Hacking Matter - Wil McCarthy

 

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"When he experimented with lightning, Ben Franklin mused that electricity 'might someday prove of use.' Now comes Wil McCarthy, offering a peek at something so potentially transforming, our grandchildren may build civilizations around it. If even a few of these possibilities come true, you'll always remember you heard it here first." -- David Brin, author of The Transparent Society

"Programmable substances and futuristic computers will revolutionize our lives and allow us to soar beyond the limits of our intuition. No book better describes the impact of hypercomputing and the dazzling wealth of new materils coming our way than Hacking Matter." -- Clifford A. Pickover, author of The Mathematics of Oz

"A grand tour of cutting-edge research: alchemy, 21st century style. The author makes an informative case for the promising, even magical, potential of programmable atoms." -- Publishers Weekly

McCarthy effectively conveys the inherent gee-whiz character of his subject. A fascinating glimpse of research that may in a few years find its way into our everyday lives." --Kirkus Reviews

"[T]he book's science is solid and McCarthy's fervor genuinely infectious. The future never felt so close." -- Jennifer Kahn, WIRED

"McCarthy blends lucid nuts-and-bolts explanations of 'quantum dots' and other developing technologies with healthy doses of 'You ain't seen nothin' yet' descriptions of speculative applications. A fascinating book for any reader intrigued by new technologies." -- Barnes and Noble

"Promises to create a thunderclap of change. McCarthy takes a fantastical concept, coolly explaining it in a plausible way, and helps even the most science-deficient reader to understand how 'hacking matter' works, and what it means for all of us." -- Dallas Morning News

 

At the nanoscale, where we find very tiny, very simple objects like the water molecule (about 0.3 nm across at its widest), these rules barely apply at all. Instead, the behavior of particles is governed by quantum mechanics, that elusive and slippery physics pioneered in the time of Einstein. Quantum mechanics is almost completely counterintuitive; your "gut feel" about how a particle should behave is virtually useless for predicting what it will actually do. This is because on the nanoscale, what we call "particles" are really probability waves -- regions where a particle-like phenomenon is more or less likely to occur. Probability waves can do "impossible" things like leaping across an impenetrable barrier, or existing in many places at the same time, or apparently predicting the future, or being influenced by distant events much faster than the speed of light should allow.