Carlo Rovelli Shares the Wonder and Beauty of Quantum Theory

 Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution – Carlo Rovelli (2021)

            One of the greatest compliments I can give the eminent physicist and author Carlo Rovelli is that his informative and entertaining science books rival Richard Feynman’s for the sheer joy they give me upon reading.  I have reviewed three of Mr. Rovelli’s amazing books on RXTT’s Book Journey, White Holes, Reality Is Not What It Seems, and The First Scientist: Anaximander and His Legacy.  Each one is incredibly eye-opening, and written in a manner so casual as to seem like personal conversations between Mr. Rovelli and I.  This latest work, an exploration into the ideas of quantum mechanics and their repercussions and implications, is critical reading for me, and has given me much to think about.

            Rovelli understands that us lay readers, people with an interest in physics but not professional scientists, can experience the same awe, the same thrill of understanding, that the researchers and theoreticians feel when they gain new knowledge.  The difference lies in the presentation of the material.  Since quantum mechanics is an intensely odd, yet deeply relevant field of modern science, it takes a special storyteller to relate the discovery, formulation, and utilization of this particularly intriguing area of current scientific thought.

            The author never loses sight of the humanity involved in science, and of the amazing achievements and knowledge that mere humans can bring to the world at large.  The recounting of the early 1900’s, a time when the formal, mechanistic, classical physics of Newton were upended by Einstein’s relativity, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, and Planck’s exploration into the world of quanta.  These world-shaking ideas took hold in the minds of young physicists, producing one of the most successful, and rigorous understandings of the natural world that humanity has ever encountered, quantum theory.  Nearly every new development in our world over the past 100 years owes everything to our knowledge of the quantum nature of reality and the ability of our fellow humans to create technology dependent on the quantum world.  Sadly, most of us benefit from these ideas without understanding even the smallest part.

            Besides sharing the story of quantum theory’s discovery, the author explores how the theory refutes many of the long-standing assumptions held by the great thinkers of humanity.  It is this aspect of quantum theory that has yet to see its full flowering.  Most of us walk around with our grammar school science knowledge informing our view of the world, when, in fact, that model of the universe is flawed and incomplete.  Quantum theory instead describes a universe where the divisions between objects disappear, where the observer cannot be removed from what is observed, where absolute certainty about anything is a mirage.  It will take centuries for humanity to fully grasp these ideas and drop the old prejudices.

            Rovelli also makes it abundantly clear that, for even the most highly trained minds, the ability to use quantum theory is not the same as the ability to fully comprehend quantum theory.  He is honestly forthright when describing his own attempts, mostly unsuccessful, to cognitively grasp the deep truths that quantum theory seems to tell us about the reality we live in.  Thank Mario that humanity has minds such as Mr. Rovelli’s whose curiosity leads them to seek and grapple with the most obtuse and rarefied ideas, in order to help the rest of us understand what makes up the world we all share.  As with all of Carlo Rovelli’s books, it is highly recommended.

           

(Helgoland can be purchased here - https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/653621/helgoland-by-carlo-rovelli-translated-by-erica-segre-and-simon-carnell/ )

Carlo Rovelli Has Once Again Taken Me Along For The Ride

White Holes - Carlo Rovelli (2023)

I have admired so many great thinkers, imagining how it must have been for contemporary readers of Goethe, Homer, Nietzsche, etc.  To share in the intimate thoughts of those at the cutting edge of abstract human exploration (Literature, Philosophy, Science, Arts) as they themselves first share them with the world at large seems to me one of the rarest glories that life may afford for a layperson such as myself, in love with science and human exploration.  Reading the work of Carlo Rovelli I find myself exactly where I imagined decades ago, with open ears and mind, receiving original ideas from someone on the leading edge of abstract thought, ideas which will alter everything moving forward.  I feel so fortunate.

(I must mention here that Mr. Rovelli is Italian, and writes in his native language.  I feel a great debt owed to the translator of this book, Simon Carnell.  He managed to convey both the facts and the subtle meanings in a wonderful way.)

Carlo Rovelli is a theoretical physicist, and one of the most original thinkers.  He is gifted not only with the ability to grasp and calculate abstract mathematics and physical theory, but he writes like a poet, explaining the science with the same fervor with which he explains his personal mode of work.  He not only loves ideas, and exploring them as far as possible, but he loves the process by which he develops his ideas.  The joy he finds in work that, to many, may seem like mathematical drudgeries and theoretical mazes, is readily apparent.  I felt his joy and wonderment as his conclusions led to new questions, and eventually to the idea that a black hole does not "die" but is instead, reborn as a "white" hole.  

Thirty years ago, black holes were barely an accepted theoretical idea.  Today, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of them catalogued in visible space, with nearly every galaxy containing a massive black hole at its center.  Physicists sought to understand the "life cycle" of a black hole, much like they studied the life cycle of stars.  Many assumed that a black hole was a permanent null void in space, while others, such as Stephen Hawking, surmised that through natural quantum effects, the black holes would slowly "evaporate" away.  Evidence of these processes has been found.   These became the consensus on black holes.

Mr. Rovelli's genius lies not only in the real of physical science, but in the much-admired (by me) and often lacking skill that is pure abstract thought.  It is in abstract thought that the human mind achieves greatness.  This place is where intuition, knowledge, and the magic of consciousness combine to create the truly new ideas.  From the first human to note that fire made the clay underneath hard and sturdy, thereby intuiting that shaping the clay while wet and then placing it in the fire she could create a vessel or bowl, to Albert Einstein discovering the relativity of time while pondering the way train stations miles apart managed to keep track of departures and arrivals, this mind abstraction has shaped all of humanity.  It is in this realm that Carlo Rovelli realized a black hole does not need to evaporate or die, since quantum effects prevented the actual formation of a singularity, always assumed to reside inside all black holes.  Instead, Rovelli grasped that the gravity pit would bounce back, in a sense, and that the black hole would become a "white hole," an object that spews matter and energy out of itself into the universe at large, without ever becoming a singularity.  This is a BIG idea, and the hard part was yet to come.

Many non-scientists assume that the job of physicist is to come up with ideas.  That is only the very start of the process.  The work comes in using rigorous mathematics to test the ideas over and over again, looking for any and all possibility of error, assumption, and misunderstanding.  One must also look into any previous work that may have analyzed the same phenomenon.  It can take a lifetime to properly verify that a physical theory stands up.  It is now 2024 and we still run experiments testing the theories Einstein crafted one hundred years ago.  THEY HOLD UP! My favorite sections of this book are when Rovelli describes the joy he feels when the mathematics consistently work in his idea's favor.  What the Universe does not allow will not happen. The joy of discovery is a pure one, and rarely described so beautifully.

I am fortunate to find myself here, with Carlo Rovelli, at the start of his journey.  I expect he will explore white holes and every new possibility they may bring.  I will be right there with him, receiving periodic updates hopefully, as he continues his foray into the unknown, leading the charge for the rest of us.  I highly recommend this book. 

(White Holes can be purchased here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/724426/white-holes-by-carlo-rovelli/ )

Quantum Gravity, and the history of human exploration into the nature of our Universe

Reality is Not What It Seems: The Journey Into Quantum Gravity – Carlo Rovelli (2014)

            Around a year ago I read and reviewed another book by the Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli.  (Click Here for that Review) That book was a detailed history of the man known as Anaximander, of whom I wrote that he is “the earliest human that we have record of who helped create the logical and rational framework that set the stage for the scientific revolution all humans have experienced over the past 250 years.”  At the time I bemoaned my inability to read his then-current book Reality is Not What It Seems.  Thank goodness for the good folks at the M.D. Anderson Library of the University of Houston.  They acquired the English translation and this is what I managed to stumble across during my browsing.

            Where to start?  This book is an attempt by Mr. Rovelli to discuss the history of our collective efforts to understand what constitutes the fabric of Reality, the elementary nature of our selves and everything that exists.  Beginning with Anaximander, Plato, and Aristotle, Mr. Rovelli describes how each of these ancient geniuses grappled with the substance of reality, and with the ability and limits of the human to comprehend this reality.  He details the amazing and near-miraculous insights from these men that propelled our entire world forward in the quest to understand. Leuccipus and Democritus formed the basis of “atomist” theory, purely through rigorous analytical thought, understanding that all matter is composed of small indivisible parts. Democritus alone was such an amazing thinker.  It is a shame most of his massive output has been lost to history.

            After the initial period of discovery, once monotheistic religions took over the human landscape, progress was effectively halted, and the knowledge of our forefathers was lost in the Western World.  Scientific fact was replaced by dogma and blind faith in the make-believe magic stories of priests and the governments which aligned themselves with religions.  It was after nearly a thousand years of barbaric ignorance that travelers and scholars visited India and brought back the wisdom of the ancient Greeks, knowledge which was critical to creating the modern world we all share.  From this influx of ancient wisdom and science, someone like Isaac Newton was able to understand and explain what he saw as the structure of the Universe.  Newton saw a fiercely deterministic static Universe.  His laws of motion and his invention of the Calculus allowed humans to plot star and planet trajectories centuries in advance, and his mathematics and science helped the Western world shake free of its religion-induced intellectual coma.

            The world as Newton saw it was un-changing, and infinite.  Scientists continued to study the Universe, finding and creating new tools with which to explore.  In the early 1900’s, Albert Einstein proceeded to shake the world to its core, much like Newton had done before.  Einstein understood that there is no static Universe and that everything is constantly in motion relative to everything else.  He was the first human to grasp that time is not a specific thing, existing separate from the Universe.  He saw that we live in an ever-expanding Present.  Einstein also saw that the world is not what Newton stated.  There is no matter and energy floating in empty space.  There is just matter and energy existing in space-time and gravity is merely the deformation of this space-time by massive objects.  All of these things have been verified countless times.

            What Einstein did for the world at large, quantum mechanics did for the world of the very small.  It is an extremely successful theory and its predictions have been validated countless times as well.  Quantum Mechanics shows us that the world is made up of quantum objects, which have probabilistic traits.  One cannot know everything about a proton, unlike in Newton’s time, when it was assumed that this was possible.  This indeterminacy has been proven to exist throughout the Universe at all quantum levels.

            All of this leads into the discussion of Quantum Gravity.  Einstein’s Relativity and quantum Mechanics work together in most ways, but in special cases, such as black holes, or singularities, both theories fall apart.  Gravity can only be calculated in the macro sense, and quantum effects never give definite answers.  To combine these two theories is the current goal of theoretical physicists around the world.  Some have been working on String Theory, which predicts the existence of super-symmetric particles.  These particles have not been seen in experiments at particle colliders.  This lends more weight to Rovelli’s field, which is studying Loop Quantum Gravity, which seeks to study the constituents of gravity, or the quanta of gravity. 

            Light acts as a wave and a particle.  The quanta of light is the Photon.  Gravity seems to act as both a wave and a particle, gravitational waves having been detected as recently as 2016.  Loop Quantum Gravity postulates that the smallest quanta of gravity are actually small closed “loops” as opposed to points.  He goes into a great explanation of his research and of the ways that scientists have arrived at this idea, one which seems to be more promising that String Theory. What a great book.  The Bibliography at the back will keep me happy for a while too.  I wish I could better describe how much is contained within this awesome book,  but you will have to read it for yourself.

(This book is available for purchase here: REALITY IS NOT WHAT IT SEEMS )

Anaximander is my Newest Hero

The First Scientist: Anaximander and his Legacy – Carlo Rovelli (2011)

In my never-ending search for new reading material I came across the name Carlo Rovelli, a theoretical physicist who wrote a book intriguingly titled “Reality is Not What It Seems.”  That book is about the development of quantum gravity theories.  I wanted to read it badly, but could not find a copy at my Library of choice (I am still on the hunt!  Soon!).  What I did find available was a book by Rovelli about the Greek philosopher Anaximander, a man whose ideas about us and the natural world around us were so advanced for their time that they were quickly discarded in favor of the same old status-quo.  People like to throw out the old statement that there is nothing new under the sun, usually to bemoan the lack of originality evident in some artwork or research or idea.  This is a falsehood.  There truly ARE new ideas, never before thought or spoken.  Anaximander was the earliest human that we have record of who helped create the logical and rational framework that set the stage for the scientific revolution all humans have experienced over the past 250 years.

Rovelli does a fabulous job of explaining the radical difference between the worldviews that all humans lived under before Anaximander (The Earth is below, the Heavens above. All is put into motion by the will of gods.  Everything has been the way it is now since the beginning of time, etc.), and the general worldview that most of us modern humans live in, (The Earth is not the center of the Universe. The Universe is exceedingly old. Rain clouds form after water evaporates and climbs into the atmosphere. Land animals evolved from sea animals, etc.)  He explains how big a conceptual leap it was to go from the standard beliefs of the time, beliefs which persisted through all human cultures ever studied, to the core idea that pushes scientific thinking and study.

This core idea is a very critical thing, and it is something that many people do not grasp.  In essence, it is this: Nothing can be learned from certainty, especially certainty blindly accepted without analysis.  Certainty only leads to ignorance.  Before Anaximander, most people who wished to study under a master had to wholly accept that master’s wisdom and teachings without question.  They were assumed to be infallible, due to their prestige, age, or perceived wisdom.  This does not allow for knowledge to expand.  Blind allegiance to “certainty” negates critical thinking.  The ancient sage Thales was Anaximander’s “master.”  What Anaximander did that changed the course of human history is to absorb and understand everything his master had written, and then to LOOK FOR THE MISTAKES.  Anaximander assumed, rightly, that humans are not infallible, and that new knowledge and wisdom is to be found by asking questions of those that came before.  Each new answer creates new questions.  Nothing is absolutely certain in science.  It is only as good as the current data and experiences we use to create our scientific theories.  This idea is the germ of all scientific and rational thinking about the world around us.

Critics of science and scientific thinking despise this uncertainty.  They value the certainty their religion gives them.  Unchanging, unthinking certainty is an evil.  They claim that because Isaac Newton overturned the Ptolemaic idea of the Universe then Ptolemy must have been completely wrong.  Also, since Albert Einstein and his General Relativity overturned the Newtonian idea of the Universe, therefore Newton’s ideas must be completely wrong, according to these people.  Science does not work that way.  The genius of Newton is that his theories on gravity and the Universe and matter and energy were and are correct for 99.99% of the natural world we see around us.  Einstein absorbed this, understood this, and sought out the tiny areas where he felt the great genius Newton was incorrect or lacking information, and proceeded to flesh out those areas.   Newton assumed certain things about our Universe.  Einstein showed these things to be false, and because of his work, was able to understand the relativity of location, the curvature of space time, the “speed limit” set by light, etc.  These were concepts that Newton had no way to understand, but which Einstein, by building on Newton’s work, managed to ingeniously create. 

Einstein was not 100% correct either.  NO ONE IS.  Anyone that tells you is either a liar out to steal from you or use you in some way, or they are deluded morons, trying to make you live in their blindly ignorant and simple worldview.  Either way, they are enemies of rational thought, of rational and human exploration of the world around us.  We, as a human race, owe Anaximander for this conceptual leap.  We owe him big time. 

           Anaximander lived around 600 BC.  That is a little under 3,000 years ago.  He was able to deduce through observation and rigorous thought, that Zeus does not cause the rain but that it is caused by water evaporating from the Earth, heated by the Sun, with no need for any supernatural intervention.  He understood that the Earth was a solid mass, floating in the nothingness of space, with the “heavens” in all directions.  He understood that the first land animals must have come from the oceans, and that humans are descended, along with all creatures, from the sea.  He posited that the Universe was born out of chaos, that all that happened afterwards was dictated not by the capricious will of some gods, but by natural laws.  Before Anaximander humanity was like a child, full of blind faith and certainty.  After Anaximander we have a world where a human can, by virtue of study and hard work, truly understand the causes and effects of the natural world around them, constantly building upon the knowledge of previous humans, and correcting any errors along the way.  This is the true genius of humans.  It is so sad to see that nearly three thousand years later, so much of the world is still obsessed with their religious and philosophical certainties, and willfully ignorant of the uncertain truths that science and logical thinking can provide us.

(This great book can be purchased here:  https://www.amazon.com/Anaximander-Carlo-Rovelli/dp/159416262X )