Going to have to check this out! I just finished the last book in the trilogy a few days ago, and found them to be quite enjoyable. Had no idea they were being adapted into a series, though (until now). Thanks!

Very interesting, thanks this is helpful! Yes, I suppose in the real world there are a lot of additional factors that need to be considered as well (such as the actual uniformity of the glass, etc.)

I've been following and trying to wrap my head around these concepts as well. Did not realize something we see every day (light passing through glass) would be such a deep topic.

Based on your description, my understanding is that if you had a laser, a piece of glass (transparent material with index of refraction) and a detector placed in a dark box in a vacuum, and

1. you emitted a single photon, there is a high probability that photon would be detected by the detector.

2. you emitted many photons, the photon detector on the other side of the transparent material would not detect the same quantity of photons emitted, because there is a probability that some of them would be reflected back at the emitter. However, because they are all part of a wavefront, none of them would be emitted out the sides of the transparent material?