Imaginary numbers seem like a mathematical curiosity, with no obvious connection to physical reality. |
iai.tv/video/tim-maudlin-why…
Yet they sit at the very foundation of quantum mechanics, a fact that puzzled even the greatest physicists of the twentieth century.
Philosopher of science Tim Maudlin argues that their appearance in Schrödinger's equation is no accident, but follows necessarily from the kind of wave-like structure that fundamental dynamics requires.