Entanglement: The Greatest Mystery in Physics

'Entanglement' by Amir D. Aczel is a very interesting read, I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Physics (more specifically, in the subject of quantum philosophy). The author is quite successful in explaining this very complicated subject in such a manner that it does not limit his audience to just physics-savvy folks. I feel completely comfortable in recommending this book to a non-nerd. The phenomena of entangled particles has always fascinated me and I happened to stumbled upon this book right as my curiosity in this subject was peaking. So obviously, I'm biased by my enthusasiam in the subject and of course, I highly recommend it. (I really liked the mini-quantum history lesson too. With QM it's always nice to hear the progression of experiments that have led us to believe what we do.)

Amir Aczel's book "Entanglement" is a great introduction to the subject for the non-physicist, or the future physicist, in my case. As someone who is just starting out with his studies in physics, it was great to have the chance to read a book on a very complicated subject, written for a much wider audience than simply the people who work in that field. Aside from the strangeness of the concept of entanglement itself, what I found fascinating was how the interplay of personalities, professional rivalries and the general direction of the field of physics lead to the startling suggesting of entanglement in the first place. I applaud Aczel's accomplishment. It isn't easy to make something as strange as entanglement understandable to a scientifically untrained audience, but he has done so exceptionally well. This is much more a book about the history of the players involved than it is about the science itself, though both subjects are touched on with great style. A fascinating and entertaining read

There must be some eggheads who understand quantum physics. For the rest of us who live in a Newtonian world, all sorts of weird things happen at the atomic scale, things that are too weird ever to be explained. A photon, the basic particle of light, when fired at a screen with two holes in it goes through both holes at once. Not only that, the photon particle isn't a particle at all, but a strange amalgam of particle and wave. A quantum entity can not only be two places at once, it can have two opposite characteristics at once (like opposite directions of spin), and it only settles on one of those characteristics when you look at it closely. Einstein had imbued the universe with his own share of weirdness related to speed of light travel, but he could never accept the weirdness of quantum theory. As physicist David Greenberger remarked, "Einstein said that if quantum mechanics was correct then the world would be crazy. Einstein was right - the world is crazy." Crazy or not, quantum theory has turned out to be correct, experimentally demonstrated over and over again in the last decades, and if we aren't going ever to get used to it, we might try to get to know it better nonetheless. At the heart of quantum physics is the mysterious phenomenon of entanglement, and in _Entanglement: The Greatest Mystery in Physics_ (Four Walls Eight Windows), Amir D. Aczel has valiantly attempted to make the phenomenon plain, and has had good success.Entanglement is one of those quantum happenings that doesn't make any sense. It involves an instantaneous change in a particle once there is a change in a another particle with which it is entangled. The change is instantaneous, and would be even if the particles were on different sides of the solar system, or even of the universe. Somehow one particle "knows" that the other is changing, but this is not information that is transmitted one to the other. If it were information, it could not travel faster than the speed of light, but the change happens at exactly the same time. Einstein mistrusted the idea, calling it "spooky action at a distance." He would have been amazed that such a thing was not just theoretical, but experimentally proven, and much of this book is the history of how such a experiments came to be. The considerable physics in the book is lightened by anecdotes about the scientists involved. Along with the anecdotes are vignettes of model cooperation between scientists helping each other try to understand, even if their views were in opposition. Entanglement has a colorful history, well told here._Entanglement_ ends with a description of some practical applications; this is not just empty theorizing. Teleportation, the dream of science fiction, if it ever occurs, will be done by transferring quantum states of one particle to another. More immediately, using entangled photons as a means of sending an encoded message can reveal if anyone has tried to listen to the message. And quantum

This book should have been titled "Alice in the Quantum Wonderland." Aczel brings the amazing world of the quantum to within the reach of any reader with interest in science. This was really a page-turner. The author describes the latest developments in physics, and the bizarre behavior of photons and electrons in this strange world. He makes you wonder whether people, too, like his characters, are entangled. This is one of the best science books I've read this year.