More Profound Things: The Non-Living

There are many things and concepts within the collective worldviews of humanity that are considered pretty mundane. However, there’s certainly a collection of things and ideas which rise to the top in profoundness when compared and contrasted with the ordinary everyday routine. These are the sorts of profound things and concepts which keep you awake at night, pondering the Big Issues. No two people will come up with identical lists. Without further ado, here are some more of mine. 

* Matter: Matter is profoundly just frozen energy. Matter and energy are not different things but the same thing, as Einstein theoretically proposed and the Manhattan Project demonstrated. Even burning a match turns some matter into energy; a nuclear reaction even more so; and the ultimate – matter-antimatter annihilation. Energy is probably more fundamental than matter since it’s much easier to turn matter into energy than energy into matter, at least on the macro scale.  

* Electrons in the Twilight Zone: When an electron rises or falls from one atomic energy level to another, when in-between levels the electron is in a profound limbo, in Never-Never-Land, in The Twilight Zone, in another dimension for all we know. It just can’t be anywhere that’s locatable in-between for if it was – in-between that is – it would possess an in-between energy state that it is not allowed to have.

* Delayed Double Slit Experiment & Time Travel: We all know about the infamous Double Slit experiment, which in one variation allows the experimenter to peek and thus see if one particle (photon, electron, etc.) can actually pass through two slits at the same time, which is what happens when the experimenter turns her back. Of course the particle will only go through one slit or the other if there is a Peeping-Tomboy around. But what if someone, human or independent observation device, peeks, but only after the particle has already passed through presumably but absurdly both slits? That shouldn’t affect the outcome since it’s now too little to late for the particle to change its mind. But again, irregardless, the normal particle-that-passes-through-both-slits that results in an eventual wave interference pattern, that pattern disappears even after the peeking is done, even after the particle has passed through both slits. The one very nasty implication is that the particle travels back in time to just before or when it was emitted so as to now make the correct choice (pass through one and only one slit) to correlate what it does with what is detected - A profound conclusion indeed.  

* Pane in the Glass:  You have one light source. You have one normal everyday clear and clean pane of glass. Some of the light (photons) from the light source will pass clear through the clear glass, but some of those identical photons will reflect off the clear surface of the pane of glass. One set of circumstances yields two differing but simultaneous outcomes. That violates cause-and-effect. One could almost say photons exhibit a restricted form of ‘free will’. That’s crazy, that’s profound, but it happens as you can verify for yourself. 

* Electric Charge: The electric charge of the proton is exactly equal and opposite to the electric charge of the electron, despite the proton being nearly 2000 times more massive. There’s no set in concrete theoretical reason why this should be so. This could be considered a profound example of ‘fine tuning’ that makes our cosmos a ‘Goldilocks’ (bio-friendly) Universe.

* Matter & Antimatter: Theory predicts there should be equal amounts of matter and antimatter in the Universe. Observation shows that there is a massive predominance of matter over antimatter. Something is screwy somewhere. Anytime something is screwy somewhere, profoundness is not far behind.

* Mother Nature: Why are there laws of Nature? Why is Nature organised? Why is Nature creative? Why is Nature self-ordering? One could imagine a universe where there was nothing but an endless cosmic ‘soup’ of quarks and electrons and neutrinos and photons and there were no interactions between them. All was just chaos and there was no mathematics, hence no physics, hence no chemistry, hence no biology. That the in-the-beginning chaotic state profoundly evolved into laws and organization and creativity and the self-ordering of things, instead of remaining forever and a day in a chaotic state, gave rise to Goldilocks.  

* Goldilocks: Why is the cosmos bio-friendly? Well the Universe, or at least our Universe, has to be bio-friendly otherwise we wouldn’t be here to wonder why our Universe was, well, bio-friendly. But why is it so, when one can envision all sorts of universes where the laws, relationships and principles of physics could be just ever so slightly differently that would make your existence, and all other life-as-we-know-it life forms, impossible. That makes our bio-friendly Universe a rather profound Universe.

* Time and Time Again: What is time? We all know what time is, at least until we’re required to actually have to explain it. It’s pretty profound that we have such trouble coming to terms with something so fundamental in our lives; a concept that has been philosophically and scientifically been bounced around like a ping-pong ball since the beginnings of recorded history and probably even before that.

* Grandma, Ma and Baby Make Three: There are three generations of particles. There are three generations of quarks; three generations of electrons; three generations of neutrinos. That’s profound because there’s absolutely no theoretical reason why that should be, especially seeing as how only one generation plays any sort of substantial role in life, the Universe and everything, including those bits and pieces that make you, you.

* Spooky Action at a Distance: It’s not too difficult to imagine two entangled objects or concepts such that if you uncover the properties of one, you immediately know the properties of the other. If you know that Jane goes shopping on Fridays, and only on Fridays, and you see Jane at the supermarket, you also immediately know that it is Friday! Jane and Fridays are entangled. But things get spooky when two objects are entangled but their properties are only statistical probabilities. The vacuum energy might spontaneously produce two particles, one matter, and the other antimatter. Say they separate and eventually are light years apart. You track down one particle and it’s a 50/50 chance that it’s matter, or antimatter. Both are actually in a superposition of state, both particles equally matter and antimatter at the same time until such time as you observe the properties of one (or the other), then the collective probabilistic wave-function of the two particles collapses down into an either/or state. Say the particle you tracked down then observed collapses into a matter particle. You then immediately know that the other particle light years away is an antimatter particle. Somehow the particle you observed communicated to its entangled partner that the gig was up – instantaneously even though it was light years away. And of course you acquired the knowledge about the status of the unobserved particle instantaneously even though it was light years away. So profound was this scenario that Einstein finally rejected the whole concept of quantum mechanics being probabilistic, calling this “spooky action at a distance”. 

* Impressive Space! If you remove all the empty space within an atom, and do that for each and every atom that’s part and parcel of each and human being on the planet, one could in theory fit the entirety of the human race into a volume the size of a sugar cube. But that’s just a baby step towards a theoretical singularity and since the constituents are now already in direct contact (no space, remember), so what’s left to compress. Can an electron be squeezed down and further than its normal volume? 



Even More Random Thoughts In Physics

Sometimes you have a new thought, an idea, or eureka moment, but it’s not gutsy enough to expand into a reasonable length article or essay. So, here’s yet another potpourri of thoughts dealing with physics and related too good not to record, but with not enough meat available to flesh out. 

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* In reviewing several of my essays I’ve noted that I’ve occasionally said that there is just the one physics, yet I’ve often said for the record that quantum physics and classical physics (General Relativity) are incompatible and forever will be. In other words, there’s no quantum gravity and no Theory of Everything (TOE). Is this in conflict? No. There is the one physics even though you’d be hard pressed to unify thermodynamics with levers, inclined planes and pullies.

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* Universal Parameters: You cannot determine from first principles what the properties of the Universe, or the fundamental particles that make up the Universe, are. They apparently can have free range. A proton is 2000 times more massive than an electron, but you can’t calculate that from the theoretical laws, principles and relationships of physics. It’s only determined experimentally. There doesn’t seem to be any reason why the proton couldn’t have been 0.2, 2, 20, 200 or 20,000 times the mass of an electron. The same applies to the relative forces. The theoretical laws, principles and relationships of physics do not require an opposite yet of equal value charge between the negative electron and the positive proton. Presumably the value of each could have been as far apart as their masses – that is a proton could have been 2000 times as positive as the electron is negative. Why not? There’s no reason why not apart from the fact that the Universe as we know it wouldn’t work, but then we wouldn’t be here to worry about that or what might have been. 

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* We’re all taught in high school the above, that the electric charge of an electron is equal and opposite to that of a proton. The ‘why’ of the relationship is never explained in any shape, manner or form. I’ve never seen an explanation given in any popular particle or quantum physics book. Now either the explanation is so bloody obvious authors don’t feel the need to explain the ‘why’ of the matter and insult the reader’s intelligence, or else the ‘why’ is in the way, way, way too hard basket and authors avoid the question and the issue to avoid appearing ignorant about so fundamental a fact.

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* Black Holes would make excellent, in fact perfect, thermos (vacuum) flasks. Pour into a Black Hole the contents of a star, say like the Sun. All that heat is then trapped and I do mean trapped!

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* Light is a thing; gravity is a thing; things can effect each other, so when it comes to the bending of light in a gravitational field, there’s no need for all this nonsense of warped space, time or space-time, which, after all, are not-things but just mental concepts.

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* If something quantum happens for no reason at all (i.e. – unstable nuclei goes poof) why doesn’t everything micro happen for no reason at all. Or, if some quantum happenings are just probabilities, why aren’t all micro happenings probabilities.

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* An isolated neutron has a half-life of roughly 15 minutes before going poof or decaying into a proton, an electron and an antineutrino. Neutrons that ‘live’ in a community of neutrons like in the nucleus of atoms; as in a neutron star, don’t decay. They are stable in these community relations. That seems like something is screwy somewhere. Why is it so? I thought that might explain why the hydrogen atom (otherwise known as protium) had no neutron (just one electron and one proton), but then heavy hydrogen (deuterium) does have one neutron (plus one electron and one proton) so things get weirder and weirder.

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* You obviously relate to being a human in a human-sized world. You can imagine being a cat or a dog and living in their world. You can probably extend that down to the world of insects and imagine yourself as a fly or ant or butterfly. At a stretch, you might be able to relate to and imagine yourself as a micro-organism living in say a drop of pond water or in the blood stream. But what about navigating down to the worldview of a photon or an electron? That I suspect is way, way, way too alien to imagine in your wildest dreams.

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* We conceive of nanotechnology as building up from micro scratch what technology we want (say micro devices to traverse our blood vessels and clean them up from the inside) by manipulating atoms from the ground up and building whatever we want from those fundamental ‘Lego’ blocks. But what if the fundamental particles are themselves products of nanotechnology?  



Profound Things & Concepts

There are many things and concepts within the collective worldviews of humanity that are considered pretty mundane. However, there’s certainly a collection of things and ideas which rise to the top in profoundness when compared and contrasted with the ordinary everyday routine. These are the sorts of profound things and concepts which keep you awake at night, pondering the Big Issues. No two people will come up with identical lists. Without further ado, here is mine. 

1) There Is Something Rather Than Nothing! Why is there something rather than nothing? Let’s say there’s a 50-50 probability between a universe that contains nothing and one that contains something. Or even make the ratio 60-40 or 99-1 or even odds of a billion to one, as long as the probability of a something universe isn’t zero. Then, well that’s something to be said for a something universe. Now a nothing universe isn’t bio-friendly and a something universe can be, so since we’re a friendly bio-entity that must mean we live in a something universe. So, as far as we are concerned, that’s what there is something rather than nothing, because if there was nothing we wouldn’t be here to ponder the issue. Still, it’s one of the most profound and debated topics in all philosophy.

2) 95% of the Universe is Missing! If you add up all of the matter and energy in the Universe that is required to account for actual observations about the Universe, well, those in the know come up short – to the tune of 95% short in actual fact! The missing stuff is divided into Dark Matter (27%), which we know exists because of it’s gravitational influence though it doesn’t interact with electromagnetism (like light); and Dark Energy (68%) which we know exists because the expansion rate of the Universe is increasing, ever increasing. To accelerate the stuff of the Universe to ever faster velocities requires energy, hence the phrase “Dark Energy” – its energy Jim, but not as we know it. In a nutshell, we haven’t a clue what Dark Energy actually is; we have no idea exactly what Dark Matter is. Therefore, 95% of the Universe is missing, well that’s not really true. It’s not so much missing as astronomers have no rational explanation for Dark Matter or Dark Energy. What we have are two profound anomalies.

3) Black Holes! Black Holes are profound because nobody has the foggiest idea what actually transpires inside. What’s the substance and structure inside the Event Horizon? The equations break down that one normally relies upon for such insights. When the mystery is ultimately solved, no doubt the resolution will be a profound one.

4) The Universe Is Bio-Friendly! Our Universe is a Goldilocks Universe if you will – which doesn’t of necessity imply the Universe was deliberately fine-tuned for bio-friendliness, just that there are many more options for disorder than for order, so to there are many more ways to envision a bio-unfriendly not-just-right-for-life Universe than a just-right-for-life cosmos.  

5) Extraterrestrial Life! Either we are alone in the Universe or we have cosmic company. Either scenario has profound philosophical implications. Related to that profound concept is the profound observation that advanced intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations, assuming advanced intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations, should be bloody obvious, having already visited us. Where is everybody? That’s the profound observation (or lack of observation) known as the Fermi Paradox. If they exist, we should know about it. 

6) Now! “Now” is the only period where anything can happen. The past (what has happened) is unchangeable; the future (what will happen) is yet to be. And there are more “now” moments in one standard second than all the numbers of all the humans who have ever lived and are currently alive to boot. That only “now” has any real significance is a pretty profound idea. Fortunately, “now” is an ongoing process.

7) Why Is It So? The electron and the proton have an equal and opposite electromagnetic charge. You cannot determine from first principles what the properties of the Universe, or the fundamental particles that make up the Universe, are. They apparently can have free range. A proton is 2000 times more massive than an electron, but you can’t calculate that from the theoretical laws, principles and relationships of physics. It’s only determined experimentally. There doesn’t seem to be any reason why the proton couldn’t have been 0.2, 2, 20, 200 or 20,000 times the mass of an electron. The same applies to the relative forces. The theoretical laws, principles and relationships of physics do not require an opposite yet equal value of charge between the negative electron and the positive proton. Presumably the value of each could have been as far apart as their masses – that is a proton could have been 2000 times as positive as the electron is negative. Why not? There’s no reason why not apart from the fact that the Universe as we know it then wouldn’t work, but then we wouldn’t be here to worry about that or what might have been. 

8) Wave-Particle Duality! The general picture here is that when a particle is given off, it is in fact a particle – a little billiard ball is emitted. When a particle is absorbed or detected it is in fact a particle that’s detected – a little billiard ball. What about the in-between times? Well, then apparently the little billiard ball undergoes a phase transition into a wave. Now I don’t believe for a moment that the particle actually turns into a nebulous or undefined maybe-here-maybe-there smeared out wave. It’s weird enough that it waves around though truth be known the ‘wave’ is actually a wave of probability. The little billiard ball, well it’s most likely to be in this vicinity or in this volume of space, a bit less likely to be over there, though some say that means there’s a tiny percentage of probability that it’s now on the other side of the Universe – which is nuts since that would imply superluminal velocities. The best analogy that springs to mind is that when the baseball leaves the pitcher’s hand, it’s a particle and when it impacts the catcher’s mitt, it’s a particle, but in-between it’s like a wave – a knuckleball, a slider, a spitter, a curve, etc. The batter (and sometimes the catcher) has to estimate the probability of where that baseball-particle actually is so as to placing the bat (or the mitt) in the right place at the right time. 

9) The Concept of Infinity! There are many things claimed to have (or have had) the property of infinity, though that cannot be. Things like infinite temperature at the Big Bang, or infinite density of the singularity inside a Black Hole. Nonsense isn’t profound. What is profound however - concepts that logically could be infinite. I refer in particular to the concepts (not things) that we call space and time. There’s no reason that if you headed off in a particular direction, that you could not just keep on keeping on without end. There’s no reason that if you headed off in a particular direction, that you could not just keep on keeping on for all eternity. There’s no requirement for there to be an alpha or omega in space or in time. In general you cannot indefinitely divide things, but you can when it comes to non-things or concepts, like the idea of a line that can be chopped into smaller and smaller segments indefinitely, or say of time. Of course not all not-things make logical sense in terms of dividing them. You can’t split Xmas indefinitely or the concept of a car.  

 

10) Self-Awareness! It’s not too difficult to comprehend increasing levels of complexity, from fundamental particles to atoms to molecules to 3-D structures of substance. However, while one branch of increasing complexity (or organisation) – dust and gas, debris, stars and planets, galaxies, clusters of galaxies – doesn’t achieve self-awareness (to the best of our knowledge anyway), another branch undergoes a phase change on the organisational road that’s ever upwards. That’s a change from structures with substance that have no self-awareness (like a rock) to structures with substance that are self-aware (like a bird or mammal). Exactly how that phase change has been accomplished is still one of those profound mysteries. Related, your brain, and my brain, in fact all normal human brains, share one thing. The brain is the only organ capable of studying itself! Now that’s profound!

11) The Simulated Universe! The human species, especially since the proliferation of the computer and associated technologies, have created thousands of simulated landscapes and virtual beings, from the humble Microsoft office assistant to pilot training simulators to video games that cater to all types of interests and age groups. Entire movies are now computer generated simulations – no actual on-location travel required; no humans need apply in hopes of earning an eventual Oscar for best actor. In view of the explosion of simulation technologies, and it’s only going to increase and get ever more realistic than it already is, the question has arisen, if we can create virtual worlds, might not we in turn be virtual beings ‘living’ in a simulated landscape programmed for some purpose or other, by other beings which might be futuristic humans recreating their past history, or ET’s video game version of “The Life and Times on the Third Rock in the Sol Planetary System”. It’s a best seller on Krypton! Though once just sci-fi speculation, that profound idea that we don’t really exist is now taken very seriously indeed.

12) Man Not On the Moon! Humans from Earth landed on the Moon and returned safely to Earth during the period 1969-1972. Three further missions were scrubbed for economic reasons – sort of like buying the car then not driving it because you couldn’t afford gasoline. Since then, economics apparently haven’t improved since we’ve never been back. That we haven’t returned in over 40 years is unprecedented in the history of manned exploration. It’s like if Charles Lindbergh had flown the Atlantic in 1927 and nearly 90 years on there was still no sign of any trans-Atlantic air travel on the horizon. There are currently no plans yet set in concrete for a lunar return mission(s). It’s one of the most shameful and ill-profound examples of human stupidity yet on the public record. There is no logical reason humans shouldn’t have established at least one lunar colony 20 years ago; there’s no logical reason why humans shouldn’t have already landed on Mars.   

Honourable Mention! How is it profoundly possible that the Boston Red Sox (the wild card entry no less) could end up beating the New York Yankees four straight games after being behind three games to zip in the 2004 ALCS? It’s profoundly good if you’re a Boston fan (which I’m not) and profoundly bad if you are a Yankee’s fan (which I am). But no matter which way you slice it, the end result was profound as it was the first time in Major League Baseball playoff history that a team lost the first three games and went on to win the next four to prove victorious in an overall best of seven game series. It’s still a nightmare episode out of “The Twilight Zone” as far as I’m concerned.

You and the Vacuum Energy

The electron, the proton and the quark are all entities within the realm of particle hence quantum physics. All three carry electrical charge. All three have mass. After those observations, things get interesting, or messy, depending on your point of view.

An electron has a negative charge exactly equal and opposite to that of a proton. Note: the charge is exactly equal, even though the proton has a far greater mass than the electron (some 2000 times heavier in fact, not that there has to be of necessity any relationship between mass and charge).

Now that’s strange since the electron is a fundamental particle but the positively charged proton is a composite particle, made up of a trio of quarks (as it the neutron with no net charge). The proton has two quarks each with a positive 2/3rds charge (up quark) and one quark with a negative 1/3^rd charge (down quark) for an overall balance of one positive charge. (The neutron on the other hand has one up quark with a positive 2/3rds charge and two down quarks each with a negative 1/3^rd charge, for an overall balance of zero charge – neither positive nor negative.)

Now you might suggest that an electron might be a fusion of a trio of down quarks, each with a negative 1/3^rd charge, except the electron, again, isn’t a composite particle, and the mass is all wrong for that scenario. If an electron were a composite of a trio of down quarks, each with a minus 1/3^rd charge, the electron would be thirty times more massive than it is – not something particle physicists would fail to take notice of. 

Further, the force particle that governs the electron is the photon; that which governs the quarks inside the proton and the neutron is the gluon, which further differentiates the two things – quarks and electrons. In any event, if you could have a composite particle of a trio of negative 1/3^rd down quarks, if that were the case, and it is the case, and it’s called the Negative Delta, you’d also need a composite particle that’s the fusion of a trio of positive 2/3rds up quarks for an overall charge of plus two. To the best of my knowledge there is only one such critter in the particle zoo and it’s called the Doubly Positive Delta. I’m sure you’ve never heard of these Delta particles, which goes to show how much bearing or impact they have on life, the Universe, and everything.

In case you were wondering, there would be an anti-quark of minus 2/3rds charge, and an anti-quark of a positive 1/3^rd charge, to yield an anti-proton and an anti-neutron. The anti-proton would of course have an equal and opposite charge to the anti-electron (which has a formal name – the positron). So things are equally as mysterious in the realm of the anti-world.

Question: How do you get 1/3^rd or 2/3rds of an electric charge in any event? Of course one could just multiply by three and that does away with the fractions, but that doesn’t resolve the larger issues, like for that matter, what exactly is electric charge and how does it come to be?

Presumably quarks inside of protons and neutrons, and electrons, could have taken on any old values of charge, separate and apart, but didn’t. Why? Is this evidence for a Multiverse (where anything that can happen does happen in all possible combinations); intelligent design (which does not of necessity imply a deity – just a creator, or a programmer); or just a coincidence?

Why is it so? What does it mean? Equal and opposite charges between the proton and the electron would just seem to be one of Mother Nature’s little mysteries.

But something else is odd here. The proton, as noted above, is 2000 times more massive than the electron, but if you weigh up the trio of quarks* that make up the proton, the proton should only come in at roughly 20 times that of an electron. That’s 100 times too small. So where does the other 1980 bits of mass come from? Well the gluon that holds the proton’s (and the neutron’s) quarks together, like the electron’s photon and gravity’s (theoretical or hypothetical) graviton, have no rest mass that add to the total. But the internal jiggling of the quarks and their gluon companions does add a bit more mass to the proton. Remember that motion equals energy which equals mass. Finally, that leaves the vacuum energy to fill the remaining gap.

Vacuum energy: what’s that? There’s no such state as zero energy, so there’s energy around even where you don’t expect it – like in a vacuum. If you have a finite amount of energy in a finite volume, you cannot dilute that amount of energy such that you end up with no energy present. That’s a violation of fundamental conservation laws. So this vacuum energy is present everywhere and experimentally confirmed so that’s not an issue to be debated. The next bit is to recall that Einstein’s famous equation relates the equality between energy and mass. Mass can be converted to energy and energy can be converted to mass. So this vacuum energy can produce what’s known as virtual particles, which exist for nanoseconds (actually way less than that) before recombining, going poof, and returning to the environment again as energy.

Everywhere, anywhere, all the time, these virtual particles pop into and out of existence – your basic transformation of energy into matter (mass) and back to energy again. Again, matter and energy are two sides of the same coin. A little bit of mass can create a lot of energy as the atomic bomb; a lot of energy can create a tiny bit of mass, and virtual particles are tiny, so it doesn’t take much energy to manufacture them. As you might expect, it’s cheaper (uses less energy) to create virtual ‘ping pong balls’ than virtual ‘bowling balls’, and so you get way more of the lighter particles created than the heavier ones. Further, the heavier they are the quicker they go poof again. Not that it ultimately matters but these pop-in pop-out events transpire so quickly that not even the finest and most accurate of Olympic timers could measure their duration. Quantum’s vacuum energy’s virtual pop-in pop-out is all over in the blink of a blink of a blink of a blink (add some more blinks) of an eye.

Oh, one other thing to note, when the vacuum energy creates these virtual particles, they are created in pairs – matter-antimatter pairs to be precise. Now why, when virtual particles are created are they in that form? Matter-antimatter pairs are the only viable way of returning to the vacuum energy the energy that was ‘borrowed’ to create the particles in the first place. It’s like borrowing money from the bank. You’ve got to repay it. If the vacuum energy created, say a pair of electrons, well the energy debt couldn’t be repaid since two electrons can’t annihilate each other back to pure energy. The bank’s money wouldn’t be repaid and there’d be hell to pay instead!

This constant froth and bubble is commonly called quantum fluctuations or the quantum jitters. All that activity, those virtual matter-antimatter particles, completely accounts for the missing mass – the differential between the proton’s quarks’s mass and the proton’s mass. In a similar way, presumably all matter is more massive as a result of these quantum jitters that take place in the vacuum energy, jitters which even permeate the insides of protons and neutrons. So, and I hope you’re sitting down while reading this, a large part of your mass is due to the jittery happenings of the vacuum energy!  

Given the above, I can’t help now but wonder what affect this constant froth and bubble, the quantum jitters, has on the biological body – your biological body. In theory, barring external agents like accidents, there is no real reason why we should age and die. Some diseases are obviously caused by outside agents like bacteria and viruses, but others have more mysterious origins. There are external agents like smoking, alcohol, radioactivity and ultraviolet light which can have detrimental effects. But if you exclude all nasty external agents, why would we age and ultimately snuff it?

The body, your body, my body, your pet’s body, is ultimately a composite of the fundamental particles that make up life, the universe and everything. These fundamental or elementary particles are subject to quantum phenomena. These particles have a volume for those phenomena to operate in. Even in space external to those particles, quantum phenomena operate all the time, anywhere and everywhere. The vacuum energy isn’t somewhere ‘out there’ in never-never-land. It’s everywhere including inside you from head to toe. Virtual particles are being created and destroyed inside you even as you read this, like it or not. All of this too-ing and fro-ing, the constant creation of virtual particles and hence their annihilation (literally a matter-antimatter annihilation) – energy to matter and matter back to energy – must have some sort of wear and tear on biological systems starting at the quantum or micro level and moving on up the line. If something goes wrong at the micro level, it has an obvious ripple effect on up that line to the macro level. Perhaps modern medicine should pay closer attention to quantum and particle physics!

There are probably multi hundreds of thousands of monographs exploring and explaining the workings and maladies of the human body from conception to ultimate demise; from the whole of physiology and anatomy down to the individual organ systems (i.e. – digestive system, respiratory system, nervous system, etc.); the individual organs (stomach, lungs, spinal cord); the tissues that comprise these; the cells that make up the tissues and the biochemistry that works its magic inside the cells. But I doubt if you’ll find in any medical library too many tomes on particle and quantum physics. Yet without particle and quantum physics there could be no cellular biochemistry on up to gross physiology and anatomy.

If all those quantum jitters, those now-you-see-them now-you-don’t virtual particles consisting of matter-antimatter annihilations inside you weren’t bad enough, the micro world isn’t quite through with you. You’re being bombarded 24/7/52 by millions of cosmic rays and neutrinos every second, though fortunately nearly all pass right through you as if you didn’t exist at all. However, the same can’t be said for those matter-antimatter annihilations. There’s no way I can see the creation and destruction of virtual particles (in matter-antimatter pairs) having any beneficial effect on your body, hence my postulating that these quantum jitters might have some, even if partial, effect on some diseases, infirmities, the ageing process, even ultimately death.

There’s no point is worrying about this for there’s not a damn thing you or anyone, not even your family doctor or a particle physicist, can do about it.        

The one saving grace is that the virtual energy is 120 orders of magnitude less than theory predicts, otherwise you and the Universe would be ripped apart – well actually you and the Universe would never have formed in the first place.

*There is some degree of uncertainty in the exact mass of those various quarks because they cannot be weighed in isolation. However, the estimates are probably pretty close to the mark. The error bars aren’t that great.

Reality: Really Real, Pseudo-Real, or Unreal? Part Four

Reality – It’s all relative; it’s reversible; it’s symmetric; it’s personal; it kicks back when you kick it; it’s conceptual; it’s theoretical; it’s actual; it’s abstract; it’s bio-friendly; it’s unforgiving; it’s emotional; and ultimately the reality of life, the Universe and everything resides in your mind.

Reality from Two More Points of View – Squared:

Position yourself way above the Sun’s North Pole and film the motion of the solar system, or just the inner solar system ‘below’ you. You’d film the Earth revolving about the Sun in a counter clockwise direction, and rotating in an easterly direction.

If you now role that film in reverse, you’d see the Earth revolving in a clockwise direction and rotating in a westerly direction. An inhabitant of that time reversed Earth would see the Sun rise in the west and set in the east! However, that’s no violation of physical law. It’s relatively easy to picture a solar system is which the revolution of planetary bodies is the opposite of ours; planets that rotate in the opposite direction. 

Such opposites with respect to motion are what you’d see in a mirror reflection – if you had a mirror big enough. So, if you reverse time [T], you produce a mirror image of the motion (left handedness motion becomes right handedness motion and vice versa), which in physics is called parity [P]. If you look in a mirror, your right hand now looks like a left hand and vice versa – that’s parity. That applies equally on the micro scale; with the added feature that to preserve the overall symmetry, the charge [C] needs to be reversed too. So, a positive [CPT] is symmetrical with a negative [CPT]. Since the macro is made up of the micro, in our time reversed; parity (motion) reversed, Earth; said Earth would have all the charges in all the particles that made it up reversed. In short, said Earth would be an antimatter Earth!

On the micro level, a positron (positive charge), rotating clockwise (spin up) while moving forward in time at one second per second is symmetrical with an electron (negative charge), rotating counter clockwise (spin down), and moving backwards in time, at a rate of one second per second! Again, there’s no violation of physical law. The laws of physics do not make any distinction between time frames moving from past to present to future relative to time frames going from future to present to past. It’s the same reality from two different perspectives. Which version you prefer is solely up to you – either interpretation is a valid one. Most people of course prefer the classical time frames forward version – the Earth revolves counter clockwise and rotates easterly and is composed of matter and goes from past to present to future. But, you can be, if you wish to be, justifiably stubborn and reverse the CPT and accept that reality.

Again, if you reverse the time frame, you need to also reverse the image of whatever is in motion to its mirror image instead. Now that image may be hard to swallow and isn’t really a ‘reflection’ of your day to day macro world. If you look in your home mirror, and see a reflection of a grandfather clock with hands rotating and pendulum swinging, it will look odd – the hands going the wrong way around (counter clockwise) and the pendulum going right-left-right instead of left-right-left. But, physicists can handle it (at least via their abstract equations – just like the mathematics can deal with the ten or eleven dimensions required of string theory.    

So, in general, negative [CPT] and positive [CPT] are the two symmetrical sides of the same physical law reality coin.

But there are two other ways of looking at and interpreting this. There’s 1) a real mix of (a hell of a lot of) matter and (a very little amount of) antimatter all going forward in time together in step, or 2) you can postulate the concept of additional pseudo-antimatter by postulating that every now and then elementary particles of matter reverse direction in time (hence reverse charge and parity as well) thus mimicking what we call antimatter. That mimicked antimatter elementary particle can reverse time direction again and revert back to what we call normal matter. That applies equally to real antimatter reversing time’s arrow and becoming pseudo-matter. While the former (1) is the commonly accepted, commonsense point of view, it’s actually the latter (2) that has greater explanatory power in solving some of those mysteries of physics, such as entanglement, and double slit experiment weirdness and why are all electrons or positrons identical (because maybe there’s only one of each zigzagging backwards and forwards in time).

Reality Really Is A Personal Thing:

The most unique thing about you is “The You” inside you – your mind. There’s nothing unique about your sex, blood type, pigmentation, hair style, body shape, age, etc. Your genetic makeup isn’t unique if you have an identical twin. Many of your body’s organs can be transplanted into other bodies. But your mind is unique. Even if you had an identical twin, your minds would be different.

Your brain, which houses the mind, is the organ that has to absorb the sensory input we constantly receive from the outside world. While we have some limited control over the sensory barrage or onslaught reality inflicts on us, we so have some – control that is. You can often choose what you want to taste or listen to or see. You can close your eyes or stick your fingers in your ears if you want.  Another form of control is that you can choose your surroundings, maybe eventually immerse yourself in a totally artificial reality, as in the Star Trek’s holodeck programs.  So, in one sense, reality really is all in the mind as all sensory input flows into it. And since your mind is unique, your reality, or your version of reality, must be unique too.

Quite apart fro having some control over external sensory input, the inner workings of your body also can affect the mind and therefore your notion of reality. Migraine headaches can cause you to ‘see’ flashes of light where no optical input is preset. A build-up of this chemical, or lack of that substance, can cause quite considerable alterations in your perception of what’s happening – reality. Near Death Experiences (the NDE) is a case in point. Control over those inner workings is possible, in some cases, to a greater or lesser degree. However, you’re body often tends to do its own thing and mind over matter is a useless exercise!

All of which leads to the point that you can also alter your own perception of reality, not directly via sensory stimuli, but chemically. There are lots of drugs, prescription, legal and over-the-counter (alcohol, etc.), not quite so legal (LSD, magic mushrooms, marijuana, various herbs, etc.) which affect brain (mind) chemistry and how you perceive the outside world.  The question then arises, if you can alter your brain’s (mind’s) chemistry, and that alters your perception of reality, how do you know that your unaltered (normal) brain chemistry is giving you an accurate reflection of what’s out there? If you’re honest, you don’t! But you can assume that you are getting a reasonable facsimile of reality, otherwise basic survival would be highly problematic. I mean if you thing that’s a purring pussy cat approaching you when it’s actually a roaring man-eating tiger, you’re in deep shit. Or, equally in the fertilizer, that’s not really table salt you’re sprinkling on your veggies, its cyanide!

There’s also the area of electrical stimulation of the brain that can produce realities which aren’t real but which, to you, are very real indeed!

There’s an opposite side to the altering-your-mind’s-sensory-input. Instead of adding or replacing inputs, eliminate them – deprive yourself of as much sensory input as possible. I’m thinking of isolation tanks where you float in water at body temperature, there’s no light, no sound, no smell. Of course your heart still thumps and you can still think (therefore you are and therefore you still have a grip on reality, even if the sum total of that reality is just you, and only you. Regardless, it’s a far removal from your day-to-day perception of what’s real!

Lastly, while mind melds (or telepathy) are probably an ever unlikely possibility, I can se the day when there is a direct interface between a computer, an artificial intelligence perhaps, and the human mind. Perhaps that computer link might be an interface between one human mind and another. That way you could directly experience another person’s reality!

The key point: Actual reality has relatively little to do with your brain chemistry (apart from providing the matter/energy needed to run the apparatus).  Your perception of reality has everything to do with brain chemistry. That’s true even if reality is augmented by technology, from telescopes to microscopes; mass spectrometers to particle accelerators; eye glasses to hearing aids.

To be continued…

Three Jokers in the Deck of Physics: Part One

In physics you have four fundamental forces and four fundamental dimensions and two fundamental types of stuff with associated properties and fates. In each case you have something, the odd one out – the one that is not symmetrical – the jokers in the physics deck. What are they?

1) You have four fundamental forces of which three have symmetry.

*Electromagnetism or the Electromagnetic Force where symmetry abounds – magnetism can generate electricity; electricity can generate magnetism. Electricity/magnetism symmetry includes the positive vs. the negative; the northern pole vs. the southern pole of a magnet; attraction vs. repulsion; the negative electron vs. the antimatter twin, the positron.

*Strong Nuclear Force has symmetry in that within the nucleus of an atom, positively charged protons repel each other – protons push outwards, yet gluons keep them in their assigned place within the nucleus – gluons pull inwards: attraction vs. repulsion. 

*Weak Nuclear Force has symmetry in that particle interactions can go in either direction. Weak interactions govern radioactivity. Radioactive nuclei can obviously be created; they also obviously can come apart at the seams (radioactive decay)!

*Gravity (the Joker): Gravity is unidirectional – it is attractive only. There is no equal and opposite antigravity except in the minds of science fiction writers.

2) There are four fundamental dimensions (ignoring unverified string theory) of which three have symmetry.

You need all four dimensions (space-time) in order to specify any particular event. You cannot have a happening in space without also having it happen in time; you cannot have an event that happens in time without it also happening in a three dimensional space. Yet only three of these dimensions are symmetrical.

*Left & Right is obviously symmetrical. These movements can be undone or reversed.

*Back & Forth is also obviously symmetrical. These movements can be undone or reversed.

*Up and Down are two directions that are obviously symmetrical. These movements can be undone or reversed.

*Time (the Joker): Time is unidirectional. Time flows in one direction only, from past to present to future. There is no equal and opposite arrow of time that extends from the future to the present and onto the past. Time cannot be undone or reversed. You cannot go back in time and change what has already happened. You remember the past; you do not remember the future. 

3) There are two kinds of stuff plus the properties of stuff (like velocity, temperature, pressure and density) and the ultimate fate of stuff.

*Mass: There’s a conservation law – the conservation of mass/matter – which states that matter can neither be created not destroyed, only changed in form. Matter (mass) can be converted to other forms of matter. You can go from a solid to a liquid to a gas and back again. You can go from hydrogen and oxygen to water and from water to hydrogen and oxygen. You can fuse hydrogen into helium (which powers the Sun) which is also an example of the equivalence between matter and energy (see below) since that fusion process releases a lot of energy at the expense of a tiny bit of mass. Matter (mass) also has another form of symmetry – antimatter. Antimatter is the same as matter only with opposite electric charge (like the negatively charged electron and its antimatter counterpart, the positively charged positron).

*Energy: There’s another conservation law – the conservation of energy – which states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only changed in form. Energy can be converted to other forms of energy. The chemical energy inherent in petrol gets converted to the kinetic energy of motion and heat energy. The electromagnetic heat and light energy from the Sun powers up green plants, which in turn convert that solar radiation to chemical energy and ultimately your petrol as a fossil fuel, or fuel you directly as you munch on your salad.. Unlike matter however, there is no anti-energy since energy doesn’t have any charge. But I hear an objection here. What about electrical energy? Surely electricity is the flow of electrons and electrons have negative charge.

There’s another conservation law – the conservation of charge. An electron just cannot shed its negative charge and remain an electron. The electron in fact doesn’t shed its charge after electrical energy has been converted to other forms of energy. Just think of your everyday household electrical appliances. Electrical energy gets converted to sound, heat and motion in your electric razor; ditto your electric tea kettle. Your TV set receives electrical energy which is converted to light, sound, and heat. Your electric radiator converts electrical energy to heat and light; your flashlight battery converts chemical energy to electrical energy hence to light (and some heat). But sound, heat, light, motion etc. doesn’t not contain any charge. The electron’s negative charge does not literally get converted to heat or light or motion or sound. So it’s not the electron’s charge itself that’s the source of the energy in electrical energy. 

There’s one other broader conservation law which combines the conservation of matter and the conservation of energy. One of the forms matter can be changed into is energy; one of the forms energy can be changed into is matter. The symmetries between mass and energy relate as we all know from Einstein’s most famous of equations, mass equals energy; energy equals mass. Mass has often been described as ‘frozen’ energy. So antimatter should also obey that relationship. Matter can be converted to energy; antimatter can be converted to energy. If matter of one charge and antimatter of the opposite charge meet, you also get energy – a 100% conversion to energy – but there’s no longer any charge since energy isn’t electrically charged. The positive charge and the negative charge cancel.

But there’s an exception to that rule – we think. If you have a matter Black Hole, and an antimatter Black Hole, and they merge, you just get a bigger Black Hole without the ka-boom. The ‘we think’ bit is because we can’t actually see inside a Black Hole so we don’t really know what’s happening inside. For all we know, all the hell of matter-antimatter annihilation has broken loose, but the resulting conversion of matter and antimatter to pure energy is energy that still can’t escape the gravity of the Black Hole to let us know what transpired. For the sake of argument, I’ll assume real events in real time can happen inside a Black Hole; real physics can happen inside a Black Hole. 

If the merger of equal amounts of both matter and antimatter can be converted to 100% energy, then energy can create both matter and antimatter in equal amounts. And in fact the vacuum energy; quantum fluctuations, verify that virtual particle pairs – one matter, one antimatter can and are in fact created. However, these particle pairs usually then immediate annihilate again to pure energy, restoring the borrowed energy that created them back to the cosmos. More symmetry!

The properties of stuff (like temperature) can go up and they can go down (symmetry). There’s no preferred direction.

The joker comes into play when you ask what eventually happens to stuff. Left to themselves, things go from order to disorder; things cool off; eggs don’t unscramble; your automobile doesn’t un-rust, an exploded firecracker doesn’t revert back into an unexploded firecracker. That unidirectional fate of life, the universe and everything is termed entropy. Entropy is not symmetrical. The Universe ultimately ‘dies’ when everything that is in the Universe, is in the ultimate state of disorder it can achieve. Translated, that means when the Universe attains the same temperature everywhere, what’s referred to as the ‘Big Chill’ or the ‘Heat Death’ of the Universe. Don’t lose any sleep over that – it won’t come to pass for trillions of years yet.

 To be continued…

Electron-ness: Why Are All Electrons Identical? Part One

INTRODUCTION: Individual members of the fundamental or elementary particles are absolutely identical* with one another. In a police identification line-up, you couldn’t tell them apart. Why? Rather than go into an exhaustive review of the entire particle zoo, I’ll just hit on the electron and its antimatter mirror twin, the positron.

BEGINNINGS: Go to your local store and buy several items of the same product – say a package of three golf balls. Though the golf balls appear identical, closer examination will reveal ever so slight differences. One ball maybe fractionally larger; another ever so slightly less spherical; perhaps the third is ever so slightly lighter. The generality that extends from this is that any two seemingly identical products will have nevertheless slight variations in their properties.

Now buy a packet of three electrons (or their antimatter equivalent, the positron). Each electron, or positron, will be identical in size, mass and electric charge to as many decimal places as you care to measure. All electrons (and positrons) are 100% absolutely identical clones.

Take one electron and one positron and bring them together. They annihilate releasing a fixed amount of energy. Take another electron and another positron and repeat the scenario. The pair will annihilate releasing an identical amount of energy in the process. The amount of energy released in each electron-positron annihilation case is the same, to as many decimal places as you can measure. That’s quite unlike taking a match from a box of matches, striking same and releasing its stored chemical energy as heat energy. Another match from the same box wouldn’t release, to as many decimal places as you care to measure, the absolutely identical amount of heat energy.

WHY IS THIS SO? #1: How come identical golf balls aren’t but identical electrons (or positrons) are?

Electrons (or positrons), having mass, can be created from energy (just like mass can be converted to energy as in the case of the electron-positron annihilation process). You (human intelligence) can’t create identical golf balls, but a seemingly non-intelligent natural process (Mother Nature by any other name) can create or produce copies of a fundamental particle, like an electron (or positron), that are clones of one another down to the nittiest-grittiest detail.

Even with quantum mechanics in force, you’d think energy could create or be converted into an electron with twice the standard electron mass or twice the electric charge, or thrice even. But no. You see one electron you’ve seen them all – every electron that is, was or will be, anywhere, everywhere, anytime, every time in our Universe.  Electrons, like Black Holes, have no hair. That means they have no individual personality. In fact Black Holes can be said to have some fuzz because they can and do differ in terms of size, mass and electric charge. Electrons have the exact same size, mass and electric charge, so absolutely no hair!  Relative to Black Holes, electrons (and positrons) are absolutely bald!

Invoking all things quantum is still a bit of a copout in that while quantum means things are this or that, one unit or two, one energy level or two energy levels, there’s no explanation as to why it’s only one or two, not one & a half. It just is, but why remains a mystery.

SO, WHY IS IT SO? #2: Why are all electrons (and positrons) identical?

1) Of course THE copout answer is that that’s just the way God wanted it and no correspondence will be entered into regarding the matter.

Unfortunately, there is no real evidence for the existence of any deity past and/or present that stands up to any detailed scrutiny.

2) One could resort to an explanation via string theory merged with quantum physics. String theory just replaces elementary particles as little billiard balls for elementary little bits of string (albeit not string as we know it). Now maybe, as in all things quantum, these strings can be one unit in length, or two units, or three units, or four units, etc. Any positive whole number multiple of one string length is okay.  Now say that a two length unit of string is an electron. A two unit length of anti-string is therefore a positron.

Or, one can suggest that strings vibrate and can only vibrate at specific frequencies as any musician playing a stringed instrument knows. So, a string vibrating at one allowed frequency is an electron; if it vibrates at another allowable frequency maybe that’s a proton or a neutron. Again, a vibrating anti-matter string would produce manifestations of the antimatter particles, a positron being dependent upon one of the allowable vibrating frequencies.

Of the two possibilities, it’s the vibration rate theory that’s preferred. All strings are of the same fundamental length – their rate of vibration can differ, but at precise intervals. What causes strings to vibrate at the rate they do, and how they can change rates of vibration (morph from one kind of particle into others) are questions better left for another time.

Unfortunately, string theory has no credibility in terms of any actual experimental evidence, and, to add insult to injury, it requires the postulation of ten to eleven dimensions in order to fit the pieces together. If string theory gets some experimental runs on the board then, and only then, will it be time to take strings seriously.

3) Well, one other possible explanation is that all electrons are absolutely identical because there is only one electron in actual existence. If you see the same object twice, thrice of a zillion times over, then it’s the same object and the fact that it is consistently identical is not a great mystery. But how can the Universe contain only one electron? That seems to be the least obvious statement anyone could ever make – the statement of a total wacko.

Well, one explanation goes something like this. Our one electron has zipped back and forth between the Alpha and Omega points again, and again, and again. Now multiply ‘again’ by zillions upon zillions upon zillions of times. When you take a cross section at any ‘now’ point in time between the Alpha and the Omega, there will be zillions upon zillions upon zillions of electrons visible ‘now’. Simple, isn’t it?

Unfortunately, while there is no violation of physical laws at the micro level in travelling through time (apart from going forward at a rate of one second per second which we do whether we like it or not), no exact causality mechanism has been proposed to explain how and why an elementary particle shifts gear into time reverse (or forward again). But, this is interesting, this time travel bit, so let’s explore it in some greater detail.

To be continued…

*The concept of identicalness can bring us into some weird scientific and philosophical territory. Two people examining the same object will not agree to the Nth degree that the object under consideration is the exact same object, an identical object, when compared from each person’s perspective. Perception is ultimately a function of brain chemistry and no two people have the exact same brain chemistry due to various factors like genetics, age, physiology, disease, fatigue, and/or intakes of various solid, liquid and gaseous elements and compounds that directly affect brain chemistry. The differences may be really tiny and nitpicky but nevertheless present. To take another case, if three court stenographers all record and transcribe a days worth of testimony, no doubt there will be (ever so) slight differences in the final three versions.

Even the same person experiencing the same object or event a second, third, etc. time – say watching a film again or listening to a CD track again, won’t have identical experiences, again due to the internal brain chemistry being slightly different on each occasion. That’s apart from the fact that external influences like temperature, humidity, pressure, and general wear and tear (entropy) all affect that object or event and the environment between that object/event and the person experiencing the object/event. Those external factors also change from moment to moment.  

People though tend to agree (brain chemistry not withstanding) on what an independent umpire says about an object or event – the independent umpire being an instrument or measuring device. Instruments are of course also subject to external influences, but aren’t affected by brain chemistry – they have no brains!

Measurements tend to be numerical, and numbers are pretty straight forward. However, all measurements are subject to some uncertainty or error margins, especially analogue devices like a ruler – is it 1.510 cm or 1.511 cm or 1.509 cm? Or a thermometer – is it reading 31.37 degrees or 31.38 degrees or 31.36 degrees? Or take a standard watch or clock – is it 12:00:00 or 12:00:01 or 11:59:59?

Digital instruments however have readouts that have a finite number of places in which to display the result, so they don’t tend to give you a plus or minus uncertainty error bar. A digital instrument will readout that the length IS 1.510 cm; the temperature IS 31.37 degrees; the time IS 12:00:00, and everyone looking at the readout will agree.   

In the case of an electron, the independent umpire gives the same numerical results for each electron it measures. Of course there are still error bars, but with each further decimal place reached, identicalness holds and the error bars get less and less.