Quantum Enigma
Everyone knows that sub-atomic particles have some very strange qualities. Light sometimes behaves like a particle, sometimes like a wave. Objects separated by vast distances interact faster than the speed of light - what Einstein called 'spooky action at a distance'. Most strangely, the behaviour of objects somehow seems be determined in retrospect, depending on what the observer is looking for. In this ground-breaking work the authors show how these quantum properties are being observed in larger and larger objects. They set out carefully and cautiously exactly what quantum theory might mean for us.
Quantum physics presents an unanswerable challenge to our common sense understanding of the universe, and the final explanation might not come from physics at all, but from the equally strange world of cognitive neuro-science - the mysteries of mind and matter might be one and the same.
Bruce Rosenblum is Professor of Physics and former Chairperson of the Physics Department at the University of California. He has consulted extensively for the US government and industry.
Fred Kuttner teaches physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.