physics

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Linear & Local Systems

Two weeks ago I posted a poem Uncertain Determinism. Determinism is the universe according to Isaac Newton, where strict determinist rule governs every action, interaction and reaction. This fixes the future of the universe irrevocably in an inescapable sequence of ‘This causes that, so what happens next is inevitable’, a so-called linear future in which the falling apple meets the ground every time.

Fortunately physicists such as Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Max Planck and many others have given us the escape route of uncertainty. The world behaves as though it is a series of linear interactions like a game of snooker, but at its heart it is like the fall of the cards in poker. The problem is, how does the random behaviour at the world’s heart create a world in which dependable things can happen? How can the apple fall and hit the ground and still allow chance and freewill?

The ball roll on the table
follows rules of moon and sun
which rise today, tomorrow,
as they have always done,
as past connects to future,
and to present, and are one.

This is called a linear system,
like the turning of a planet,
like a bullet, or a prism,
the passage of a photon,
the turning cosmic rhythm.

Yet this certain path is found
in local interaction
in spun, uncertain motion:
of each particle and atom
in the chalky cue’s rebound.
Local gravity, vibration,
make the universal sound
of uncertain random chaos,
smoke, not mirrors, all around.

With so many random roads
how does it take the chosen one?
why doesn’t it explode
as a blazing, shining sun?

The answer is the tiny
uncertain chance and sway
of every sub-atomic spin and swirl.
The congregated sum
of a trillion minute sums
has a bias that produces
a solid rolling ball,
and here it comes!

 

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Creative Collapse

There is trust and there is hope
in the pushing of a cue,
but its moment and position
and even its direction,
are certainly uncertain;
will it miss or is it true?

So mass will gain momentum
in the rolling snooker ball
from the players practiced prodding,
which will send it like a rocket
into the corner pocket
if uncertain quantum chances
are outweighed as it advances
by a strong determination
and combined co-operation
of the sine-curves in the haze
of its line across the baize,
like the odds that have been spinning,
in a gambler’s mind so able
where at the the corner table,
while the rolling snooker ball
is heading for its fall,
he is smugly, quietly grinning
at a hand that’s stacked for winning.

But the spinning, whirling chances
of the eddies in the stream
are subject to the entropy
that eats the gambler’s dream.
And the ball may well be found
in the pocket, but the sound
of the other players cheers
and the clink of many beers
may not echo here at all
in the disappointing fall
of the other players cards,
and his chance to win the pot
may be well and truly shot.

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Uncertain Determinism

A quark within a particle
of the nucleus of an atom
in a molecule of substance
of a rolling snooker ball
is neither here nor there
and not directional.

So are they all.

They dance in random orbits
where the chance that each is where
their fellows in the prodding
of the chalky, pushy cue
are in line with its pointing
is no more than a smattering
twixt the lucky streak continuing
at the table in the corner
and the quite unlikely sound
of another player saying,
‘I’m buying the next round.’

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Why is there Something rather than Nothing?

This is for those who like trying to imagine travelling to infinity and beyond! It is a sort of sequel to ‘Eddies in the Stream‘.

Why is there something rather than nothing?
Something is something we can understand –
things are all round us, but why are they there?
Why is there sunshine and birds in the air?
nothing is no-thing, and this seems absurd,
nothing is something for which there’s no word.
Nothing is absence, and that is something;
no song for no singer that no-one can sing.
What are those things that just cannot be?
Just between you and just between me,
nothing is something, and that cannot be.

Why is there something rather than nothing?
Is there a Maker that calls us to be?
an infinite-finite source of all being?
or multiverses to infinity?
Religion nor Science have answered the question,
‘Why is there something where nothing could be?’

Nothing is no-thing, and that is a problem,
it describes both a void and things that are not.
I search for a word that speaks not of things,
that does not suggest an absence of what?
for a void is a something, and an absence is too,
and nothing is something that just will not do.
I search for a word and zilch is no answer;
I search for a word and get diddly-squat.

Why is there something rather than nothing?
Why is there something where nothing could be?

—

There is no word for nothing
that does not mention things,
or speak about the void
the absence of them brings,
then nothing must be something
and so we talk in rings.

So surely it is possible,
and some may well say probable,
that something so intangible
can simply not exist.
Then nothing is a no-thing,
an impossible-to-go thing,
so surely there is something
rising from this mist.

Space and time and energy
are something we can feel:
eddies whirled in spacetime,
an expanding, whirling reel;
a dark, flowing energy
with eddies of its own,
spinning, ever spinning,
in this turning cosmic wheel

And those we see and know
as fundamental particles,
atoms, light and molecules,
flying to and fro,
may be eddies within eddies,
that draw the flow around them;
eddies in those eddies.
that make this cosmos grow.

Eddies bend the space-time flow around them.
Spacetime tells the eddies how to move.
Something more than nothing is no problem;
but something we can wonder at and love.

—

I have a sort of feeling that your mind like mine is reeling.

—

Scientists often say the language of the universe is mathematics, so is number an essential thing? an irreducible something, the reason for ‘something rather than nothing’? Perhaps, perhaps not.

We cannot explain numbers to children without words; sometimes lots of words. As children learn numbers in words, so students learn mathematics – plus, minus, times, divide, integrals, calculus, matrices, in many, many words. The most complex mathematical concepts, cosmic infinities, sub-atomic minutiae, could probably not be said in the words of a mathematician’s lifetime. A neighbour in Sue’s Birthday Bunnies called numbers the collapsed waveforms of words, a shorthand for the infinite words that might define this universe.

They take out all the hassle.

But in the beginning was the word.

There is another word for which we have no word. See you in two weeks.

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Eddies in the Stream

When rain clouds rise from oceans
like sea-waves in the sky
from sea to land and onward,
to hills and mountains upward,
to pour down from up high.

Where storm-rains lash the heather
to soak in moss and peat,
where dark deer-runnels ooze and drain
and ocean’s loss is nature’s gain,
for streamlets swell to run again
to rivers pure and sweet.

Where alders dip above the run
and boulders break the stream,
and eddies, whirling as they go,
dance with each other in the flow
like dancers in a dream.

They turn and fill and ebb and flow –
and catch the eye so well –
small points of action in the stream,
the focus of the swell
as though the river’s swelling run
is focussed in their spin and turn
and river, sea and rain are one;
a cosmic carousel.

We spin in busy circles,
swirled in life’s foray
while the great stream flows forever
to an ocean that is ever
beyond this little day
where the depth and breadth and wonder
of this turning cosmic reel
is just a little bay
in which the eddies play.

Two weeks ago I suggested that you watch two interesting ‘You Tube’ illustrations of eddies and harmonics:

‘Physics Girl’ Dianna Cowern here, and James Dann here.

If physics girl held her plate in a running stream instead of a still pool the eddies would be relatively still while the stream runs powerfully on.

If you watch James Dann’s setup closely you can see flickering waves within the ones he shows. Later, when he shows the first harmonic, at the wave’s highest and lowest points, top and bottom, there are nodes in the string outline which are not part of the demonstration. You can capture them, as well as the flickering internal nodes and harmonics, by pressing pause at various points. They can be seen as wobbles in the slow motion capture by the high-speed camera. They happen because the  string is never fully at rest before the demonstration starts. Dann moves from one example to the next without letting it fully settle down, but even if he did there would still be a fine wave background due to circumstances outside his control, an in-built uncertainty.

We are used to the idea that energy and matter are compatible and can be transformed, one into the other (E = mc2). Matter has been described as the collapsed waveform or point of action of waves of energy – the ‘hit’ where energy makes its impact. It forms interactive, bound clusters of these points of action which we call particles, atoms, molecules, compounds, chairs, tables, you.

Another word for the particles of which all things are built is nodes, from the latin for knot. It is as though energy is a vibrating violin string whose action, such as playing the note C, is marked by a point at which it is held at the bridge or the violinist’s finger.

These slower, harmonic notes point to a strange possibility. Nodes have little of the energy of the string, they are points of relative inaction. If we think of particles of matter as harmonic nodes in the total cosmic energy, then they are not points of action or collapsed waveforms, they are foci or regions of relative steadiness, eddies in the stream as the stream runs powerfully on. They swirl dramatically, like points of active energy in a stream’s flow, but the stream’s energy is far greater though less visible than its eddies. It is more like the dark energy unexpectedly accelerating cosmic expansion. Seen this way particles are not points of action or building blocks, they are eddies in this expanding cosmic ball; harmonics in the cosmic wave-function.

And is this universe what Dame Julian saw in a vision? something as small as a hazelnut in the hand of God, our Father and Source of all creative energy?

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Elpee?

Back with a charged computer and taking up where I left off, I imagine many of you spotted the theme of my last post ‘Elpee!’ was Planck’s Length, L­­­p­­­ and the strange forces that seem to bind the universe together at the same time as preventing it from collapsing in on itself.

You did? Wow!

Anyway for those who might not have done:

The concealed theme in the poem is the four fundamental interactions or forces of Quantum Mechanics (QM): electromagnetic, gravitational, strong, and weak, which make up our universe. They can be hard to understand, as is QM generally, so I pictured them as a flock of starlings.

Electromagnetic radiation is the colours thrown between the sky and starlings wings (by which they know one another and their world).

Gravity is the distant longing, drawing the flock as one (Newton’s apple to the earth).

The strong interaction draws mate to mate, binding families and roosting birds into groups (atoms, molecules, compounds, you).

The weak interaction is the short range interaction between birds, stopping them crashing together but not strong enough to break up the flock (stabilising those groups drawn by the strong interaction).

LP is Planck Length. A starling’s wing-flutter and flight swirls make its position, size and velocity uncertain. If there were no limit to this, if their size could be infinitely small, the flock could collapse or evaporate to nothing. Max Planck, faced with a  problem involving radiation, found there was a limit to the smallness of things; a fundamental length or grain size, even to space, below which the laws of physics will not take us. This length is known as Planck’s Length, or LP, the smallest distance that can be measured.

Because length is effectively granular in this way, so are all those things that depend on it. Speed of travel is length (distance travelled) divided by the time taken, so time is granular in the same way; it literally ticks on in tiny portions of Planck Time (Tp), the time light, the fastest thing in the universe, takes to travel one Planck length. Mass, temperature, and electric charge also share this granular nature.

I hope you find this difficult to follow because physicists do. There is something very strange going on – a conflict between the laws governing the very small and the very large. The sums do not work. When particles, which are seen as the focus or points of action of waves of energy, come together en masse, the Earth and Moon, or an apple falling from a tree, their gravity bends and contracts the space between them and brings them together. Physicists can calculate the mathematics of this and define its laws, but these same particles on their own, in their own tiny inner space do not follow these laws. The laws we find governing the very small and the very big do not agree. Somewhere we have got it wrong.

No poem this time, but I am working on it. A murmuration of starlings is one way of looking at the cosmos with the starlings representing particles of matter in fields of energy. Each starling or particle is a focus or point of action of its field of energy.

There may be another way, a quite different, far more relaxed view, in which starlings are replaced by ‘Eddies in the Stream’ which I shall post in a couple of weeks. If you want to get ahead of me there are two fun and interesting ‘You Tube’ illustrations by ‘Physics Girl’ Dianna Cowern here and James Dann here. If you watch James Dann’s setup closely there is something to be seen that he does not mention.

See you in two weeks.

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A Quantum Genesis

Back again (although still with lots to do) it seems apt that with a new house and a new beginning, to return to the theme of genesis, so here goes!

I have written Genesis and Science creation posts before (view here) but here I try to put a modern quantum physics and evolutionary version in the language and form of the book of Genesis (Bereshith in the Hebrew Pentateuch). Genesis bears evidence of originally being a collection of prehistoric oral records put into writing sometime before the early bronze age, and brought together at the beginning of the iron age. There is evidence to show that such generation to generation passing on of oral racial memories maintains an accuracy that exceeds that of the written word. One reason may be that the spoken word depends far more upon accuracy than the written in that hearers’ criticism of error is more immediate than that of readers of written records, making the speaker more conscientious. The point here is how a very early world view, predating any modern scientific approach, comes so close to producing a thesis similar to modern physics and evolutionary theory – something much more than ‘truth dressed up as story’.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Creation was formless and void,
darkness was on the face of the deep
and the Spirit of God brooded over the waveforms.
God said, “Let there be light.”
and there were waves of light.

God saw the initial conditions were good,
dark gave way to light.
The first era dawned.
…
God said,
“Let a space spread in the waveforms,
to separate waves from waves.”
An expansion separated the waves
and it was so.
Fermions, unable to cling together,
flew apart;
baryons permeated space differently,
providing driving and drawing forces.
Spacetime and the heavens formed.
The second era dawned.
…
God said,
“Let waveforms condense in spacetime
let gravity draw them together
and let matter appear.”
It was so.

Baryon waveforms – distinct from fermions,
permeated one another,
permeated spacetime.
Fermion waveforms gathered in spacetime,
drawn by the forces of baryon waves:
weak forces,
strong forces,
gravity.
Here the Earth formed, with dry land and seas.

God saw it was good.

God said,
“Let the land produce vegetation:
plants yielding seeds according to their kinds,
trees bearing fruit with seed
according to their kinds.”

It was so.
Organic compounds forming a primordial ‘soup’,
organic compounds,
self replicating molecules,
primitive vegetal life,
single cells feeding on each other
until, some a single event,
the absorption of one cell by another,
formed a symbiosis,
both cells surviving as one,
reproducing as a single entity,
forming the first nucleated cells,
the cellular building blocks of the first plants
evolving into plants yielding seeds according to their kinds,
trees bearing fruit with seed
according to their kinds.

God saw it was good.
The third era dawned.
…
God said,
“Let the lights in the sky’s expanse
separate day from night,
drive seasons, days and evolution.
giving light on the earth.”
It was so.

The greater light ruling the day
the lesser light ruling the night,
the stars also,
shining on Earth,
driving tides, seasons, evolution.

God saw it was good.
The fourth era dawned.
…
God said,
“Let the water swarm with living creatures.
Let birds fly above the earth,
across the expanse of the sky.”

God created the great sea creatures,
every living, moving thing
with which the water swarmed.
Life spread to land.
Over millions of years, the time of the dinosaurs,
birds evolved.

God saw it was good.

God blessed them and said,
“Be fruitful, multiply,
fill the water in the seas,
let the birds multiply on the earth.”

The fifth era dawned.
…
God said,
“Let the land produce living creatures:
cattle, creeping things, and wild animals,
each according to its kind.”
It was so.

Wild animals evolved
cattle according to their kinds,
all creatures that creep along the ground.

God saw it was good.

Then God said,
“Let us make humanity in our image,
to rule over the fish of the sea,
the birds of the air,
over cattle, and all the earth,
and all creatures that move on the earth.”

God created humankind in His own image,
in His image He created them,
male and female he created them.

God blessed them and said,
“Be fruitful and multiply!
Fill the earth and subdue it!
Rule over the fish of the sea,
the birds of the air
every creature that moves on the ground.”

Then God said,
“I give you every seed-bearing plant
on the face of the entire earth;
every fruiting tree with seed.
They will be yours for food.
And to all the animals of the earth,
to every bird of the air,
to all creatures that move on the ground –
everything with the breath of life –
I give every green plant for food.”

It was so.

God saw all he had made –
and it was very good!
The sixth era dawned.

The seventh era lasted less than a millisecond, all was done.

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Quark Flavours

There are six flavors of quarks: up, down, strange, charm, top, and bottom.
Up and down quarks have the lowest masses of all,
but heavier quarks can rapidly become lighter, changing to up and down.

A quark is a many flavoured thing,
with its ups and down, and a certain charm,
yet the strangest thing,
when it’s heavy, given time,
it will lighten and be fine.

Though stuck inside a shroud
of the proton – neutron crowd,
it’s position is uncertain,
as though hid behind a curtain,
part of the cosmic harmony,
dancing with its destiny.

We think of quarks as small,
almost not there at all,
but there is still a stranger thing to say.
Its unpinned-down position,
surely here but perhaps there,
gets more doubtful as we travel far away;
yet the chance that it is elsewhere
stretches faint and far forever,
this little shrouded entity
harmonic in eternity,
of limitless potential grace
throughout all time and space,
it is this that holds the universe together.

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Sue’s Birthday Bunnies

Dedicated to my friends Dick & Sue.

For her birthday little Sue
was given by her Daddy two
little bunnies in a hutch.
She said, ‘I love them! Oh so much!’
She loved them, and they loved Sue,
And they loved each other too.

Bunnies did what bunnies do,
so what a great surprise had Sue
when she peeped inside their door:
her two bunnies now were four.

‘Daddy come! Oh Daddy quick!
(Daddy by the way was Dick)
One and one have just made four!’
Daddy came and Daddy saw
that the present he’d supplied
had gone forth and multiplied.

‘Oh no!’ he said, ‘I gave you two.
Pretty soon we’ll have a zoo!
There first were two, and now two more,
It’s two and two that becomes four.’

Later talking to his neighbour
Dick said, ‘How I had to labour!
‘Sue may be bright and pretty quick,
but no good at arithmetic!’

The neighbour said,
‘Now don’t you fuss,
although I only drive a bus
I study speed and things like that
when in my driver’s seat I’m sat.
A speed of just two miles an hour
If doubled needs a bit more power.
But, and this is hard to scan,
I’ll try and do it if I can,
two miles an hour plus two again,
Is not four m.p.h.’

‘Explain!’

‘The actual sum, as I have found,
Is two miles per hour, plus two miles more
less two divided by the speed of light in miles per hour.
This argument you can’t resist.
I am a Quantum Physicist
not a poet.’

‘I thought you drove a bus!’

Dick’s other neighbour, on his way,
Stopped to pass the time of day.
‘Math and physics show us we
really need philosophy.
One and two and three and four
mean nothing if not joined to more.
They are shorthand, abstract terms,
to count the stars and sticks, and worms.’

‘And bunnies!’ spoke up little Sue.
We really must give her her due.
She knows that numbers are a tool
not bound to any other rule
than Einstein’s relativity
and Heisenberg’s uncertainty.
Schrodinger’s unhappy cat
would surely say, ‘Amen.’ to that.

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The Debate Of The Gaps

Can science explain faith? Perhaps, but ‘explaining’ must not be misinterpreted as ‘explaining away’. In the debate between science and religion the debaters are often separated into those discussing how we exist and those discussing why. Sometimes the religious argument is described as plugging holes that science has not yet explained – a retreating ‘God of the gaps’, but this is reversible. There are gaps on both sides. We can too easily treat the discussion as ‘either/or’.

There is a move away from the ‘God of the gaps’ to an equally erroneous ‘science of the gaps’ such as the apparent counter to Big Bang Creation theology by multiverse theories which avoid a single creation moment by postulating an infinite supply of them; or the infinite-finite source of Hartle-Hawking space which does the same by making the creation moment unattainable. It is easy to point out that neither answer the ‘why is there something rather than nothing’ question, but nor does religion. Both skate round an unknown centre.

There is neither a God of the gaps nor a science of the gaps. They are two views of the same whole.

Even if we could remove the need for God it would not necessarily remove our desire for Him. Lovers do not need each other, they want each other. Richard Leonard touches on this in ‘What Are We Doing on Earth for Christ’s Sake?’, describing a friend struggling with some religious work or duty suddenly feeling the peace of knowing God did not need him but simply loved him. If he died or did not finish, someone else could do it. Although God loved him doing it He did not need him.

Removing the need does not remove the love or the lover.