Entangled States: A Life According to Quantum Physics

Join us for a discussion with Karmela Padavic-Callaghan and Sevan Rasmussen about Entangled States: A Life According to Quantum Physics

Padavic-Callaghan is a science writer currently on staff writer at New Scientist where they report on physics, materials science, and quantum technology. Each chapter examines a moment in Karmela’s life through the lens of a physics concept. Knot theory becomes a lens for the story of Karmela visiting a Croatian healer. Ultracold atom labs lead to a meditation on societal expectations that women be unfailingly warm and nurturing. And the workings of an electron microscope become a framework for Karmela’s evolving relationship with cosmetics as they realized they are nonbinary.

Padavic-Callaghan writes conversationally about seeing themselves in Freddie Mercury’s queer masculinity and power, what it means to be a queer teacher to young people, and overall how “Queerness, as I have come to understand it, is always future-oriented, always a state of becoming.”