Week Four: Energy, Matter and the Four Forces

How has e=mc2 affected you?

E=mc2 has greatly affected the larger culture, and in that way it has affected me as well. E=mc2 took scientific thinking from absolutes to relativity. Perhaps this sort of thinking is what led to the 60s, and LSD experimentation, and cubist art...and the civil rights movement and the women's movement...who can be certain? All of those openings in the collective conciousness have impacted me positively. E=mc2 also led to nuclear energy and the atomic bomb. Chernobyl and Hiroshima. Lots of death and destruction. I was sixteen when the Chernobyl disaster happened. I recall those images of devistation and suffering well. These images led me into a more activist mindset, a realization that big plans by governments and scientists can lead to a great deal of suffering for others. I would really like to say that overwhelmingly I feel that Einstein's work has affected me in a positive way, but frankly I think the world might be a better place without it. Maybe I romanticize the caveman days but I don't think technological "advances" or an understanding of space through physics has led us to a better place than would otherwise be with us still crawling around in the trees like squirrels. We are ending up with the same realizations through physics that mystics told us thousands of years ago -- the world is connected, we are connected to everything in it, etc. Too bad we have had to go through all of this investigation and suffering in order to bring us back home, but I guess that's what growing up is all about. The only place to go now is to keep moving forward to try to find the god particle, which I imagine will either destroy us completely or liberate us...perhaps it's one and the same.

How would you compare the four forces?

Strong nuclear force
Weak nuclear force
Electromagnetic force
Gravity

Gravity and electromagnetism are apparent in the "everyday" world and have an infinite reach. The strong and weak nuclear forces are found only in the nucleus of an atom. Except for the weak nuclear force, the forces hold the universe together from the smallest bit to the largest bit like a chain. The strong force holds the nucleus of an atom together, electromagnetism holds the atom together, and gravity holds the planets, stars and galaxies together. The weak force causes particles to decay. Apparently physicists can't seem to put their finger on gravity, which is kind of funny to me since gravity can really put the finger on us (falling apples and pianos...our bodies are stuck here on this planet and yet where is the graviton?)...We don't know how gravity is transmitted, yet we know how the other forces are transmitted (photons, gluons, W and Z particles. Physicists believe that if they can tie all these forces together and prove they are the product of some larger force, they will then have found god, or in scientific terms, the one unified force that blew everything apart in the big bang. I have an inkling the answer might be found in superstring theory.

In superstring theory there are "extra" dimensions of spacetime. I think these extra dimensions do still exist at the subatomic level and that when the big bang happened the other dimensions inverted and became really, really tiny (subatomic particles).


What is the function of gravity?



One day I watched a dish drying in the dish rack knock over another dish and I got the apparently silly idea that we could use gravity as energy--it's always present and always pulling things down. When I looked into it, however, it turned out scientists have often made a big joke of this idea...it still seems kind of possible to me if you can build a perpetual motion machine operating by the force of gravity. Anyway, I think gravity is more complicated than its common reputation. The function appears to be to hold things in place without having them smash into each other or fly away from each other. It allows us to have relationships with people, places, and things. It holds us to the ground, but also has an infinite reach gently keeping everything connected in the universe. It can also be a dangerous thing...falling pianos, etc.

(Personally, I think that gravity is a byproduct of an object and does not exist separately from objects.)