Did all describe the same object, or did each represent a possible world? Schrödinger considered the second possibility: those multiple waves would be the first glimpse of something completely new, each a brief flash of a universe that was born when the electron leapt from one state to the other, branching out to populate the infinite, like the jewels of Indra’s net. But such a thing was inconceivable. Rack his brain as he might, he could not understand how he had strayed so far from his original intent. He had hoped to simplify the atomic world, had looked for a common attribute to all
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