The Quantum Story: A History in 40 Moments (Hardcover)

Jim Baggott

商品描述

Utterly beautiful. Profoundly disconcerting. Quantum theory is quite simply the most successful account of the physical universe ever devised. Its concepts underpin much of the twenty-first century technology that we now take for granted. But at the same time it has completely undermined our ability to make sense of the world at its most fundamental level. Niels Bohr claimed that anybody who is not shocked by the theory has not understood it. The American physicist Richard Feynman went further: he claimed that nobody understands it. 

 

The Quantum Story begins in 1900, tracing a century of game-changing science. Popular science writer Jim Baggott first shows how, over the space of three decades, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, and others formulated and refined the theory--and opened the floodgates. Indeed, since then, a torrent of ideas has flowed from the world's leading physicists, as they explore and apply the theory's bizarre implications. To take us from the story's beginning to the present day, Baggott organizes his narrative around forty turning-point moments of discovery. Many of these are inextricably bound up with the characters involved--their rivalries and their collaborations, their arguments and, not least, their excitement as they sense that they are redefining what reality means. Through the mix of story and science, we experience their breathtaking leaps of theory and experiment, as they uncover such undreamed of and mind-boggling phenomenon as black holes, multiple universes, quantum entanglement, the Higgs boson, and much more.

 

Brisk, clear, and compelling, The Quantum Story is science writing at its best. A compelling look at the one-hundred-year history of quantum theory, it illuminates the idea as it reveals how generations of physicists have grappled with this monster ever since.

商品描述(中文翻譯)

《量子故事》是一本引人入勝的科學著作,以生動的敘事方式揭示了量子理論的百年歷史。這本書由知名科普作家吉姆·巴戈特撰寫,從1900年開始,追溯了一個世紀的改變遊戲規則的科學。巴戈特首先展示了愛因斯坦、玻爾、海森堡等人在三十年間如何制定和完善這一理論,並打開了知識的大門。自那時以來,世界頂尖物理學家們從這一理論中探索和應用出了一系列奇異的結果。為了將我們帶到現在,巴戈特將敘述組織成了四十個重要的發現轉折點。其中許多與相關人物密不可分,包括他們的競爭、合作、爭論,以及他們對於重新定義現實意義的興奮感。通過故事和科學的結合,我們將體驗到他們在理論和實驗中的驚人飛躍,揭示了黑洞、多個宇宙、量子纏繞、希格斯玻色子等令人難以置信的現象。《量子故事》以其簡潔、清晰和引人入勝的風格,展示了科學寫作的最佳表現。這本書深入探索了量子理論的百年歷史,同時揭示了自那時以來一代又一代的物理學家如何與這個“怪物”搏鬥。