Let’s imagine...
Who says scientists are dull, boring,
lacking creativity — all lines and graphs
and numbers.
Why,
the entire field of quantum math
was dreamed up by a young scientist
bored out of his mind
in a math class.
What if...
What if there was a number
the square root of which
was negative 1?
There isn’t.
But...
But what if there was?
What can I do now?
Hey, let’s solve the equation this way...
didn’t work.
Okay, let’s try it that way...
still didn’t work.
Okay, turn this number into a pretzel shape and ...
Eureka! Look what I discovered!
Fiction.
There still isn’t a number
which has a square root of
negative one.
Don’t tell that to the quantum scientists.
Don’t spill that to the engineers that
play with quantum mechanics.
Don’t tell the entire scientific field of study
that it’s writing science fiction every day.
Because...
for some unfathomable reason,
the imaginary numbers
that existed only in one (not so young any more)
scientist’s imagination
actually work
and reality
bows, listens,
and does what the math says to do.
It can’t do that...
but it does.
