beth Sturgess divulges an ignominious past to her loving husband--who has deadly secrets. Mistakes are fatal. With deeply flawed, relatable characters, Entanglement--Quantum and Otherwise is an intricate literary crime story that unravels the generational impact on reality after a loved one's death.

An exploration of quantum entanglement and the ways in which it contradicts our everyday assumptions about the ultimate nature of reality. Quantum physics is notable for its brazen defiance of common sense. (Think of Schrödinger's Cat, famously both dead and alive.) An especially rigorous form of quantum contradiction occurs in experiments with entangled particles. Our common assumption is that objects have properties whether or not anyone is observing them, and the measurement of one can't affect the other. Quantum entanglement—called by Einstein “spooky action at a distance”—rejects this assumption, offering impeccable reasoning and irrefutable evidence of the opposite. Is quantum entanglement mystical, or just mystifying? In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Jed Brody equips readers to decide for themselves. He explains how our commonsense assumptions impose constraints—from which entangled particles break free. Brody explores such concepts as local realism, Bell's inequality, polarization, time dilation, and special relativity. He introduces readers to imaginary physicists Alice and Bob and their photon analyses; points out that it's easier to reject falsehood than establish the truth; and reports that some physicists explain entanglement by arguing that we live in a cross-section of a higher-dimensional reality. He examines a variety of viewpoints held by physicists, including quantum decoherence, Niels Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation, genuine fortuitousness, and QBism. This relatively recent interpretation, an abbreviation of “quantum Bayesianism,” holds that there's no such thing as an absolutely accurate, objective probability “out there,” that quantum mechanical probabilities are subjective judgments, and there's no “action at a distance,” spooky or otherwise.

Finally, a scientific series that treats babies like the geniuses they are! With scientific and mathematical information from an expert, this is the perfect book for the next Einstein. Written by an expert, Quantum Entanglement for Babies is a colorfully simple introduction to one of nature's weirdest phenomenons. Babies (and grownups!) will learn about the wild world of quantum particles. With a tongue-in-cheek approach that adults will love, this installment of the Baby University board book series is the perfect way to introduce basic concepts to even the youngest scientists. After all, it's never too early to become a quantum physicist! Baby University: It only takes a small spark to ignite a child's mind.

"How the Hippies Saved Physics gives us an unconventional view of some unconventional people engaged early in the fundamentals of quantum theory. Great fun to read." —Anton Zeilinger, Nobel laureate in physics The surprising story of eccentric young scientists—among them Nobel laureates John Clauser and Alain Aspect—who stood up to convention and changed the face of modern physics. Today, quantum information theory is among the most exciting scientific frontiers, attracting billions of dollars in funding and thousands of talented researchers. But as MIT physicist and historian David Kaiser reveals, this cutting-edge field has a surprisingly psychedelic past. How the Hippies Saved Physics introduces us to a band of freewheeling physicists who defied the imperative to “shut up and calculate” and helped to rejuvenate modern physics. For physicists, the 1970s were a time of stagnation. Jobs became scarce, and conformity was encouraged, sometimes stifling exploration of the mysteries of the physical world. Dissatisfied, underemployed, and eternally curious, an eccentric group of physicists in Berkeley, California, banded together to throw off the constraints of the physics mainstream and explore the wilder side of science. Dubbing themselves the “Fundamental Fysiks Group,” they pursued an audacious, speculative approach to physics. They studied quantum entanglement and Bell’s Theorem through the lens of Eastern mysticism and psychic mind-reading, discussing the latest research while lounging in hot tubs. Some even dabbled with LSD to enhance their creativity. Unlikely as it may seem, these iconoclasts spun modern physics in a new direction, forcing mainstream physicists to pay attention to the strange but exciting underpinnings of quantum theory. A lively, entertaining story that illuminates the relationship between creativity and scientific progress, How the Hippies Saved Physics takes us to a time when only the unlikeliest heroes could break the science world out of its rut.

In The Age of Entanglement, Louisa Gilder brings to life one of the pivotal debates in twentieth century physics. In 1935, Albert Einstein famously showed that, according to the quantum theory, separated particles could act as if intimately connected–a phenomenon which he derisively described as “spooky action at a distance.” In that same year, Erwin Schrödinger christened this correlation “entanglement.” Yet its existence was mostly ignored until 1964, when the Irish physicist John Bell demonstrated just how strange this entanglement really was. Drawing on the papers, letters, and memoirs of the twentieth century’s greatest physicists, Gilder both humanizes and dramatizes the story by employing the scientists’ own words in imagined face-to-face dialogues. The result is a richly illuminating exploration of one of the most exciting concepts of quantum physics.

A remarkable concept known as "entanglement" in quantum physics requires an incredibly bizarre link between subatomic particles. When one such particle is observed, quantum entanglement demands the rest of them to be affected instantaneously, even if they are universes apart. Einstein called this "spooky actions at a distance," and argued that such bizarre predictions of quantum theory show that it is an incomplete theory of nature. In 1964, however, John Bell proposed a theorem which seemed to prove that such spooky actions at a distance are inevitable for any physical theory, not just quantum theory. Since then many experiments have confirmed these long-distance correlations. But now, in this groundbreaking collection of papers, the author exposes a fatal flaw in the logic and mathematics of Bell's theorem, thus undermining its main conclusion, and proves that---as suspected by Einstein all along---there are no spooky actions at a distance in nature. The observed long-distance correlations among subatomic particles are dictated by a garden-variety "common cause," encoded within the topological structure of our ordinary physical space itself.

Discusses the history, science, applications, and relevant current issues of quantum physics in an accessible way for the non-scientist.