Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics: And Everyone Needs to Know Something About It

By Frank Verstraete and CéLine BROECKAERT

A distinguished scientist and a literary mind unite to explain the revolutionary discoveries and astounding phenomena at the heart of quantum theory

Why is matter hard? Why are the properties of an object determined by the way we look at it? Why is grass green? Why can 1 + 1 be both more and less than 2? Why doesn’t Earth collapse to a black hole?

The answer to these questions came a century ago with the discovery of modern quantum physics, the most abstract and counterintuitive scientific theory ever – and the most controversial.

In this book, one of the world’s leading quantum physicists teams up with an acclaimed writer to provide general readers with fresh insight into this seemingly incomprehensible theory. By leading us through the history of the field, they shed light on the main ideas that underlie almost all of today’s technologies while providing colourful portraits of the people who made the important discoveries – including for the first time in a popular account the crucial contributions of women scientists.

Writing with clarity, wonder and humour, the authors aim to demystify quantum physics and present it for the awe-inspiring science that it is: one of the crowning achievements of human culture, allowing us to uncover the laws of nature, control matter and develop life-changing technologies such as quantum computers, quantum sensors and quantum cryptography.