I read this very often in science fiction.

In Ilium the Quantum Matrix around Achilles was changed.

In The Dreaming Void Advanced Neural Systems is embedded into the Quantum Lattice around earth.

In The Night's Dawn trilogy there is something that can control Vacuum Fluctuations (aka Quantum Fluctuations according to wiki).

 

Now Quantum Physics tend to be used to explain all sorts of funky technology in science fiction but I want to know just how much is really based on actual science.

 

What exactly is a Quantum Matrix/Lattice?

 

If I understand it correctly, Quantum/Vacuum Fluctations, Space-Time/Quantum Foam and the Casimir effect are all closely related. It's about particles and anti-particles popping in an out of existence on a subatomic scale, the Casimir effect being the force these particles can exert (in the test it was particles pressing together two plates because there were more virtual particles on the outside than between the plates, iirc).

 

But what I don't get is how you manipulate a Quantum Matrix in order to fix someoen's way of dying, effectily changing his "Fate".

And how you embed something into a Quantum Lattice?

 

It's science fiction. Emphasis on the latter. Vacuum fluctuations and the Casimir effect are real things, but there is no guarantee that the use of terminology is correct, or that an author hasn't just dropped "quantum" into a phrase to make it sound science-y. (Known as Choprafication*)

 

*at least, from now on

It's science fiction. Emphasis on the latter. Vacuum fluctuations and the Casimir effect are real things, but there is no guarantee that the use of terminology is correct, or that an author hasn't just dropped "quantum" into a phrase to make it sound science-y. (Known as Choprafication*)

 

*at least, from now on

Yeah, I am heavily inclined to believe this, but I see it pretty often so I thought there may be some kind of scientific basis.

Probably taking their names(and little else) from: Matrix mechanics and Lattice QCD.

 

They certainly sound like something humans could manipulate, which is likely why the respective authors decided to use them.