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Translator's note: Emm… What is this book about again?
The author warned Chinese readers of this chapter being very boring. Yeah, it definitely is boring. HOWEVER, I respect the author even more for creating this wonderful concept. Clearly, the guy totally loved this process.
Three days had passed since Anne demonstrated the power of a transcendent mage to Adam.
During this time, he had fully absorbed the orb of the Origin power. Now, four-fifths of his soul carried the essence of Origin, hugely enhancing the quality of his magic.
The energy density of his spells had increased several times, boosting their power significantly. Yet Adam barely paid attention to this improvement.
Instead, his mind wrestled with a single question: how could he create a "hole" in the box that separated thought from matter, allowing his will to merge directly with knowledge and magic?
The idea was too abstract, too unquantifiable. For someone like Adam, who thrived on logical structure and experimental proof, such concepts felt maddeningly intangible.
Frustrated, he decided to set aside Anne’s philosophical perspective and focus instead on what he knew best: experimentation.
For Adam, no problem—no matter how profound—was immune to the power of formulas and data.
*****
The personal chip research facility had expanded into a vast collaborative hub involving mages from multiple Towers.
Although Adam was nominally the leader, his direct control was limited to the big data and cloud computing projects.
The mages in other research fields operated independently.
Thus, Adam’s personal experiments remained his sole domain, carried out with the assistance of his avatars.
These avatars had become far more advanced. Each was equipped with a personal chip, connected to a unified computational network. This integration had multiplied their efficiency, transforming them into invaluable tools in Adam’s research.
Until now, Adam’s work relied on classical electromagnetism. Deriving equations like
Maxwell’s equations and the Lorentz force law had been challenging but ultimately manageable. These principles described observable, macroscopic phenomena and formed the foundation of his understanding of electromagnetic magic.
But to advance further, Adam needed a deeper framework—a theoretical foundation akin to quantum electrodynamics (QED) from Earth’s science.
QED, as the culmination of decades of collaborative work by Earth’s brightest physicists, had required intricate experiments and advanced mathematical theories.
Here in the Mage World, Adam had no one to share the burden. Replicating such achievements single-handedly felt daunting even for him.
After mastering Maxwell’s equations in the etheric environment, Adam had gained significant control over electromagnetic fields.
His abilities were on par with other high-level elemental mages. He even discovered and used electromagnetic waves, though his understanding remained surface-level. He could wield them effectively but lacked insight into their deeper nature.
After much deliberation, Adam decided to go back to basics, focusing on visible light as a starting point.
By studying its properties in the etheric environment, he hoped to lay a solid foundation for breakthroughs in his understanding of electromagnetism.
To do this, he needed to recreate several key physics experiments from Earth’s history:
Adam chose to begin with the blackbody radiation experiment, a cornerstone of modern physics that was crucial for determining Planck’s constant—a fundamental value in quantum mechanics. This constant would be a gateway to subsequent discoveries.
On Earth, a perfect blackbody was only a theoretical construct, an idealized object that absorbed all incident radiation and emitted energy perfectly according to its temperature. Similarly, creating an ideal blackbody in the Mage World was impossible.
However, the use of magical materials and etheric manipulation allowed Adam to construct a device that mimicked a perfect blackbody with remarkable accuracy.
After days of trials and adjustments, Adam successfully crafted a near-perfect blackbody—an object that could absorb radiation at any wavelength and temperature with an absorption ratio nearing one.
With the blackbody stabilized and emitting radiation at consistent values, the experiment moved forward smoothly.
For the first time, Adam felt both mentally and physically drained. The research he was tackling now represented an entirely new branch of knowledge, far removed from his earlier frameworks. It was like starting over, and the road ahead promised to be exponentially harder.
Seven days of tireless effort, hundreds of repeated experiments, and thousands of data comparisons finally bore fruit. Adam arrived at the value of Planck’s constant in the etheric environment, which he denoted as "h."
The breakthrough hinged on a critical assumption: electromagnetic radiation isn’t emitted or absorbed continuously but in discrete packets. These packets, which Adam called "quanta," aligned his calculations with experimental results.
The energy of each quantum was defined by the formula:
E=hν
Where:
Adam calculated the value of h as:
h = 6.62606896(33) 10-34 J·s
Satisfied with this breakthrough, Adam set aside the blackbody radiation experiments and shifted his focus to the interference of light.
The interference experiment was straightforward. Adam quickly assembled the apparatus:
The result was unmistakable. When the beams intersected, alternating bright and dark patterns—interference fringes—appeared. This confirmed that light behaved as a wave, capable of interference.
Adam conducted additional experiments to explore diffraction and polarization, both of which further reinforced the wave-like nature of light.
With light’s wave properties confirmed, Adam turned his attention to the photoelectric effect.
Building the necessary apparatus was far more challenging, requiring ten days to gather and prepare the materials. Once ready, Adam shut himself off from the world to focus entirely on the experiment.
Two weeks of painstaking testing revealed a groundbreaking result: when light of certain frequencies struck metallic surfaces, it excited electrons within the material, releasing them and generating an electric current.
This effect, known as photoelectricity, validated the existence of photons and confirmed the accuracy of Planck’s constant.
The photoelectric effect’s success sparked a deep shift in Adam’s understanding, but he suppressed the resulting changes in his soul to maintain focus. He immediately began investigating Compton scattering to further explore light’s particle nature.
After another month of meticulous experiments, Adam completed this series of tests. The scattering results corroborated his earlier findings, providing indisputable evidence of light’s particle-like behavior.
With both the wave-like and particle-like nature of light confirmed, Adam summarized his findings.
Light was both a wave and a particle, its behavior shifting depending on the circumstances. This realization, known as wave-particle duality, was a cornerstone in his quest to understand the fundamental nature of reality.
When Adam finally released the seal on his soul, a faint, otherworldly etheric radiance descended upon him.
His soul grew stronger, and his magical power expanded slightly. But the greatest gain was his newfound ability to manipulate visible light with unparalleled precision.