Hogwarts: From Selling White Peppers to Becoming a God

Chapter 65 The Essence of Magic

Western-style mansion.

The Magic Research Institute, first floor.

meeting room.

Laura Kruger is giving a presentation to Murphy.

"The institute has produced three valuable papers to date, and another paper, 'The Nature of Magic,' is currently undergoing peer review and is considered the second major hypothesis after 'The Transfiguration Approach.'"

"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 all received points as a reward. Andrew, the author of the modified approach, received the most points, about 30 points. In addition, there will be a share of the rewards if the paper is cited and the ideas are verified."

"Andrew chose to save his points, but Mitra Gaglia, the author of 'The Floating Curse,' used her 15 points to buy a bottle of love potion."

"In addition, since its establishment, the Transformation Research Group now has 17 members. It has set up 10 groups, including the Animagus Special Research Group, the Transformation Magus Initial Research Group, the Werewolf and Vampire Research Group, the Boggart Initial Research Group, the Compound Potion Research Group, and the Transformation Potions Research Group, such as the Gillbagel and Beauty Potion."

"Currently, most groups are in the initial research stage, collecting relevant data on their own. Only the werewolf and vampire group has received the vampire blood you provided and is preparing to conduct several experiments."

"After the Transformation Research Group was established, several researchers proposed to form their own research groups, including the Mind Magic Research Group, the Elemental Magic Research Group, the Spatial Magic Research Group, the Non-human Intelligent Creature Research Group, and the Death Research Group."

"I've already approved several of them, but there haven't been any related research outputs yet. Currently, these project groups don't have designated leaders. I plan to follow the approach of modified research groups, waiting until guiding research directions emerge for each project before appointing the person who proposed it as the leader. What do you think?"

Murphy nodded. "Okay, let's do it this way."

"By the way, call the author of 'The Nature of Magic' over here and have him tell me his conjectures."

Laura hesitated for a moment. "That paper hasn't been peer-reviewed yet."

"It's okay, I just want to hear your thought process."

A short while later, a young man with long flowing hair and wearing slippers came up to Murphy.

"Are you the author of 'The Nature of Magic'?"

Murphy wasn't surprised to see the hippie-dressed guy in front of him. Hippie culture swept the globe in the last decade, and even Steve Jobs was a fan. It still has a huge influence today, and many young Westerners like to dress themselves up in all sorts of strange ways to show their individuality.

Murphy doesn't care about other people's values ​​or cultural background. "Tell me your thoughts."

"Okay, boss. My name is Haldan Harper, and I'm a fundamental physics researcher specializing in condensed matter physics. My conjectures about the nature of magic are also related to my research."

"Speaking."

"Okay, let me state my conclusion first. I believe that magic is actually a special authority to manipulate the material world. The essence of magic is the directional collapse of the wave function."

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

"Two years ago, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to the inventors of the scanning tunneling microscope. With the help of similar observation tools, modern physics has extended its reach to the nanoscale."

"If magic is something completely different from what we know in modern physics, it either exists on a smaller scale below 10 to the power of negative 9 meters and its influence on the material world is limited to this scale, or it is a kind of dark matter or dark energy that is difficult to interact with ordinary matter."

"Given the nature of magic as it currently is, neither of these possibilities is very likely."

"Magic can exhibit macroscopic physical effects. The only reason why these effects have not been observed by Muggle scientists is that magic has not overturned our known physical facts; it has simply added some powers to ordinary physical facts."

"When this magical power is granted to a person, he can manipulate ordinary physical facts and manifest the appearance of magic."

"Quantum physics believes that matter does not exist; only particles and fields exist. Even particles may not exist. There is only energy and fields in the world, and the things that make energy and fields look like particles and matter—probability clouds, or wave functions."

"The collapse of the wave function depends on the rules within the system, such as the probability of an electron appearing in a certain place, which depends on its quantum number, etc."

"In the ordinary physical world without magic, everything exists within this system, so everyone has the same authority."

"In this world, if you want to change something, you can only do so by transmitting that influence through a field, thus indirectly achieving your goal."

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

"It can bypass these indirect influences and directly determine the occurrence of a phenomenon. Therefore, magic can occur without intermediate processes, and can even transcend logic."

Murphy frowned. "If magic is really as you say, something that transcends logic, how can we study it?"

"Of course we can study it," Haldan said. "Different wizards have different levels of magical power, different affinity with various spells, and different levels of difficulty in learning and using certain spells. What causes these differences? Are there any methods to enhance a wizard's magical power, increase their affinity with different spells, and make magic stronger and easier to use? These are the questions we need to study."

Murphy nodded. "What are your thoughts on these issues you've raised?"

"Of course. Based on my conjectures about the nature of magic, I conducted specialized research on spells as a form of magic and proposed several hypotheses," Haldane said. "I also conducted some preliminary experiments with Professor Alex to verify these hypotheses."

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

"Probability-based payment hypothesis".

"I believe that the interference of magic with physical phenomena comes at a price. The greater the difference between the result of interference and the result of non-interference, the greater the price to be paid. And the unit of measurement for this difference is the wave function, which is probability."

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

"The less likely something is to happen, the greater the price that magic has to pay to make it happen."

In other words, the natural operation of physical phenomena is inertia, and to make them transcend their natural state, "magic" must be applied.

This is somewhat similar to the feeling of Newton's First Law.

"Second, the necessary condition hypothesis of spells."

(End of this chapter)