Entanglement: The Unlikely Story of How Scientists, Mathematicians, and Philosphers Proved Einstein's Spookiest Theory

Rating:
Summary: Pretty good stuff
Review: Excellent history showing how much of the quantum weirdness was discovered. I really enjoyed the personal stories of the scientists that made these discoveries. However, not enough detail was given when it came to EPR and how the results pointed to non-local reality. Otherwise, it was a great read and well worth the money!

Rating:
Summary: Not quite what I was looking for.
Review: I should begin by saying that I was expecting (or hoping for) a different book, though perhaps from the other book by Aczel that I have read (Mystery of the Aleph), my expectations were probably misplaced. The book that I was hoping for would have been much more technical, though given the fact that only a handful of equations appeared in the book at all, this would not be difficult), and one that would explain what this entanglement thing is, or at least provide arguments for some of the prevailing theories.

What this book did provide, though, was a brief account of the history of entanglement as a controversial physical concept. I first encountered entanglement while doing some studies in quantum computation, and my studies were on the computer science/mathematical side, which basically meant that entanglement was a given, and it never really occurred to me that there would have been much controversy --- in retrospect, this was quite naive of me. By going through the breakthroughs made by many physicists over the passed century, Aczel was able to bring light to the fact that while science textbooks state principles as undeniable truths, doing science and interpreting science are more akin to a somewhat political struggle. For this reason, there is much to commend this book.

However, a great shortcomming is the length. The book is divided into 20 chapters with an average length of about 12 short pages. Most chapters have a two-fold purpose --- to introduce and give a brief biographical sketch (leaning more towards intellectual development) of someone involved in the history of entanglement, and also to explain briefly what that person did. Due to the length, it is impossible to provide much detail of either the person(s) introduced or how the result fits into the overall development of our understanding of the quantum world. The only results that seemed to permeate the book were the paper by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen which introduced the concept as an argument against quantum physics, and John Bell's theorem which provided a theoretical mechanism to determine whether Einstein or quantum physics is correct.

After reading this book, I am looking forward to going through more books listed in the References, in the hopes of finding the book I want.

Rating:
Summary: I cannot rate this book .
Review: I simply suspect it is retitled, earlier edition of "Entanglement-the Greatest Mystery in Physics" by the same author, and I have given it 3 stars. It should be stated by the publisher. Not the best book. Victor Stenger's "Timeless Reality" is my choice on these subjects.

Rating:
Summary: For The Inquisitive Layperson
Review: Mr. Aczel writes books about concepts that at times border on those barely understood, and in this case, still are being debated, by some of the greatest minds in their associated fields of study. This does not mean the same issues are completely off limits to the non expert. There are several writers of science and its history that are able to share enough of a topic or field of study to share the wonder of it without requiring the decades of study that those who are the experts have invested in their quests. At the same time I would imagine those with an above average understanding of these topics would be better served by reading advanced texts and the papers that are issued by scientific journals.

"ENtanglement", is a book that is full of concise biographies of dozens of men and women who have pursued this realm of Science that has been deemed everything from strange to weird to magic. Einstein spent a good deal of his time attempting to disprove many of his colleagues as he always felt, "God does not play dice", and the world of the Quantum would require that He did. As the author explains he used this format to continually reinforce complex ideas so the reader would have a path. He also explains that while he has included formulas that are famous in the scientific world, they are not likely to be understood by the more casual reader, but keeping to the text will not penalize the reader either.

Some of the traditional ideas anyone who has taken a Physics course and has accepted as fact gets tossed in the world of the Quantum. In this world Light is a wave and a particle, and if a single photon is offered the alternative of traveling through one of two slits in a barrier, choice no longer is an option, it is not either this opening or that one, rather both. Mr. Aczel takes the reader from the world of here or there to the world of here and there, to a world where action taken on a given particle will affect another particle no matter how far apart they may be. He even takes you to a lab where they have teleported a photon. Now if this brings to mind a certain science fiction program, you are on the correct path as the author refers to the same program several times during the book. Science is in no manner approaching the teleportation of a human. But just as what was a Science Fiction a decade or a Century ago, may once again be science fact again in 10 or 50 or 100 years.

I can understand how this book may be too much for some and too little for others. I enjoyed the book as it gives the non-expert a glimpse at the "magic" that scientists all around the world are exploring and discovering in their labs.

Rating:
Summary: I learned a lot from this book
Review: The first chapters are well done. I learned a lot about the history of experiments surrounding the subject and came away from the text understanding the quantum theory better than before I picked up the book. Aside from entanglement, the book also had insightful sentences that helped me understand the uncertainty principle in greater detail.

With that said, there are a few things that irritate me about the text. First of all the author went to great lengths to provide a good journal reference to all of the key experiments in the history of entanglement, however he does not have a list of these at the end of the text (they are inline citations) and now I have to dig through the chapters again to make a list of the papers I am interested in. The second thing that irritated me was how the book referred to pictures and diagrams; it often said `see below' and the picture was on the next page. There are a few chapters toward the end of the book that are confusing to read. The book talks about 3 particle entanglement and mentions everyone who was working on that in a short chapter. To make matters a bit worse that chapter also introduces the concept of 3 particle entanglement. I wish the author would have just listed the names of everyone that had something to do with it and focused more on the key players like in the early chapters. Mentioning the role of every single person might be nice to give them credit, but it took away from my concentration.

As far as the previous comment about wanting to see some of the mathematics of entanglement, there are really hundreds of books written that cover basic quantum theory but only one book of this type. The basic idea is simple, an entangled state cannot be written as a product, so if we want to write it down as an equation we must write a sum of terms.

I think this is a great book and it complemented my understanding. I will have to go through some of the experiments in better detail to fully understand them but I must say that I learned a lot. I think this book would find use to anyone interested in studying the quantum theory.