God, Einstein And Games Of Chance : 13.7: Cosmos And Culture : NPR
But in Schrödinger's wave equation, the waves were not real
things. After some trial and error by Schrödinger, Born came up with the
strange idea that the wave was a wave of potentialities which, once
squared properly (for the experts, by taking the absolute value as the
wave function is a complex quantity) would produce the probability that
the electron be found at this or that orbit around the nucleus. The same
for other situations where the equation is applied: the result is
always some kind of probability.
In other words, the fundamental equation of matter didn't describe matter!
The
essence of Nature was not some concrete material realm but a
mathematical abstraction. The theory worked beautifully, producing
efficient descriptions of countless experiments. Quantum physics
revolutionized the world. But its interpretation, if you so choose to
think about it, remains mysterious.
