#atomic physics

“Butterflies and Beamsplitters”

Rudolf Peierls – Scientist of the Day

Rudolf Peierls, a German/Jewish/British physicist, died Sep. 19, 1995, at the age of 88.

"The collapse of a brick wall and of atoms, under the action of very large pressures." The Birth and Death of the Sun. 1959. George Gamow.

FIRST TRUE COLOR PHOTO OF AN ATOMIC NUCLEUS!

FIJMU News 10-19-21

Today, the world's most powerful microscope has photographed in real color the core of a single atom. The nucleus of an atom is like the delicious yolk of a hard boiled quantum egg, containing protons and neutrons (red) as held together by gluons (tan filaments). All known substances are made of atoms with nuclei like the one seen above.

The atom used was a Thulium atom because of its highly photogenic traits, bright coloration, and nice atomic number. According to microscopy professor Minnie Lewker, "Atoms have been photographed before but never in real color. They usually look almost like waves of light and dark instead of real, tangible objects as they are."

The same microscope team was also able to take the first known photograph of an electron:

The Lord takes all whom he strikes and loves,

he bears them far from Earth . . .

their hearts aflame, their brains made ice,

Earth sends her laughter up to them

and, compassionate, the sun strews diamond dust

upon their lonely way.

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin

The First War of Physics: The Secret History of the Atom Bomb by Jim Baggot

Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb by Richard Rhobes

The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhobes

The Los Alamos Primer: The First Lectures on How to Build an Atomic Bomb by Robert Serber

Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhatten Project by Leslie R. Groves

The Bastard Brigade: The True Story of the Renegade Scientists and Spies Who Sabotaged the Nazi Atomic Bomb by Sam Kean

The physical is always so much more important than the mental to most people. That’s why physical illness or impairment is taken much more seriously and treated with much more urgency than mental illness and impairment. This has always been very twisted and nonsensical to me as someone that doesn’t believe in the physical. Or rather - that doesn’t believe that the physical can ever exist without the mental. Don’t get me wrong. It is not that I believe that the physical body isn’t important. Obviously I know it is. I have one myself. It’s just, the mind should be just as important as the body since it’s related and connected to it. Since it comes and goes with it. After all - nobody cares about a body once what “lived in” it is dead. It is all but forgotten about. But not the soul. In common understanding, the body and the mind house the soul. Most people understand the body in particular as a container for the soul… thus most people think that the body identifies a person. But my understanding is a minority one. It’s uncommon. I don’t believe the body and mind houses the soul at all. I actually believe it to be the other way around. The soul houses the body and mind because soul is not something that can be contained as it IS everything. Soul is non-located. Omnipresent. So it is not that it is in physical “things”… rather physical “things” are made up of it because soul is not a “thing”. It’s the relationship and connection of thought and form. It is a force more than it is a “thing” because the only way to have a “thing”, or to have a distinction of a “thing” from another “thing”, is to have that force in-between. The only way you can have a distinction between what is “solid” and what is “space” is for both to have a relationship and connection with each other. This is the way physical-ness works. The way matter works. But forget the physical matter part for a second: I want to explain something that should be common knowledge nowadays in all scientific and spiritual circles. Neither science or religion has a way of either fully confirming or fully denying that anything exists. Religion goes by faith and have accepted it as “God made it.” And in a way, that is smart because it has acknowledged that existence goes beyond it’s knowledge. In another way, it is stupid because it also can’t be certain that this “God” exists either. Science on the other hand goes by empiricism. (Wiki: Empiricism is a theory that states that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience.) In a way, that is smart because it at least acknowledges that knowledge of existence can’t be without an experience of it. In another way, it is stupid because it assumes that to know or to be aware of existence isn’t exactly what “existence” is. It is an assumption because it cannot prove it either way. Meaning it cannot prove that existence is separate and different from experience. If science cannot prove that any “thing” exists without a sensory experience of it… why should there be an assumption and an entire worldview surrounding the idea that it does? Isn’t that just the same as taking it on faith? Isn’t that just another form of religion? A religion of science. A belief.

Here is what I believe. And I do fully recognize that it is a belief because I also can’t prove it either and I won’t try to. It is not my intention to prove that anything does or doesn’t exist. In fact it is not my intention to prove anything at all. It’s my intention to explain that there is a middle way that is more logical. And that has solid basis in both religion and science.

Fundamentally a “thing” doesn’t exist. What gives rise to form is thought. What gives rise to thought is form. Thus, thought and form come and go together. Thought and form arise and depart together. So they are essentially one in the same. They cannot be without each other. There is no thought without form and there is no form without thought. The relationship and connection between is all important to make a distinction of a “thing” from another “thing”. What is that relationship and connection? What is that force? It’s consciousness. So the question then becomes what is consciousness? Relationship and connection between body and mind is what consciousness is. It is knowledge. It is awareness. It is experience. It is spirit.

Now the problem with the term “spirit” in using it to explain existential phenomena and philosophy is that most people think the spiritual is paranormal. That it is not inherently of this world and its laws. That is it not fundamental to its nature. So then let’s just forget the term for the moment and use another much more accepted term in common scientific knowledge.

Atom. An atom has never been seen as a physically existing “thing” in itself. So that means that it has never been directly observed. So how do we know that an atom exists? How did we discover the atom? Well, we discovered it because a bunch of physicists generally wanted to understand how physics and thermodynamics worked. And due to one very famous theoretical physicist in particular: Albert Einstein, and his interest and studies in Brownian motion, we were able to discover the existence of the atom by measuring its weight. They could weigh an atom but couldn’t see one. So the gravitational force of an atom proved it existed. This eventually led to the discovery of a particle even smaller than the atom. The electron. And to the now prevalent scientific paradigm of atomic physics. An atom is not indivisible as it is made up of subatomic particles: electrons, protons and neutrons - all working together in interaction and motion to give the illusion of an “atom” existing. So you see, the concept exists but the physical “thing” doesn’t. An atom simply is the relationship and connection between a “thing” and another “thing”. All “things” are, are relationship and connection in interaction and motion. The existence of a “thing” is an illusion of sensory experience. Of thought and form. Of “I” and “other”. There is no distinction of any of it without the mind and body. The physics we cling to and revolve our lives around is a finite instance of “I am” interacting with itself. Creating itself, learning itself, developing itself, evolving itself, changing itself, destroying itself. Doing and being itself. There is nothing else but that ever presentness of itself. I term and define that understanding as spirit…. Or as “soul”.

It is not that I don’t believe in physical existence. I would be insane to think that the floor I’m sitting on as I type this isn’t actually there. I just think we have a very intense misunderstanding of it as a collective consciousness. It’s automatic and expected to think of physical existence as some permanent solid “thing” that’s separate from the consciousness that experiences it. But it doesn’t work like that. It never has worked like that. And it never will work like that.

Nature is change. There is no definition of nature that isn’t a behaviour or a quality of change or evolution. Planets. Plants. People. It’s all moves. It all interacts. And the minority and uncommon understanding I have is that interaction and movement is cause and effect of existence. That is it’s nature. Is our nature. I understand atomic physics through this understanding of nature. Through relationship and connection between “I” and “other”. Through thought and form. Through the physical and the mental. Through mind and body. It has never made any sense to me that anything could exist without all of it working together as one nature. And I think there would be remarkable discoveries in both theoretical physics and mental health if we all thought like this. We need to understand the fundamental, always present relationship and connection between all of existence first before we can change or improve on it. I am simply offering another perspective to take into consideration in our reality. A middle way to the oppositional viewpoints of both religion and science. I genuinely think both have the answers, they just have to work together to come to ask the right questions.

I’m a Taoist. So it’s obvious to me that relationship and connection is the fundamental nature to all of existence. That ‘yin-yang’ is the way that anything ever exists and works. That’s just logical to me. It’s more logical to me than “God” or “The Big Bang” is. But I’m not ever saying those concepts aren’t important too. Just that they’re a little short-sighted of the bigger picture. Philosophy or theory is very beneficial to understanding, of course. But sometimes it can also be a detriment to understanding anything. And it may be paradoxical to most people but sometimes you’ve got to take away to add. Sometimes you’ve got to think less to understand more. Sometimes you’ve got to let go to gain solid ground. Nature has a process. Trust in it and trust in the Universe.