Just wanted to draw attention to an interview with Joe Staten in 2004 and the recent link to Erwin Schrödinger, with the use of his wave function equation in Server 3.
HSP: If you could offer a few words to guide dedicated Story Page readers on their Quest for Tru7h, what would they be?
JS: In your valiant search for the truth, do not forget the legacy of the good Dr. Heisenberg.
Now why would the main writer for Halo and the ARG both refer to quantum mechanics?
Now we know that this equation is really important...Damn, we need to figure this out.
EDIT: Hmmm, did the two of them do anything directly related to the other's work?
Apparently, Schrodinger favored the view that a single electron can be located at a given time (also viewed electrons in waves).
And Heisenburg developed the "cloud" atomic model, where electrons in orbit are represented by an electron "cloud" around the nucleus.
“The unity and continuity of Vedanta are reflected in the unity and continuity of wave mechanics. In 1925, the world view of physics was a model of a great machine composed of separable interacting material particles. During the next few years, Schrodinger and Heisenberg and their followers created a universe based on super imposed inseparable waves of probability amplitudes. This new view would be entirely consistent with the Vedantic concept of All in One."
He became a Vedantist, a Hindu, as a result of his studies in search for truth. Schrodinger kept a copy of the Hindu scriptures at his bedside. He read books on Vedas, yoga and Sankhya philosophy and he reworked them into his own words, and ultimately came to believe them. The Upanishads and the Bhagavad gita, were his favorite scriptures.
"The scientific world view has ceased to be a scientific view in the true sense of the word." Werner Heisenberg went later in life to Rabindhranath Tagore's University in India called Shantiniketan (Abode of Peace) in a rural and natural setting evidently in search of what he missed in science, namely the certain principle which is Reality or Truth but which never known outside and therefore never spoken of but which is felt in the pure heart. It is the reflection of this which Heisenberg might have discerned in the spiritual writings of the poet."
I remember there being quite a bit of puzzlement over what Staten meant by that, and I think the most believable interpretation I saw was that Staten was simply warning us not to look too deeply into some things. Not to get so caught up that we start following false trails. The "legacy of Heisenberg" being that you can't examine something without changing it--and that you can't look too closely without really changing it.
That's not to say he really meant it that way--I'm not trying to kill the discussion.
I do think quantum mechanics is sort of an obvious place for contemporary science fiction to go, though, since it's the contemporary model of how we understand the universe. Certainly that equation we found is significant and interesting, but I'm not sure that Staten interview holds any clues.
My take on the Halo ARG was to expand and explain the Halo story. I just trying to see where the inspiration for the story came from? Like Schroedinger's incite into genes inspired the discovery of the DNA structure by Clark & Co.
A good, simple way to describe the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal.