Einstein's Dice and Schrödinger's Cat How Two Great Minds Battled Quantum Randomness to Create a Unified Theory of Physics

Paul Halpern

eBook - 2015

"A fascinating and thought-provoking story, one that sheds light on the origins of . . . the current challenging situation in physics." — Wall Street Journal When the fuzzy indeterminacy of quantum mechanics overthrew the orderly world of Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Erwin Schröger were at the forefront of the revolution. Neither man was ever satisfied with the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics, however, and both rebelled against what they considered the most preposterous aspect of quantum mechanics: its randomness. Einstein famously quipped that God does not play dice with the universe, and Schröger constructed his famous fable of a cat that was neither alive nor dead not to explain quantum mechanics but t...o highlight the apparent absurdity of a theory gone wrong. But these two giants did more than just criticize: they fought back, seeking a Theory of Everything that would make the universe seem sensible again. In Einstein's Dice and Schröger's... more