Thomas Young’s 200 year old “double slit” experiment still fascinates and mystifies scientists as well as nonspecialists because it shows how weird and counterintuitive reality can be at the smallest of scales. Through Two Doors at Once: The Elegant Experiment That Captures the Enigma of Our Quantum Reality by Anil Ananthaswamy (Dutton, 2018: Amazon US / Amazon UK) Another of my favorites from this year’s group of popular science books, this thought-provoking and readable book is honest and often quite funny, and will be enjoyed by any scientifically curious person, as well as by physicists and by those who enjoy reading about the philosophy of science. Hossenfelder clearly argues that physicists must rethink their methods and accept reality before they can discover truth. This quest for beauty is at odds with scientific objectivity and has given rise to a number of theories in theoretical physics and cosmology that cannot be tested - string theory, particle physics, quantum mechanics and field theory, black holes and even the origins of the universe. Why has there not been a major breakthrough in fundamental physics for more than 40 years? According to physicist Sabine Hossenfelder, this is because physicists believe the best theories are mathematically beautiful, natural, and elegant, and those that are not are disposable. Lost in Math by Sabine Hossenfelder (Basic Books, 2018: Amazon US / Amazon UK) (Many thanks to Brian Keating for sending me a review copy of his book in exchange for my honest review.) If you read only one popular science book this year, this is your book. This entertaining, moving and often witty book is one of my absolute favorites in this year’s impressive crop of popular science books. This limitation also creates a toxic culture of cut-throat competition in disciplines that often require extensive collaborations.) Professor Keating delivers a clearly written synopsis of observational cosmology combined with an honest and informative assessment of the harsh realities of how the competitive world of astronomy and physics - and science in general - really work. In this book, Professor Keating describes his involvement in the BICEP2 experiment and his personal ambitions of winning a Nobel Prize whilst also detailing his views of what is wrong with the Nobel Prize - particularly its limitation to just three living scientists (this is an unjust situation where nearly all researchers in a large team who contributed to a particular discovery are completely overlooked. Cosmologist Brian Keating has written an interesting account about his part in the race for a Nobel Prize in physics.
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