The behavior is so bizarre you almost have to suspend a “scientific” mind to even entertain the possibility, and then recalibrate your entire mechanistic paradigm to fully accept it. “The electrons orbiting each atomic nucleus obey weird rules,” explains Berkeley professor and science author Timothy Ferris, “performing quantum leaps, for instance, which means disappearing from one spot and appearing at another without having traversed the space in between.”14
Protons and neutrons— The proton and neutron both inhabit the dense high-energy nucleus, and unlike the electron, both are made up of smaller particles called quarks. Protons and neutrons are held together within the nucleus by a powerful bond called the strong nuclear force.
Protons have a positive charge. The number of protons in the nucleus equals the atomic number of that element (for example, hydrogen has an atomic number of 1, and uranium has an atomic number of 92).
Neutrons also live in the nucleus but have no electric charge. Together protons and neutrons, which have nearly identical mass, comprise almost all of the atomic weight of an element. Each is 1,836 times heavier than the ghostly electron. If you have the feeling you have heard neutron in an associated context before, you are correct. Neutron stars, for example, are hyperdense burned-out stars made up almost entirely of tightly compressed neutrons, weighing hundreds of millions of tons per teaspoon—thus rivaling the density of discount-priced fruitcake. Neutron bombs are a kind of atomic weapon noted for killing large numbers of people but causing less damage to property—perhaps the flipped effect of Hurricane Andrew.
The story of the atom, however, does not end with the proton, neutron, and electron. Beyond this more classical view of the atom lies a recently uncovered array of previously unsuspected critters, with more being added all the time. A few entries in this disparate tribe deserve mention:
Quarks— Perhaps the most notable category of particles is the quark, first predicted in 1964 and then actually discovered in 1968. Their whimsical sixties name was taken from a passage in James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake. Whimsy, however, did not end there. In all, twelve quarks have been named: up, down, charm, strange, top (or truth), and bottom (or beauty), plus their antiparticles. Protons consist of two up quarks and one down quark, while neutrons are made up of two down quarks and one up quark.
Quarks are tiny—a billion billionth of a meter. To do a size comparison, first enlarge an atom until it fills the distance from here to the moon. At that size, the nucleus of the atom would be as big as a golf course. A proton would be the size of a football field. And a quark would be the size of a golf ball.15
“Quarks” explains Staguhn, “are located in a physical ‘somewhere’ between matter and spirit.”16 Free quarks exist only in particle accelerators or at temperatures exceeding ten trillion degrees Kelvin. Such temperatures are not known to exist in the universe, thus keeping these particles structurally locked in a condition called “quark confinement.”
Neutrinos — Neutrinos were first postulated in the 1930s and then discovered in 1956. Historically their name, given by Enrico Fermi and meaning “little neutral one” in Italian, is an offshoot of neutron. Neutrinos are even more ghostly than the elusive electron. “Every second, sixty billion of them, mostly from the sun, pass through each square centimeter of your bodies (and of everything else),” explain researchers at the giant neutrino detector site in Japan. “But because they seldom interact with other particles, generally all sixty billion go through you without so much as nudging a single atom.”17
A beam of neutrinos can pass through a trillion miles of solid lead and emerge totally unscathed. Produced in large numbers by nuclear reactions in stars, these numberless neutrinos—so vacuous that almost nothing can stop them—stream constantly across the universe at the speed of light.
For decades neutrinos were assumed to be without mass. Increasing evidence, however, suggests they do indeed have a slight mass, although so negligible it is almost impossible to measure. Recent studies indicate that perhaps the neutrino’s mass is in the range of 0.03 to 0.1 eV. Don’t worry about the units here—an eV probably means nothing to you. But take a look at the comparisons involved. Electrons, the lightest of all other subatomic particles, have a mass of 511,000 eV. Thus, if these recent calculations are borne out, the neutrino has only about one millionth the mass of an electron.18
Even though such a mass seems almost too small to bother with, it is nevertheless of great interest to scientists. For decades, astrophysicists have been looking for the missing mass of the universe predicted by their calculations. Neutrinos have infinitesimally small mass but exist in infinitely high numbers. When you do the math, it might indeed be the case that neutrinos are the answer to the “missing mass” puzzle.
The trillions of neutrinos that pass through our bodies every second come mostly from our own sun. After dashing through our anatomy, the landscape, and the earth itself, they streak out into space for a long, lonely journey to nowhere but the doorstep of God.
Photon— The photon is a particle of light. It was first advanced by Einstein in 1905, but initially resisted because light was considered a wave and not a particle. The existence of the photon was proven experimentally in 1915, and named in 1926 by physical chemist Gilbert Lewis.
Graviton — The graviton is a hypothetical particle of gravity. Such a carrier of gravitational force would function as photons do when they convey electromagnetism, and gluons when they convey the strong nuclear force. It is suspected but to date not experimentally verified.
Tachyon— Some scientists postulate the existence of a yet-undiscovered particle called the tachyon. If they exist, tachyons would inhabit a tachyon universe where everything exceeds the speed of light and nothing can be slowed to equal the speed of light. Einstein’s relativity proves that nothing traveling slower than the speed of light can be accelerated through the “light barrier.” But this theory does not preclude the possibility that particles might perhaps be created already traveling faster than the speed of light. If such a faster-than-light universe is ever discovered, tachyons would be noted to naturally travel backwards in time. Lacking any experimental data to support the tachyon’s existence, however, most physicists are skeptical that they exist.
A few additional representative subatomic particles and categories of particles are included in Figure 3, in alphabetical order.
In an effort to discover yet more about mysterious particle physics, researchers are digging deeper and going faster than ever before. Particles at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), for example, are being accelerated to 99.995 percent of the speed of light. When these heavy ions slam into each other they are going so fast they don’t notice the collision immediately. Instead they pass through each other and blow up an instant later—at temperatures of over a trillion degrees. Researchers are looking for a quark-gluon plasma, something never before observed.19
These experiments are so novel, so high-energy, and so unprecedented that they sparked multi-nation protests fearing the research-induced formation of a black hole, an expanding vacuum bubble, or “strange matter.” Any one of these scenarios would lead to global annihilation, and possibly even the destruction of the entire universe! To pacify the worried, Brookhaven National Laboratories called together a distinguished panel of experts to investigate such possibilities. Their opinion, essentially “we seriously doubt it,” gave a green light for the research to continue.20
ANTIMATTER
Antimatter is the most powerful substance known in the universe. Dramatic stuff, straight out of the pages of Star Trek. Yet it is real, not just science fiction. Antimatter was first postulated in 1929 by quantum physicist Paul Dirac and then first observed experimentally in 1932 by Carl Anderson, when he detected a positron.
Today scientists believe that every type of particle in the universe has a corresponding antiparticle: essentially the same particle but with its quantum properties (such as electric charge and magnetic moment) reversed. For example
, Carlson’s positron is the antiparticle of the electron. (It could also have been called an antielectron.) In the same way, every quark has a corresponding antiquark, every proton an antiproton, and so on. There even are antiatoms and antimolecules. In 1995, for the first time, antihydrogen was created.
Even though antimatter is a real phenomenon, it is not found naturally except in cosmic ray interactions. Its rarity is for a very good reason. Whenever a particle of matter comes into contact with its corresponding antimatter particle there is a tremendous explosion. Actually, annihilation is the more correct term. The annihilation that occurs when matter and antimatter collide represents the pure translation of matter into energy according to Einstein’s formula E = mc2. And the energy involved is huge! Upon annihilation with matter, antimatter offers the highest energy density of any material found on earth.21
Because of its explosive powers, antimatter is proposed as a possible fuel for space exploration. Penn State University has been diligently working on just such an application. Antimatter is so powerful that an amount equal to a shirt button would be enough to put the space shuttle into orbit. One proposal suggests that nine kilograms (about twenty pounds) of antimatter fuel could accelerate a one-ton payload to one-tenth the speed of light.
The biggest problem with antimatter is cost. At current rates, it costs about one billion dollars to create one milligram of antimatter. A second problem is storage. Penn State stores its supply in magnetic bottles. Star Trek, as usual, was ahead of its time. The Starship Enterprise used antimatter for its propulsion system in the form of frozen antihydrogen; it was always handled with magnetic fields and never allowed to touch normal matter.
When we think about the mysterious nature and awesome power of antimatter, let it remind us of a God who is greater by far than anything He creates. Does He ever play with antimatter? Perhaps using it to annihilate an entire galaxy on the far side of the universe, or making a throne out of it to impress the seraphim? Antimatter is both real and unimaginably explosive. As for the God who created it, the pillars of heaven can only tremble at His reproof and the mountains appropriately melt like wax in His presence.22
THE FOUR FORCES
Each bit of matter in the universe is influenced by four forces— no more, no less. Why four forces rather than two, or fifty? The simple answer is that God set it up that way and we have no idea why. Additionally, we also are in the dark when it comes to understanding why these forces work in the first place. We can measure them, monitor them, and manipulate them. But we have great trouble explaining them.
The four fundamental forces are the gravitational force, the electromagnetic force, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force. Each of these forces works with different strengths on different particles over vastly different distances. Yet if even a small change in the strength of one of these forces with respect to another were to occur, life as we know it would not be possible. Of the four, the strong nuclear force is the most powerful, and gravity is by far the weakest.
Gravity is the most familiar of the four forces and the first to be investigated scientifically. Even though it is the weakest of the four (more than a trillion trillion trillion times weaker than the strong nuclear force), it is nevertheless of massive importance because it controls the balance of power in the entire macroscopic universe. The secret of its success is the great range of distances over which it is effective. While the two nuclear forces exert their influence only within the tiny confines of the atom itself, the gravitational force extends to infinity. Gravity is, in fact, the dominant force of the universe at distances greater than the size of molecules.
Although Sir Isaac Newton clarified the law of gravity several hundred years ago, it remains a mysterious force. Think about it. If we drop a pencil, it falls to the floor. Why? Is there an invisible rubber band connecting the two? Obviously not. Why does the pencil drop? At the deepest level, we don’t know. Yet if God were to suspend the law of gravity, we would need a steel cable six hundred miles in diameter to hold the moon in place.
One possible explanation for gravity is found in the theoretical gravitons. It is postulated that gravitons are tiny energy quanta that function within gravitational fields in a way similar to that of photons carrying light. But if so, how exactly do these gravitons constitute an attraction between the earth and the moon? We don’t know. “We do not understand what mechanism generates mass in the basic building blocks of matter,” observed the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1995. Interpretation: we do not know why there is gravity.23
Another explanation for gravity is that it is not really a force like the others but instead results from the curvature of space-time in Einstein’s general relativity theory. While this is satisfying in some respects, it still is not definitive.
One of the many strange implications of general relativity is that time and gravity are related. The higher we climb, the faster our watch runs. With every ten meters’ increase in elevation, gravity weakens by 0.0003 percent, and a clock would run faster by one second in 100 million years.24 While this effect might seem negligible in human dimensions, it is not negligible in the dimensions of our universe as a whole.
The round shape noticed in almost every heavenly body in the universe is another interesting consequence of gravity. Once something is larger than the size of an asteroid, the pull of gravity toward a common center crushes that object into the shape of a sphere. Reasoning from this basis, astrophysicist Hugh Ross explains that God evidently will suspend the law of gravity in forming the New Jerusalem. Revelation 21:16 describes this city as 1,400 miles wide, long, and high. Yet no such structure could exist within the pull of gravity as we know it, for anything exceeding 300 miles across would be collapsed into a sphere.25
Gravity is both kindergarten-simple and only-God-knows mysterious. “Gravity, like space, is ubiquitous and, like time, cannot be turned off,” explains physics professor Hans C. von Baeyer. “Gravity passes through all materials, affects all matter equally, and has no opposing force, no shield, no antigravity. Only God can turn it on and off. … Inexorably it draws form out of chaos.”26
In 1692 Newton wrote in a letter: “So then Gravity may put the Planets into Motion, but without the divine Power it could never put them into such a circulating motion as they have about the sun; and therefore, for this, as well as other Reasons, I am compelled to ascribe the Frame of the System to an intelligent Agent. … The Cause of Gravity is what I do not pretend to know.”27
Electromagnetism is the other relatively familiar force. It provides electricity to power our technology and sparks lightning strikes during thunderstorms. It plays an essential role in human physiology—in cellular functioning, the bonding together of bones, the contraction of muscles, and even the testing of cardiac health by electrocardiogram. Electromagnetism is also the force involved with the orbiting of electrons, the charges of particles, and the binding together of molecules and chemical compounds. The streaming of photons and the photoelectric nature of light owe their existence to the same process.
This force was initially considered to be two separate forces using two separate sets of equations: electricity and magnetism. But in the 1870s James Clerk Maxwell discovered a set of equations that unified the two forces into one. This was the first successful attempt at unifying the various forces into one integrated whole, which ever since has become the elusive Holy Grail of physics: discovering the Grand Unified Theory.
Electromagnetism exceeds the power of gravity by more than a billion trillion quadrillion times. Yet the two forces are—and must be —precisely balanced for life to exist in our universe. A deviation by even 1 part in 1040 would spell catastrophe for both human life and stellar existence.
The weak nuclear force is, in some ways, more like an interaction than a force. It has a very limited range, essentially active only within the atom. Thus it is called a “contact force.” It is the force responsible for the radioactive decay of elements li
ke uranium. In the 1960s and 1970s mathematics equations were devised to link the weak force and electromagnetism into a single force called the electroweak interaction, bringing theoretical physics one step closer to a grand unified theory.
The strong nuclear force —another contact force—has an exceptionally short range of effectiveness extending only over a few subatomic particles. Yet it is incredibly powerful. It is the force that keeps the nucleus of the atom together. The nucleus, packed with protons all having a positive charge, would naturally want to repel each other. That such a repellent outward explosion does not happen is a tribute to the power of the strong nuclear force, which is about a hundred times stronger than the repelling electromagnetic force.
Any scientist first formulating an overarching unification of these forces would be faint with hysteria. To discover the grand unified theory (GUT) or the theory of everything (TOE) would bring worldwide fame and assure a Nobel Prize. It also would result in an immortalization similar to that enjoyed by Einstein’s name. Yet such a discovery has proven elusive. Even Einstein himself searched the last twenty-five years of his life for this theory without success.
When British physicist Stephen Hawking was asked his opinion about the biggest unsolved problem in physics today, he did not equivocate: “The theory of everything. … We feel that we are near, but we never get there. It always seems just over the rainbow’s edge.” When asked if the task will be finished soon, Hawking replied: “My money is on it.”28
More Than Meets the Eye Page 11
