This book tells the story of the second quantum revolution which will shape the 21st century as much as the first quantum revolution shaped the 20th century. It provides unique orientation in today's discussion and the latest progress on the interpretation of quantum physics and its further technological potential.
As you read this book the first prototypes of this revolution are being built in laboratories worldwide. Super-technologies such as nanotechnology, quantum computers, quantum information processing, and others will soon shape our daily lives, even if physicists themselves continue to disagree on how to interpret the central theory of modern physics. The book will thus also touch on the profound philosophical questions at the heart of quantum mechanics.
Prologue: The white rabbit.- Part 1: Quantum 2.0 - The second technological revolution arising from the quantum world: Mighty power - How a theory of the microcosm changed our world.-There's plenty of room at the bottom - A new generation of quantum technologies.- Technology on the smallest scales - The possibilities of nanotechnology.- Incredibly fast - From digital to the quantum computer.- Part 2: Quantum Worlds - The bizarre in the very small: Contradictory atoms - Philosophical problems with the smallest building blocks of nature.- Natura facit saltus - On quantum jumps and particles being made out of nothing.- Tertium datur - Wave and particles at the same time.- As well as neither/-nor - Superposition: how things can be here and there at the same time.- Loss of identity - The New Reality Concept of Quantum Physics and its Consequences.- Part 3: From Quantum Field Theories to a "Theory of Everything" -All matter dissolves: Negative energies and the electron spin - Combining the theory of relativity to produce a new quantum theory.- Quantum field theories - All matter dissolves.- Infinity minus infinity gives something finite - How physicists learnt to deal with infinitely large values in the infinitely small.- More and more particles - From the particle zoo to the standard model of elementary particle physics.- Einstein does not fit - The fundamental problem in physics today.- Part 4: Cutting across philosophical, aesthetic, and spiritual, frames of thought: The Path towards Substancelessness - Breaking with 2,600 years of philosophical thought.- A New Understanding of Truth - How quantum physics made absolute reality disappear, and with it absolute truth.- The eternal interplay - Surprising overlaps between quantum physics and Buddhism.- Symmetries - Beauty in the House of Physics.- Quantum Consciousness and the Tao ofPhysics - On quantum holism, quantum healing, and other quantum nonsense.- Quantum physics and faith- Explaining the inexplicable.- Part 5: Entanglement - getting to the crux of the matter: The destinies of cats - The quantum physical measurement problem.- Wigner〓s Friend - Quantum physics and consciousness.- EPR and Hidden Variables - The debate about spooky action at a distance.- The experimental resolution of the Bohr- Einstein debate - How entangled particles made their way from theory into practice.- The Age of Entanglement - From spooks to a new quantum revolution.- Schrödinger's cat is alive - The path back to classical physics.- Part 6: The future - Where are we going?: Quantum Revolution 2.0 - When nanobots and quantum computers become part of our everyday lives.
Dr. Lars Jaeger, 48, studied physics, mathematics, philosophy, and history and spent several years in theoretical physics research in the area of quantum field theory and chaos theory. He is author of numerous books on popular science, writes his own blogs, and appears frequently in the media on questions of science and technology. As an impetuous lateral thinker he founded two companies that use mathematical methods to model global capital markets.
