Book Review: In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat

I'm not sure I understood 100% of what I was getting myself into with this book. Did I want to know a little more about the universe and try to understand quantum theory a little bit? Sure, who doesn't? However, as this book was advertised as a layman’s introduction to quantum mechanics, I think I need to challenge what John Gribbin defines as a layman. This book is written in English, but I'm 100% sure bits of it were in a whole other language.

The book's title comes from the famed thought experiment conceived by Erwin Schrödinger in the mid-20th century. What's cool about Schrödinger was that he was a very unassuming physicist. He was mid-career teaching about physics rather than theorising and trying to break ground in quantum mechanics on his own. As John Gribbin notes, Schrödinger is famed for saying, “Had I known that we were not going to get rid of this damned quantum jumping, I would never have involved myself in this business”, which is pretty much how I felt trying to get through this book.

That being said, there were some pretty interesting bits to read through, for instance, I had no idea that when we think about quantum, we think small; the history of quantum physics goes all the back to Bohr trying to understand atoms - his model, although inaccurate, kick-started this whole business. Gribbin said to think of a pin in the centre of St Paul’s Cathedral - that is the nucleus. The space from the pin to the ceiling is the vacuum within the atom - just to give us an idea of size! Then you’ve got the photons and electrons to think about. Physicists then started questioning atoms, their mass, and how photons and electrons move in a vacuum. Einstein already had the breakthrough of light particles moving in waves (particle wave theory) then how do photons and electrons move? I’ll be honest: a lot of the technicalities of the experiments conducted confused me. But the key was we have no way of telling where a photon or electron is going or what it is doing unless we are actively looking at it. Photons also can move backwards and forward through time. Was this cool? Yes. Was this confusing as heck? Also yes. Gribbin says, “There is no absolute truth at the quantum level”. Don’t even get me started on the Copenhagen interpretation.

It is true that in the past 100+ years, we have made leaps and bounds in quantum theory. Gribbin notes that in the 21st century, we are sure to go even further. There is no grand unifying theory as of yet as there are too many equations that only confirm certain aspects of our reality, not all, and there is a lot still missing. The funny thing is that some physicists don't even know what is missing. But I think we should leave that to them. Let the rest of us ponder reality in a way that we understand - minus the confuddling equations of quantum mechanics.