The Open Problem in Physics

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I thought I was going to get tomatoes thrown at me. And I didn't. I give a talk at Berkeley Lab, which is almost in my backyard and they knew what I was coming to give a talk about. But you should be aware that it's an open problem the same way that everyone's aware that we don't have a theory of quantum gravity. That's a well-known open problem even if you don't work on that. We wouldn't want that.

There are many mysteries surrounding quantum mechanics. To me, the biggest mysteries are why physicists haven’t yet agreed on a complete understanding of the theory, and even more why they mostly seem content not to try. This puzzling attitude has historical roots that go back to the Bohr-Einstein debates. Adam Becker, in his book What Is Real?, looks at this history, and discusses how physicists have shied away from the foundations of quantum mechanics in the subsequent years. We discuss why this has been the case, and talk about some of the stubborn iconoclasts who insisted on thinking about it anyway.

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Adam Becker received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Michigan. He is currently a science writer and a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine & Society at UC Berkeley. His book What Is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics comes out in paperback on Sept. 3, 2019.

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