"Edward M. Lerner - Inside the Box" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lerner Edward M)

INSIDE THE BOX
by Edward M. Lerner

Edward Lerner’s novels include Probe, Moonstruck, and (in collaboration
with Larry Niven) Fleet of Worlds. His short fiction has appeared in Analog,
Artemis, and Jim Baen’s Universe magazines, on Amazon Shorts, in the
anthologies Year’s Best SF 7 and Future Washington, and in his 2006
collection Creative Destruction. He tells us that in the pipeline are the
novels Fools’ Experiments, Small Miracles, and (with Larry Niven) Juggler
of Worlds. In his first story for Asimov’s, the author looks at the
complicated and strange goings-on...

****

The lecture hall was pleasantly warm. Behind Thaddeus Fitch, busily writing
on the chalkboard, pencils scratched earnestly in spiral notebooks,
fluorescent lights hummed, and feet shuffled. A Beach Boys tune wafted in
through open windows from the quad.

Or so, in any case, the professor imagined the lecture hall. Chittering,
muttering students squirming in their seats this morning drowned out the
customary sounds. Or what he thought he remembered to be the
customary sounds...

Chalk squeaked as Thaddeus, with more energy than artistry, began
sketching a stick-figure quadruped. “I’ll explain this cat momentarily, class.”
Shrodinger’s thought-experiment cat. Today’s Introduction to Physics
lecture introduced the counterintuitive topic of quantum mechanics. “Recall
from your reading that the behavior of atoms and their constituent parts
cannot be fully described by such conventional characteristics as position
and momentum. More precisely, how we think about those descriptive
terms must change.” He continued drawing as he spoke, the cube in which
he was attempting to enclose the cat somewhat out of perspective. He
winced as the chalk snapped, its tip caught by the hole that should not be
there. Should it?

“In classical physics, we can, with sufficient care and expense,
measure to arbitrary precision the position and momentum of any particle.
At sufficiently tiny scales, however, nature does not behave as we expect.
Instead, in those infinitesimal domains, we discover that certain parameters
exhibit heretofore imperceptible granularity or lumpiness—what physicists
call quantization. Further, we cannot measure at quantum scales without
influencing whatever is being measured. The math is inappropriate
for”—beyond—”this class, but a consequence of quantization is that we
cannot have absolute knowledge of subatomic particles.”

His crude diagram complete, Thaddeus pivoted to face the packed
auditorium. “If we know an electron’s position quite exactly, we can know
little about its momentum. If we know its momentum, we can tell little about
where it is. We are reduced to probabilistic descriptions of where the