Somehow, stranded in the stillness and chaos, we live unaware of the changes and patterns we are part of.
On a warm summer’s day, with no breeze to wave the trees and no clouds to cruise the skies, there is stillness.
On a violent winter’s day, when dark clouds charge across the low ceiling of the sky, the trees bend in the wind and rain slants down to sting faces, there is movement but no pattern.
These are strange illusions that we live. We are trapped like meat in a sandwich. Only the bread is real. We are neither part of the microcosm under us with its pattern of tiny spheres and energy in frantic movement, nor included in the macrocosm with its huge orbs, crazy circles and arcing orbits that bend through the vast reaches of space. We are somewhere between the two only partially aware of either. We walk upon both and do not comprehend what we are part of at all. It is hidden from our eyes.
Yet on that summer’s day, when nothing moves, on a scale far beyond that of the human eye to appreciate, for it encompasses different scales of time and space, we move at both colossal speeds and minute tingling through two unseen universes.
Each solid mass is really shimmering before our eyes on an unseen microscopic level – each atom jiggling about a point, each molecule boogieing about. There is no stillness in that world. The water in the still pond is zipping about in mad delight as the molecules career around bouncing off each other. The air is a mass of dashing molecules of gas and careering energy, vibrating, pulsing in constant rush-hour madness.
The microcosm is as hectic as any madness on our streets. The serenity is an illusion.
On a smaller scale each atoms is a twirling mass of pulsing life. Electrons, protons and neutrons spinning, orbiting and exuding gravity, electric charge and magnetism – interacting – joining, breaking, coalescing. A screaming roar of activity so frenetic that we can only guess at it.
Inside each proton and neutron there are the quarks – so strange they are called strange, charm, upwards and downwards – so fast and full of energy that we can only guess at what they do and wonder at the power of the Higgs Boson.
All unseen and unimagined.
There is no solidity – nothing solid to hit. The distance between nuclei is, in relative terms, greater than that between the stars. The atoms would simply slip through each other with never a solid nucleus touching another, despite the zillions, if it was not for the force that repels. We are repelled by a force-field. Solidity is an illusion.
And if we were to grip a quark and pull it apart what might we find? A flash of energy or nothing?
Who can weigh a gamma ray?
The ground we look at is a cosmic dance of atoms.
We shimmer with it. Our body is alive with atomic dancing.
On the macrocosmic scale we are partnered with a grander waltz.
As we stand and stare at that sultry scene we are spinning with the Earth’s rotation at a 1000 MPH, travelling around the sun at 6,500 MPH, travelling out towards the star Vega with the expansion of our galaxy at 43,000 MPH and spinning with the Milky Way at 611,000 MPH.
It is a gavotte of arcs and spins, of corkscrew intricacy and precision that is of unimaginable speed and complexity – the dance of the gods – if only there were gods – so grand that we had to invent gods to explain its majesty.
If we were to see this pageant from afar with time speeded up what a drama of whirling form it would take – what a spectacle. If it wasn’t for the vastness of space it would produce more wondrous patterns than a giant kaleidoscope.
On this planet we would be speeding in gigantic spiralling corkscrews at inconceivable speed in a pattern to amaze for all time – trees would fall, mountains would be swept flat.
Perhaps the planets watch? And see the universe through minds that move much more slowly, so that for them humanity is a blink and the skies do tumble and spin in the grandest firework display of all time. There are no random movements here – just arc and spirals of delight.
But likewise, if we were to take an overdose of Alice’s potion and slip between the atoms, we would once again discover that the circle reigns. Spherical atoms with circling electrons interweave to create a show of grandeur illuminated by an array of energies, where even light, the straightest thing we know travels in curves.
There is no stability here, no stillness, no serenity. All is madness. All is change and movement. Paradox rules as time is stretched and energy chooses direction, electrons occupy two spaces simultaneously and the laws we live by no longer hold.
It is only here, between universes, where we live, obliviously, where the world can seem quiet and there appears to be an anarchy of jagged movement that defies the circle in its apparent chaotic disorder. Here the illusion of stability rules and anarchy is superimposed on the patterns of reality. Here the flux is unseen and straight lines appear real. Only occasionally does the circle emerge to remind us of the real nature of the universe. Here in the middle we are a law unto ourselves.
Great writing, Opher, love the solid science and the sense of wonder!
Cheers Dave. It has been fun revisiting my younger self. I wrote this back in 1971/3 and I was cheered to find the optimism and adventurousness of my younger self. I was daring. There were no rules. I was also trying out the full range of my ideas and philosophies. Some of them worked and some didn’t.
As well as your natural buoyancy, I reckon you were reflecting some of the positives of those days when freedom was very much on the agenda.
ink we were all infused with it, weren’t we?