A Subject of Matter Conversations on Physical Science
nasa The Galactic Centre Region
A Subject of Matter
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part 01
VII
part 02
XII
part 03
XIV
part 04
XXI
part 05
XXIII
part 06
XXX
part 07
XXXVII
part 08
XXXVIII
part 09
XLIII
part 10
index
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A Subject of Matter
I thought I was being all kind of edgy and different with the idea, because I thought: oh nobody in the creative practice is going to be interested in or have done this before. Then I kind of discovered that actually in the last couple of years it’s suddenly become really popular. What has? The topic which I am doing which is basically the physical sciences. So astrophysics and quantum mechanics. Phew. Exactly yeah, this is why he’s here. Okay, I’ll go back to my laptop. No because you can give me a … Well first of all I have to understand. You can give me the average person’s view. I’ll give you the slightly better than average person’s viewpoint but not a lot. Maybe you should explain to her what it is before we start then, because then I’ve got your explanation of it on record. Explain astrophysics? Yeah. Isn’t that astronomy? Not really. No, not really no, it’s more than that. II
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It’s the physics of the universe. Life the universe and everything? Yeah essentially yes. And how the universe works. Aha oh, well … I assume that you know I’m very interested in that? You must do. Yes I do know that you’re very interested in that. I’ve never talked with anyone about astrophysics before, I’m assuming you are talking Big Bang theory and all that sort of thing? Yeah. I mean, because I have read Stephen Hawking’s book … You’re ahead of all of us then! And Bill Bryson has a book about … Oh a brief history of everything? Yeah, that one. About what? A brief history of everything. That sounds easier. Oh it’s long, the Stephen Hawking’s book is shorter than his. Yeah but Bill Bryson might be my level. No, the Stephen Hawking’s book is surprisingly … You should read Bill. Bill explains it better. So, quantum mechanics is the study of everything small. Everything tiny, tiny, tiny. You mean neutrons and protons? Quarks, smaller than neutrons and protons. Neutrons and protons are A-level stuff. I’m just not very interested in it. Oh but you should be! Because the advances in in quantum mechanics have brought more to everyday life than anything in astrophysics, all of the technology that we have now has been brought about by research into quantum mechanics. But you don’t have to understand it to use it. No but it’s very important. Ok I can accept that. It’s at the cutting edge of technology as it were. Hmmm yeah. All of this came out long after I had left school, you know quarks and … This is that particle accelerator in Sweden that they’ve got going round … Switzerland. Switzerland, which was going to bring about the end of the world as we know it because they didn’t know what was going to happen. Now I thought that was very irresponsible. Well, that was actually … I was tasked with writing ten questions that I need to research myself, next week. So this week I had to write out ten questions and one of them was: ethically, did the people who were doing these experiments have a responsibility … I think they did! To the human population to maybe not switch that thing on in the first place. But then I think if they had known … If they didn’t know what was going to happen they wouldn’t have done it. But they didn’t. Didn’t they? They admitted that they didn’t. Did the media blow it out of proportion? I think that’s very very irresponsible. The precedent had been set though, because when they exploded the first atomic bomb they hadn’t got a clue what was going to happen. Ah, I didn’t know that. And that was worse than they thought it was going to be. Yes. Was it? Oh yeah. Well that’s not true because they had done nuclear tests. But somebody first of all … But they split an atom and they had never done that before. That must have been the first time. III
part 01 Do you think that scientists at leading practical research institutes have an ethical responsibility to the human race and planet Earth to make careful consideration on the experiments that they are performing?
A Subject of Matter
charles levy – 9 august 1945 Atomic bombing of Nagasaki taken from B-29 Superfortress
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They had done nuclear tests, which amounts to a classroom experiment of the same thing. Because they knew that if you stood … that you A. couldn’t look at it and B. that if you stood anywhere near it there would be, what do they call it? A nuclear wind. Well but that’s the same for any bomb. I mean if somebody drops a thousand pounds worth of TNT next to you there will be a nuclear wind and a flash so bright you can’t look at it. He’s right there. It is common sense that when you are going to test a bomb you do it in a desert, a long way away from you. But they weren’t sure what was going to happen. But they did test radioactivity from it and people did get sick as a result of that nuclear testing and they knew that. Well yes but they weren’t sure it wasn’t going to bring about the end of the world, they weren’t sure it wasn’t going to set the atmosphere on fire. V
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maximilien brice – 25 february 2008 CERN Large Hadron Collider
They weren’t sure, you know … Does that … well that’s another thing that I’m thinking about, does that worry you? What? That, it’s outside of your control. That people in these institutes … Yes. They’re doing things … Yes it does. That could … anything could happen! They said that it was a possibility that when they switched the Hadron Collider on they would make a black hole. That’s right yeah. And actually I think … I may be wrong in this but I think it has been proven that they have made black holes, just tiny ones. Just unsustainable ones. That have fizzled out in a micro-second. Yes they did, and I still thought that: knowing that, it was highly irresponsible. And yes it was beyond my control so what could I do except turn my back to it and accept it. No but I was interested to find out, if people were worried about that. I mean, maybe … I don’t know if the average person thinks about that. Well it is kind of out of their control really isn’t it. I think it’s … well it depends on the kind of person that you are. Because there are some people who will worry about things that they have no control over and some that will accept that they have no control over it and so there is no point in worrying about it. VI
A Subject of Matter
I mean it’s like; war. It’s like; the cold war. It’s like; all the countries in the world that had nuclear power and how worrying that was when I was younger. About some idiot starting World War three and nuking everybody. I was looking at the Bulletin for Atomic Scientists, which is a website run by the university of Chicago, I believe, which is where the doomsday clock originates from and the closest that it has ever been to midnight was around that time that you are speaking of now. I think it was the late fifties. It was the Cuban missile crisis and all that sort of thing, so they were very close then to … Two minutes to midnight it was then. I think it frightened them so much that that is why the disarmament came about. Do you know what the time is now, according to that clock? No. It’s five minutes to midnight at the moment, eleven fifty five. Well what does that mean? What does the clock mean? The clock is a metaphor for how close we are to destroying ourselves, essentially. So when the clock says midnight … nuclear fallout and everyone dies. Yeah but everybody is so afraid of it, it won’t happen. We hope. Well we were closer to it back then than we are now. On a large scale, yes. That’s what they’re saying, yes. But they’ve factored into it as of two thousand and ten, I think it is, to take into account … Places like Korea? No, no. To take into account the environmental damage that we’re doing as well. So now it takes into account global warming and things like that as well. What when the world will self-destruct? Well, not self-destruct. But that we will cause the destruction of the world by other means. But that’s a slow process. Well now they’re saying that global warming isn’t quite what it was cracked up to be, aren’t we? The latest report is that things aren’t accelerating as fast as we … I don’t think the scientific community agrees on that actually. I think it is still quite split. Well it’s like when they first found a hole in the ozone layer. The thing was that they had found the hole but they didn’t know how long it had been there. No. The first time you discovered something, you know … And then it’s, oh my god it’s CFCs and carbon dioxide that is causing a hole in the ozone, but the hole may have always been there! Well the hole was there but it has changed in size. But we don’t have any frame of reference for these things because we haven’t been around long enough. We haven’t, but we do know because we can look back with carbon dating and various other scientific method. To see that things are cyclical and we have been cold enough in this country where they have been able to ice-skate on the Thames. Well it’s never been as cold as that … And likewise warm enough to grow grapes in Scotland. Exactly. We’re getting a little bit off topic though. Sorry. Yeah. That’s alright. Astrophysics. I’ve got a few facts that I can tell you about the subject. VII
part 02 Are we as a species doomed to our own self-destruction through advances in technology and the physical sciences?
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tim boyle, getty images – 10 january 2012 The Doomsday Clock moves to five minutes to midnight
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Did you know … I don’t know how they proved this but they know that atoms in the universe are paired with each other. You can’t alter one thing without altering something else. Atoms spin in a specific direction and if you change the spin direction of one atom, it’s paired atom changes as well. Even if that atom is on the other side of the universe. Oh right. Don’t you think that is mind boggling? I can’t understand it. My mind can’t boggle because it is meaningless to me. But how can an atom be on the other … Well there’s the other theory that says merely by observing something you change what it does. That’s light. As an example, light can be either a wave or a particle, depending on the experiment. Merely by a process, whatever that process may be, it affects what that process is doing at the time. X
A Subject of Matter
Is this like, if you chop a tree down in the woods does it make a noise, if no-one is around to hear it? Yeah kind of. When they do experiments with photons of light, the light can act as either a particle or a wave depending on which experiment it is in … there’s an experiment called the Young’s experiment, where they have proved that a photon of light can be in two places at the same time. But only when they observe it. Going back to this atom business did you say on the other side of the universe? Anywhere. But how can something that is one thing be in two different places. They’re not, they’re paired. So they are different atoms, not the same atom. So how are they paired? A pair is of something that is similar, surely? Perhaps two of the same element, maybe. So how can it be part of one thing if it is somewhere else? Cunning isn’t it. It’s a separate entity. XI
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part 03 If time and space are relative as Einstein predicted then does a mutual reality exist between individuals or does everything amount to human perception?
Einstein’s theory of … not general relativity, special relativity, which was his original theory, before it was updated to the theory of general relativity, which is what everyone knows as E=MC2. His original hypothesis, later proved, was that both time and space are relative, they aren’t fixed. So no single thing is happening in a specific time or a specific place. So even though you feel as though you may be sat here at five past eleven, here isn’t a place and now isn’t a time. This is the stuff of science fiction, because this is the stuff of consciousness. But I don’t want it to be the stuff of science fiction for this project, because I want to make these things understandable for everybody, because I find it so interesting that I want other people to … Yes it is fascinating. But you find yourself going round in circles. Especially when you talk about things like that, very specific things which is something that is not possible to comprehend. Therefore that doesn’t necessarily make it right. Are you with me? It’s because Einstein says it is but who sets him up as being … it is what it is. I can give you an example. I know what reality is, I’m here. That’s in your reality. But it’s yours too, because you’re here too. How do you know? How do you know what my reality is? Because if I ask you: where are you, you will say here. But how do you know what my reality is? Because the whole point is that everything is relative to the individual, even human language. That’s human perception, that’s a different thing. We are now talking physiology and anatomy, not the science of astrophysics. Why is it not all the same thing? Because one is a perception of reality and the other is actual fact. But what is actual fact? You can prove that you are here. How? How? I don’t know. But if I was a scientist … because you can pinch yourself, you can feel reality. Well, pain is in the mind isn’t it. Pain is not a … No it’s not it’s a physiological experience, pain is the way of your body keeping you safe from harm if you hold your hand over a flame, physiology takes over to remove your hand from the flame. It’s not in your mind. Mind over matter is a different thing. Pain is in the mind, that’s what it equates to. Well everything is in the mind really. Yeah. No of course it’s not. Then explain to me why someone in a coma can react to pain, painful stimuli. That’s how they test, brain dead. Dunno. Well because it’s not in the mind, if the mind was not functioning, the person is in a coma, they would not feel pain. And yet the way to test for brain inactivity is to create pain. I think the point is, if you can train yourself, as you said, mind over matter. Then doesn’t that mean that it isn’t definitive, it is in the mind. No, it means that you can learn to control your bodies experience of pain. You can learn to control your response to it. I personally think that it equates to the same thing. XII
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pieter kuiper, wikimedia commons New Journal of Physics, Herman Batelaan, University of Nebraska, confirms Richard Feynman’s double slit hypothesis
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What I was going to say to you about space and time not being fixed. A couple of things actually, is that soon after that there was somebody who was doing very high altitude jet flights and they found that time actually moves differently on Earth to the speed that it does higher up in the atmosphere. Yes, I did hear about this. Well that’s the thing about sending people off in rockets and coming back again … well that’s relativity again isn’t it? That’s what I am saying. It’ because massive objects like … objects with a large mass, bend time. So, the universe exists … we draw it in two dimensions, we know it in three dimensions, but it exists in four dimensions. So you have up, down, forwards, backwards, left, right and time is the fourth dimension. Time is flat, but then big big objects bend flat time. So that time will move at a different speed closer to a large mass. part 04 Is there a way to describe theoretical physics and its predictions in a much more accessible manner?
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time magazine – 18 october 1971 Hafele and Keating conducting high altitude jet flights, with atomic clocks, to prove time dilation
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stephen hawking, brief history of time – 1988 Objects and light follow a straight path in geodesic space time, warped by mass
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stepehen hawking, brief history of time – 1988 Model of three dimensional future light cone in four dimensional space-time, illustrating Einstein’s theory of special relativity
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lucas taylor, cern Computer simulation of particle traces from an LHC collision in which a Higgs Boson is produced
My understanding of that would simply be that it is because you are further away from the source of the calculation of time. I mean on the Earth you have … Who’s calculation of time? The Earth calculation of time. But if you take a clock up with you, it’s your time. That’s why we are trying to find the Higgs boson isn’t it? Because the Higgs boson would be the particle which makes all the other particles make sense. It links gravity and all the other forces together. It’s the … God particle! It was theorised as being the particle that causes mass and they have now proven that it is in fact the case. That links relativity with gravity and … So there is no God then? It’s a question of a particle? Not necessarily true if you don’t want to believe that, because there is a huge portion of the scientific community that do believe in God. Yeah, which is quite amazing. When you think what they are working on. Well maybe not God in the traditional sense of God, but in a divine sense they believe that there is something. XVIII
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I still can’t get my head around this time thing. Okay, what I was going to explain to you is that in terms of space being relative. This is the kind of text-book example for relativity: if you are moving on a train, a glass train, and you bounce a ping-pong ball twice on a table, and a person stood outside on the tracks does the same thing. From their perspective your ball hits the table here and then lands … There. To you it just bounces twice in the same place. Yeah. So the space is relative to where you are. Assuming you are travelling at speed? What does that prove? That space is relative. Space is relative to where you are. To what perspective you are looking at it from. And how does that relate to other things then? I mean, what is — is. What is — is? Yeah, I don’t see … what are we attempting to understand by understanding that space is relative? It’s obvious that space is relative. XIX
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So what does that tell us about everything and the world we live in. It is — is. It is what it is. No because that is the point, it isn’t what it is, it only is to you what you see it as being. So everyone has a different perception. So Einstein’s perception isn’t mine. With the knowledge that, what the theory of relativity helped … it helped with a lot of astrological reasoning for why certain things happened in certain ways. So kind of … the movement of planets and things like that became much more reasoned. So it’s beyond the simple fact that it happens the way it does, it happens because of this, is what you are saying. It’s become much more complicated. What physics, in general, as a science is now trying to do is … they’ve found an equation that equates to pretty much everything on a quantum scale, which is on the tiny scale, all the atoms and stuff. XX
A Subject of Matter
They’ve found an equation that pretty much equates to everything on a massive astrological scale and what they want to do is combine the two equations together to make a unified equation of everything. Yeah. A unified theory. Which explains life, the universe and everything. Yeah essentially. But the problem that they have at the moment is that a Newtonian law of gravity doesn’t apply to the quantum? Something like that, it is all about how to work gravity into the whole thing. Gravity is the one thing that they … It’s a problem that they have with gravity. The one thing that they are struggling to understand, really, properly how it works. Even though from a simple education perspective: gravity always seems to be the thing that we are taught that is fixed. A constant! Gravity is the one thing that they are having trouble with.
part 05 Can the universe in it’s infinite complexity be summarised in an equation or are we arrogant to suggest that we could describe a unified theory in such a way?
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In what way? Having trouble understanding or fitting into other theories? Fitting into other theories. Fitting it into everything. Because it works on the big scale but it doesn’t work on the little scale. This is when you need someone to have that eureka moment. Well or does it work but it is just so small that you can’t measure it on a small scale? Because the larger an object is the more gravity it exerts. Yeah. So you know, you get something really really tiny it’s gonna produce infinitesimal amounts of gravity, it’s just a question of scale, being able to measure a force that small. Maybe. But you know, I’ve no idea what experiments they do and how small they can get down and still detect that there is gravity present. I don’t understand the concept of small, it’s … it’s … What do you mean? What is it of the scale that confuses you? XXII
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nasa / esa Galaxy M106, whilst physicists understand that gravity works on a large scale, such as at the centre of a galaxy, they are still searching for a theory of subatomic quantum gravity
Because there are things that they know about that are too small to be seen. So how do they know that they are there? Well, the Higgs boson, the particle that we were talking about that is responsible for mass was predicted like thirty years ago and they never had the technology to prove it existed until now. Yeah, yeah which I don’t get. A lot of very clever people making some very strong assumptions. Mmmm I suppose so … it’s guess work basically. Or an educated guess. Yeah, probably closer to say an educated guess. I mean … it’s always changing as well isn’t it. I suppose that they … that with the education that they have some reason to believe that something exists even though they can’t pin it down or find it. Yeah. Well that was the whole point of the particle accelerator thing. Was to find out what atoms are made of and to find the Higgs boson. But where do you begin to know that they needed to magnetise the whole thing? Because atoms are charged? They’re shooting the atoms around a twenty seven mile circuit. So how are they shooting them? With the magnetic charge. So they move the magnetic charge then, the magnetic charge doesn’t stay still? I mean, I don’t know the finer technicalities of it but the point is that it’s shooting round at a very high speed. It’s going round a twenty seven mile circuit in seconds. They must have to draw it round. Yeah. Still, it takes true genius to even contemplate these things. XXIII
part 06 Can theoretical physics be considered a very unique form of creative thinking?
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cern – november 2006 The silicon strip tracker of the Compact Muon Solenoid
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Something I read somewhere or one interesting way of thinking about the scale of atoms. Is that, every single person in the world, which is seven point five billion people, could each have hundreds of atoms in their body of Shakespeare’s body. Oh that’s Bill Bryson isn’t it. Probably. It’s a magical feat that all the atoms in your body get together, and they’re only carbon, hydrogen and all the rest of it, but they’re you and they co-operate in being you over your entire life span and then as soon as you die they stop being you and vanish away into all their residual parts and becoming something else. Other things. Well that’s the thing about: nothing can be … Destroyed. It can only be changed. Yeah. Which again is another fundamental law of physics isn’t it. The transfer of energy rather than the destruction of it. Well you can destroy it but you then release huge amount of energy from it. Which is what they are trying to do with nuclear fusion isn’t it. Yeah. Instead of getting an atom and splitting it and creating energy they try and ram two atoms together, that don’t wanna go together, and the electromagnetic force blows them apart … But then they fuse to become something else surely, so it’s still kept it true. They smash each other apart don’t they? They fuse, is it helium nuclei? Or something like that. Together and they end up with a sort of helium atom with twice as many bits to it, but something is missing. It’s lost weight in the process and that mass that it has lost is released as energy. Right. I don’t know understand that fully, but they ram them together to get something new which weighs less than the two things put together. But that has still kept it true, hasn’t it? They’ve lost energy. Because it’s still not destroyed it’s it changed. It’s changed. Into something else. You can destroy matter but you can’t remove it completely from the equation, if you destroy it it comes out as energy instead. Which is something else. And because Einstein says that E=MC2 where M is mass and C is the speed of light, the speed of light is an enormous number, the speed of light is absolutely gigantic, one tiny bit of destroyed mass releases a huge amount of energy. One gram of coal, one little spec of coal could probably power a major city for a year. If you could destroy it completely. If you could but you can’t, or it’s very difficult to. Well they’re starting to get the hang of it. Somebody has done some experiments now where they’ve held … something in a tiny little gold capsule that’s held out in an arm … sits on the end … and it’s bombarded with pulse lasers from all sides, all aimed at this one little spot. They pulse it all together and it gets to the point where it vaporises whatever is inside and as it starts to expand they hit it with a huge blaster laser and they make it shrink by many hundreds of times itself. XXVI
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It goes right down to an almost nothing and then fuses. That’s almost like a point of singularity isn’t it? Kind of thing yeah but … Which is what a black hole is. It’s on a very small scale but they have done it. But isn’t it unstable? Well it doesn’t matter. Well that’s the energy being released. You’d have to expend a tremendous amount of energy to get it to do that in the first place. But the point is that the energy that is being released is more than the energy that is being put in to do it. Oh. That’s a lot of energy to make it happen but you do get a gain.
j brew, deutsches museum – june 2006 The experimental apparatus used by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman to discover nuclear fission in 1938
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the hubble space telescope – 2004 A ghostly ring of dark matter in galaxy cluster ZwC10024+1652
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nrao / aui – 1984 Radio image of Cygnus A, a galaxy shooting giant radio lobe jets of electrons near the speed of light across 500,000 light years of space, the small bright centre is a black hole
I read somewhere else that seventy or eighty percent of the observable universe is made up of dark matter but we don’t know what dark matter is! No-one does. No. Stuff you can’t see. But it’s not the same as black holes, or is it? A black hole isn’t stuff. A black hole is an absence of stuff. A black hole is density. A black hole is a singularity, which is what they say that the Big Bang started from, which is basically … Density. Yeah, it’s like mass as dense as possible. Imploding. Not imploding it’s crushed. So it’s like taking the moon and putting it on a pin head, kind of thing. So it is so, so compacted that it has got this huge amount of energy. Which in turn gives it a huge mass. It’s a gravitational thing, because it is so dense, little things like that will weigh millions of tons, it exerts a huge amount of gravity. But that’s the point. It’s a black hole. It sucks things in … Light can’t escape the gravity of it, it’s that strong. It even drags light back in. And they have something called a future light cone I think it is called … That’s weird. Which is the point at which light cannot escape the black hole. I can’t get how light can be dragged into something and not be seen. How light can vanish like that. It’s not an absence of light, it’s an entirely different concept. Absence of light is dark. But this isn’t a darkness that is an absence of light. It’s a light that is sucked in and taken away. Disappears. I can’t get my head around that. It’s extinguished. It’s a light that is removed. Yeah, it’s not turned off. It’s still there but it is gone. XXIX
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part 07 Is divine creation necessary for a working model of the universe or should it be the quest of science to remove creationism from the picture?
Sometimes it hurts to think about it too much. It’s like the enormity of the universe. Yeah. You just cannot comprehend it. Don’t you think that is exciting though? Yeah I do, I do, but it aches. It’s too big to think about. It’s exhausting. Yeah it is exciting and I suppose what is interesting too is that you talk about the concept of being here and perception. I don’t know what we are talking about. But I have a perception of what we are talking about. But is my understanding your understanding or am I understanding it in a different way. Yeah you could be. Very likely. Well then that’s … The perception of language is involved in that as well isn’t it. One thing that I say that means something to me may not mean the same thing to you. No. Which is very human which isn’t necessarily scientific. It’s more emotional. But we will always try and explain things won’t we, that’s the nature of being a human. It’s an enquiring mind, yeah. It’s what sets us apart. Well, going back to the God thing it’s lovely to think that if there is an entity it gave us this ability to question and to examine exactly what it is all about and where it all comes from. As we have spoken about before though, I think that everything is so magnificent that it is almost, kind of, a waste to attribute it to … you know … God did it. In a way. I wouldn’t agree. It helps the small human mind to quantify it. Because if you can’t quantify it, you can’t necessarily enjoy it. But that’s my problem. I think if you quantify it then you are putting a limit on it. No. Because anyone’s perception of religion is the limitlessness of it. I mean if you quantify something and you say: there are five hundred clocks in a clock shop, then you have limited it instantly to five hundred. If you don’t quantify something then it is limitless and it can keep evolving in being … Yes but to use as an expression of the enormity of something, to say that it is a creation of a being is not a limiting factor. It is that this being has limitless power and does things that are beyond our understanding and comprehension. But it gives us a focus of attention and an element of understanding. It isn’t about how that thing is limiting. That is the only way to get the human mind around it. As we said, scientists … Some of them are very religious. Exactly, yes because the two are not mutually exclusive are they? They don’t have to be no. No. Which is again the beauty of the whole thing. That you can be understanding things at a minute particular level and still glorify in the magnificence and the hugeness of it all. It’s both ends of the same spectrum. If you want it to be. Yeah. It can be anything you want it to be really. If that is what you want it to be. XXX
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esa – 21 march 2013 Planck satellite ‘All Sky Survey’, the cosmic microwave background of the observable universe
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pierre auger project – 2002/03 The Pierre Auger Observatory, in Western Argentina, for the detection of cosmic particles, one of 1,600 surface detectors across a radius approximately the size of Luxembourg
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Recently they have discovered that radiated particles are showering down on the Earth at all times. They’ve called them cosmic rays, but they are more waves or particles of some sort. This is not from the Sun then? They’ve attributed a large portion of it to the Sun. But then there is another twenty or thirty percent that they don’t actually know where it comes from and it varies in elemental … I mean, it’s mostly hydrogen or helium, some iron and then I think there is a range of other elements that it is includes as well. All charged, ionised atoms, radiated atoms. Just raining down on Earth. To the point where at any given second there is about a hundred of them passing through your body. And most of them go through without doing ay damage whatsoever. But, what I thought was interesting was that it equates to two doses of hospitalised x-ray, every year. XXXIII
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institute for [amolf] – may 2013 The first ever image of a hydrogen atom’s orbital structure, captured using a quantum microscope
It is a naturally occurring thing which your body has learnt to cope with I suppose. And, obviously the Earth’s atmosphere blocks out any of the harmful stuff. So what is coming through isn’t harmful? Mostly. The majority of it , yes. Yeah it’s not harmful. It’s not harmful. This is not expanding a theory on why some people get certain illnesses because they’re more susceptible to these elements than others. No, because it’s happening … it’s constant … it’s everywhere. It’s happening all the time. Right at this second there will be two hundred particles going through you. The funny thing is that the way they have become accustomed to measuring these particles isn’t the way that you would expect. And it is that they go into caves and do it. Either that or with giant water baths. Hundreds of metres across. Huge water baths. And they might get one event per year or something like that. Yeah. Just a ping. Suddenly there will be a little ping in the water and they will say: ‘oh we’ve got one’. Neutrinos I thought they were called. Oh yeah I’ve heard that. It has to be far away from the interference of any other particles. Because the particles are so tiny that any of the mass here on Earth doesn’t make any difference. Oh, they’re incredibly difficult to detect because they are so small and they interact with … most of matter is emptiness. If you look at an atom, if you draw it to scale. There will be a nucleus in the middle. Tiny nucleus. And the electrons will be out there somewhere. XXXIV
A Subject of Matter
It’s like eighty percent of it is nothing. And the rest yeah. So it’s not how it’s diagrammatically represented at all then? No. An atom is by no means a solid piece of matter. It’s a couple of tiny bits of matter with an awful lot of space around it.
Yeah? I kind of have got it like a scotch egg. So these particles can pass through and miss everything. You’ve got the yolk, the white and the breadcrumb. Perfect. Well that’s how it is taught! But how it is taught isn’t how it is accepted as being. Clearly not. That’s what I’ve got revolving around this boson accelerator thing. A scotch egg? They’re smashing scotch eggs together to make black holes. But you are only taught that because … It’s easier. It’s a way of getting your head around it. Terry Pratchett says that it’s lies to children. You tell somebody something that they can understand at the time. Yeah and then break it to them. When they ask where babies come from you don’t go through the whole rigmarole of explaining how you get a baby. I never got further than the scotch egg. I lost interest. So they say: well actually, the whole world is made up of atoms, all these little pieces that go together and then later on you get to find out what an atom is … an atom is really made up of lots of other different particles and so you find that out. As you gain more understanding and more … They’ll break it to you that what you’ve learnt is wrong and more complicated than that. That’s right. What you’ve learnt before is all rubbish and what it really is, is this. That bypassed me. I lost interest.
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I don’t get it, it’s all too much.It’s much easier to believe in God. Exactly! I think so. Exactly my point. I’m not saying that people who believe in God are simple minded by any stretch of the imagination. Scientists are a case in point. But I just think that it gives you a focus. That’s what I mean. It aches to think about it because you can’t comprehend it. So it gets too difficult to think about it in the end. I quite like that about it. Yeah but I need a rest. That it is limitless. Yeah. I mean, you can explain it simply but the maths and all that behind it is incredibly complicated. This is the simple conversation about it. What boggles me is where do you start from to get to E=MC2. That’s what boggles me. Where does the inspiration come from to begin working on or thinking about these ideas? I’d say it’s almost a form of creative conception in itself. XXXVI
A Subject of Matter
Newton didn’t actually didn’t catch an apple … an apple didn’t fall on his head. That isn’t what happened at all. No. He was ‘occasioned by an apple falling in an orchard’ I think was his diary extract. And it was sensationalised. Well again it was simplified. Yeah, I suppose. So that the common man could get his head around it. I think the apple falling on his head doesn’t simplify the maths of it. No it’s gives people understanding of ‘what goes up, must come down’ etcetera and all those things that have been said. Why don’t things fall upwards? Because of gravity. And what is gravity? Gravity is what holds us on the planet. Stops us falling off. But what is it? It’s the magnetic pull exerted by the core of the Earth. No. It’s not a magnet. Oh. It’s nothing to do with electrical charges at all. So what is it? Does nobody know? Mass. For some reason large mass objects attract. Large objects create a pull. Yeah. But we don’t know what that pull is. Or where it originates from. No, I don’t think they do. Yes. But don’t we know that the Sun has a certain degree of influence on that pull? Of course. The Sun is the biggest thing in our solar system. It’s got the most gravity. If the Sun didn’t have gravity we would … So is there gravity where there is no Sun? There is. Between suns. Because … well, you know the accepted model of the universe is that it’s expanding. They had to come to agreement that if gravity was too strong then the universe would collapse in on itself and if it was too weak it would continue to expand forever. So they had to come to a conclusion that … There is another Sun that is exerting an equal force somewhere else? There is equal force between all the stars attracted to each other, but because the universe is infinite, rather than finite, there is not centre point for it to collapse into. Right. Because it is infinite. But it’s going outwards anyway. Yeah. But if it is going outwards then it has to be going outwards from somewhere. Doesn’t it? No. But that’s the point. Because it is four dimensional it is going outwards from somewhere but there is no centre. But that’s not possible. That’s not unreasonable for it to be going outwards from several different points. But it’s not from several different points. Why not? Why does there have to be a single point? Because there was one Big Bang from one singularity point. Okay. But that singularity could have resulted in several other singularities. What I mean is, this Big Bang caused an eruption of matter outwards. But there could be other points that are creating a pull. An exertion. That is now greater than the initial point. I still can’t understand the Big Bang, but there you go … Well, what started that? What was before it? I like to think … one of the theories is that it’s a constant expand and contract … so the universe explodes, gets to the point where it can’t expand any more and then collapses in on itself. And then it happens again. XXXVI I
part 08 Can the human conscious grasp the concept of infinite and is such a thing even possible?
A Subject of Matter
part 09 When defining a creation point for the universe is absolutely anything that can be imagined in theory possible?
So … we’ve been here before? No. I don’t think it goes as far as that. There has been an Earth before? No. Because all matter would be re-shaped in the singularity. The universe has existed before. But not in the state that it is currently in. Right. But then there is every reason to believe that if the universe has existed before then the conditions have been right for an Earth to exist. Yeah. So we have been here before. I’m not saying ‘we’, I’m saying that the environmental circumstances have been such that there has been an Earth before. I’m not sure that it would qualify as the Earth because it would not be in ‘our’ universe. It wouldn’t be ‘the Earth’ it wouldn’t be ‘our’ sun. It would be a big star and a planet. But it wouldn’t necessarily be Earth. No. But the circumstances to have created a similar existence … It could have happened somewhere else though. Somewhere else? Yeah. Not at this fixed point. Well, this isn’t a fixed point. Wherever ‘this’ is. But that depends on there being a point at which it all starts from. Yeah. Which we don’t know that there is because the theory is that there isn’t. No. The singularity is the starting point, but they believe that it’s now … I don’t know. It’s now infinite and because of that cannot collapse in on itself because there is no centre point. How it can be expanding without a centre point I don’t really understand. Well as I say there may be several. I’ve never understood the Big Bang, I just couldn’t get my head around it. First there was ‘nothing’. Then there was a singularity and then we had a universe. Well was there nothing? We don’t know that. We don’t know that there was only nothing, do we? That’s the point. We don’t know that there was ever nothing. We don’t know, as you’ve said, that this isn’t cyclical. That this has been happening … Yeah. Or it could be a case of … the universe is an atom in another universe is an atom in another universe. Then why aren’t we all drifting slowly apart? Why aren’t we expanding? Well. If our universe was an atom in another universe it would be so small … I like the fact that there are things that we can’t explain. Do you? I think that’s what scares most people. No. I like that. That is what keeps us searching for the answer but we won’t necessarily find it and sometimes we have to accept that we can’t find the answer. So, we can have our theories and that’s what’s interesting. Do you think we ever will find an answer? Ever? In my lifetime? Or ever? Ever. How can I possibly know that. Well you can’t. It would just be an opinion. Do you think it is possible that there is an answer? Well there has to be. Does there? Well there is an answer to everything I’m sure. It’s like … caveman … and his not understanding how fire was created or something like that … But we go on to use it. Then we expand and we find something else that we don’t understand. XXXVIII
A Subject of Matter
bbc horizon, the big bang – may 2013 Param Singh phD, Assistant Professor of Physics at Lousiana State University, was a propagator of the ‘Big Bounce’ cyclic universe model Neil Turok, Director of the Perimeter Institute for Theoreticlal Physics was a propagator of an eleven dimensional M-theory collision as the beginning of the universe
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rob ratkowski, institute for astronomy, maui The Pan STAARS1 Observatory on Haleakala, in October 2013 scientists discovered PSO J318.5–22 a lone giant gas planet without a sun
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A Subject of Matter
Nothing’s ever permanent is it. I mean everything changes constantly, things disintegrate and fall apart. There must have been a starting point somewhere, it’s just deciding where that starting point was. But we know there was a starting point. For us, yes. But for the universe, it can’t have been here forever. Why not? Well. I guess because by it’s very nature. Infinite isn’t … well … we can’t imagine infinite. No we can’t imagine infinite. Did you hear about … I think it may have even been this year … they found the very first planet they’ve ever discovered that doesn’t have a sun. Quite what defines it as being a planet, without having a sun I don’t really know. But it’s a planet. A giant gas planet. It’s free moving, it’s not tied to anything. A free radical. A wanderer. A nomadic planet. Surprising really that such XLI
A Subject of Matter
dave herald, murrumbateman – 15 february 2013 Asteroid DA14, weighing 130,000 tons, passes Earth, on the closest recorded trajectory for an extra-terrestrial object, of its size, since since records began. Skimming Earth below the orbit of most terrestrial satellites
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A Subject of Matter
Does the thought that actually our existence here is … subject to change … does that ever … No that’s perfectly obvious. But subject to change very quickly. Does that ever … do you think people … well, for example: an asteroid … last year, an asteroid passed the closest to Earth that has ever been recorded, since we have been observing. And nobody saw it coming. That’s the point. That is the scary part, is that nobody saw it coming. It was only maybe a couple of days before, at most. That asteroid actually passed underneath some of the satellites that we have orbiting the Earth. There was nothing that we could have done about it at that time because we couldn’t have destroyed it. It was too close to Earth. Yeah. It wasn’t a particularly big one. It was big enough to wipe out a country I think or at least do some damage. Does that worry me? Does that worry me personally? Or do I think that worries a lot of humanity? Both. Because I don’t think people think about the reality of that. I guess you can’t really. I guess I think, that it very much depends on the individual. If you have the intellectual capability you might worry about it. Because you have a theoretical understanding of the possibility of it occurring. But then you can choose, to not let it bother you. The thing is that most scientists will be aware of the possibility of that. I think you have to be of a certain character … there are people who will worry about everything. There are lots of possibilities … Bigger and smaller than that. That’s a big thing. It’s so big that really, as it’s beyond your control, there is very little to worry about. You shouldn’t worry about it. Well, the thing that I always rationalise … It’s a bit like the Cold War … The thing that I always say to kind of rationalise that is if a asteroid or meteor was to come down on Earth and wipe out humanity … you wouldn’t want to be the only person left anyway. If you are going to go, life as you know it will go as well. It doesn’t really make any difference. I suppose if I am absolutely honest the only thing that bothers me is where I will be and who I will be with and what I will be doing. That’s the only thing that bothers me. Again, I have no control over that. No. But I would rather be under the asteroid than on the edge of it. I wouldn’t want to survive. Who would? I wouldn’t want to be left. No. I wouldn’t either. For what? Exactly. That’s the point. Everything has to be put into context. Even life should be put into the context of everyone else being there as well. An existence without anything else, isn’t a life. Is it?
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part 10 In light of how close asteroid DA14 passed to Earth in 2013. Do people consider mankind’s very fragile and temporal existence?
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newton [–onian] nothing nuclear nuclear fallout nuclear fusion nuclear power nuclear test [–ing] nuclear wind observe [*able, *ing] orbiting paired particle [–s] people perceptions photon [–s] physics planet [–s] possibility power protons pulse quantify quantum quarks radiation [*ed] radioactive [*ity] ray [–s] reality relative relativity religion [*ious] research satellites scale science [–s] scientific scientist [–s] singularity [*ties] small
solar system somewhere space speed spin split [–ting] star [–s] sun [–s] technology test theoretical theorised theory [*ies] thought time [–s] tiny understanding unexplainable unified universe unlimited unstable wave [–s] whole why world x-ray [–s]
nasa / esa The Carina Nebula