Chapter 642: Endless Dispute
In the Magic Sanctuary, Fruits of Immortality were placed one by one. Hundreds of millions of Super-dimensional Mana Generators surrounded the sanctuary. Wizards were conducting a ritual: they compiled the latest disputes into information streams, inscribed them into the Fruits of Immortality, and then injected stable, pure super-dimensional mana to accelerate the fruits’ recovery, urging all the slumbering Legendary Immortal Wizards to walk out of the river of history.
The only difficulty in this process was inscribing and injecting the information streams. Fortunately, the appearance of the wave equation provided a stepping stone to the microscopic world for all wizards who believed in waves.
As for the more terrifying collapse of causality, probability theory could be used to replace determinism, thereby resolving it.
Regardless, the wizards believed it was time to awaken the slumbering Legendary Immortal Wizards.
Even if they didn’t awaken them, these Legendary Immortal Wizards would eventually crawl out of history anew, but doing this would accelerate the process.
The injection of super-dimensional mana gradually increased. The complex magical arrays inscribed on the Magic Sanctuary lit up one after another. Legendary Immortal Wizards awoke from their long slumber. Bruce touched his head; it’s still there this time. The information stream echoed in his mind, letting him know to what extent the current theoretical dispute had developed.
Bayen also resurrected from the river of history. He seemingly hadn’t recovered from the collapse of belief caused by the collapse of determinism, staring blankly ahead as the information stream swirled in his mind.
Time waits for no one, and neither does academia. In various venues, Thales continued to criticize quantum mechanics, arguing that the concept of quantum jumps should be abandoned and that the microscopic world was still continuous.
The members of the Gelto School naturally disagreed. Alexander and the others went to his door personally to debate, which ultimately ended on bad terms.
However, the wave equation remained very endearing. After confirming that the rest of matrix mechanics was equivalent, Alexander and others of the Gelto School, and even the recently resurrected Legendary Immortal Wizard Bru, began to use the wave equation to solve practical problems.
In the quantum mechanics camp, more and more people began to use the wave equation. They were all masters of calculus. Daru, the founder of the matrix, was both angry and helpless about this.
Bruce even publicly declared multiple times: “In the realm of magical mechanics theory, nothing is more outstanding than the initial papers on wave mechanics.”
Daru was exceptionally heartbroken upon hearing this. He angrily questioned his teacher why his stance was so weak.
Bruce smiled and said mysteriously: “You are ultimately just a young man. I am merely praising the equation, which does not mean I am praising Thales. In the field of mechanics, every symbol has physical meaning. What meaning does a wave function used to describe matter waves have?”
Daru fell into deep thought. His eyes gradually brightened as he whispered, “You disagree with Thales’s interpretation of the wave function?”
Bruce’s gaze turned sharp, and his voice became shrill: “Of course. The wave-particle duality Lord Ace mentioned might be a direction, but pure waves are absolutely not the direction. Do you remember the genius scholar Thomson that Lord Ace praised? After being unable to resolve the collapse of determinism, he creatively proposed probability theory!
“Do you remember? Thales himself once introduced probability into the field of mechanics, developing a new branch: statistical mechanics. And this time, we will use his former weapon to attack his currently strongest shield!”
Daru immediately called for Alexander and the others. Together, they spread out magical parchment and began calculating. Alexander frowned and said, “There is a distinct difference between electrons and molecules. If two molecules are placed in the same environment, their final outcome must be the same. But electrons are different. Even if we could create the exact same environment for two electrons, there is no way to determine they will have the same outcome.”
Daru smiled and said, “Isn’t this precisely the reality of the microscopic realm? Your own experiments have also proven this. We should respect facts.”
They worked together and finally grafted the wave function onto probability: the square of the wave function is a probability distribution.
When the joint paper by the Gelto School was published, Thales was the first to write an article opposing it, and publicly opposed this viewpoint at various academic discussion venues.
At this time, the wizard once called the closest to Ace—Tenth Ring Wizard Bayen—and “The Phoenix” Thales came together. Bayen still couldn’t accept the probability theory proposed by his student; or rather, he had too many doubts about the concept of probability. Thus, another massive academic debate inevitably began.
The 572nd Frontier Theoretical Academic Conference convened in the First Academic Ring. On the way to the Academic Ring, Daru still adhered to the particle theory. Whether it was wave-particle duality or electrons being waves, he believed neither. Whoever brought it up to him, he would fly into a rage at them.
The Gelto School spent almost the entire journey to the Academic Ring arguing.
But amidst these arguments, Daru didn’t forget to research the lingering problem in matrix operations: that A B does not equal B A.
Daru was very anxious and sad inside. This anxiety didn’t stem from the people around him using the wave equation, but because the matrix itself had a severe problem: it did not obey the commutative law of multiplication.
In other words, measuring the electron’s velocity first and then its position would yield a different result than measuring its position first and then its velocity.
Looking at the still-thinking Daru, Bruce said in a deep voice, “The simpler a theory is, the more terrifying it is. If not handled well, it will poke a massive hole in the sky. Our focus this time is the probability distribution of the wave function. We can slowly research the rest later.”
Bruce’s words did not make Daru give up. If the sky needed poking, it had to be poked. A wizard’s curiosity toward the unknown was no less than a foodie’s yearning for delicacies.
Daru said without hesitation, “If it really gets poked through, we’ll just patch it up.”
Soon, the group from the Gelto School arrived at the First Academic Ring. Thales, Bayen, and others had long been waiting there. After simple pleasantries, Thales suddenly walked up to Daru, stared at him, and said, “You don’t really believe that only observable quantities are qualified to enter magical mechanics, do you?”
This touched upon the original concept of matrix mechanics: “measure first, establish theory later,” kicking physical quantities that only existed in speculation (like electron orbits) entirely out of the calculation realm.
Daru’s gaze was also sharp. He smiled faintly: “Why not? Didn’t Lord Ace abandon ‘absolute time’ because it was unobservable, ultimately establishing relativity?”
Thales choked on his words and could only say, “A good trick can’t be played twice.”
Bayen’s leather shoes clacked as he also walked up to Daru and whispered, “Theory determines what we can observe, doesn’t it?”
Daru didn’t speak. This proposition was incredibly broad. Whether theory determined observation or observation determined theory was much more complex than the chicken or the egg.
Before the academic conference even began, Daru silently returned to his quarters. He thought of a new concept: What if the electron’s position and velocity were measured simultaneously?
But he immediately realized this was a false proposition; it was untenable.
It was like using a thermometer to measure the heat of a cup of water. You must leave the thermometer in the water for a period of time to ensure the measurement is correct, but the thermometer also changes the water’s original temperature. If the thermometer is left in the water for a very short time, although the change in water temperature due to the thermometer is negligible, the result measured by the thermometer will definitely be inaccurate.
In other words, either you don’t measure it, or you measure it but don’t know the water’s true temperature.
The same was true for the electron. To know the exact position of an electron, one must use instruments to measure it. Currently, magic hadn’t produced the technology to allow the naked eye to observe electrons through a microscope—though it was said that with Great Source feedback, it might be possible.
But the naked eye must use optical fibers to see objects. When light shines on an electron, the electron’s motion characteristics have already been changed by the photon.
Daru, who had his eyes closed in deep thought in his room, suddenly opened them and said loudly, “We fundamentally have no way of knowing the electron’s position and velocity simultaneously. If we measure velocity first, the position has an error; if we measure position first, the velocity has an error. No matter what, it cannot be measured accurately.”
He unrolled a scroll of magical parchment and began drawing complex matrices and calculating. Outside the door, Bruce and the others knocked, but no one responded.
“The first discussion of the academic conference is about to begin. If Daru doesn’t want to come out, we’ll let him calm down first. Let’s go,” Bruce finally said with a serious expression.
Bruce was Daru’s teacher. Since he had spoken, the rest of the Gelto School didn’t insist. Leaving Daru be, they went to the Starlight Hall together and engaged in a fierce debate with Legendary Immortal Wizards like Thales and Bayen.
The focal point of the stalemate between the two sides lay in whether the wave function was a probability distribution.
Thales attacked the Gelto School’s grafting behavior without hesitation, only to be retorted by Alexander: “If it is not a probability distribution, how do you explain the instantaneous collapse of the particle in the electron double-slit interference experiment?”
Not to be outdone, Thales countered, “May I ask how probability theory explains the self-interference that occurs when a particle passes through two slits simultaneously?”
“What does Thales know about the Thales Wave Equation?”
…
The debate raged on. Bayen, who had already “died” once, had no spell models in his Mental Image World, so he didn’t need to worry about any impact. He loudly stated his viewpoint.
“Whether it’s electromagnetic equations or relativity, everything is built upon a solid foundation of determinism. I believe quantum theory is merely a stopgap measure while we have yet to correctly understand the microscopic world. It is incomplete and flawed. We cannot simply accept this unknowable status quo, but should find a way to understand it clearly and return to stricter causal determinism.”
Bayen’s student and descendant, Thomson, stood up directly and said loudly: “My dear teacher, I cannot agree with your viewpoint. Times have changed…”
The scene devolved into a chaotic shouting match. The stubborn and intelligent wizards couldn’t convince anyone else.
Finally, the host, Betty, used machinery to construct a line of magical text: “God confused the language of mankind.”
This came from Kaya mythology. Legend had it that in a prehistoric era, humanity united to build a miraculous structure reaching straight to Mount Kaya, the divine mountain. The God King Kronos was deeply worried, and ultimately the gods used their authority to confuse human language.
Only then did everyone present stop arguing and burst into laughter. The scene barely returned to calm. Betty took the opportunity to announce an adjournment, with discussions to resume in three days.
Daru’s door remained tightly shut. His eyes burned bright, and he was extremely excited.
As the founder of matrix operations, Daru had finally derived a formula: the product of the two errors is not less than a certain constant.
In other words, he had mathematically proven that error always exists; this result could not be measured accurately.
Daru’s door finally opened. He proudly announced to the exhausted members of the Gelto School: “I found it! I found it!”
Having just experienced a near hoarse, brain-racking debate, Alexander asked weakly, “Daru, what did you find?”
Waving the thick stack of calculation drafts in his hand, Daru said loudly, “I have strictly deduced from mathematics that error permanently exists. In other words, it is the ‘Daru Uncertainty Principle’!”
“Uncertainty?”
The crowd murmured the word, gathering together to view the fruits of Daru’s labor.
Soon, the internal argument within the Gelto School began. Alexander and Bruce firmly believed this uncertainty was a theoretical manifestation of wave-particle duality, while the proposer, Daru, believed this was caused by the electron’s particle nature and had nothing to do with wave nature.
They had a huge argument. As they argued, Bruce and Daru actually became red-eyed. Daru roared like a fighting bull, and finally turned around and burst into tears.
Lucilu had to comfort the two of them and mediate, ultimately repairing their master-apprentice relationship.
Everyone was physically and mentally exhausted. A single thought lingered in their minds: Just what on earth is an electron?!
On the third day, sporting panda eyes, Alexander said to the crowd: “Whether it’s an electron or a photon, at a certain moment of observation, it cannot possess two natures. When an electron hits the screen, it exhibits particle nature, because the screen is also an observation instrument. When an electron passes through the double slits, it exhibits wave nature, strictly following the Thales Wave Equation in space.
“If we forcefully install ‘super probes’ on the two slits to see exactly which slit the electron passes through, then I’m sorry, but this kind of observation assumes from the start that the electron is a particle, so you will get your wish and observe the electron passing through one of the slits.”
The crowd conducted verification experiments according to Alexander’s prediction, and everything was indeed just as he described. With a confident expression, Alexander said: “What an electron actually is, is essentially irrelevant. It is an unmeasurable state. Since it cannot be observed, it has no meaning.
“You can imagine it like this: when we close our eyes, the electron unfolds in the room like a cloud of mist obeying the probability wave function. The moment we open our eyes, it instantly collapses into a particle.
“Therefore, it is human observation that determines the nature of the electron. Not just electrons, but our entire world is like this. If a thing cannot be given an observation method, then that thing has no meaning whatsoever.
“The times have completely changed. There’s no need to question any determinism. Causality is dead; determinism ceased to exist long ago!”
(Chapter finished)
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