Includes notes, bibliographical references and index.

Carlo Rovelli has entranced millions of readers with his vivid presentations of contemporary science. In Helgoland, he examines the enduring enigma of quantum theory. Helgoland is a treeless island in the North Sea where the twenty-three-year-old Werner Heisenberg made the crucial breakthrough for the creation of quantum mechanics, setting off a century of scientific revolution. Today our understanding of the world is based on this theory, yet it is still profoundly mysterious.

Rovelli argues that quantum theory's most unsettling contradictions can be explained by seeing the world as fundamentally made of relationships rather than substances. We and everything around us exist only in our interactions with one another. This bold idea suggests new directions for thinking about the structure of reality and even the nature of consciousness. Shifting our perspective once again, Rovelli takes us on a riveting journey through the universe so we can better comprehend our place in it.

(From the back cover)