Chapter 210: The Wave of Matter

The wave of electrification in the Kingdom of Heinrich, like the first downpour of summer, violently washed over every inch of the old era.

The nights in the Royal Capital were gradually illuminated by continuous lights, no longer relying on expensive magic crystals or flickering candlelight.

Horseless carriages drove on the smoothly paved main roads, silently heralding the arrival of a new era of transportation.

Magic, the power once confined to mage towers and royal courts, was flowing into ordinary streets and alleys in the form of “electricity.”

The vast majority of people cheered for this tangible convenience.

The newspapers were filled every day with praises for new inventions, and eulogies for Professor Lia Farrien and Master Klein.

However, beneath this scene of clamor and prosperity, there were always some people who chose to gaze at the stars rather than look down at the road.

De Broglie was such a person.

He was a young mage who had graduated from the Royal Magic Academy less than two years ago and was currently working as an assistant editor at an obscure journal.

He was not like Alistair, who had seized the opportunity of the era, nor was he like Hoffman, who was keen on turning blueprints into machines.

He had no interest in money, fame, or applied technology.

The only thing de Broglie was obsessed with was the beauty of symmetry and harmony inherent in theory itself.

While the mages of the entire kingdom were discussing how to build better generators or design safer circuits, de Broglie was in his small attic, repeatedly reading all the subversive papers published in Magitech Theory from last year to this year.

From the “wave-particle duality of quantum light” to the “spacetime transformation equations,” and then to that earth-shattering “mass-energy equivalence equation.”

He stroked the cold formulas on the paper, yet he felt the pulsation of the deepest part of the universe.

Matter is imprisoned energy.

Light is both a particle and a wave.

De Broglie sat at his desk, the noise from outside unable to penetrate his ears. In his world, there were only these simple and profound laws.

A thought, like a bolt of lightning, struck his mind without warning.

Why did only light possess this special dual identity?

If the laws of the universe were harmonious and symmetrical, shouldn’t this duality also apply to all the matter that constitutes our world?

He picked up a quill, his hands trembling slightly with excitement.

If photons, particles with no rest mass, can exhibit wave-like properties.

Then, electrons, protons, and even every table and chair around us, these “entities” with rest mass, are they not also a kind of wave when in motion?

This idea was too insane, enough to make any sane mage dismiss it as nonsense.

Matter is matter, the solid foundation upon which the world is built.

A wave is a wave, the propagation of energy through a medium.

To confuse the two was to subvert the entire system of classical physics.

But de Broglie didn’t think so.

He firmly believed that symmetry was the only path to truth.

Since energy can condense into matter, then matter in motion must also be accompanied by some form of wave.

He began to derive frantically.

He connected the formula for energy quanta with the mass-energy equivalence equation, trying to find a mathematical expression for this “matter wave.”

Difficulties followed one after another.

If matter waves carry energy, then a moving particle would simultaneously have two forms of energy, which violates the law of conservation of energy.

More fatally, if the speed of this wave was the speed of light, it would be unable to carry any information about the particle’s own state of motion.

If its speed was the same as the particle’s, it would fall into a series of complex mathematical paradoxes.

De Broglie worked tirelessly. For a whole week, his room was piled high with draft papers covered in calculations.

Finally, in a flash of inspiration, he found the narrow path.

He boldly hypothesized that this wave did not carry energy.

It was a “phase wave,” a wave that described the probability of a particle appearing in spacetime.

Based on this groundbreaking assumption, he derived an incredibly simple formula.

v_p = c² / v

The phase velocity of a moving particle is equal to the square of the speed of light divided by its own velocity.

This formula perfectly avoided all paradoxes.

Since the particle’s own velocity v is always less than the speed of light c, the speed of its associated phase wave is always greater than the speed of light.

But this did not violate relativity, because it did not transmit any energy or information.

It was just a mathematical ghost, a probability ghost that described the particle’s whereabouts.

De Broglie looked at the final result on his draft paper, so excited that tears welled up in his eyes.

He gave his paper a simple name, On Matter Waves.

He did not submit it to the Journal of Truth or Magitech Theory, because he knew that such a theory was too advanced and would surely be thrown into the wastebasket by those rigid-minded reviewers.

He submitted the paper to the third-rate journal where he worked, Magitech Tidbits.

The editor-in-chief of the journal was an old mage about to retire.

He didn’t understand what was written in the paper at all, but he felt that this young man had been working very hard recently, and in order to fill up the pages for this issue, he mercifully squeezed this short paper into an inconspicuous corner of the journal.

The paper was published, like a stone thrown into the sea, without making a single ripple.

Until half a month later, a professor from the Royal Magic Academy happened to see this article while flipping through the journal.

He burst out laughing on the spot.

“Matter waves? That’s the funniest nonsense I’ve heard all year.”

He told this to his colleagues as a joke.

Soon, the entire academic circle of the Royal Capital knew that there was a young man named de Broglie who was delusional enough to try and prove that a stone was also a wave.

Ridicule and scorn followed.

When de Broglie walked down the street, he could always feel people pointing at his back.

“Look, that’s the madman.”

“He actually thinks my boots are a kind of wave.”

“I heard he wants to use a crystal ball to divine the trajectory of atoms.”

His mentor, a Sixth-Circle Mage with a considerable reputation in the academic world, was furious when he learned of this.

He called de Broglie to his office and slammed the journal on his face.

“I am ashamed to have a student like you!”

“You are defiling the sacred discipline of physics!”

“From this day on, I am no longer your mentor. Don’t you ever tell anyone you’ve attended my classes!”

De Broglie was kicked out of the office. He picked up the crumpled journal from the floor and silently smoothed it out.

He was isolated by the entire world.

No one believed him; everyone treated him like a madman.

He walked on the bustling streets of the Royal Capital, looking at the endless stream of people and vehicles around him, and for the first time, he felt so alone.

He looked up at the sky and murmured to himself.

“Can’t you all see?

This world… it should be this harmonious and perfect.”

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