Escape from shadow physics The quest to end the dark ages of quantum theory

MIT researcher Kay debuts with a rigorous investigation of whether quantum mechanics constitutes the most fundamental means of understanding physics or if there's "more detail hiding at a deeper level." The implications are huge, Kay contends, explaining that if the former is true, then the "moon is not there when nobody looks at it" and "an entirely new universe is created each time something happens." Kay describes Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein's debates on the subject, with the latter playing skeptic to the former's arguments in favor of the physics community's consensus that quantum mechanics is fundamental and objects don't exist "separately of any observation." This dogma is incorrect, Kay argues, suggesting that because quantum mechanics is statistical by nature, it cannot be complete because there has to be a deeper explanation underlying the statistical patterns that the theory describes. The author also traces how scientific resistance to the theory of plate tectonics and the idea that heat is "an emergent property" rather than a discrete "thing" gave way to mounting contrary evidence, suggesting Bohr's adherents will face a similar reckoning in light of future discoveries. The focus on theory ensures this doesn't get bogged down in abstruse equations, and the generous historical context offers a point of entry for those with only passing knowledge of quantum theory. Readers will be enlightened. (June)

Another in the steady stream of books aiming to explain the massive complexities of quantum theory. Like most predecessors, MIT researcher Kay makes a valiant if not entirely successful effort. He writes that in the old classical universe, an object occupied a single location. Nothing could be in two places at the same time; matter was one phenomena and energy another. Because it seemed to make intuitive sense, it didn't require a complicated explanation, but it turns out that we live in a quantum universe that defies such a reality. The great quantum pioneers, including Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and Erwin Schrödinger, produced accurate descriptions of phenomena without revealing the mysteries, so Einstein and others insisted that quantum theory is incomplete and required deeper explanations. Kay's hero, French physicist Louis de Broglie (1892-1987), won the 1929 Nobel Prize for his pilot-wave model demonstrating wavelike behavior of particles. According to the author, this step in the right direction was crushed by the quantum formalism of Bohr et al. De Broglie's countrymen revived it in 2005, with experiments showing that a tiny oil bead dropped over a vibrating oil bath never coalesces but moves in a bizarre path across the surface in an analogy to the pilot-wave theory. Although generous with charts, tables, and metaphors, Kay's description of how this makes sense may mystify readers unfamiliar with college-level physics--as is the case with many books on this subject. In the final third, the author offers numerous denunciations of the physics establishment. Metaphysics, theology, and a host of New Age theories embrace the unknowable, he writes, but science has triumphed because it attempts to describe reality. Kay also addresses the newly popular idea that "theoretical physics has completely stalled and made no progress in forty years." Insights into quantum theory that may flummox nonprofessionals but keep them thinking. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.