Physics

A friend of mine once sent me one of those online interactives. It displayed "The Scale of the Universe" on an animated slider. Man was in the middle, sliding the scale leftwards would zoom in to the smallest forms of life, ending on pieces of the smallest particles.

Turning the slider to the right would zoom outward. Displaying all things in between man and what man estimates is the size of the known universe. It was humbling to see presented mathematically, how one individual, as a human being, is such a miniscule piece of the totality of all life. A lot of people I know get depressed when they about the expanse of the Universe, I think it’s because of all the things between man and Milky Way. There are large, intimidating things in that space, their size makes us feel small and insignificant.

But then I turned the slider to the left. As I examined the smaller species on the planet, eventually moving to the microscopic particles, I realized that some of the smallest pieces of existence can be more magical than galaxies. Another friend of mine, who is fascinated by the physics of the Universe, shared with me one of the more recent studies done by quantum physicists. They took a ball-shaped particle of matter, and launched it towards a piece with a slit in it. The particle travelled through the slit, as expected. They then added more slits, three to four, and found that when the particle was launched towards its multiple targets, it registered as passing through multiple slits. The particle managed to change itself into a different form to make it through the piece by going through all of the slits.

As if self-manipulation of matter by particles wasn’t enough of a find, the physicists also found that when the particle was viewed with the human eye (rather than through a high power microscope), it wouldn’t split itself. Meaning that this particle would display different behavior when it was aware of being observed. The presence of a person changed how the particle behaved, literally mind over matter. Something within the brain, the act of viewing the experiment, changed the way the matter behaved. When I was told this story I remember blurting out, “That’s the closest thing to magic I’ve ever heard.”

But the craziest part is, it’s not mythical or magical, it’s pure science. It’s examining the potential of our Universe, and the potential our minds have. Telepathy, Extra Sensory Perception (ESP), Telekinesis, all these previously fabled skills stem from the simple notion that our mental processes CAN have an effect on the physical world. It’s not too unbelievable is it? Considering how even with all of today’s technological advances we know so little about how our brain actually works. We know the basics, what it means when certain parts light up on a PET scan, but we’ve barely scraped the surface when it comes to our mental potential.

There’s another spec in the history of the universe that also excited me, the God particle. It’s the colloquial name given by physicist to the particle they believe began the existence of life in the Universe, the thing that began that oh-so-big bang. Like most people my age, as I’ve gotten older I’ve found myself more jaded by the traditional notions of religion. You would think I’d be completely against the particle’s title, the inappropriate melding of scientific fact with the spiritual concept of God. But two things changed my mind on the subject.

The first was the realization that everything, every piece of known existence, all stemmed from this one single particle. One tiny, tiny spec on the scale of the Universe, began… all. Like most of my agnostic age, I’ve always believed in the existence of some sort of energy, some connection between all living things. Knowing that we are all partial decedents of the God particle solidifies that connection.

The God particle also lets me question human potential. If we all originated from the particle that created life, it’s not a ridiculous assumption that we could have all have a piece of that energy inside us. That somewhere in our minds we’ve locked the potential to create matter out of nothing, to turn existence into something we can mold.

So if that’s not enough to make you forget about feeling insignificant in the face of the Universe,the realization that we all have the potential for godliness, I will call upon another, writer’s words to turn you. In his 1963 novel, Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut satirizes religion, while simultaneously trying to answer existence, through his creation of the Bokononists, followers of the religion of Bokononism. In the creation story of Bokononism, God looks over vast fields of mud. He then says to the mud, “Stand up.” And some of the mud stands and begins life in the Universe. This is the only roll God plays in the origin of humanity. The Bokonists also have a unique set of last rites, as a Bokonist prepares to leave the world they recite, “"The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and look around."

No matter how terrifying it gets to contemplate our individual space in this more than massive Universe, we were the mud that stood up. We exist, and thehe possession of life, the adventure of it, the sheer ability to be in the randomness of existence, stays more meaningful to me than all the matter in the Universe.