Manjit Kumar
Good Vibrations
The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning and the Universe Itself
By Sean Carroll
Oneworld 470pp £20 order from our bookshop
When Richard Feynman was notified in October 1965 that he was to share that year’s Nobel Prize in Physics, the telegram stated simply that the award was ‘for fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics, with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles’. A reporter asked Feynman to tell him in just two sentences what he had actually done. ‘If I could tell you in two sentences,’ Feynman replied, ‘I wouldn’t have won the Nobel Prize.’
Despite being a pioneer in the field, Feynman later admitted, ‘I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.’ In the fifty or so years since, very little has changed, for at the centre of quantum mechanics is the vexed question of what sort of reality
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'The authorities are able to detain individuals in solitary confinement for up to six months at a secret location', which 'increases the risk to the prisoner of torture'.
@lucyjpop looks at two cases of China's brutal crackdown on free expression.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/xu-zhiyong-thupten-lodoe
'"The Last Colony" is, among other things, part of the campaign to shift the British position through political pressure. As with all good propaganda, Sands’s case is based in truth, if not the whole of it.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/empire-strikes-back
'To her enemies she was the alien temptress who led Charles I away from the "true religion" of Protestantism and towards royal absolutism.'
Lucy Hughes-Hallett reviews @LeandadeLisle's 'colourful', 'persuasive' new biography of Henrietta Maria.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/royalist-generalissima