Thursday, December 12, 2019

Why Quantum Mechanics Matter and Why You Should Care: A Conversation with Physicist Sean Carroll

The great screenwriter William Goldman once said of Hollywood that "nobody knows anything."  The physicist Richard Feynman once said that "no one understands quantum mechanics."

And yet random as knowledge sometimes might be, it safe to say that the entire technological infrastructure of modern society, all of Silicon Valley, is built on top of the reliable functioning quantum mechanics.

Quantum Mechanics has been around since 1927. It is so ubiquitous in some ways that it’s been a little like being able to tell time and use that value of the information while not having any understanding of how a watch (digital or otherwise) actually works.

That where Sean Carroll comes and his book Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime.

My conversation with Sean Carroll: