Overview

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER As you read these words, copies of you are being created.   Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist and one of this world’s most celebrated writers on science, rewrites the history of 20th century physics. Already hailed as a masterpiece, Something Deeply Hidden shows for the first time that facing up to the essential puzzle of quantum mechanics utterly transforms how we think about space and time.  His reconciling of quantum mechanics with Einstein’s theory of relativity changes, well, everything. Most physicists haven’t even recognized the uncomfortable truth: physics has been in crisis since 1927. Quantum mechanics  has always had obvious gaps—which have come to be simply ignored. Science popularizers keep telling us how weird it is,  how impossible it is to understand. Academics discourage students from working on the ""dead end"" of quantum foundations. Putting his professional reputation on the line with this audacious yet entirely reasonable book, Carroll says that the crisis can now come to an end. We just have to accept that there is more than one of us in the universe. There are many, many Sean Carrolls. Many of every one of us.   Copies of you are generated thousands of times per second. The Many Worlds Theory of quantum behavior says that every time there is a quantum event, a world splits off with everything in it the same, except in that other world the quantum event didn't happen. Step-by-step in Carroll's uniquely lucid way, he tackles the major objections to this otherworldly revelation until his case is inescapably established.   Rarely does a book so fully reorganize how we think about our place in the universe. We are on the threshold of a new understanding—of where we are in the cosmos, and what we are made of.

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9781524743017

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Sean Carroll beautifully clarifies the debate about the foundations of quantum mechanics, and champions the most elegant, courageous approach: the astonishing many worlds interpretation. His explanations of its pros and cons are clear, evenhanded, and philosophically gob smacking. --Steven Strogatz, professor of mathematics, Cornell University, and author of Infinite Powers I was overwhelmed by tears of joy at seeing so many fundamental issues explained as well as they ever have been. Something Deeply Hidden is a masterpiece, which stands along with Feynman's QED as one of the two best popularizations of quantum mechanics I've ever seen. And if we classify QED as having had different goals, then it's just the best popularization of quantum mechanics I've ever seen, full stop. --Scott Aaronson, professor of computer science at the University of Texas at Austin, and Director of UT's Quantum Information Center Irresistible and an absolute treat to read. While this is a book about some of the deepest current mysteries in physics, it is also a book about metaphysics as Carroll lucidly guides us on how to not only think about the true and hidden nature of reality but also how to make sense of it. I loved this book. --Priyamvada Natarajan, theoretical astrophysicist, Yale University, author of Mapping the Heavens

Author Information

SEAN CARROLL is a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology, host of the Mindscape podcast, and author of From Eternity to Here, The Particle at the End of the Universe, and The Big Picture. He has been awarded prizes and fellowships by the National Science Foundation, NASA, the American Institute of Physics, and the Royal Society of London, among many others. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, writer Jennifer Ouellette.

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