The relationship between black holes and quasars is purely speculation, but the speculation is mind-boggling. For example, some physicists speculate that black holes swallow up matter from one universe and pump it either into another universe or into another part and time of the same universe. The “output” side of a black hole, according to this hypothesis, is a quasar. If this speculation is correct, then our universe is being sucked into its many black holes, only to reappear in other universes, while other universes are being pumped into our own universe, which is being sucked through black holes and into other universes again. The process goes on and on, feeding on itself, another beginningless, endless, endless, beginningless dance.
One of the most profound by-products of the general theory of relativity is the discovery that gravitational “force,” which we had so long taken to be a real and independently existing thing, is actually our mental creation. There is no such thing in the real world. The planets do not orbit the sun because the sun exerts an invisible gravitational force on them, they follow the paths that they do because those paths are the easiest ways for them to traverse the terrain of the space-time continuum in which they find themselves.
The same is true for “nonsense.” It is a mental creation. There is no such thing in the real world. From one frame of reference black holes and event horizons make sense. From another frame of reference absolute nonmotion makes sense. Neither is “nonsense” except as seen from another point of view.
We call something nonsense if it does not agree with the rational edifices that we carefully have constructed. However, there is nothing intrinsically valuable about these edifices. In fact, they themselves often are replaced by more useful ones. When that happens, what was nonsensical from an old frame of reference can make sense from a new frame of reference, and the other way round. Like measurements of space and time, the concept of nonsense (itself a type of measurement) is relative, and we always can be sure when we use it that from some frame of reference it applies to us.
Part One
I CLUTCH MY IDEAS
1
The Particle Zoo
The fourth translation of Wu Li is “I Clutch My Ideas.” This is appropriate to a book on physics since the history of science in general often has been the story of scientists vigorously fighting an onslaught of new ideas. This is because it is difficult to relinquish the sense of security that comes from a long and rewarding acquaintance with a particular world view.
The value of a physical theory depends upon its usefulness. In this sense the history of physical theories might be said to resemble the history of individual personality traits. Most of us respond to our environment with a collection of automatic responses that once brought desirable results, usually in childhood. Unfortunately, if the environment that produced these responses changes (we grow up) and the responses themselves do not adapt, they become counterproductive. Showing anger, becoming depressed, flattering, crying, and bullying behavior are response patterns appropriate to times often long past. These patterns change only when we are forced to realize that they are no longer productive. Even then change is often painful and slow. The same is true of scientific theories.
Not one person, except Copernicus, wanted to accept the Copernican idea that the earth revolves around the sun. Goethe wrote about the Copernican revolution:
Perhaps a greater demand has never been laid upon mankind; for by this admission [that the earth is not the center of the universe], how much else did not collapse in dust and smoke: a second paradise, a world of innocence, poetry, and piety, the witness of the senses, the convictions of a poetic and religious faith; no wonder that men had no stomach for all this, that they ranged themselves in every way against such a doctrine…1
Not one physicist, not even Planck himself, wanted to accept the implications of Planck’s discovery, for to do so threatened a scientific structure (Newtonian physics) over three hundred years old. Heisenberg wrote about the quantum revolution:
…when new groups of phenomena compel changes in the pattern of thought…even the most eminent of physicists find immense difficulties. For the demand for change in the thought pattern may engender the feeling that the ground is to be pulled from under one’s feet…. I believe that the difficulties at this point can hardly be overestimated. Once one has experienced the desperation with which clever and conciliatory men of science react to the demand for a change in the thought pattern, one can only be amazed that such revolutions in science have actually been possible at all.2
Scientific revolutions are forced upon us by the discovery of phenomena that are not comprehensible in terms of the old theories. Old theories die hard. Much more is at stake than the theories themselves. To give up our privileged position at the center of the universe, as Copernicus asked, was an enormous psychological task. To accept that nature is fundamentally irrational (governed by chance), which is the essential statement of quantum mechanics, is a powerful blow to the intellect. Nonetheless, as new theories demonstrate superior utility, their adversaries, however reluctantly, have little choice but to accept them. In so doing, they also must grant a measure of recognition to the world views that accompany them.
Today, particle accelerators, bubble chambers, and computer printouts are giving birth to another world view. This world view is as different from the world view at the beginning of this century as the Copernican world view was from its predecessors. It calls upon us to relinquish many of our closely clutched ideas.
In this world view there is no substance.
The most common question that we can ask about an object is, “What is it made of?” That question, however, “What is it made of?” is based upon an artificial mental structure that is much like a hall of mirrors. If we stand directly between two mirrors and look into one, we see our reflection, and, just behind ourselves, we see a crowd of “us”s, each looking at the back of the head in front of it, stretching backward as far as we can see. These reflections, all of them, are illusions. The only real thing in the whole setting is us (we).
This situation is very similar to what happens whenever we ask of something, “What is it made of?” The answer to such a question is always another something to which we can apply the same question.
Suppose, for example, that we ask of an ordinary toothpick, “What is it made of?” The answer, of course, is “wood.” However, the question itself has taken us into a hall of mirrors because now we can ask about the wood, “What is it made of?” Closer examination reveals that wood is made of fibers, but what the fibers are made of is another question, and so on.
Like a pair of parallel mirrors, reflecting reflections, gives the illusion of an unending progression to nowhere, the idea that a thing can be different from what it is made of creates an infinite progression of answers, leaving us forever frustrated in an unending search. No matter what something—anything—is “made of,” we have created an illusion which forces us to ask, “Yes, but what is that made of?”
Physicists are people who have pursued tenaciously this endless series of questions. What they have found is startling. Wood fibers, to continue the example, are actually patterns of cells. Cells, under magnification, are revealed to be patterns of molecules. Molecules, under higher magnification, are discovered to be patterns of atoms, and, lastly, atoms have turned out to be patterns of subatomic particles. In other words, “matter” is actually a series of patterns out of focus. The search for the ultimate stuff of the universe ends with the discovery that there isn’t any.
If there is any ultimate stuff of the universe, it is pure energy, but subatomic particles are not “made of” energy, they are energy. This is what Einstein theorized in 1905. Subatomic interactions, therefore, are interactions of energy with energy. At the subatomic level there is no longer a clear distinction between what is and what happens, between the actor and the action. At the subatomic level the dancer and the dance are one.
According to particle physics, the world is fundame
ntally dancing energy; energy that is everywhere and incessantly assuming first this form and then that. What we have been calling matter (particles) constantly is being created, annihilated, and created again. This happens as particles interact and it also happens, literally, out of nowhere.
Where there was “nothing” there suddenly is “something,” and then the something is gone again, often changing into something else before vanishing. In particle physics there is no distinction between empty, as in “empty space,” and not-empty, or between something and not-something. The world of particle physics is a world of sparkling energy forever dancing with itself in the form of its particles as they twinkle in and out of existence, collide, transmute, and disappear again.
The world view of particle physics is a picture of chaos beneath order. At the fundamental level is a confusion of continual creation, annihilation and transformation. Above this confusion, limiting the forms that it can take, are a set of conservation laws. They do not specify what must happen, as ordinary laws of physics do, rather they specify what cannot happen. They are permissive laws. At the subatomic level, absolutely everything that is not forbidden by the conservation laws actually happens. (Quantum theory describes the probabilities of the possibilities permitted by the conservation laws).
The old world view was a picture of order beneath chaos. It assumed that beneath the prolific confusion of detail that constitutes our daily experience lie systematic and rational laws which relate them one and all. This was Newton’s great insight: The same laws which govern falling apples govern the motion of planets. There is still, of course, much truth in this, but the world view of particle physics is essentially the opposite.
The world view of particle physics is that of a world without “stuff,” where what is = what happens, and where an unending tumultuous dance of creation, annihilation, and transformation runs unabated within a framework of conservation laws and probability.
High-energy particle physics is the study of subatomic particles. It usually is shortened to “particle physics.” Quantum theory and relativity are the theoretical tools of particle physics. The hardware of particle physics is housed in unimaginably expensive facilities which couple particle accelerators and computers.
The original purpose of particle physics was to discover the ultimate building blocks of the universe. This was to be accomplished by breaking matter into smaller and smaller pieces, eventually arriving at the smallest pieces possible. The experimental results of particle physics, however, have not been so simple Today most particle physicists are engaged in making sense out of their copious findings.*
In principle, particle physics hardly could be simpler. Physicists send subatomic particles smashing into each other as hard as they can. They use one particle to shatter another particle so that they can see what the remains are made of. The particle that does the smashing is called the projectile and the particle that gets smashed is called the target. The most advanced (and expensive) particle accelerators send both the projectile and the target particles flying toward a common collision point.
The collision point usually is located inside a device called a bubble chamber. As charged particles move through a bubble chamber, they leave trails similar to the vapor trails that jetliners leave in the atmosphere. The bubble chamber is located inside a magnetic field. This causes particles with a positive charge to curve in one direction and particles with a negative charge to curve in the opposite direction. The mass of the particle can be determined by the tightness of the curve that the particle makes (lighter particles curve more than heavier particles with the same velocity and charge). A computer-triggered camera makes a photograph every time a particle enters the bubble chamber.
This elaborate arrangement is necessary because most particles live much less than a millionth of a second and are too small to be observed directly.* In general, everything a particle physicist knows about subatomic particles, he deduces from his theories and from photographs of the tracks that particles leave in a bubble chamber.†
Bubble chamber photographs, thousands and thousands of them, show clearly the frustrating situation which early particle physicists encountered in their search for “elementary” particles. When the projectile strikes the target, both particles are destroyed at the point of impact. In their place, however, are created new particles, all of which are as “elementary” as the original particles and often as massive as the original particles!
The schematic diagram on the next page shows a typical particle interaction. A particle called a negative pi meson (π;-) collides with a proton (p). Both the pi meson and the proton are destroyed and in their place are created two new particles, a neutral K meson (K0) and a lambda particle (Δ). Both of these particles decay spontaneously (no collision necessary) into two additional particles, leaving four new particles. Of these four particles, two of them are the same particles that we started with! It is as though, wrote Finkelstein, we fling two clocks together, they shatter, and out of them come flying not gears and springs but more clocks, some of them as large as the originals.
How can this happen? The answer is partly given by Einstein’s special theory of relativity. The new particles are created from the kinetic energy (energy of motion) of the projectile particle in addition to the mass of the projectile particle and the mass of the target particle. The faster the projectile particle is traveling, the more kinetic energy is available to create new particles at the point of impact. For this reason, governments have spent more and more money to construct larger and larger particle accelerators which can push projectile particles to higher and higher velocities. If both the projectile particle and the target particle are accelerated to the point of impact, so much the more kinetic energy is available to create new particles to study.
Every subatomic interaction consists of the annihilation of the original particles and the creation of new subatomic particles. The subatomic world is a continual dance of creation and annihilation, of mass changing to energy and energy changing to mass.* Transient forms sparkle in and out of existence creating a never-ending, forever-newly-created reality.
Mystics from both the East and the West who claim to have beheld “the face of God” speak in terms so similar to these that any psychologist who professes an interest in altered states of awareness scarcely can ignore this obvious bridge between the disciplines of physics and psychology.
The first question of particle physics is, “What collides?”
According to quantum mechanics, a subatomic particle is not a particle like a particle of dust. Rather, subatomic particles are “tendencies to exist’ and “correlations between macroscopic observables”. They have no objective existence. That means that we cannot assume, if we are to use quantum theory, that particles have an existence apart from their interactions with a measuring device. As Heisenberg wrote:
In the light of the quantum theory…elementary particles are no longer real in the same sense as objects of daily life, trees or stones…3
When an electron, for example, passes through a photographic plate it leaves a visible “track” behind it. This “track,” under close examination, is actually a series of dots. Each dot is a grain of silver formed by the electron’s interaction with atoms in the photographic plate. When we look at the track under a microscope, it looks something like this.
Ordinarily we would assume that one and the same electron, like a little baseball, went streaking through the photographic plate and left this trail of silver grains behind it. This is a mistake. Quantum mechanics tells us the same thing that Tantric Buddhists have been saying for a millennium. The connection between the dots (the “moving object”) is a product of our minds and it is not really there. In rigorous quantum mechanical terms, the moving object—the particle with an independent existence—is an unprovable assumption.
“According to our customary way of reasoning,” wrote David Bohm, a professor of physics at Birkbeck College, University of London,
we
could suppose that the track of grains of silver indicates that a real electron moves continuously through space in a path somewhere near these grains, and by interaction caused the formation of the grains. But according to the usual interpretation of the quantum theory, it would be incorrect to suppose that this really happened. All that we can say is that certain grains appeared, but we must not try to imagine that these grains were produced by a real object moving through space in the way in which we usually think of objects moving through space. For although this idea of a continuously moving object is good enough for an approximate theory, we would discover that it would break down in a very exact theory.4
The natural assumption that objects, like “particles,” are real things that run their course in space and time according to causal laws regardless of whether we are around to observe them or not is repudiated by quantum mechanics. This is especially significant because quantum mechanics is the theory of physics. It has explained successfully everything from subatomic particles to stellar phenomena. There never has been a more successful theory. It has no competition.
Therefore, when we look at the tracks in a bubble chamber, we are left with the question, “What made them?” The best answer that physicists have so far is that “particles” are actually interactions between fields. A field, like a wave, is spread out over a much larger area than a particle (a particle is restricted to one point). A field, moreover, completely fills a given space, like the gravitational field of the earth fills all of the space immediately around it.
When two fields interact with each other they interact neither gradually nor at all their areas of contact. Rather, when two fields interact, they do it instantaneously and at one single point in space (“instantaneously and locally”). These instantaneous and local interactions make what we call particles. In fact, according to this theory, these instantaneous and local interactions are “particles.” The continual creation and annihilation of particles at the subatomic level is the result of the continual interaction of different fields.