653 Determinism (1/2)

Dum, dum, dum. In his library, Fernando heard the slow door knocks.

”You've come so early?” Fernando gazed at Lucien with his slightly dirty, red eyes, with subconscious vigilance about his abnormality.

Lucien lowered his head and smiled. ”When I finished the paper, it happened to be sunrise, so I went here straight away.”

”What paper?” Fernando had an even stronger sense of danger, which did not come from his Host Star of Destiny but from the multiple lessons in the past. ”Is it disruptive?”

Lucien thought for a moment and nodded his head. ”Yes. However, it is only based on the observation of tremendous experiment results and not strictly proved. The possibility can't be ruled out that it will be disapproved or included by other theories that include those phenomena in the future.”

”Bring it here.” Fernando was relieved. In such a case, until decisive proofs appeared, even the most revolutionary theory could not blow up his head.

Lucien presented his paper, and Fernando looked awful after merely reading the title.

”'A Probabilistic Explanation of the Wave Function'.” He read the title of the paper aloud one word after another and vaguely guessed what it was about. He somehow understood what the electron diffusion and diffraction experiments he worked on recently indicated, and why Oliver's explanation of the wave function did not match certain experiment results.

Opening the paper, Fernando read on without a word. The atmosphere around was more and more depressing, as if a real storm was about to arrive.

Suddenly, he raised his head when he hadn't finished the paper yet. With electricity flashing in his red eyes, he said dangerously, ”Are you suggesting that the wave function is not a wave in the regular sense, but a wave of probabilities probability wave?”

Lucien looked back at his teacher's dangerous eyes fearlessly. ”Yes. By observing tremendous experiment results and introducing Chloe statistics in molecular movement, we can describe the wave function in such a way: it is an indication of the probability that the electron appears in a certain location.”

Fernando seemed to be holding his fury back. ”But its location is fixed on the receiving screen. The probability is 100%!”

That was without a doubt. Every arcanist had seen the fluorescent points on the screen that were stimulated by the electrons. The undeniable experiment phenomenon suggested that the location of the electrons was absolutely certain.

Understanding his teacher's mood very well, Lucien said solemnly, ”It's like when we toss a coin without knowing any external circumstances. During the whole process, we can say that the result may be heads and tails. However, by the time it hit the ground, the result will be determined, never to change anymore. Naturally, the probability is 100%. What we are discussing is the electron before observation, not the electron whose result has been determined after observation.”

Fernando found it easier to understand now. More or less eased, he grasped the key point. ”Before observation? After observation? Then, according to your explanation, until we observe them, the electrons may appear in any location in space, except that the probability that it appears in some locations is higher than in others?”

He couldn't imagine the electron's form of existence at all now!

Fernando could accept the coin without any resistance, because it rolled in midair all the time, which entailed the different results when it hit the ground, but what about the electron? If the wave function described probabilities of location, the electron might appear anywhere. Did it mean that the electron might be in two places, or even all the places, at the same time?

That was more preposterous and unbelievable than any magic!

Up until so far, except for the demigods that he was unaware of, nobody could create such magic and let themselves exist in a similar form!

Lucien made an analogy. ”Until we observe it, the electron is like an illusionary cloud that does not have any entity. It spreads throughout space and exists everywhere as a superposition of all possibilities. The thicker part of the cloud is the location where it is more likely to appear, but it doesn't mean that the electron will surely appear there after observation.”

”Until we observe it, the electron is something we cannot imagine. It is a self-contradictory but unified monster with the wave-particle duality. Therefore, we cannot imagine its status with our original concepts, which is utterly meaningless. We can only describe it with the experiments that can be strictly verified.”

Fernando kept his mouth shut, as if he wouldn't stop himself from roaring if he were to open it.

Lucien went further. ”As a matter of fact, master, you must've observed that, after we modified the magic circles and reduced the number of electrons launched at one time, the first thing we would see was not the image of diffraction, but an assortment of messy fluorescent points. The image of diffraction only came into being when the number of electrons grew. Why was that?”

”It was because the destination of a single electron after it was diffracted was absolutely undeterminable; it was only a probability. Therefore, when electrons were too few, they would be disordered, but when there were enough of them, they would show the probabilistic distribution in general. There would be more electrons in some places and fewer in others. That's how the image of diffraction was formed.”

”It's like when we toss coins ten times, it's impossible for us to predict how many times they are going to show heads, but if we toss coins hundreds and thousands of times, the times that they show heads should be half of the whole!”

”If one day we can modify the magic circle to the point that it can shoot only one electron at a time, the result will be even clearer.”

”Probability, probability!” Fernando's face was so twisted as if he were going to eat probability.

He did not need Lucien to lecture him on the common sense of probability, which was one of the fields he was best at as an authority of thermodynamics. He remembered the electron diffraction experiments he did recently. It was true that the spots of light were messy until there were enough electrons.

Such a clear picture shivered his hands. A wind blew around him, turning the pages in the library with multiple loud noises. ”Until they are observed, electrons are a cloud of probabilities spreading throughout space? After they are observed, they are matter with a fixed location? What happened during the observation?”