‘Beyond Weird’ by Philip Ball Wins Physics World Book of 2018
(PhysicsWorld) The winner of the 2018 Physics World Book of the Year is “Beyond Weird: Why Everything You Thought You Knew About Quantum Physics is Different” by Philip Ball. ‘Beyond Weird’ also contains a hefty helping of philosophy, as Ball attempts to reconcile quantum reality with seemingly confounding experimental results. Quantum theory may actually be a theory about information, and how we gain it. As Ball writes, a more “if this, then that” approach to understanding the outcome of an experiment may be what we need to meaningfully understand the quantum world.
Reviewer Brian Clegg described Beyond Weird as “the most original and interesting book on quantum physics for the general public in a long while”, adding that what Ball “successfully does is to enable the reader to look at quantum physics in a different light.”
Quantum mechanics has dominated the headlines in physics in 2018 and the field has also been a hot topic in popular-science writing. Physics World based the winner of 2018 from 37 books reviewed over the last 12 months.
