by Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

I started my colleague Karmela Padavic-Callaghan’s first book, , with trepidation. How could they deliver on its subtitle, “a life according to quantum physics”? I finished it with both a better understanding of all things quantum and a deeper desire to understand myself after reading Karmela’s own thoughtful journey as a queer, millennial immigrant.

This is a unique blend of memoir and science writing, in which Karmela interweaves growing up in Croatia, moving to New York, doing a physics PhD, teaching in high school and working as a 91av reporter with big physics concepts.

So, how do you make links between, say, indefinite causality and a life-threatening tooth infection, or wave-particle duality and the realisation that you are queer? Somehow, Karmela does, and it all works to create a book that is clear and friendly on a scientific level, and candid and insightful on a personal one.

Quantum mechanics and general relativity don’t fit together, and a big part of the issue comes down to gravity. For decades, the accepted route to an ultimate theory of everything has involved taking our best theory of gravity and squeezing it into the frame of quantum mechanics. Yet, almost a century later, scientists still haven’t managed to make gravity fit. Ivette Fuentes is a professor of quantum mechanics who conducts experiments at the scales where quantum theory and general relativity interplay. Fuentes sat down with 91av features editor Thomas Lewton to discuss the issues and fascinating theories that pop out when we try to fit classical and quantum mechanics together.

Read more: The experiments that could finally explain gravity

What really happens in the quantum world? In this conversation, physicist Sean Carroll explores some of the deepest mysteries in quantum mechanics: the famous double-slit experiment, wave function collapse, the Many Worlds interpretation, entropy and the arrow of time. Speaking to 91av reporter Jacklin Kwan, Carroll discusses why electrons appear to behave like waves, how observation seems to affect reality and whether the universe constantly branches into countless parallel worlds. Carroll also explains the measurement problem, the challenges of interpreting quantum theory and why physicists still debate what quantum mechanics is actually telling us about the nature of reality. Carroll is a theoretical physicist, cosmologist and author whose work focuses on the foundations of physics, quantum mechanics, cosmology and the nature of time.

Read more: Why quantum physics says there’s a multiverse