Budayeen Nights Read Online Free PDF Page A

The girl was stunningly lovely. Hilbert looked into her huge, dark eyes—“like the eyes of a gazelle,” he remembered from reading Omar Khayyam—and glimpsed her slender form undisguised by her modest garments. As she mounted the steps, she looked down directly at him again. Hilbert felt his heart lurch; he felt a tremendous shudder. Then she looked away.
    The Arab guide screamed in Hilbert’s ear. It meant nothing to the mathematician. He watched in horror as Jehan knelt, as the headsman raised his weapon of office. When the fierce, bellowing cry went up from the crowd, Hilbert noticed that his suit was now spattered with small flecks of red. The Arab screamed at him again and tightened his grip on Hilbert’s arm until Hilbert complained. The Arab did not release him. With his other hand, Hilbert took out his wallet. The Arab smiled. Above him, Hilbert watched several men carry away the body of the decapitated girl.
    The Arab guide did not let him go until he’d paid an enormous sum.
     

    Perhaps another hour had passed in the alley. Jehan had withdrawn to the darkest part and sat in a damp corner with her legs drawn up, her head against the rough brick wall. If she could sleep, she told herself, the night would pass more quickly; but she would not sleep, she would fight it if drowsiness threatened. What if she should slip into slumber and waken in the late morning, her peril and her opportunity both long since lost? Her only companion, the crescent moon, had abandoned her; she looked up at fragments of constellations, stars familiar enough in their groups but indistinguishable now as individuals. How different from people, where the opposite was true. She sighed; she was not a profound person, and it did not suit her to have profound thoughts. These must not truly be profound thoughts, she decided; she was merely deluded by weariness. Slowly she let her head fall forward. She crossed her arms on her knees and cradled her head. The greater part of the night had already passed, and only silence came from the street. There were perhaps only three more hours until dawn….
     

    Soon Schrödinger’s wave mechanics was proved to be equivalent to Heisenberg’s matrix mechanics. It was a validation of both men’s work and of the whole field of quantum physics as well. Eventually Schrödinger’s simplistic wave picture of the electron was abandoned, but his mathematical laws remained undisputed. Jehan remembered Schrödinger predicting that he might need to take just that step.
    Jehan had at last returned to Gottingen and Heisenberg. He had “forgiven her petulance.” He welcomed her gladly, because of his genuine feelings for her and because he had much work to do. He had just formally developed what came to be known as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. This was the first indication that the impartial observer could not help but play an essential, active role in the universe of subatomic particles. Jehan grasped Heisenberg’s concept readily. Other scientists thought Heisenberg was making a trivial criticism of the limitations of their experiments or the quality of their observations. It was more profound than that. Heisenberg was saying that one can never hope to know both the position and the momentum of an electron at the same time under any circumstances. He had destroyed forever the assumption of the impartial observer.
    “To observe is to disturb,” said Heisenberg. “Newton wouldn’t have liked any of this at all.”
    “Einstein still doesn’t like it right this very minute,” said Jehan.
    “I wish I had a mark for every time he’s made that sour ‘God doesn’t play dice with the universe’ comment.”
    “That’s just the way he sees a ‘wave of probability.’ The path of the electron can’t be known unless you look; but once you look, you change the information.”
    “So maybe God doesn’t play dice with the universe,” said Heisenberg. “He plays vingt-et-un, and if He does not have