Book Reviews Perceptions Magazine, August 2024
The Handy Quantum Physics Answer Book
By Charles Liu, Ph.D.
Visible Ink Press
43311 Joy Road #414
Canton, MI 48187-2075
2024, 480 pages, 135 B/W Photos & Illustrations,
7.125” x 9.25” Trade Paperback, US $29.95
ISBN: 978-1-57859-805-2
Reviewed by Brent Raynes
The author of The Handy Quantum Physics Answer Book is certainly more than adequately qualified to write this volume. It covers clear answers to more than 800 of the most frequently asked questions pertaining to quantum physics. In brief, he’s a professor of astrophysics with the City University of New York’s College of Staten Island, is an associate with the Hayden Planetarium and Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History. He’s also the president of the Astronomical Society of New York and is a fellow of the American Astronomical Society and is the host of the podcast The LIUniverse with Dr. Charles Liu. And this alas is just a very abbreviated thumbnail overview of Dr. Liu’s background, accomplishments and qualifications.
“Quantum Mechanics! Quantum Tunneling! Quantum Computing! Quantum Teleportation! Every one of these topics sounds more awesome and more mysterious than the one before it,” Dr. Liu begins in his book’s introduction. “There can be no doubt – quantum physics is pretty cool.”
From the start, this author points out that the world of quantum physics surrounds us daily, pointing out how due to quantum physics we see light and feel heat due to quantum processes. He further explains that it’s “hardly strange and exotic,” and that’s it’s been incorporated into our phones, cars, trains, and even kitchen appliances.
Dr. Liu invites the reader to read his book from beginning to end, or simply open to the pages that tackle the quantum questions that you wish to have answered. It’s a deep and comprehensive dive into the “wild and wonderful world of quantum physics.”
Here are a few examples of the hundreds of questions that are addressed:
What role does quantum physics play in the human brain?
What is quantum teleportation?
What is quantum tunneling?
Can light be stopped from moving?
Did the Big Bang arise from quantum foam?
What does the many-worlds interpretation suggest about the nature of time?
Do we live in a multiverse?
What is antimatter?
This 480-page book more than lives up to its name as a handy reference volume on quantum physics. It’s also available in hardbound copy [ISBN: 978-1-57859-837-3] and as an eBook [ISBN: 978-1-57859-838-0].
Crashed Saucers and Malevolent Aliens: The Emergence of the Popular Modern UFO Mythos in the Late 20th Century
By Charles Lear
Pen and Pad Press
2024, 221 pages, Paperback, U.S. $17.00
ISBN: 9798321486702
Reviewed by Brent Raynes
This is an introductory review taking the reader through the complex and convoluted history and evolution of the modern “flying saucer era” not only from the time of Idaho businessman and airplane pilot Kenneth Arnold’s dramatic sighting of nine fast moving craft in the vicinity of Mount Rainer in Washington state, on June 24, 1947, that ignited a firestorm of hundreds of other unexplained aerial phenomena reported in the media from coast to coast that year, but also earlier in San Diego, California, on October 9, 1946. That’s when one Mark Probert claimed he saw an otherworldly craft and while in a light trance learned the object was piloted by “etherians” from the “etheric realm,” which as the author explains is an early version of reports we today associate with the interdimensional realm. The next day others reported seeing craft.
In the1950s, the so-called “contactees” rose to fame, men and women who claimed encounters with flesh and blood “Space Brothers” (and sometimes Sisters) in “nuts and bolts” space craft, which they’d often be given rides to places like our moon, Venus and Mars. There was a great division in the UFO field between these individuals and those who wanted to be seen as more scientific and serious, who focused on what they regarded as more credible reports. Especially those of police officers, pilots, military personnel, astronomers, and others with more responsible and credible sounding backgrounds than those who claimed to have become pals with beautiful Nordic men and women who shared extraordinary scientific and spiritual knowledge, which many of these contactees would freely share in books and lectures.
In the early years, many ufologists were very reluctant to deal with the “contactee” accounts. They wanted to deal with ordinary regular citizens who weren’t claiming a messianic type “Space Brother” connection in their encounters. They preferred a single close-range sighting of a craft, preferably by multiple witnesses of course, and they would become suspicious if a witness described more than one UFO sighting. Some investigators could deal with certain beings associated with landed UFOs, so long as they were collecting soil samples – or engaged in what somehow resembled scientific exploration and study of some kind and didn’t suddenly begin preaching an intergalactic message of peace and love.
Eventually though, gradually and reluctantly at first, but in time the contact scenario morphed into something more acceptable to the pallets of the “serious” ufologists.
Journalist, UFO author John Keel meanwhile had back in the early 1970s described ufology as a pseudoscientific belief-ridden field and pretty soon those words would have an almost prophetic quality to them. The “serious” ufologists instead came to largely support the “abductee” movement/narrative by the 1980s that was emerging wherein experiencers were being forced (rather than invited) aboard craft, being examined, creating possible hybrid species, and the ufologists were using a lot of regressive hypnosis (incorrectly assuming then to be an effective way to recover lost memories) that later would come under intense criticism. John Keel, Jacques Vallee, and a few others spoke out against its excessive usage, but many ignored such pleas.
Enough said on my part. The author expresses his points quite well. There’s not enough space here for me as a reviewer to effectively flesh it out and do the justice it deserves. Below is what the author expressed in his introduction, which I feel is a relevant statement to set the proper stage for the reader:
“The purpose of this book is to explore the development of the various narratives that together have created the mythos of grey aliens with big black eyes coming here from Zeta Reticuli to abduct humans, mutilate cattle, and experiment in secret underground bases working to create hybrids to replace us, all with the knowledge of a secret government that has recovered crashed flying saucers and alien bodies. Many in the UFO community, such as Jeremy Vaeni and Greg Bishop, who are both cited in this work, have moved beyond this scenario, thinking along the lines of John Keel and Jacques Vallée, who both felt that the phenomena might be far more complex. almost a comfort to at least have an explanation for high-strangeness reports that follows the rules of human logic.”
