Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Bohr and Einstein: Einstein and Bohr
- 2 The peace before the quantum
- 3 A glance at relativity
- 4 The slow rise of the quantum
- 5 Bohr: what does it all mean?
- 6 Einstein's negative views
- 7 Bell and non-locality
- 8 A round-up of recent developments
- 9 Quantum information theory – an introduction
- 10 Bohr or Einstein?
- References
- Index
7 - Bell and non-locality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Bohr and Einstein: Einstein and Bohr
- 2 The peace before the quantum
- 3 A glance at relativity
- 4 The slow rise of the quantum
- 5 Bohr: what does it all mean?
- 6 Einstein's negative views
- 7 Bell and non-locality
- 8 A round-up of recent developments
- 9 Quantum information theory – an introduction
- 10 Bohr or Einstein?
- References
- Index
Summary
David Bohm: life and times
In what is perhaps Virginia Woolf's most famous novel, much of the narrative describes intentions, hopes, plans for the visit To the Lighthouse, a visit forestalled by bad weather. There follows a section ‘Time passes’ in which all is war, death, decay, desperation; only the poets thrive. Then life returns slowly and timorously; the visit is at last made, in sombre reflective mood.
Between perhaps 1930 and 1952, the study of the meaning of quantum theory went through its own period of emptiness. Von Neumann had done most to cause it. Einstein could not disturb it … When interest did creep back, it was a result of the work of David Bohm.
Bohm had already experienced a chequered career. He was born in the USA in 1917, and rapidly built up an exceedingly high reputation as a theoretical physicist. After initial collaboration with Robert Oppenheimer, he specialised in the physics of plasmas – gases in which, because of high temperature or low pressure, atoms are ionised, or broken up into negatively charged electrons and positively charged ions. Plasmas [118] are important in astrophysics and also in the effort to achieve controlled nuclear fusion. In nuclear fusion, small nuclei fuse together to form one large one, with the emission of energy; high temperatures are required, and so one is forced to deal with plasmas. This is also exactly the process that causes stars to radiate energy.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Einstein, Bohr and the Quantum DilemmaFrom Quantum Theory to Quantum Information, pp. 246 - 288Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006