Physics for Poets

I needed something in here in order to add labels and such. It's just a short little essay that I wrote for the Star Sequence Blog. Feel free to read it or ignore it. :)

This will seem pretty far off the sort of thing that one would normally expect me to write about. Fair enough but I hope it will be entertaining for someone out there. Maybe even a hair inspirational.

In physics, there have been two seemingly contradictory theories since Einstein came up with General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics became General Relativity’s rival. Both are considered “correct”. Einstein has been often quoted as saying, “God does not play dice!” when he was asked about the competing theory. The physics world decided to simply use whichever theory seemed best for their experiments and ignored the contradictions for a very long time. None of them seriously proposed that both theories might be wrong. None of them stopped for a moment to consider that there is no way to in fact “prove” beyond a shadow of a doubt that any scientific theory is true. God forbid a scientist should discover how much science is like faith.

After a time of course, this dual mindset had to become very unsatisfying to science. Many started to murmur that either both theories weren’t quite right or one was definitely wrong. The quest for “The Theory of Everything” began. Basically, they were looking for one theory as “elegant” as Relativity that could account for the very large scale movement and gravity of planets, stars, and galaxies, but also predict the weird behavior of subatomic particles that according to Quantum Mechanics do such things as wink in and out of existence or even in and out of this dimension. In other words, a theory of the very large consistent or at least not at odds with the observed behavior of the very small.

Then String Theory was born. Supposedly the long sought after theory of everything, String Theory says among other things, that everything in the cosmos is made up of very tiny vibrating “strings”. These strings are somewhat analogous to the strings of a stringed instrument such as a piano. Just as the rate of vibration in a plucked string determines the “note” played, the vibration of these subatomic strings determines what the string will “be”. Pardon the pun but if you read this theory carefully it sounds like a stretch to me. And this would be the main problem I have with science.

Can’t explain something in terms of the myriad systems humans have devised to explain everything? Create something that seems to fit the puzzle. It’s as if those who worship at the altar of science have a handy jigsaw in their workshops to turn out those missing pieces or cut new corners on them so they all fit neatly. Isn’t it possible that one of our grand theories is just plain wrong? That what they’ve predicted in the past worked by pure coincidence rather than any true causal relation? Scientists once said the smallest particle possible was the atom. Then Einstein came along and messed that all up. Ever since then, scientists have been hard pressed to make all of the pieces fit together again. Did it ever occur to any of them that maybe the math might be wrong? Maybe math is wrong period. Maybe numbers don’t work beyond our very superficial sphere. Maybe, just maybe, a higher power out there, a being who defies our comprehension, maybe such a being created all that is using a system we could never completely grasp or maybe no system at all. What a concept.

Perhaps this reasoning sounds like surrender but really it’s more like a plea that we stop taking ourselves and our abilities quite so seriously. Just have fun with the concepts for a change. Allow some imagination. Who can say whether the theories we’ve devised as a species appear to work to us because most of us believe they will work. The I never would have seen it if I hadn't believed it attitude. For that matter, who can prove beyond any question that any of us or even the universe actually exist in any real sense? Who can say whether or not our perceptions and all that has ever been are no more than a supreme being’s dream?

Well, now you know a little more about how my mind works and where the poem, About Time, came from. I do love astronomy and physics. I just don’t take either of them all that seriously.

§ P.B.S. "Physics BS" Adams (Nope, the BS does not stand for Bachelor of Science, though maybe they do come to the same thing sometimes. It's the other BS. LOL)