Through Two Doors at Once

Many great scientific minds have grappled with the 'double slit' experiment. Thomas Young devised it in the early 1800s to show that light behaves like a wave and in doing so opposed Isaac Newton's view that light is made of particles. But then Albert Einstein showed that light comes in quanta or particles. Thus quantum mechanics was born. This led to a fierce debate between Einstein and Niels Bohr over the nature of reality-subatomic bits of matter and its interaction with light-as revealed by the double slit experiment. Richard Feynman held that it embodies the central mystery of the quantum world. Decade after decade hypothesis after hypothesis scientists have returned to this ingenious experiment to help them answer deeper and deeper questions about the fabric of the universe.How can a single particle behave both like a particle and a wave? Does a particle or indeed reality exist before we look at it or does looking create reality as the textbook 'Copenhagen interpretation' of quantum mechanics seems to suggest? How can particles influence each other faster than the speed of light? Is there a place where the quantum world ends and the familiar classical world of our daily lives begins and if so can we find it? And if there's no such place then does the universe split into two each time a particle goes through the double slit?With his extraordinarily gifted eloquence Anil Ananthaswamy travels around the world and through history down to the smallest scales of physical reality we have fathomed. It is the most fantastic voyage you can take. Review Through Two Doors at Once is a challenging and rewarding survey of how scientists . . . are grappling with nature's deepest strangest secrets. --Wall Street Journal -- Wall Street JournalA fascinating tour through the cutting-edge physics the experiment keeps on spawning. --Scientific American -- Scientific AmericanThrough Two Doors at Once offers beginners the tools they need to seriously engage with the philosophical questions that likely drew them to quantum mechanics. --Science -- ScienceAt a time when popular physics writing so valorizes theory a quietly welcome strength of Ananthaswamy's book is how much human construction comes into focus here. This is not 'nature' showing us but us pressing 'nature' for answers to our increasingly obsessional questions. --Margaret Wertheim Washington Post -- Washington PostA thrilling survey of the most famous enduring and enigmatic experiment in the history of science. --Kirkus starred review -- KirkusFollowing up 2015's acclaimed The Man Who Wasn't There Ananthaswamy treats a 19th-century light experiment as a sprawling intellectual adventure story . . . This accessible illuminating book shows that no matter how sophisticated the lab setup the double-slit experiment still challenges physicists. --Publisher's Weekly -- Publisher's WeeklyAn excellent and comprehensive exploration of notable double-slit-like experiments. --Forbes -- ForbesAn engaging and accessible history of a fascinating and baffling experiment that remains inconclusive to this day. Recommended for those interested in the subject or anyone wishing to delve further into the double-slit experiment. --Library Journal -- Library Journal About the Author Anil Ananthaswamy is an award-winning journalist and former staff writer and deputy news editor for the London-basedNew Scientist magazine. He has been a guest editor for the science writing program at the University of California Santa Cruz and organizes and teaches an annual science journalism workshop at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bengaluru India. He is a freelance feature editor for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science'sFront Matter. He contributes regularly to theNew Scientist and has also written forNatureNational Geographic NewsDiscoverNautilusMatter the Wall Street Journal and