Hardcover
$15.19

Paperback
$7.77 - $12.99

$15.19 with 44 percent savings

List Price: $27.00

FREE International Returns

No Import Fees Deposit & $10.29 Shipping to Germany Details

Delivery Thursday, January 9

Or fastest delivery Monday, January 6

Only 9 left in stock - order soon.

$$15.19 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Ships from

Amazon

Ships from

Amazon

Sold by

Finery Book

Sold by

Finery Book

Returns

Returnable until Jan 31, 2025

Returns

Returnable until Jan 31, 2025

For the 2024 holiday season, eligible items purchased between November 1 and December 31, 2024 can be returned until January 31, 2025.

Read full return policy

Payment

Secure transaction

Payment

Secure transaction

We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more

Details

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

$9.26

FREE International Returns

Delivery Thursday, January 9

Or fastest delivery Monday, January 6

Only 1 left in stock - order soon.

$$15.19 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Enhancements you chose aren't available for this seller. Details

${cardName} not available for the seller you chose

${cardName} unavailable for quantities greater than ${maxQuantity}.

Sold by FindAnyBook and Fulfilled by Amazon.

Add to List

Added to

Unable to add item to List. Please try again.

Other sellers on Amazon

New & Used (24) from $5.00

Image Unavailable

Image not available for
Color:

To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

George Musser

Spooky Action at a Distance: The Phenomenon That Reimagines Space and Time--and What It Means for Black Holes, the Big Bang, and Theories of Everything Hardcover – November 3, 2015

by George Musser (Author)

4.2 570 ratings

See all formats and editions

{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$15.19","priceAmount":15.19,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"15","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"19","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"2xRDreJ0TxCaSkLEIOPLbAuT0GTDGfpxMmB%2BWA5oQXjB1oKvStQ8YXNK9s1A%2FBy2NTq6VyURpr9KB%2BMGxIHTqPM9%2BdvjfY3xeuOESo2w%2FEPVa9BMW7hmIX5mf3NXwSj9u4t2uRE9PfTr56CIUK18trF9w%2BXmSg8vWhQS%2Fug25mQtE%2B5sIKlBuO2H9AZ1xrmk","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$9.26","priceAmount":9.26,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"9","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"26","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"2xRDreJ0TxCaSkLEIOPLbAuT0GTDGfpxJyYtJ1y43cUJSP1aCD%2BCrMmqXPyjVFDpTEtNC%2B59BeACZLMiOnkUZFu6uoC2rMBBTP7TK26aUPSHj8tsz0%2BxifMJm0Mfk%2F%2Bn7nHri%2FBLsCtMkCTDDvPwuhVULKrje84mYMfIXzvrsOHBzfIGhO%2Fo6QkvJh8lBArr","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

Long-listed for the 2016 PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award

Delightfully readable, Spooky Action at a Distance is a mind-bending voyage to the frontiers of modern physics that will change the way we think about reality.

What is space? It isn't a question that most of us normally ask. Space is the venue of physics; it's where things exist, where they move and take shape. Yet over the past few decades, physicists have discovered a phenomenon that operates outside the confines of space and time: nonlocality--the ability of two particles to act in harmony no matter how far apart they may be. It appears to be almost magical.

Einstein grappled with this oddity and couldn't come to terms with it, describing it as "spooky action at a distance." More recently, the mystery has deepened as other forms of nonlocality have been uncovered. This strange occurrence, which has direct connections to black holes, particle collisions, and even the workings of gravity, holds the potential to undermine our most basic understandings of physical reality. If space isn't what we thought it was, then what is it?

In Spooky Action at a Distance, George Musser sets out to answer that question, offering a provocative exploration of nonlocality and a celebration of the scientists who are trying to explain it. Musser guides us on an epic journey into the lives of experimental physicists observing particles acting in tandem, astronomers finding galaxies that look statistically identical, and cosmologists hoping to unravel the paradoxes surrounding the big bang. He traces the often contentious debates over nonlocality through major discoveries and disruptions of the twentieth century and shows how scientists faced with the same undisputed experimental evidence develop wildly different explanations for that evidence. Their conclusions challenge our understanding of not only space and time but also the origins of the universe-and they suggest a new grand unified theory of physics.

“An important book that provides insight into key new developments in our understanding of the nature of space, time and the universe. It will repay careful study.” ―John Gribbin, The Wall Street Journal

“An endlessly surprising foray into the current mother of physics' many knotty mysteries, the solving of which may unveil the weirdness of quantum particles, black holes, and the essential unity of nature.” ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Report an issue with this product or seller

Print length

304 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date

November 3, 2015
Dimensions

6.25 x 1.13 x 9.27 inches
ISBN-10

9780374298517
ISBN-13

978-0374298517
See all details

This item: Spooky Action at a Distance: The Phenomenon That Reimagines Space and Time--and What It Means for Black Holes, the Big Bang, and Theories of Everything

$15.19

Get it as soon as Tuesday, Jan 7

Only 9 left in stock - order soon.

Sold by Finery Book and ships from Amazon Fulfillment.

Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation: Why Physicists Are Studying Human Consciousness and AI to Unravel the Mysteries of the Universe

$17.99

Get it as soon as Tuesday, Jan 7

Only 1 left in stock - order soon.

Sold by esyaka and ships from Amazon Fulfillment.

Total price: $00

To see our price, add these items to your cart.

Try again!

Details

Added to Cart

One of these items ships sooner than the other.

Show details Hide details

Choose items to buy together.

Products related to this item

Page 1 of 1Start overPage 1 of 1

Customer reviews

570 global ratings

How customer reviews and ratings work

Review this product

Write a customer review

Customers say

Customers find the book well-written and engaging. They describe it as a good, heavy-duty read that is thought-provoking and rewarding for amateur physicists. However, opinions differ on the information quality - some find it a good summary of the history of science with clear explanations, while others consider it not technical enough for casual scientists.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Select to learn more

Readable Readability Entertainment value Information quality

59 customers mention "Readable"45 positive14 negative

Customers find the book well-written with clear analogies and colorful illustrations. They appreciate the explanation in plain language for those not familiar with physics. The book provides a good summary of the attempts by physicists to understand the universe. Readers find each page fascinating and mysterious, with well-documented ideas. The presentation is not mathematical, so interested laymen have a fighting chance. Overall, it's a useful introduction and survey on the topic for armchair fans.

"...His book is well-written with many short but clear analogies and colorful terms (like the “prebangian epoch”)...." Read more

"...It soon becomes apparent that we know very little. A well written book that stretches the mind. Five stars." Read more

"...The book is a useful introduction and survey on the topic for an armchair fan of physics and philosophy such as myself who's willing to put his/her..." Read more

"...significant progress in physics rather unlikely. The book is very readable but was not very helpful to me in understanding the substance of..." Read more

30 customers mention "Readability"30 positive0 negative

Customers find the book easy to read and engaging. They appreciate the factual content about Einstein and his life.

"...The book has many good reviews, communications with many great modern physicists, extensive..." Read more

"...however I have been studying it for a couple years and this book was EXCELLENT...." Read more

"This is an excellent read for those who are interested in exploring the current theories of physics that try to address the most basic elements and..." Read more

"This is a great book for all of us who have enough science background to be thrilled and exicted about the universe from the largest to smallest...." Read more

25 customers mention "Entertainment value"25 positive0 negative

Customers find the book entertaining, fascinating, and thought-provoking. They say it's well-written and rewarding for amateur physicists.

"...He does a superb job of explaining all the nonsense theories. Very entertaining...." Read more

"I found this book very interesting, but it's not for everyone...." Read more

"Briskly written and entertaining, but if you have read other pop science accounts of non-locality in physics, there's not much for you here...." Read more

"A truly entertaining and comprehensive look at the complex topic of nonlocality...." Read more

44 customers mention "Information quality"28 positive16 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the book's information quality. Some find it a good summary of the history of science, with clear explanations and interesting concepts. Others mention it's not a technical book, but a good introduction for someone studying physics. There are also complaints that the book contains a lot of conjecture presented as fact without any logical explanation.

"...great modern physicists, extensive bibliography and notes, and a good index...." Read more

"...This book is very hard, very complicated, and tackles so many issues that I found myself reading a page or two and then putting it away for days...." Read more

"...rather unlikely. The book is very readable but was not very helpful to me in understanding the substance of the issues or even the basis for..." Read more

"Overall I fund this to be a clear, fascinating overview of the evidence we have that suggests that nature interacts with itself beyond space and time..." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Stephen Held
But it's brilliant gibberish. Musser is either a charlatan or a ...
Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2015
Verified Purchase
This book is gibberish. But it's brilliant gibberish. Which kind of makes sense because he's explaining quantum physics, which is useful gibberish. Musser is either a charlatan or a great explainer. Or both. I read this book foolishly expecting him to explain quantum entanglement. He can't. Nobody can. Feynman said don't feel bad if you don't understand quantum physics - nobody does. I tossed the quantum entanglement problem to my really smart 10 year old grandson who has not yet been biased by a conventional physics education and even he couldn't figure it out. But his explanations were every bit as entertaining as Musser's explanations of whether time and space really exist. So why the 5 stars? He does a superb job of explaining all the nonsense theories. Very entertaining. My advice - Never try to read explanations of quantum physics sober.

Read more

12 people found this helpful

Helpful

Report
David L. Peterson
Non-Locality as General Principle(?)
Reviewed in the United States on February 24, 2016
Verified Purchase
The term “spooky action at a distance” comes from Einstein’s view of quantum non-locality and was later renamed “entanglement” by Schrodinger. That entanglements really were non-local was emphasized by John Bell and hundreds of subsequent “Bell tests.” Since entanglement non-locality seems to operate outside of time and space, it raises the question, “If space isn’t what we thought it was, then what is it?” That is the key question addressed by Musser’s book. Much of the reading is about people and history of modern speculative physics at its fringes (holography, duality, strings, loops, D0-branes, black hole horizons, twistors, amplituhedron, wormholes, matrix models, and non-commutative geometry). The many ideas discussed are all beyond present test abilities; and the book trades any detail for wide breadth of coverage. Because it is on the fringes of physics, there is no closure or conclusions and a feeling of handwavings. The overall lack of tangibility can be pretty frustrating. One of the key players mentioned in the book was Fotini Markopoulou who had worked in the areas of causal sets, causal dynamical triangulation theory (CDT, 2006 with Lee Smolin) theory and quantum graphity (2008) but then left physics for work in Innovation Design in 2012 (not “industrial design” as stated in the book).
It is of great interest to know what modern theoretical physicists are working on, and Musser provides that. His book is well-written with many short but clear analogies and colorful terms (like the “prebangian epoch”). Apart from quantum mechanics, one example of non-locality is black hole horizons: “the location of the horizon depends not only on how strong the hole’s gravity is now, but how strong it will be.” But the horizon is a deduced view of an observer lying very far away from a region where time seems to stand still – not a conventional use of the term “location.”
I believe that book would have had more needed solidity if it had initially discussed the strongly well-verified experimental state of Bell Tests for quantum entanglement and showed more space-time diagrams of non-local strangeness. Here, Anton Zeilinger is a very key player (perhaps worthy of a future Nobel Prize). One of his experiments showed "delayed-choice entanglement swapping" and another “teleportation” of a quantum state. Swapping means the transfer of a quantum state of one photon to another. Possibly his most famous demonstration was quantum teleportation over 144 kilometers between two Canary Islands. Other authors did a separate 2013 test called, "Entanglement Swapping between Photons that have Never Coexisted"-- entanglement can be over spacelike or timelike separations.
The easiest understanding of non-local entanglement is perhaps the “transactional interpretation” from John Cramer. This allows sub-quantum communication between an emitter and an absorber both forwards and backwards in time (“zig-zag”, you know where you’re going because you’ve already been there). The classical world only allows time to progress forwards, but the quantum wavefunction lives in a different world more resembling “the square root of reality” and may communicate both ways in time (retarded and advanced). Then all the tested space-time diagrams of non-locality make simple intuitive sense. This is mentioned briefly in the book under “reverse causation” but then quickly dismissed (perhaps due to a confusion over the term signaling as classical versus sub-quantum).
The book has many good reviews, communications with many great modern physicists, extensive bibliography and notes, and a good index. But good understanding would require a lot of individual effort investigating elsewhere.

Read more

14 people found this helpful

Helpful

Report
Albert
A fascinating mind stretcher
Reviewed in the United States on January 25, 2016
Verified Purchase
“Spooky action” is when one thing is influenced by something else even though the two have no physical connection. The appropriate terms are “locality” and “non-locality”. An example is the influence of gravity. It has an obvious effect but without any physical connection. While nonlocal action has been known and observed for centuries, most scientists preferred to ignore it or to assume that a physical explanation would arise. However, with the rise of quantum mechanics and such things as quantum entanglement the matter has become too obvious to ignore. In discussing this the author opens the door to a cornucopia of speculation concerning “reality” and the structure of the universe. It soon becomes apparent that we know very little. A well written book that stretches the mind. Five stars.

Read more

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Report
Tom P
Nice comprehensive treatment, but...
Reviewed in the United States on January 18, 2017
Verified Purchase
This was my first exposure to nonlocality as a dedicated topic and the book gave what seemed to be a comprehensive coverage both historically and in relation to the science itself. I certainly walked away with an appreciation of its various manifestations in nature, related theoretical work, and likely indication of an underlying reality that is well outside our daily experience. The author has a broad command of current work in the field and concepts being studied to help the reader better understand this dauntingly obscure (but apparently very real) character of nature. My thanks for his taking the time to create this work.

I did find the book pedagogically challenged however in several aspects. To begin with, the entanglement experiment that motivates the subject early on, seems to describe a system that could easily be interpreted through classical means and this is obviously not the intention. That is, for all the reader knows the generated photon pairs could be coherent (or anti-coherent - may not have this right ) - the description of moving the second polarizer 90 deg notwithstanding (this might indeed unambiguously demonstrate entangled behavior, but it's not explained sufficiently to enable the reader to see that vs the more obvious classical explanation). Also, data measurements are stated in units of events and coincidences per second where they should be events per hundred detections (since he implies resulting values are percentages. Stated units are OK if apparatus is set to deliver precisely 100 photon pairs/s but not obvious why one would do this and not so described).

In some places the reading just seems out of synch with common terminology such as describing collisions in the Large Hadron Collider as being those of gluons and with gluon collision products. This seems like an unusual way to describe such events since gluons do not appear by themselves in nature (have never been isolated empirically). If there's a beneficial reason for describing these collisions in this non-standard manner (singling out only the strong boson component), why not help out the learning reader by saying what that is.

At another point early on, an analogy is made for the expansion of space, which can cause distant objects to separate faster than light speed - the analogy being a line dance where dozens of dancers are added per second resulting in the ends reaching high speeds ("55 mph") without any one person needing to move quickly. Sorry but this just seems wrong. The end dancers would each need to move at least at half the separation speed - nearly 30 mph (on average). Does he instead mean "dancers need not move quickly relative to their neighbor"?

There are plenty of other examples where the analogies and metaphors either seemed confusing or to only hold in a limited sense. The latter is always the case to some degree with such devices however enough of them seemed to have had me scratching my head early on that it was hard to shake my skepticism and embrace them to help digest the many subtle concepts that followed.

Finally, after the first half, the book seems to lose some focus. There are stories of meetings with and opinions of leaders in the field, various anecdotes, ties with historical developments and between various theoretical explorations, etc. All potentially helpful and quite possibly a good survey for someone already familiar with the field, but seeemed protracted and diffuse for someone unfamiliar trying to sort out the main takeaways.

Having said all this and in fairness to the author, this is seems to be an elusive subject indeed and one that has defied having its veil pierced (with any clarity) by brilliant minds past and present. The book is a useful introduction and survey on the topic for an armchair fan of physics and philosophy such as myself who's willing to put his/her head down and get through it.

Read more

11 people found this helpful

Helpful

Report

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English

davidgarciar1
Wow
Reviewed in Mexico on August 2, 2018
Verified Purchase
Good book for learning about nonlocality and the modern thoughts on how we understand the universe. Without math but deep insights.

Read more
Report
Kaustav kemprai
Its Good
Reviewed in India on March 20, 2017
Verified Purchase
Nice ! The book quality is good pages are soft loved to read !! But it takes 3 weeks in shipping thats annoying .. I hope they will make delivery more faster for this product !

Read more
Report
Bahram Houchmandzadeh
What do we smoke in our labs ?
Reviewed in France on December 19, 2016
Verified Purchase
The book gave me pleasure to read, but ... I have the impression that it is going to mystify the general audience about the current state of Physics. The book brings to the forefront an inconsistency in our comprehension of Physics. Many people are trying to bridge this gap by exploring wild ideas, and the author does a good job at reviewing these ideas. However, theories are not idea. A theory in physics should be (i) falsifiable and (ii) predictive. None of these ideas (Holistic universe, holographic universe, parallel universe, quantum graphity, ...) is even close to these gold standards of physics. The book however presents all these idea as kind of theories, letting the non-physicist wonder what do we smoke in our labs (disclaimer: I am a physicist). It is only in the concluding chapter that the author tries to make the distinction between ideas and theories, and I'm not sure that many readers will get to this point.

Read more
Report
Matheus Lobo
Muito bom!
Reviewed in Brazil on July 20, 2016
Verified Purchase
Esclarecedor. O autor apresenta a parte histórica acompanhada da física acerca dos vários tipos de não-localidade. Recomendável para não especialistas e para especialistas que desejam conhecer a área. É um dos MELHORES livros que já li sobre não-localidade e sobre a possibilidade do espaço ser discretizado.

Read more
Report
Translate review to English
Stephen
A must read !
Reviewed in Canada on April 23, 2016
Verified Purchase
First thing first. I am not a scientist. My last science classes were in highschool and I'm now 53 years old. I have always been interested in space, the cosmos, physic but as an amateur. Having said this Mr Musser is a must read. I had read stuff about this non locality and, like many others it seems, saw this as no more than a freak show of nature. I did feel that their was something deep about in anyway but again not being a physicist what did I know. Is this book easy to read? I'd say yes and no. Yes cause Mr Musser explains everything in terms easy to understand even if not always easy to grasp. So yes you need to make an effort to follow but it's worth it beleive me. After finishing his book, I felt someone had open a window to something unknown, something that will redefine concepts as fundemental as spacetime and reality.

Read more
Report

See more reviews

Return this item for free

Shipping & Fee Details

Return this item for free

Image Unavailable

Follow the author