Entanglement: The Greatest Mystery in Physics

This is a quick, easy read with an enlightening high-level overview of the mysteries and advances in understanding quantum entanglement. This works very well as a an audio book, despites some tables and formulae. On the science side, I do not recall knowing that the Heisenberg's uncertainty principle could be demonstrated not only in sub-nucleon particles like the photon, but even in neutrons and atoms themselves. Making this book interesting is the colorful scientists like Bohr, Heisenberg, Feynman, Dirac, etc. Einstein gets a lot of space and it is interesting to think in the WWI era he outmoded classical, Newtonian physics only to see

My fourth Aczel book and so far the best. Entanglement is one of the better popular accounts of quantum mechanics I've read. As the title suggests, it focuses on the topic of quantum entanglement, one of the central concepts of quantum mechanics.

Aczel traces the history of quantum mechanics through the lives and careers of its early players, and then introduces the concept of entanglement -- the idea that two quantum mechanical particle created during the same process, separated by even thousands of light years in distance, are inextricably linked through their probability wave function and that the measurement of one instantaneously determines the state of the other. This "spooky action at a distance" bugged Einstein and kept him from show more embracing the quantum theories that he was instrumental in helping to create. Over the past century, there has been active and lively research and debate over the nature of quantum mechanics and the properties and parameters of entanglement, and Aczel does a very good job of bringing such an esoteric topic down to the level of the advanced layperson and highlighting the personalities involved. show less

Definitely not as good as the first Aczel book I read, on the Aleph. The idea of quantum entanglement is interesting and intriguing because it goes against all we know about reality. This I have learned from Nova. I was hoping for more on the implications of what quantum entanglement means, namely, it seems as if there can either be (a) one thing in two places at once, or (b) messages between two things that travel at speeds faster than that of light. Unfortunately, what Aczel gives the reader here is the birth of the notion of quantum entanglement, the EPR paradox, and the various experiments that prove the phenomenon actually exists. Unfortunately, unlike The Mystery of the Aleph, as the book progressed I found it harder and harder, show more as a layman, to actually understand what was going on physics-wise and math-wise. The book started intriguingly and ended flat for this reason, and others. I found the debates between Einstein and Bohr intriguing (from a historian's point of view), but got bogged down in the chapter by chapter biographies and introductions of new characters that I've never heard of. The final chapter, "Quantum Magic," was a complete let down. Still, a generally good book that could have been much more interesting. I'm wavering now on if I should purchase Fermat's Last Theorem. I mean, I find mathematics completely boring and befuddling. show less

Accessible overview of the debate between Einstein and Bohr as to the nature of light, electrons, atoms, etc, and many of the recent experiments that reveal the mysterious world of the very small. Is it a wave? Is it a particle? Is it both? How does a particle go through two slits at a time? How do entangled particles "know" what has been measured with its partner so it can "change" accordingly? Einstein called it "spooky action at a distance". Can we never know "where" a particle is except as a probability? Einstein said "God doesn't play dice." The work of John Bell, Abner Shimony, Greenberger, Horne, Zelinger, Gisin and more are summarized along with fascinating biographical details. Amir Aczel is obviously given much respect because show more of his own physics credentials, and his interviews reveal a world of research being conducted as a hobby, outside normal work, by individuals who have atypically broad backgrounds. An entertaining glimpse, but for the gory mathematical details you will need to look/read/struggle further. I'm left feeling that all the experiments reveal is that we don't really understand the nature of light, and if we don't honor Einstein's plea for true understanding, all we are left with is a way to calculate. The story is still unfolding... show less

A decent book on Entanglement. Suffers from my pet peeve in popular science books -- which is repeating lots of material you have read over and over again. You would think that someone coming to a book on Entanglement would have read a few other accounts of quantum mechanics before and doesn't need to re-read the familiar history starting from the Greeks through Planck and Bohr, Heisenberg and the rest of the early pioneers. Or that someone who wants an introduction to quantum mechanics would not want to start with a book that focuses on one aspect. The book also suffers from too much biography, which would be fine if it were not for the fact that it features 20 scientists -- so that mini-biographies of each weigh down the show more explication.

The second half is interesting, including both theoretical work like Bell's theorem and the experimental tests of it. You can never really understand this material without going through the actual physics (and even then you can't actually understand it), but the shortness of the explication made one suffer a little more than normal in a book of this sort. Plus there was a lot less on applications of entanglement, like encryption, than I might have liked. show less

A decent book on Entanglement. Suffers from my pet peeve in popular science books -- which is repeating lots of material you have read over and over again. You would think that someone coming to a book on Entanglement would have read a few other accounts of quantum mechanics before and doesn't need to re-read the familiar history starting from the Greeks through Planck and Bohr, Heisenberg and the rest of the early pioneers. Or that someone who wants an introduction to quantum mechanics would not want to start with a book that focuses on one aspect. The book also suffers from too much biography, which would be fine if it were not for the fact that it features 20+ scientists -- so that mini-biographies of each weigh down the show more explication.

The second half is interesting, including both theoretical work like Bell's theorem and the experimental tests of it. You can never really understand this material without going through the actual physics (and even then you can't actually understand it), but the shortness of the explication made one suffer a little more than normal in a book of this sort. Plus there was a lot less on applications of entanglement, like encryption, than I might have liked. show less

The aim of this book seems to be to cast a shroud of mystery over quantum entanglement rather than attempting to understand and explain the underlying mechanism that makes it possible. His method is to interview a score of scientist who believe in the experimental reality of quantum entanglement and non-locality but could not explain the underlying mechanisms to him. Then he tells us that he can't explain it either. There is not much to learn here.