Part IV: Conversation 1926

Phone call from Copenhagen to Berlin, 1926:

Niels Bohr:

Erwin, I don't get it. Here I had a nice model that explains so much about the light spectrum, black body radiation, the periodic table of elements -- all the chemists were so excited and, besides, it just looks so cool and drawable. I can see high school teachers way in the future drawing little balls in the center with beads of electrons zipping around. What are you doing messing in with your waves?

Erwin Schrodinger:

Niels, you gotta be kidding. Everyone knows your model violates all the traffic laws of nature. You've taken old man Planck's quantum leaps one leap too far. Particles jumping from one orbit to another without traversing the space in between! I mean, if something can leave one place and turn up instantaneously in another, then anything could happen! And if anything could happen, then what are we scientists for?

Niels:

Okay, so it's weird. Life is weird, Erwin. And waves don't make it any less so.

Erwin:

Oh, yeah? Waves are the classic model for all energy forms. Water waves. Sound waves. Force waves. Light waves. That's the way we've been explaining energy for years and you crazy Danes have no right to change it!

Niels:

Waves in water I get. Same with waves in the air. But waves in an atom are downright ludicrous! You can't have waves without something waving, Erwin!

Erwin:

A detail. So you caught me on a detail. Look, we figured everything else out. We'll figure this one out eventually as well. The main thing is we got rid of those doggone quantum disappearing acts.

Niels:

So waves in the nothingness is okay. But disappearing acts are not. Now if that isn't arbitrary…

Erwin:

Niels, your buddy Albert already established that energy and matter are really the same stuff. So let's just do away with this whole notion of matter and tiny beads in orbit and say the whole world is made of energy. And energy is waves.

Niels:

Now there's no such thing as matter. So exactly who's going too far here? And another thing I want to know: If there aren't any electron particles, why is it my Geiger counter registers a click when they hit? Waves don't click, you know that Erwin. They splash or buzz, but they don't click. And how do you explain the whole black body radiation thing?

Erwin:

You are the one going too far, Niels. Because I know just where you're going with all this. First you have them disappearing from one place and appearing elsewhere. Then you'll tell us they could be anywhere, their position and velocity is just an array of possibilities. And if they could be anywhere, then all of causality breaks down. I know what your pet whippersnapper student, Heisenberg is up to, Niels. No longer will we be able to say that this happened because that happened. And if all those things are gone, then, gevald Niels! Why are we scientists?

Listen, Niels, electrons are energy. Energy is waves. Waves are the wave of the future. You got problems with it, go work it out. But don't go tearing down the basic laws of physics with particles that act like ghosts.

Niels:

They're particles.

Erwin:

They're waves.

Niels:

Particles.

Erwin:

In the name of the Motherland, they are waves!

Niels:

Your Motherland wears army boots. Now get your tushy up here to Copenhagen and we'll have it out like men, face to face.

Erwin:

Danishes at two feet?

Niels:

Math at ten inches.

From the transcript, it seems Schrodinger took Bohr up on the deal. They did the math and after a week, poor Erwin went home feeling sick. It wasn't from the pastries.

As it turned out, these waves were even weirder than the particles. They're not waves in space, like ripples on a pond -- they're happening in some abstract form of space. Something they called configuration space. Worse, each electron needs its own three dimensions. One electron on its own can be described by a wave in its 3D configuration space, but to describe another electron in the same atom, you need a whole other set of three dimensions somewhere else. With three electrons, you needed nine dimensions, and it goes on and on. Worst of all, when it comes to explaining blackbody radiation, they were back to those magical quantum leaps -- when a particle moves from one orbit to another without traversing the space in between.

Schrodinger's reaction (this is for real now): "If I had known we were not going to get rid of those *@&#$%^ quantum leaps, I would never have gotten involved in this business!"

It wouldn't be so bad if these were just some distant planets. But these are the things whose nutty rules are resisting your hand when you touch that table. Not that you can touch them. They're not really ‘things' that you touch. Just that they have rules that don't allow your hand within their playing field. It's all very mystical. But it's been called the "most successful theory in the history of science."1

These are the things that create photons out of nothing and project them at your eyeballs so that you'll think something's really there. These are the things that tickle your nose glands and tingle your taste buds. This is the stuff our world is made from.

I had one more vital piece of research to do. I had to make contact with the enlightened master of inner wisdom, decoder of quantum riddles, the wise teacher who could make brownies out of the hash I had put together from all my research, the inimitable Guadalajara Rebbe.