Things Small

Photo by Ulf Sandström on Unsplash

As they say, size matters. In my last post, I talked about the enormity of the universe as something that points us to depth dimension of reality. But there’s more to the universe than what we know of on an unthinkably gargantuan scale over unimaginably long periods of time. The small stuff packs quite a punch too. If we’re looking at the “something” to get a read on the “something more,” we also need to take a look at the ridiculously small.

And here, I thought cells were small. But smaller than cells are molecules, and smaller still are atoms. The word, “atom,” comes from the Greek word “atamos,” which means “uncuttable” or “indivisible.” And for a long time, the atom was thought to be the smallest particle of matter. But surprise! We now know that atoms contain electrons, protons, and neutrons, and the latter two are made up of even smaller particles called quarks which are held together by gluons along with other such amazing insanity. In the future, perhaps newer, tricked-out microscopes will reveal that there are even more Russian nesting dolls to uncover inside the quantum realm.

Even more interesting than how small “small” has become is how strangely “small” behaves. I don’t understand any of this well enough to explain it in detail, but I gather than light particles, or photons, be both a “particle” and a “wave.” As a particle, it’s like a little ball, but as a wave, it’s like the waves of the ocean that spread out larger and larger and interfere with each other. The particle/wave phenomenon was highlighted by the famous “double-slit experiment,” which is to quantum physics is what the Eras Tour is to pop culture

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Let’s say we have a tennis ball cannon aimed at a wall with a detector on it that will record where the balls hit. In between the cannon and the wall, we put a barrier with two slits or openings in it. When we shoot the balls out of the cannon, unless they are blocked, they go through one of the slits. The balls roll away, but the detector shows us that the balls hit the wall directly behind the opening in those two slits. In this way, the tennis balls acted as particles. And they behave as we’d expect.

But all bets are off if you try the same thing at the sub-atomic level. When photons are shot in a similar fashion, they land not only on the wall directly behind the slits but also in other narrow strips blocked by the barrier. In this instance, the photons acted as waves. But get this! That’s only when they weren’t being observed. When a detector is added to capture the movement, the photons behave just like the tennis balls and hit the wall behind only the two slits. In other words, when they were being observed, they behave like particles. Scientists theorize that something about the act of observation “collapses” the wave function. I can only think of it as quantum personality disorder.

Even weirder still is the whole notion of Quantum Entanglement, what Einstein referred to as “spooky action at a distance.” Two particles can become linked in some way, even when they are across the universe from each other. When we observe them, they will be in opposite states, one in “spin up” and the other in “spin down.” But their mysterious entanglement means that if the state of one changes, the state of the other one also changes at exactly the same time, as though they are communicating with each other in some way. All that and so much more at the quantum level is truly is mind-blowing.

If nothing else, quantum physics has empirically proven that the universe is not quite what it seems on the surface. Something more—something beyond our current ability to understand completely—is going on at the most foundational level of matter. "Things small" make a strong case form something going on beyond what we experience of life through the five senses.