Long-listed for the 2016 PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award.
George Musser is an award-winning journalist, a contributing editor for Scientific American, and the author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to String Theory. He is the recipient of a Jonathan Eberhart Planetary Sciences Journalism Award from the American Astronomical Society and an American Institute of Physics Science Communication Award for Science Writing. He was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT and has appeared on Today, CNN, NPR, the BBC, Al Jazeera, and other outlets. He lives in Glen Ridge, New Jersey with his wife and daughter.
Long-listed for the PEN / E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing
Award
Short-listed for Physics World's 2016 Book of the Year Ten Physics
Books of 2015, Symmetry Magazine
The Science Books We Loved Most in 2015, Gizmodo Best Astronomy and
Astrophysics Books, Space.com "An important book that provides
insight into key new developments in our understanding of the
nature of space, time and the universe. It will repay careful
study." --John Gribbin, The Wall Street Journal
"Musser deftly traces the history of our quest to understand this
curious phenomenon, covering an ambitious breadth of challenging
topics from string theory to the multiverse to the unification of
physics." --Science "[An] enlightening (and highly entertaining)
book, one that takes us beyond earlier popular treatments into the
speculative thickets of contemporary physics." --Jim Holt, The New
York Review of Books "A good science writer has to show us the
fallible men and women who made the theory, and then show us why,
after the human foibles are boiled off, the theory remains
reliable. No well-tested scientific concept is more astonishing
than the one that gives its name to a new book by the Scientific
American contributing editor George Musser, Spooky Action at
Distance. The ostensible subject is the mechanics of quantum
entanglement; the actual subject is the entanglement of its
observers. Musser presents the hard-to-grasp physics of
'non-locality, ' and his question isn't so much how this weird
thing can be true as why, given that this weird thing has been
known about for so long, so many scientists were so reluctant to
confront it." --Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker "A highly enjoyable
tour-de-force . . . Amid the superb writing here is a lot of
information that will bring you up to date on everything you should
know about this compelling mystery . . . this book will be one of
the reading highlights of your year." --David Eicher, Astronomy
magazine "Ambitious . . . the author has done a monumental job of
translating recondite theory into laymen's terms." --Laurence A.
Marschall, Natural History "In this polished study of the concept
that Albert Einstein dubbed 'spooky action at a distance', science
writer George Musser tours the entangled research, history and
philosophical speculation surrounding it . . .
proving that this is one of the most engrossing disputes in
science." --Nature "Musser explores the history of humans grappling
with nonlocality and what these strange effects are teaching
quantum mechanics researchers, astronomers, cosmologists and more
about how the universe works--and while doing so, showing the
messy, nonlinear and fascinating way researchers push forward to
understand the physical world." --Sarah Lewin, Space.com "The
journalistic style of this book is smooth and pleasing, rich with
personal interviews that touch on the inner workings of
researchers, and vignettes from contributors' lives to add colour.
Musser is a witty writer . . . As an experimental physicist, I
certainly learned a lot, and am armed with new visual metaphors and
fresh insight into an often perplexing field." --James Millen,
Physics World "I join many others in regarding Musser as one of the
best science writers covering cutting-edge physics research . . .
His book contains fascinating, mind-expanding ideas, and I've been
thinking about them for days on end." --Ben P. Stein, Inside
Science "An endlessly surprising foray into the current mother of
physics' many knotty mysteries, the solving of which may unveil the
weirdness of quantum particles, black holes, and the essential
unity of nature." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Accessible and imaginative . . . Clarity and humor illuminate
Musser's writing, and he adroitly captures the excitement and
frustration involved in investigating the mysteries of our
universe." --Publishers Weekly "Can two subatomic particles on
opposite sides of the universe truly be instantaneously connected?
Or is any theory that predicts such a connection necessarily flawed
or incomplete? Are the results of experiments that demonstrate such
a connection being misinterpreted? Such questions challenge our
most basic concepts of spatial distance and time. In Spooky Action
At A Distance, George Musser beautifully navigates through the
history, science, and philosophy of these mind-boggling conundrums,
and expounds cutting edge thinking." --Mario Livio, astrophysicist
and bestselling author of Brilliant Blunders and The Golden Ratio
"George Musser gives us a fascinating tour of the latest attempts
on the frontiers of physics to answer one of the oldest questions
in science: What is space? And the wonderful lesson is that the
deeper we look into the question, the more captivating it becomes."
--Lee Smolin, founding faculty member at the Perimeter Institute
for Theoretical Physics and author of The Trouble with Physics
"With clever metaphors and dry humor, acclaimed science
communicator George Musser is the perfect tour guide on this wild
ride through wormholes and emergent dimensions to the cutting edge
of physics. This quest to understand the ultimate nature of space
may forever transform how you think about the very fabric of
reality." --Max Tegmark, physicist and author of Our Mathematical
Universe "Modern physics is in the process of dismantling the very
space all around us, and the universe will never be the same. In
this engaging book, George Musser leads us through the thickets of
science and philosophy and takes us to the brink of a very
different view of the world." --Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist
at the California Institute of Technology and author of The
Particle at the End of the Universe "Locality has been a fruitful
and reliable principle, guiding us to the triumphs of
twentieth-century physics. Yet the consequences of local laws in
quantum theory can seem 'spooky' and nonlocal-and some theorists
are questioning locality itself. Spooky Action at a Distance is a
lively introduction to these fascinating paradoxes and
speculations." --Frank Wilczek, winner of the Nobel Prize in
Physics and author of The Lightness of Being and A Beautiful
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