The Born Rule and the Schrodinger Equation

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There are things called wave functions. And as the name sort of implies, they kind of wave. They undulate in a way that is perfectly predictable through the beautiful mathematics of the Schrodinger equation. Then there's this other thing called the Born Rule. The Born Rule doesn't look like a normal law of nature. Right? So that there are these things that are so hard. That's fine. We could be dramatic and new. Exactly. But the Born Rule also- They get their max born, not the concept of being born. Yes. Named after max born in the same way that theSchrodinger equation is named after Erwin Schrodinger.

There are many mysteries surrounding quantum mechanics. To me, the biggest mysteries are why physicists haven’t yet agreed on a complete understanding of the theory, and even more why they mostly seem content not to try. This puzzling attitude has historical roots that go back to the Bohr-Einstein debates. Adam Becker, in his book What Is Real?, looks at this history, and discusses how physicists have shied away from the foundations of quantum mechanics in the subsequent years. We discuss why this has been the case, and talk about some of the stubborn iconoclasts who insisted on thinking about it anyway.

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Adam Becker received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Michigan. He is currently a science writer and a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine & Society at UC Berkeley. His book What Is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics comes out in paperback on Sept. 3, 2019.

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