A particle is also a wave, a wave moves back and forth between -X and X passing 0 every time.
Now, when you measure this particle and it happens to be at zero, sometimes it moves towards X afterwards and sometimes it moves towards -X.
For the scientists however, all they can measure is that it’s at 0 and half the time it randomly goes one way or the other with 50/50 probability.
To explain this, scientists imagine the particle has more than 0, but it has a secret momentum hidden into it telling it to deflect positively or negatively.
Imagine a circle instead of a line. Now instead of crossing zero, you rotate around 0 and hit a Y and -Y axis with X and -X unchanged.
That y axis that contains the hidden momentum of the particle is called “imaginary” because scientists love loaded terms that are unhelpful to understanding lol.
GooberEar@lemmy.wtf 1 day ago
The easiest way I can explain it is like this: All the sci-fi geeks in the world are familiar with parallel timelines, right? The idea that there’s another RymrgandsDaughter out there living in a world where apes with goatees are the “people” but otherwise pretty much everything else is very similar to how things are for us here and now. But like in perpendicular time, nearly everything is completely different than this current timeline, and yet somehow there’s a point within where I, Gooberear, took the time out of my morning to completely make up this explanation from thin air and which has no basis in actual fact or reality. The end.
AugustWest@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
Something something nineteen ninety eight
RymrgandsDaughter@lemmy.blahaj.zone 20 hours ago
Damn I wanna meet this ape goatee woman now