EINSTEINS UNFINISHED REVOLUTION

Quantum mechanics is perhaps the most successful theory ever formulated The only problem with it argues Lee Smolin is that it is wrong a fount of provocative ideas lucid upbeat and finally optimistic Graham Farmelo Nature Human beings says Lee Smolin author of The Trouble With Physics have always had a problem with the boundary between reality and fantasy confusing our representations of the world with the world itself Nowhere is this more evident than in quantum physics which forms the basis for our understanding of everything from elementary particles to the behaviour of materials While quantum mechanics is currently our best theory of nature at an atomic scale it has many puzzling qualities qualities that preclude realism and therefore give an incomplete description of nature Rather than question this version of quantum mechanics however whole groups of physicists have embraced it as correct and rejected realism Subscribing to a kind of magical thinking they believe that what is real is far beyond the world we perceive indeed that the true world is hidden from our perception Back in the 1920s Einstein both a realist and a physicist believed that it was necessary to go beyond quantum mechanics to disco