Physicist's Book 'Tales of the Quantum' to Be Published

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Art Hobson, professor emeritus.

Oxford University Press will publish Emeritus Professor Art Hobson's forthcoming book Tales of the Quantum: Unraveling science's most fundamental theory.

In Hobson's view, fundamental quantum issues such as wave-particle duality, non-locality, and the problem of measurement (also known as Schrodinger's cat) are still considered paradoxical by some experts. This has led to attempts to re-interpret or re-formulate the theory, and also to some unfortunate quantum-inspired pseudoscience. Hobson argues that the theory is not paradoxical but merely unexpected and non-intuitive, and that quantum physics doesn't need fixing. The book's thesis is that quantum physics is experimentally correct and logically consistent as it stands. The so-called quantum paradoxes are not paradoxes but instead have rational, experimentally-verified explanations in terms of the standard quantum foundations. The time is ripe, in Hobson's view, to demonstrate that the quantum principles form a consistent and experimentally justified account of the behavior of matter and energy.

Professor Hobson joined the University of Arkansas physics faculty in 1964, and retired in 1999. He has continued to be involved in physics research and physics education, and recently published two papers dealing with quantum foundations: "There are no particles, there are only fields" (American Journal of Physics, March 2013, pp. 211-223) and "Two-photon interferometry and quantum state collapse" (Physical Review A, Volume 88, 022105 (2013)).

A secondary, broader, purpose of the book is to promote scientific literacy. Hobson, whose textbook Physics: Concepts and Connections is in its fifth edition and is used for scientific literacy courses on this and many other campuses, has maintained this goal throughout his professional life. Tales of the Quantum will be written in non-technical language, with no mathematics. It will explain the main concepts of quantum physics, and highlight the rational, evidence-based process of science, in a way that non-scientists and scientists alike can understand. The book is due to be completed in 2015.