Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe

by Brian Greene

Instead, quantum mechanics says the particle is hovering in a fuzzy mixture of being both here and there. And if the probabilities give the electron a nonzero chance to be at a variety of different locations, then according to quantum mechanics it would be hovering in a fuzzy mixture of being simultaneously situated at all of them. This is so fantastically strange, and so counter to experience, that you might be tempted to dismiss the theory out of hand. And if it weren’t for quantum mechanics’ unmatched capacity to explain experimental data, that reaction would be both widespread and justified. However, the data force us to treat quantum mechanics with utmost respect, and so we scientists have worked tirelessly to make sense of this counterintuitive feature.36 The problem is, the more we’ve worked, the weirder things have become.