{"id":141936,"date":"2025-05-29T17:21:11","date_gmt":"2025-05-29T17:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/141936\/"},"modified":"2025-05-29T17:21:11","modified_gmt":"2025-05-29T17:21:11","slug":"why-you-need-to-fall-in-love-with-quantum-physics-before-the-next-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/141936\/","title":{"rendered":"Why you need to fall in love with quantum physics before the next revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThere\u2019s a whole quest to build a quantum computer,\u201d Frank Verstraete, one of Belgium\u2019s top quantum physicist, tells me. \u201cAll the big technology companies like Google and Amazon and IBM are pouring in billions and billions and billions of dollars<\/a> and trying to build one, it\u2019s the cutting-edge of research for computing power.\u201d<\/p>\n

The problem is most people haven\u2019t caught up with the first quantum revolution. Quantum mechanics deals with things at the subatomic level, where quarks and photons operate. Unlike classical physics<\/a>, where strict rules apply, everything gets a bit weird down there. If you\u2019re not a maths fan, thinking about it too hard starts to feel like your brain is melting out of your ears.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics (And Everyone Needs to Know Something About It)<\/p>\n

Handout<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a huge shame, reckons Verstraete. \u201cEverywhere you look, there is quantum physics,\u201d he tells me. The colours on this page, or the fact that you aren\u2019t sinking through the chair you\u2019re sitting on? \u201cThis is pure quantum physics.\u201d Most of us probably understand a lot more about the subject than we think. It\u2019s all in the perception, Versraete says. <\/p>\n

He is baffled that otherwise highly educated and plugged-in people don\u2019t want to push themselves to think about the quantum world. \u201cI find it very strange that people will spend an amazing amount of time and effort reading something difficult like Tolstoy\u2019s War and Peace,\u201d he says. \u201cBut they won\u2019t make any effort to learn something about physics, because they think it\u2019s too hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than a marriage of minds <\/p>\n

However, when he was offered the chance to write his own literary masterpiece explaining quantum physics to the masses, Verstraete came up short. \u201cI completely failed. As a scientist, if we want to explain something, it\u2019s really to understand something,\u201d he says. \u201cI did not appreciate that this is not what people want when they read a book. It\u2019s not that they really want to understand. They want to get a feeling about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He did not give up. Over the course of a long bike ride, Verstraete vented his frustration about the failed book project to C\u00e9line Broeckaert. A scholar of romance languages and a playwright, quantum physics was far from her own field of expertise. But together, they had a breakthrough. \u201cShe was putting her finger on all the things that I did wrong, but asking the right questions,\u201d explains Verstraete. \u201cFrank came up with this crazy idea of writing this book together,\u201d chimes in Broeckaert.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

C\u00e9line Broeckaert and Frank Verstraete <\/p>\n

Handout<\/p>\n

The book proposal came first. But in the process of writing it together, it became something else. A romantic proposal. The couple are now married and living in Cambridge. Their book, Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics (And Everyone Needs to Know Something About It), was a bestseller in Belgium. While it\u2019s scientific non-fiction, it is also their love story. \u201cWe spent all our time together. For every page in the book, we talked for hours,\u201d says Broeckaert. <\/p>\n

Reading the book will not only give you a grounding in the fundamental laws that govern our world, but an appreciation for them. \u201cThe book is for everybody that\u2019s curious about the world, everybody that is curious about beautiful things,\u201d says Broeckaert. It also explains the science behind modern technology: the transistors in your smartphone, the way information travels through the internet, the way MRI machines work, lasers.<\/p>\n

Broeckaert teases out the very human story of quantum physics, and the men and women who made the breakthroughs. She was determined, she tells me, to apply a feminist lens to the history of quantum physics. \u201cI paid a lot of attention to women,\u201d says Broeckaert. \u201cThere are so few women in science today. Through this book you have these role models and we really hope that, for the young girls reading this, it will give them confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t fight it, feel it <\/p>\n

Quantum physics cannot be understood in isolation and the duo were keen to avoid wafting off into the mysteries of the intangible. Their book contextualises the discoveries \u2014 the leaps that were made in art and design around the turn of the 20th century. And there\u2019s still so much more to be discovered. \u201cQuantum physics is 100 years old and we only understand very minimal things about it yet,\u201d marvels Verstraete.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s important to understand about quantum physics, they both stress, is that no one truly understands it. Not even the quantum physicists. \u201cFrank told me to stop trying to understand it, you just have to feel it, and at a certain point you have to accept it,\u201d explains Broeckaert. \u201cIt works and that\u2019s the way it is. And that\u2019s even for scientists. There are things that even Frank doesn\u2019t understand, but it works, and he can work with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cReally new science, fundamental science, is all about feelings,\u201d adds Verstraete. \u201cIf you look at how scientists come up with new ideas it\u2019s similar to how artists work. You have to kind of just follow your feelings.\u201d Still confused by quantum physics? You just have to go with it, and all will be revealed.<\/p>\n

Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics (And Everyone Needs to Know Something About It) by Frank Verstraete and C\u00e9line Broeckaert is out June 5 (Pan MacMillan)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThere\u2019s a whole quest to build a quantum computer,\u201d Frank Verstraete, one of Belgium\u2019s top quantum physicist, tells…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141937,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3938],"tags":[3444,77,74,3358,17844,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-141936","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-physics","11":"tag-quantum-computing","12":"tag-quantum-mechanics","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114592277191620304","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}