Feb 15, 2026 01:59 AM
https://www.quantamagazine.org/are-the-m...-20260213/
INTRO: None of the leading interpretations of quantum theory are very convincing. They ask us to believe, for example, that the world we experience is fundamentally divided from the subatomic realm it’s built from. Or that there is a wild proliferation of parallel universes, or that a mysterious process causes quantumness to spontaneously collapse. This unsatisfying state was a key element of Beyond Weird, my 2018 book on the meaning of quantum mechanics. It’s no wonder experts are as divided as ever about what quantum theory says about reality, a century after the theory was developed.
But after reading Decoherence and Quantum Darwinism, a book published in March 2025 by the physicist Wojciech Zurek, I’m excited by the possibility of an answer that does away with all those fanciful notions. Zurek, of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, has been working for decades to resolve the question of how the quantum rules that govern the behavior of atoms and subatomic particles switch to those of classical physics — Newton’s laws of motion and so on — that operate at the scales of everyday life.
Zurek’s key idea about how this transition occurs, called decoherence, is fairly well established. But his book brings together for the first time all the elements he has been developing into a grand synthesis. He argues that the old mysteries of quantum theory are starting to dissolve. To my eye, Zurek has almost tied up the loose ends that have been confounding physics for 100 years, without invoking any substantially new or speculative assumptions. In doing so, he claims to unite the previously irreconcilable. Let’s see how far his approach takes us, and where the remaining mystery lies... (MORE - details)
INTRO: None of the leading interpretations of quantum theory are very convincing. They ask us to believe, for example, that the world we experience is fundamentally divided from the subatomic realm it’s built from. Or that there is a wild proliferation of parallel universes, or that a mysterious process causes quantumness to spontaneously collapse. This unsatisfying state was a key element of Beyond Weird, my 2018 book on the meaning of quantum mechanics. It’s no wonder experts are as divided as ever about what quantum theory says about reality, a century after the theory was developed.
But after reading Decoherence and Quantum Darwinism, a book published in March 2025 by the physicist Wojciech Zurek, I’m excited by the possibility of an answer that does away with all those fanciful notions. Zurek, of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, has been working for decades to resolve the question of how the quantum rules that govern the behavior of atoms and subatomic particles switch to those of classical physics — Newton’s laws of motion and so on — that operate at the scales of everyday life.
Zurek’s key idea about how this transition occurs, called decoherence, is fairly well established. But his book brings together for the first time all the elements he has been developing into a grand synthesis. He argues that the old mysteries of quantum theory are starting to dissolve. To my eye, Zurek has almost tied up the loose ends that have been confounding physics for 100 years, without invoking any substantially new or speculative assumptions. In doing so, he claims to unite the previously irreconcilable. Let’s see how far his approach takes us, and where the remaining mystery lies... (MORE - details)
