Die Illusion der Materie

What modern physics reveals about our world

When asked what holds the world together at its core, modern natural science provides a clear answer: matter. We are made of matter, we move on it, we shape it into thousands of objects. Matter is the Earth, the Moon, the Sun, the Universe, our common mother. And mass, the resistance to acceleration, is its defining characteristic. But what if mass is not an inherent property of matter, but merely the effect of a fluctuating field? Then the entire beautiful edifice of thought proves to be an illusion. In his unique blend of advanced physics, stories, and pop culture, Guido Tonelli brings to life this constitutive collapse of seemingly solid foundations for our thinking. When Guido Tonelli and other leading physicists succeeded in detecting the Higgs boson in 2012, it was accompanied by the hope of finally having found the particle that gives mass to all other particles. If matter is stable and resists decay, if we exist and the world exists, then we should owe this to that particle. Yet the opposite occurred. Just as in the case of the most advanced physical theory, quantum mechanics, without whose assumptions there would be no smartphones, matter literally dissolved: as if everything, absolutely everything, were nothing more than the result of a game of random fluctuations. Tonelli's brief yet breathtaking book brings us this outcome of modern physics with a wealth of examples beyond physics: from the death of his grandfather, who became a victim of a traffic accident in a deserted area during the war, to the creation of "Money," the famous song from Pink Floyd's album aptly titled "The Dark Side of the Moon."

"This book achieves a paradox. We read it breathlessly to the last page.".