Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime 1524743011, 978-1524743017
Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist and one of this world’s most celebrated writers on science, rewrites the history of
4,652 919 4MB
English Pages 368 Year 2019
Table of contents :
Prologue: Don’t Be Afraid
Part One: Spooky
1. What’s Going On: Looking at the Quantum World
2. The Courageous Formulation: Austere Quantum Mechanics
3. Why Would Anybody Think This? How Quantum Mechanics Came to Be
4. What Cannot Be Known, Because It Does Not Exist: Uncertainty and Complementarity
5. Entangled Up in Blue: Wave Functions of Many Parts
Part Two: Splitting
6. Splitting the Universe: Decoherence and Parallel Worlds
7. Order and Randomness: Where Probability Comes From
8. Does This Ontological Commitment Make Me Look Fat? A Socratic Dialogue on Quantum Puzzles
9. Other Ways: Alternatives to Many-Worlds
10. The Human Side: Living and Thinking in a Quantum Universe
Part Three: Spacetime
11. Why Is There Space? Emergence and Locality
12. A World of Vibrations: Quantum Field Theory
13. Breathing in Empty Space: Finding Gravity within Quantum Mechanics
14. Beyond Space and Time: Holography, Black Holes, and the Limits of Locality
Epilogue: Everything Is Quantum
Appendix: The Story of Virtual Particles
