Often heavy going, but a thoughtful argument that “all nature is quantum” and that we should go with the flow.
The theoretical physicist and bestselling author digs into his discipline’s most confounding concept.
As lucidly as he can, Rovelli shows that while quantum theory may clarify the foundations of science, it doesn’t make sense. “Its mathematics does not describe reality,” he writes. “Distant objects seem magically connected. Matter is replaced by ghostly waves of probability.” And yet, it “has never been found wrong.” The author begins with the easy part: the history. Helgoland is a barren island in the North Sea where, in 1925, a young Werner Heisenberg spent the summer trying to explain how electrons behave. The 20-year-old explanation that atoms consisted of tiny electrons whirling around heavier protons—as planets orbit the sun—didn’t work. Electrons don’t whirl like specks of matter but rather in diffuse, cloudlike waves. However, whenever scientists deal with an electron (such as in a particle accelerator), it becomes a speck of matter. After much agonizing, Heisenberg decided not to explain electron behavior but simply describe what happens. The result was a brilliant, if clunky, formulation using mathematical matrixes that correctly predicted what experiments showed. Within a few years, other geniuses (Schrödinger, Pauli, Dirac, Born) refined and simplified Heisenberg’s work, and quantum theory was off and running. After 100 years, scientists still agree that quantum theory remains an enigma, but it works so well that only a persistent minority, Rovelli included, try to make sense of it. In the book’s second half, more philosophy than science, the author maintains that every entity in the universe, from protons to humans, exists only in relation to other objects. Something that didn’t interact would be invisible. Expressing doubt over Ernst Mach’s insistence that science must be based on the “observable,” Rovelli leans toward the Buddhist teaching that “there is nothing that exists in itself, independently from something else.”
Often heavy going, but a thoughtful argument that “all nature is quantum” and that we should go with the flow.Pub Date: May 25, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-32888-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
An enthusiastic appreciation of a spectacular astrophysical entity.
A short, lively account of one of the oddest and most intriguing topics in astrophysics.
Levin, a Guggenheim fellow and professor of physics and astronomy at Barnard College, knows her subject well, but her goal is appreciation as much as education, and there is much to admire in a black hole. Before Einstein, writes the author, scientists believed that the force of gravity influenced the speed of moving objects. They also knew that light always travels at exactly the speed of light. This combination made no sense until 1915, when Einstein explained that gravity is not a force but a curving of space (really, space-time) near a body of matter. The more massive the matter, the greater it curves the space in its vicinity; other bodies that approach appear to bend or change speed when they are merely moving forward through distorted space-time. Einstein’s equations indicated that, above a certain mass, space-time would curve enough to double back on itself and disappear, but this was considered a mathematical curiosity until the 1960s, when objects that did just that began turning up: black holes. Light cannot emerge from a black hole, but it is not invisible. Large holes attract crowds of orbiting stars whose density produces frictional heating and intense radiation. No writer, Levin included, can contain their fascination with the event horizon, the boundary of the black hole where space-time doubles back. Nothing inside the event horizon, matter or radiation, can leave, and anything that enters is lost forever. Time slows near the horizon and then stops. The author’s discussions of the science behind her subject will enlighten those who have read similar books, perhaps the best being Marcia Bartusiak’s Black Hole (2015). Readers coming to black holes for the first time will share Levin’s wonder but may struggle with some of her explanations.
An enthusiastic appreciation of a spectacular astrophysical entity.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-65822-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
