The "popular science" takes on QM have generally been an enormous failure, focused on irrelevant fluff like this. I mean, I get it, it's a subject that you can't seriously understand without a degree in physics or chemistry. I had plenty of trouble with the math even at the undergrad level.
But surely there's more interesting stories to tell of eg particle accelerator research, rather than fantasies.
More importantly, if you don't have 4 years worth of college math, quantum mechanics is EXTREMELY BORING from a layman's perspective. It's a bunch of extremely dense and specific math with very loaded concepts and terms and has no meaning to anyone who doesn't have a strong understanding of classical physics.
"If you make a blackbody radiator nearly absolute zero, it should emit insanely high energy radiation based on our current empirical equations for radiated energy. This can only be fixed if energy can only be radiated in discrete sized packets, including a minimum size of packet"
"Whats a black body radiator?"
People don't understand quantum physics, its ramifications, or why that's interesting to physicists because people can't even be assed to do simple mental math at a grocery store to get themselves good deals before they go back to their algebra teacher and complain that they will never use math in real life
But surely there's more interesting stories to tell of eg particle accelerator research, rather than fantasies.