Dance of the Photons: From Einstein to Quantum Teleportation
by Anton Zeilinger
Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Quantum physics has a reputation for being complicated and beyond the understanding of those who attempt to study it. Richard Feynman, a Nobel Prize Laureate himself, once said, “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.”
In the past century, countless experiments have challenged the classical theory of physics and our intuition of how things might work at the atomic and subatomic scales.
Meanwhile, Anton Zeilinger, a Professor of Physics at the University of Vienna, sets out to explain quantum mechanics to the general public in Dance of the Photons: From Einstein to Quantum Teleportation. He traces its very beginnings with the founding fathers of the field — renowned names such as Planck, Einstein, and Heisenberg — to recent applications of quantum physics, such as in artificial satellites and quantum teleportation. No, physicists haven’t found a way to teleport humans yet, but the technique has great potential in transferring data in quantum communication and computation.
Throughout the book, Zeilinger intersperses his descriptions of quantum physics with a story of two fictional experimentalists, Alice and Bob, and how they arrive at several different conclusions that contradict or support each other. His way of conveying the trials and tribulations of generations of experimental physicists gives the reader an almost personal connection in understanding how certain theories remain widely accepted by the scientific community, while others have been disproven over time.
On the other hand, one perplexing issue in Zeilinger’s narrative style is the careful explanation of hypotheses, when some are immediately shot down as a contradiction to other experimental results or established theory. Separating fact from fiction, so to speak, was difficult in this sense. Or perhaps this was Zeilinger’s intention — to motivate the reader to dive into the questioning mindset of an experimentalist?
What might set this book apart from, for example, a standard quantum mechanics textbook, is the focus on conceptual understanding over mathematical reasoning. Zeilinger makes it his mission to portray physics in an informative, yet interesting and occasionally humorous, manner. The material is based on up-and-coming research — after all, the technique of quantum teleportation was only experimentally confirmed in 1997 — and the clear explanations, complete with real-life analogies, make this book a worthwhile introduction to the phenomena described in quantum mechanics.
In learning about a subject as potentially abstract as quantum mechanics, some sort of motivation is often necessary to keep the material appealing. In this case, motivation came from the emphasis on real-world applications and experiments that have been done in real life. Somewhere in between Zeilinger’s narratives, philosophical musings, and enthusiasm for putting the material in simple terms, the reader gets hooked on the basis that the knowledge has practical uses.
With that said, a scientific background, particularly in physics, would be very useful for the reader in order to follow the concepts ranging from the particle- and wave-like behaviour of photons to the basics and potential significance of quantum information technologies. Of course, given that the intended audience for the book is the general public, such a scientific background is not necessary to understand the thought processes of physicists in history, nor the logical sequence of events that has gradually established what little we know about quantum physics.
After all, as Zeilinger points out, there remain many unanswered questions and strange phenomena that have yet to be explained. There are so many ways in which the phenomena we do know about might prove to have practical uses — for example, quantum cryptography, quantum computing at higher speeds than existing ones, and quantum communication using satellites. The mere thought of future developments in the field, and what mind-boggling conclusions physicists continue to draw in their research, makes quantum physics the science whose complexity gives it a strange, intriguing beauty.
