Advent calendar door #8: Schrödinger's equation, what does it mean?
Behind the last two doors we met Schrödinger's equation and seen it in action. But what does that all mean? How should we interpret its solution, the wave function? And what does that tell us about the physical world? We spoke to to Tony Short and Nazim Bouatta, both theoretical physicists at the University of Cambridge, to find out.
They explained why, despite the wave-particle duality of all matter, we don't see big objects like tables, chairs or ourselves behaving in a wavey way. We got a glimpse of some of the deep philosophical questions that arise: Is a particle spread out in a weird wavey goo? Or is the wave function merely a mathematical tool to provide the probabilities of where a particle could be located?
One of the most fascinating idea to come out of all of this is the many worlds view of what the wave function is telling us: the idea is that there are different worlds that are all real and in each of them the particle is in a different position. This is already pretty weird when you're only thinking of tiny little particles. But what about us, the observers? If you include them in this many worlds view, you get the so-called Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics (named after the physicist Hugh Everett).
Imagine that. Perhaps one of those other versions of you is sitting in another version of the world reading this article but drinking a cup of tea rather than a cup of coffee! But if that's true, then why are we never aware of these other copies of ourselves?
You can find out the answer to this and much more in our article Schrödinger's equation — what does it mean?