Anime Reign Magazine | Page 44

www.worldanimeclub.com If the material does break down, it will release a particle, hitting the Geiger counter and releasing poison gas; this would obviously kill the cat. After one hour, the question that confronts the experimenter is this: at the end of the hour, is the cat alive or dead? The only way to know would be to open the door and make an observation, which would interfere with the experiment. Therefore, the cat can be thought of as both dead and alive. The Schrödinger Thought Experiment, while potentially doing some harm to a few unlucky felines, also serves as a prime example of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, otherwise known as the Uncertainty Principle. The uncertainty principle states that no single object has a definite position, trajectory, or momentum. The more one tries to pinpoint an object’s definite position, the less possible it is to pinpoint its momentum, and vice versa. These uncertainties are near-undetectable in the macroscopic (the larger system) world, but when applied to the microscopic (smaller system) world, these disparities become more clear. If you decided to track an electron, the uncertainty principle assures two things: one, the electron did not have a definite position before you located it, and two, the electron did not have a definite momentum until you measured its trajectory. In short, observation changes the outcome. Sounds familiar? The Uncertainty Principle is applied to the macroscopic world in Schrödinger’s Thought Experiment, as it proves that an object assumes different values simultaneously until it is observed. The Application What does all this theoretical gobbledy-gook have to do with the Personal Reality? Let’s tie it together. With regards to the Uncertainty Principle, the Power Curriculum program enables students to individually select a so called “Personal Reality.” This Personal Reality is possible because the program allows students to ignore the Uncertainty Principle. What this means is that the student, instead of having to comply with the uncertain values that objects have, are instead allowed to personally dictate these values. Basically, the student has control over the microscopic observations of the world, and chooses, among the infinite number of possibilities, the one possibility they desire. To put it in terms of Schrödinger’s experiment, observation would no longer determine if the cat was alive or not. The student would instead decide whether or not the cat is alive, and their decision would determine the status of the cat. Page 27 In terms of the student’s powers, you can think of it as a door that leads into two separate realities: one where the student has powers, and one where the student does not. As a result of the Power Curriculum program, Trained under Academy City’s Power Curriculum Program, they can manually Accelerator is the single most powerful Esper ever created. choose the door they want to pass through, as opposed to the door being randomly chosen for them. The Reality of Reality Let’s face it; the idea of choosing your own reality is pretty kick-ass. The idea of that same reality giving you immense powers and possibly dominion over the world makes it even more tantalizing. But just how real is the Personal Reality? As per philosophy and general logic, everyone already has their own “Personal Reality.” You don’t see the world exactly the same way your neighbor does, your neighbor doesn’t see the world the exact same way their mother does, and so on. While we all reside within the same space, everyone’s concept of the real world is different, sometimes slightly, sometimes not so slightly. The ability to utterly ignore principles of physics and gain control of the natural world is, unfortunately, impossible. Try to conduct high levels of electricity through yourself without proper equipment and you’ll get fried. Try to lift a building with your bare hands, and, well, you’ll probably be there for a while. For now, we’re all stuck sharing this humble reality of ours. Why “now”, instead of forever? Simple. There are still aspects of the natural world we have to figure out. Physics is still chipping away at the walls, making remarkable discoveries as it digs towards the grand truth it hopes exists. Also, with biotechnology moving at the current pace it is, we may have artificial augments in the future that give us abilities once confined to the realm of fiction. Those could range anywhere from implanting mechanical devices to altering even our own genetic code. In short, the Personal Reality is something more akin to a Personal Fantasy. We can’t pull every string of nature with our bare hands, or slap physics in the face and tell it what to do. At best, we can toy with the concept in our most lucid of dreams. But, as science has proven time and time again, the impossible can very well become the possible. So who knows? Maybe one day science will make your certain reality take on a very “uncertain” quality. Anime Reign | Issue 2 | 2013