Fundamental physics may come across as a plain sailing boat if one puts effort in it, all these imaginary numbers and some constants with a mere change of accompanying variability produces the most complex results.
The orbital, a quark or everything that is impossible to make a certainty of, is easily deduced with some constants and variables. This is indeed easy. One can read books and solve numericals assiduously to excel in this profound subject.
The question that would still stand for the same person, if he uses his brain, is ‘’What actually is physics?”
Imagine yourself in a room reading a book about physics. You have no exams to take, no numerical to solve, just think about what you read. Thousands of questions should gyrate in your head. Some of your questions could not be answered because their basics don’t fall in the category of ordinary laws of physics.
You would know that everything constitutes of atoms and thus electrons, protons, quarks, leptons, the hadron interaction and what not but as you get to know more about these abstract concepts it seems like a intricate world, chaos within the orbitals due to the excitation, the resonance, the instability et cetera but just as you look away from your book, everything seems so harmonious, all the things are at their usual places.
You don’t feel any energy. Even though all objects around you are made of atoms, you can’t seem to be applying the laws, formulas that you have read, to this real world. This is what actually physics is for me. Supreme physics, I would say.
Physics has answers for everything, technically only, because the more you read, the more questions you will have. One such question that should be asked is “is our life based on physics?”
To answer this question, one must know that physical laws can’t be generalized for everything. Suppose an engineer works with a certain element, say steel, for more than a year in many intricate constructions and problems but at home he or she finds utensils, that anyone could make, of the same material.
This steel, even if prepared from the same iron, works differently because at these two places, the construction of the element is such that the interaction with the laws of nature is different. It works for thermal resistance and conduction in the machines that he or she uses in his or her professional life and as merely a non-corrosive element for the utensil he or she uses in his or her private life.
Similarly, atoms in our body and the atoms in an inanimate object work relatively otherwise.
If we consider cell, the basic unit of life, at the atomic level, all the genetic, rather biological laws would change to become more complex. The mutations in a gene wouldn’t be limited to just the insertion, deletion or the rest of biological laws but we would have to shoulder the view that dislocation of a mere atom would change how our body works.
This gives rise to the concept of matter displacement. I used to hear from here and there, that if we hit a wall some million times, there is a probability that our hand might just pass through. When we consider the atom-atom interactions, this apparently impossible idea appears to be reasonable.
However, this can’t happen, even though there is a prodigious space in our hand and wall at the atomic level, there exists some electrostatic force of interaction that prevents this from happening.
Even though this phenomenon, known as Quantum tunneling, does exist but, as the name suggests, only at the microscopic level and not at macroscopic level because of certain factors such as a more pronounced application of Pauli’s exclusion principle and the uncertainty of position.
This also leads to a deduction that if we consider our body at the atomic level and study the interaction of a single atom, having the belief that this atom works on its own, we would notice that all the bizarre phenomenon such as quantum tunneling or shrinking of a large object seems reasonable but all this is not possible because for our body to work, atoms must create a kind of orderliness which will not happen when we take a single atom.
Shrinking of a large object could happen when electrons are replaced by muonic or mu-mesic matter to create exotic atoms which have the same chemistry but are 200 times smaller but this again would mean that the interactions of matter with laws of physics would change and maybe life wouldn’t exist with such interactions. If we apply religion to such phenomenon among many others, we find that most of the times religion deigns physics.
One such story in Islam can roughly be narrated about Prophet Mohammad SAW. Omitting the complex mathematical explanations and esoteric equations, one can actually, through the power of his own instinct and intuition, conclude that during the journey of Mi’raj, the prophet had time travelled or, more precisely, stopped time.
One can partially explain this extraordinary affair by alluding to the fact that by traveling across the fabric of space-time at the speed of light, time for that person or the object completely stops. Though this means an eventual increase in the mass of the object, one can only speculate on such miracles of the divine. I firmly believe that we have to turn to the guidance of religion when we can’t prove something scientifically.
The laws of physics, though literally called laws, were somehow miraculously altered for a human to travel at the speed of light to visit the seven skies; which reveals the fragility of the foundations of science, even if such phenomena happen once in a blue moon, by the will of the Almighty.
One such phenomenon where we can’t, in any way ignore the information from matters of religion is the existence of living matter in astral planes or the existence of the 4th dimension. One may find this difficult to understand but this concept is as simple as it can get. A simple analogous example can be attributed to demonic possessions.
The Quran mentions one species as the reason for this, Jinn or Djinn. Where do these beings live? If they live in the same world as us, why can’t we feel them? Why don’t the atoms from their body interact with ours? Do the spaces in electron clouds not cause repulsion when they possess humans? It has been stated that these supernatural beings exist in vast numbers around us but the fact that we don’t even stumble or at least feel their energy makes a strong argument for the existence of a different dimension. If one has to believe in the existence of jinns then he or she can’t deny the existence of parallel world for them.
I remember reading about a communication between a cleric and a jinn through a possessed human. The jinn told him about a 4th dimension that they live in and said that they surround us all the time. They see us but their world or dimension doesn’t interact with ours. This could be due to numerous factors such as a curled up dimension. Quran states that these beings are created from the smokeless fire and the quest of discovering thousands of elements or sub classes of these elements leads to the conclusion that there could exist some unimaginable forms of energy, of which these beings could be a specialized form. Yet, again these jinns, possibly being a form of energy, would have interacted with our energy if a different plane or a similar theoretical barrier that prevents this interaction didn’t exist. And that our vision being limited to 3D, our limited perception of time prevents us from seeing and interacting with these jinns. In simpler terms we can’t perceive what’s beyond the speed of light. Let’s consider that time moves faster in the 4th spatial dimension, which would be reasonable to some extent, all that we hypothesized in this article would start making sense.
This consideration is further vitalized by a verse in the Quran which describes the capability of jinns to travel faster through space defying the laws of atomic interaction at the macroscopic level. All of the above mentioned assumptions describe the vastness of physics and how everything around and beyond us is governed by physics. One could sit in a small room and still write for days about the laws and interactions of physics that govern the room, and even his existence. I don’t know whatever has been written is a truth or not but the level of fascination these unproved theories in particular, and physics in general, hold is beyond words. Everything seems so tangible but the more you read the more you contradict yourself and even if I, somehow, fail to be scientifically correct in what I write, I would still prefer this naivety, for this is the only way the world makes sense to me.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are the personal opinions of the author.
The facts, analysis, assumptions and perspective appearing in the article do not reflect the views of GK