Chapter 65

Mansion.

Magic Research Institute, first floor.

Conference room.

Laura Kruger is giving a report to Murphy.

"Currently, the institute has produced three valuable papers, and another paper, 'The Essence of Magic,' is undergoing peer review; it is considered the second major conjecture following 'Transformation Paths'."

"The other two are 'A Study on the Inheritance Probability of Magical Aptitude' and 'The Aerodynamics of the Levitation Charm'."

"The authors of the first three papers have all received point rewards. Among them, Andrew, the author of the transformation paths, received the most points—about 30 points—and if subsequent citations and the paper's ideas are verified, there will be a share of the rewards."

"Andrew chose to save his points, but Mitra Galia, the author of the 'Levitation Charm' paper, used her 15 points to purchase a bottle of Love Potion."

"In addition, since the formation of the Transformation Project Group, it now has 17 members. It has established 10 sub-groups, including the Animagus Special Research Group, the Metamorphmagus Initial Research Group, the Werewolf and Vampire Research Group, the Boggart Initial Research Group, the Polyjuice Potion Research Group, and research groups for transformation potions like Gillyweed and Beauty Potion."

"Currently, most of the groups are in the initial research stage, collecting relevant data. Only the Werewolf and Vampire group has received the vampire true blood you provided and is ready to start several experiments."

"After the Transformation Project Group was established, several other researchers proposed forming their own research groups, including the Mind Magic Research Group, the Elemental Magic Research Group, the Spatial Magic Research Group, the Non-Human Intelligent Beast Research Group, and the Death Research Group."

"I have approved several of them, but there are no research outputs yet. Currently, these special topic groups do not have designated heads. I plan to follow the method of the Transformation Project Group and, once guiding research directions emerge for each topic, appoint the person who proposed it as the head. What do you think?"

Murphy nodded, "That's fine, proceed with that method."

"By the way, call over the author of that 'The Essence of Magic' paper and let him explain his conjecture to me."

Laura hesitated, "That paper hasn't passed peer review yet."

"It doesn't matter, I just want to hear the line of thought."

Before long, a young man with long, flowing hair and slippers on his feet arrived before Murphy.

"You are the author of 'The Essence of Magic'?"

Murphy looked at the hippie-dressed fellow before him, not particularly surprised. Hippie culture had swept the globe in the previous decade—even Steve Jobs was a fan—and it still held huge influence today. Many young Westerners liked to dress in all sorts of strange ways to show off their individuality.

Murphy didn't care about other people's values or cultural attributes, "Tell me your thoughts."

"Alright, Boss. My name is Haldane Haber, and I am a basic physics researcher specializing in condensed matter physics. My conjecture about the essence of magic is also related to my research direction."

"Please, go ahead."

"Alright, I'll start with my conclusion: I believe that magic is actually a special permission to manipulate the material world. The essence of magic is the directional collapse of the wave function."

"First, since magic is an objective and universal existence, it cannot be completely independent of non-magical physics."

"The year before last, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to the inventors of the scanning tunneling microscope. With the help of various similar observation tools, modern physics has extended its reach to the nanometer scale."

"If magic were something completely different from what modern physics knows, it would either exist at a scale smaller than 10 to the power of negative 9 meters, with its influence on the material world limited to that scale, or it would be a form of dark matter or dark energy, difficult to interact with ordinary matter."

"Given the properties magic currently exhibits, neither of these possibilities is very likely."

"Magic can manifest macroscopic physical effects. There can only be one reason why these effects haven't been observed by Muggle scientists: magic does not overturn the physical facts we already know; it simply adds some powers on top of ordinary physical facts."

"When the power of this magic is granted to a person, they can command ordinary physical facts to manifest in the form of magic."

"Quantum physics holds that matter does not exist; what exists are only particles and fields. Even particles might not exist; there is only energy and fields in the world, and things that make energy and fields look like particles or matter—probability clouds, or in other words, wave functions."

"The collapse of a wave function depends on the rules within that system; for example, the probability of an electron appearing in a certain place depends on its quantum numbers and so on."

"In the ordinary physical world without magic, everything is within this system, so everyone's permissions are the same."

"In this world, if you want to make something change, you can only pass this influence through fields to indirectly achieve your goal."

"But magic might be able to directly influence the collapse of the wave function."

"It can bypass these indirect influences and directly specify that a certain phenomenon occurs. Therefore, magic can exist without an intermediate process, and can even transcend logic."

Murphy frowned, "If magic is truly as you say, something that bypasses logic, how are we supposed to study it?"

"Of course it can be studied," Haldane said, "Different wizards have different levels of magic power, different affinities for various types of magic, and different difficulties in learning to use certain magic. What exactly causes these differences? Are there ways to enhance a wizard's magic power, expand a wizard's affinity, and make magic stronger and easier to use? These are the questions we need to study."

Murphy nodded, "Do you have any thoughts on these questions you mentioned?"

"Of course. Based on my conjecture about the essence of magic, I have conducted specialized research on the form of magic known as spells and proposed several hypotheses," Haldane said, "and I have also preliminarily verified these hypotheses through some experiments with Professor Alex."

"First, based on the conjecture about the essence of magic, I derived the first hypothesis."

"The Probability Payment Hypothesis."

"I believe that magic's interference with physical phenomena requires a price to be paid. The greater the gap between the interference result and the non-interference state, the greater the price that must be paid. And the unit of measurement for this gap is the wave function, which is probability."

"For example, the probability of an electron appearing at a certain point outside the atomic nucleus is 1%, but magic makes it appear at that point; then the gap between the interference result and the non-interference result is 99%."

"The less likely an event is to occur, the greater the price magic must pay to realize it."

In other words, the natural operation of physical phenomena is inertial; if you want to make it transcend its natural state, you must apply 'magic'."

This point feels somewhat similar to Newton's First Law."

"Second, the Necessary Condition Hypothesis for spells."

(End of chapter)