Why you need to fall in love with quantum physics — before the next revolution

Does learning about quantum physics freak you out? A new book aims to change that, and just in time. The second quantum revolution is coming: superconductors that could revolutionise clean energy sources; new drug discoveries; stronger encryption for phone communications. They’re all within reach. Most non-scientists don’t aim to have even a passing understanding of quantum physics — a famously baffling subject — but it’s vital to understand the world we live in and the changes that are coming.

“There’s a whole quest to build a quantum computer,” Frank Verstraete, one of Belgium’s top quantum physicist, tells me. “All the big technology companies like Google and Amazon and IBM are pouring in billions and billions and billions of dollars and trying to build one, it’s the cutting-edge of research for computing power.”

The problem is most people haven’t caught up with the first quantum revolution. Quantum mechanics deals with things at the subatomic level, where quarks and photons operate. Unlike classical physics, where strict rules apply, everything gets a bit weird down there. If you’re not a maths fan, thinking about it too hard starts to feel like your brain is melting out of your ears.

Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics (And Everyone Needs to Know Something About It) (Handout)

That’s a huge shame, reckons Verstraete. “Everywhere you look, there is quantum physics,” he tells me. The colours on this page, or the fact that you aren’t sinking through the chair you’re sitting on? “This is pure quantum physics.” Most of us probably understand a lot more about the subject than we think. It’s all in the perception, Versraete says.

He is baffled that otherwise highly educated and plugged-in people don’t want to push themselves to think about the quantum world. “I find it very strange that people will spend an amazing amount of time and effort reading something difficult like Tolstoy’s War and Peace,” he says. “But they won’t make any effort to learn something about physics, because they think it’s too hard.”

More than a marriage of minds

However, when he was offered the chance to write his own literary masterpiece explaining quantum physics to the masses, Verstraete came up short. “I completely failed. As a scientist, if we want to explain something, it’s really to understand something,” he says. “I did not appreciate that this is not what people want when they read a book. It’s not that they really want to understand. They want to get a feeling about it.”

He did not give up. Over the course of a long bike ride, Verstraete vented his frustration about the failed book project to Céline Broeckaert. A scholar of romance languages and a playwright, quantum physics was far from her own field of expertise. But together, they had a breakthrough. “She was putting her finger on all the things that I did wrong, but asking the right questions,” explains Verstraete. “Frank came up with this crazy idea of writing this book together,” chimes in Broeckaert.

Céline Broeckaert and Frank Verstraete (Handout)

The book proposal came first. But in the process of writing it together, it became something else. A romantic proposal. The couple are now married and living in Cambridge. Their book, Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics (And Everyone Needs to Know Something About It), was a bestseller in Belgium. While it’s scientific non-fiction, it is also their love story. “We spent all our time together. For every page in the book, we talked for hours,” says Broeckaert.

Reading the book will not only give you a grounding in the fundamental laws that govern our world, but an appreciation for them. “The book is for everybody that’s curious about the world, everybody that is curious about beautiful things,” says Broeckaert. It also explains the science behind modern technology: the transistors in your smartphone, the way information travels through the internet, the way MRI machines work, lasers.

Broeckaert teases out the very human story of quantum physics, and the men and women who made the breakthroughs. She was determined, she tells me, to apply a feminist lens to the history of quantum physics. “I paid a lot of attention to women,” says Broeckaert. “There are so few women in science today. Through this book you have these role models and we really hope that, for the young girls reading this, it will give them confidence.”

Don’t fight it, feel it

Quantum physics cannot be understood in isolation and the duo were keen to avoid wafting off into the mysteries of the intangible. Their book contextualises the discoveries — the leaps that were made in art and design around the turn of the 20th century. And there’s still so much more to be discovered. “Quantum physics is 100 years old and we only understand very minimal things about it yet,” marvels Verstraete.

What’s important to understand about quantum physics, they both stress, is that no one truly understands it. Not even the quantum physicists. “Frank told me to stop trying to understand it, you just have to feel it, and at a certain point you have to accept it,” explains Broeckaert. “It works and that’s the way it is. And that’s even for scientists. There are things that even Frank doesn’t understand, but it works, and he can work with it.”

“Really new science, fundamental science, is all about feelings,” adds Verstraete. “If you look at how scientists come up with new ideas it’s similar to how artists work. You have to kind of just follow your feelings.” Still confused by quantum physics? You just have to go with it, and all will be revealed.

Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics (And Everyone Needs to Know Something About It) by Frank Verstraete and Céline Broeckaert is out June 5 (Pan MacMillan)