Simplification of Physics: Journey to nothing

One of our greatest gift is our ability to imagine. One of our greatest freedoms is the free will to imagine anything we want. We are free in our imagination to make possible the impossible. So I imagined what it would be like if I could change my size to as small and as big as I wanted in order to explore the quantum world of atoms and the vastness of our universe. I convinced my friend to accompany me.

Some music while you read...

To get into the mood, we jumped into the ocean, got on or surf boards and rode a wave to some corral reefs.

The first thing we saw were a grouping of eggs floating over corals. There were many corals at all stages of their growth. Some of the larger ones formed small black spherical spores that were ejected, took root, and absorbed from their environment to grow. This was sufficient inspiration to spark our imagination so we started to shrink our size.

As we shrank, the water became denser and thicker and it became milky much like a room filled with dust. The particles became larger and the space between them grew. We shrank our size until the particles were the size of foot balls and were recognizable as water molecules. They were moving very fast bumping into each other and bumping into us. We used our magical powers of imagination to slow down time till the jostling balls moved slow enough so that I could examine them. The balls were transparent, seemed to be filled with smoke and had a very bright colored dot of light in their center. I recognized them as atoms.

Near by I saw fuzzy blurs. I had to imagine time running even slower to see that the fuzzy blur I was seeing were single balls without adjacent balls to hold them still. Each ball was moving so fast that it looked smeared and elongated. It looked like it was in more than one place at the same time. It looked more like a wave then a particle.

I touched it to examine it, and it suddenly stop moving and looked like a ball that pulsated and rotated as if timed from a clock. Some of these fuzzy blurred fast moving balls had twins that vibrated so synchronously as if they were entangled. Touching one to stop it vibrating also stopped its distant twin from vibrating instantaneously.

As we shrank to explore the balls closer, I saw that they occasionally sparkled.

We shrank down to investigate this sparkle and found that they were sparks emitted out from the balls.. It is as they were emitting puffs of smoke like from a volcano. They sparkled like stars. Shrinking down, I examined the particles of smoke which shined in vibrant colors.. I recognized these particles of light as photons. Some were alone, but many were connected together much like trains of colored wagons, all of different lengths going in a straight line at the same speed, the speed of light, but all in different directions.

The wagons had different colors and were shaped like tuning forks vibrating so fast that they looked smeared and stretched. They looked more like waves than particles. While all the wagons had different height and length, they all had the same volume.

Whenever I touched a vibrating wagon, it stopped vibrating...

until I stopped touching it.

Once I recognized the photons, I was surprised that I was in an ocean of photons mostly coming from all the stars with a drizzle from our sun to keep us warm.

The extremely high and extremely short wagons were very high energy rays called gamma rays. They were so energetic that they tended to go right thru anything they hit.

The extremely low and extremely long wagons were distributed due to their length and thus they were very low energy waves called gravity waves. They were blocked and reflected by anything they hit. Objects were pushed together by gravity waves because they blocked the waves on their sides that were facing each while their unprotected sides facing outwards were pushed together by the greater number of gravity waves pushing the together.

I found an atom and studied its surface very closely. I saw that the surface had many circular trains of photons.

I prodded a bit too much and as if the atom was alive and wanted to protect itself, it ejected the circular train at me. As it was ejecting, I was able to feel the waves it was generating. It was like a rocket or a very angry snake. I followed it.

It formed a vortex of waves around it much like a bar magnet. I sprinkled a hand full of imaginary iron filings at it and was able to see that what was ejected at me was the circular train that I poked at. It was spinning so fast that it formed a tornado, I sprinkled some imaginary iron filings as it was coming out of the atom, It was exactly like it was an invisible very long bar magnet with north and south poles at each end. The head was the north pole sucking in waves and the tail was the south pole blowing the waves.

When it was finally free from the atom, it started to spin first like a propeller and then like a sphere. With its head in the center and its tail pointing out, it turned into a sphere blowing out waves in all direction. Then I realized that it was a charged up free electron.

I went back to study the circular train off photons on the surface of the atom. They were not charged like the free electrons, but confined to the surface of the atom. They were confined electrons. Every time a circling electron was disturbed and lost one of its photons, it dropped closer to the center.

Every time a free photon crashed into an electron and got coupled to the train to make it longer, it rose farther from the center.

I dived deep into the atom and saw that the rotating heads of the electrons were kept in place on the surface by their tails. They were like boats anchored to the center.

When I reached the center, I found the anchors were rotating heads much like the heads of electrons but much smaller as their circling train of photons was much shorter. The wagons being pulled were much higher and much shorter than those of the electrons.

Their tails were pointing up and they were twisted to the tails of the electrons they were anchoring. I recognize them as protons. I sprinkled my imaginary iron dust at their rotating heads facing inward. Their heads registered as north poles, just like the heads of electrons. Their tails were twisted with the tails of the electrons they anchored to the surface. The protons were swaying and purring like kittens except one that was fidgety and excited and growling like it was in heat. I followed its waggling tail that was just as long as the tail of the electron and reached near to the surface. As if it was searching for the electron it once anchored to the atom. The waggling tail was emitting waves that blew me away.

I was blown to a very large atom with very many electrons on its surface. I explored the center to find the very many neutrons that I learned from my physics courses that must be there to hold all the protons together which held the electrons in anchor. The protons would other wise repel due to their charged up heads. Each neutron looked like bundles of tightly wound up string not emanating any magnetic waves.

I prodded one and it exploded and tore out of the atom like a cannon ball splitting the atom in two smaller ones.

It then rammed into another big fat atom and split that atom into 2 smaller atoms and released some more neutron. Fortunately they did not hit any more of those very big and fat atoms that explode so easily.

I followed a neutron for 15 minutes and saw how it slowly unraveled like it was a strand of DNA. It separated into 2 strands the same length but with 2 with different heads.

I recognized the immediately as being the same as the head on a proton and the bigger head on an electron. The tails began to be stiff and erect as it was a balloon being blown up. They behaved just like very long bar magnets.

The charged electron started to spin around with its tail outward forming a sphere with south poles smeared all over.

The charged proton also started to spin but it had its tail pointing inward and the head outward forming a sphere with north pole smeared all over.

They bounced around like billiard balls.

I picked up the buzzing electron and felt the wave of a gently breeze blowing out from all directions. I gave the ball a squeeze and felt how the wave squirted out far away. I saw another free electron fly by and managed to catch it. I tried to put the two electrons together but they just blew each other away.

I followed the free proton bouncing around and eventually it was attracted by a free electron who was most happy to join hands and coupling and settle down to become a more stable neutral hydrogen atom.

By chance, another solitary hydrogen atom came by and the two bumped into each other and stayed together. They formed the stable hydrogen molecule. The two atoms joined together by sharing their electrons.

Other hydrogen atoms wondered into stars not to just join hands and become molecules, but to be forged together to become permanent atoms in their own right. To see for myself, I took two hydrogen atoms and banged them together. They snapped together and fused with such a force and made such a noise that it nearly broke my hands and ears. I had a new atom in my sore hands that I knew was the helium atom. The two atoms fused together by sharing their protons and released a great amount of energy.

Helium was banged around as well and gave birth to heavier and heavier atoms. With all that banging, atoms supporting life were born. Even heavier atoms, those that are so heavy and fat that they explode and spread their neutrons like spores to make more baby hydrogen atoms.

Next, I wanted to find some carbon atoms that life was based on. I found many swimming about in lines like strings of thread. On closer examination, the strings were beads of carbon atoms with their 4 electrons forming the beautiful and symmetrical tetrahedron shape. One bead stood out as being rather unsymmetrical. It had a somewhat protruding electron. I recognized it as a nitrogen atom.

Then by chance a gamma ray hit the protruding electron with such force and in such an angle, that the protruding electron was hammered deep out of sight into the nitrogen making it look like a carbon.

I followed the disappearing wounded electron and saw how like an accordion it was being squeezed into the center with its coupled proton and being deflated into a new neutron, like a bear curling up to hibernate.

Hibernation time is different for each nitrogen, but for large numbers, the probability is well defined and called the half life. The half life for nitrogen is about 5,000 years. Half of all the remaining wounded nitrogen will recover within about 5,000 years. Every 5,000 years the number of wounded nitrogen is reduced by half.

Then by chance, the wounded electron turned into the ticking neutron just a moment ago started to unwind from its wound up state. Its electron protruded proudly out showing that it was once again a nitrogen.

The space around me was filled like I was in a psychedelic laser show. There were so many different trains of photons coming from all the many stars in the sky The taller, shorter wagons were passing by to fast. I had to wait until some very short and very long wagons approached before I dared to hop on.

When I hoped on and touched the wagon it suddenly stopped vibrating and looked like a particle. I was traveling at the speed of light. Despite my physics teachers teaching me that time would stop when I travel at the speed of light, my heart started beating very fast. It felt like time was flying by very fast.

When I jumped off, the wagon began to vibrate again and like a boat on water, it caused waves to propagate out. Those waves I recognized electromagnetic waves of the photons. I jumped on the wave like a surfer and as I shrank more to investigate,

I found my self in an ocean of stiff vibrating foam with a very regular structure. It was as if I was in an ocean of frog eggs, as if they were pixels on a TV screen.

As I shrank to investigate it closer, What was continuous slowly began to be discontinuous, made from discrete points much like the pixels on a TV screen.

As we shrank smaller and smaller, the pixels got bigger and bigger and the empty space between the pixels got bigger and bigger. I jumped into that emptiness and suddenly I was unable to move. It was as if I was covered deep in heavy snow.

When I got small enough to fit between the pixels, my partner had to push me thru because I was unable to surf. There was nothing to surf on. It was as if the liquid made from the pixels of space turned into a solid like ice. I was frozen stuck to the pixels of space on one side of me. As I shrunk to a millionth of my size, the pixels of space I was attached to about an arms length away which seemed to be infinitely large got to be a million arm length away from me. The smaller I got, the farther I was from the space I left behind and the smaller that pace appeared until it looked like a distant star. It eventually disappeared and it made no difference to shrink any smaller.

When I tried to move, there was no space to move in. I found my self lost in nothingness. Fortunately, my friend pulled me back into the vibrating foam where I finally had the space to move again.

Having reached the limit of smallness where everything suddenly disappeared to turn into nothing, we decided to increase our size to explore the vastness of the universe.

We started to increase our size till we were where we started in the ocean with the eggs floating above the corals.

Then we had to change into our space suits.

As we increased our size, we saw the earth shrink to the size of a dust particle and the sun the size of a foot ball. There were so many sparkling atoms inside the sun emitting their train of photons as sparks, that the many sparks emitted by the many twinkling atoms in the sun fused the twinkles into a blazing continuous glow.

We continued to increase our size till the sun shrank to a spot of twinkling light and looked like the other neighboring stars.

As we grew bigger, the stars merged with billions of other stars in a group called the galaxy that looked like a coral.

As we grew bigger, the galaxies shrank to a point of light and merged with billions of other spots of light to form a foam like structure I recognized as my universe.

The universe shed its outer parts leaving a dust around it. Like a slime mold, it emitted black spherical spores which exploded to form new baby universes. I recognized them as black holes. The baby universes grew by absorbing the dust shed by their neighboring universes until they emitted their own spores.

We increased our size to get a better overall view of all the universes and saw that they were inside a thin layer of a large bubble. Like the layer of air around our earth.

They looked like soap bubbles.

Some formed interesting shapes.

As the universes were growing, the bubbles expanded. The bubbles were grouped together like floating eggs in a murky puddle of made from their own shedding which they shared and consumed.

They formed and ejected buds much like the corals ejected spores.

As we got bigger and bigger we found ourselves inside the surface of a bubble. The surfaces towards the center of the bubble and towards the outside was like it was a sea of mercury. Like a mirror from above and dark from below. Like the blackness of nothingness I explored when pushed thru the pixels of space. The almost parallel mirrors mirroring each other made the universe look infinite in any direction we looked. Like before, my partner had to pushed me out to explore this blackness because I was unable to surf. There was nothing to surf on. It was as if the liquid of space turned into a solid like ice. I was frozen stuck to the outside of the bubble I was pushed out from with the bubble on one side of me, and nothingness on the other side.

As I grew to a million times bigger, the bubble of space I was attached to about an arms length away which seemed to be infinitely large got to be a million times smaller. The bigger I got, the the smaller the bubble appeared until I saw that the bubble was attached to other bubbles to form a collection of bubbles much like seen in frog eggs. As I grew larger, the collection of bubbles grew smaller until it eventually disappeared. Then it made no difference to grow any bigger. When I tried to move, there was no space to move in. I found my self lost in nothingness. Fortunately, my friend pulled me back into the surface of my bubble where I finally had the space to move again.

I remembered when I was lost in nothingness as I was exploring the smallness of reality. While there is an endless number of somethings in the everything of the universe, there is only one nothing. Nothing and its twin called infinity exists only in mathematics and in imaginations.

I then imagined in my imagination that I could use a microscope to study the floating eggs in that murky puddle. I peered and focused deep inside one egg, I focused deeper and deeper until I spotted the sun I came from. With a bit of luck I was able to find and focus on the earth, my home.