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Everyone knows that Chitzas are masters of spatial compression, routinely exploring distant places across the Milky Way in their wedge-shaped scout ships. But rumors abound of even greater accomplishments. Some say these intrepid explorers have reached beyond the galaxy. When a distress signal is received from deep space, making sense of the emergency becomes a personal matter for Daniel Rice. His wife is onboard that ship.

High above the windswept plains of Kazakhstan, three astronauts on board a Russian Soyuz capsule begin their reentry. A strange shimmer in the atmosphere, a blinding flash of light, and the capsule vanishes in a blink as though it never existed. Daniel Rice is a government science investigator. Marie Kendrick is a NASA operations analyst. Together, they must track down the cause of the most bizarre event in the history of human spaceflight. They draw on scientific strengths as they plunge into the strange world of quantum physics.

In Quantum Physics: What Everyone Needs to Know, quantum physicist Michael G. Raymer distills the basic principles of such an abstract field, and addresses the many ways quantum physics is a key factor in today's science and beyond. The book tackles questions as broad as the meaning of quantum entanglement and as specific and timely as why governments worldwide are spending billions of dollars developing quantum technology research. Raymer's list of topics is diverse, and showcases the sheer range of questions and ideas in which quantum physics is involved.

The discovery of the quantum - the idea, born in the early 1900s in a remote corner of physics, that energy comes in finite packets instead of infinitely divisible quantities - planted a rich set of metaphors in the popular imagination. Quantum imagery and language now bombard us like an endless stream of photons. Phrases such as multiverse, quantum leap, alternate universe, the uncertainty principle, and Schrödinger's cat get reinvented continually in cartoons and movies, coffee mugs and T-shirts, and fiction and philosophy.

Utterly beautiful. Profoundly disconcerting. Quantum theory is quite simply the most successful account of the physical universe ever devised. Its concepts underpin much of the 21st-century technology that we now take for granted. But at the same time it has completely undermined our ability to make sense of the world at its most fundamental level.

On the eve of a top secret space mission, Captain Calli Chase detects a tripped alarm in the tunnels deep below a NASA research center. A NASA pilot, quantum physicist, and cybercrime investigator, Calli knows that a looming blizzard and government shutdown could provide the perfect cover for sabotage, with deadly consequences. As it turns out, the danger is worse than she thought. A spatter of dried blood, a missing security badge, a suspicious suicide—a series of disturbing clues point to Calli’s twin sister, Carme, who’s been MIA for days.