Dig It

Let's get right to work. This time we'll continue the attack on the tiny end of the spectrum. This in an attempt to get a handle of any kind on gravity. I'm slightly hindered by the lack of a lab and a research staff ☺.  A simple search reveals that there are all kinds of forces that have been quantified. That certainly doesn't help.

So what we have at a 'macro' level is gravity, magnetism, electro-magnetism, and electricity. That seems to argue that we've missed a category: magneto-gravitic, for want of an actual term. If such a thing exists, that is where we would look for an 'anti-gravity' drive.

Of course since we can't detect gravity, it may be a while before that concept does us any good. What's that you say? You can detect gravity (as he jumps up and down like a monkey)?

Sorry, but you can't detect gravity any more than Heisenberg can tell you where that phantom electron is. What you and every other thing in the solar system can detect is the effects of gravity. And darned happy about it, generally speaking. However, we're left with the same sinking feeling we got when we tried to nail down the atom. Yes, I know that there are things out there called gravity detectors, but it's the same story as before- we can see the critter's tracks, but the animal itself is invisible. We'll deal with the atom later. Maybe we can figure out where it went by then.

The trouble is, nobody can prove what gravity is or how it propagates. Since we can't detect it, we're going to have a rough time doing anything with it. It seems reasonable to consider it a force, but there are so many forces (well, at least they have been named forces... it's another case of The Cat Syndrome). And how do we know that they aren't all the same force with another name? We don't. There you are. The 'experts' really hate admitting that they have no clue. I don't. We are simply clueless about most things that happen at the atomic level. This is not to say that we can't use what we've deduced to operate these forces- atomic fission bombs still wipe out cities and all, but we're frankly jungle savages playing with an iPod. We can poke the buttons and make it run, but we have no real clue of how or why it works. We find something that goes boing when we poke it there and then we scribble down a theory that describes why.

For heaven's sake, the entire realm of physics and chemistry is loaded with enough fudge-factor numbers to sink a doughnut. Or an aircraft carrier. That alone should be screaming that there are things going on that we know nothing about! There are huge gaps in what we know about atomic and molecular forces and I seriously doubt that we'll make any progress until we do. It's really disappointing to me, but there's no choice. We have to build the foundation before the roof goes up.

The Question

I saw something on History Channel that frankly caused me to stop dead. That doesn't happen a lot. The fact that something incredibly tiny stopped me, just goes to show.

Yes, today's post is heading in the opposite direction from outer space. The subject is the Higgs-Boson particle. As we know, this is the infamous God Particle. It is supposed to provide the attribute of mass to everything else in the universe. I know I've expressed some doubt about this in the past and this new info just makes things more confusing.

It's said that an atom is both a particle AND a wave. That still sounds like something you spread in the garden to promote plant growth. However, when scientists tried to get close enough to see what's going on, they failed. Why? Because the darn atom disappeared ! Plain and simple disappeared. Much like the slightly less famous Snark, the place where the atom under study was supposed to be was empty. And yet, when they tried firing an electron at the spot, it showed something. I would love to integrate what happened into some kind of picture of the basic structure of matter. It resisted. In fact, what showed up was a diffraction pattern on the target behind the atom. That argues for some kind solid structure inside the atom. But we can't actually see any such structure, because we can't even see the atom! AND, the fired "particle", while it obviously interacted with something in the general locus of where they thought it was, didn't hit anything on the way through. It's path was affected, yet the result wasn't that of a single particle of anything hitting anything. No, instead, it was that of a transmissive wave[1] moving past a a refraction grid.

[1] a transmissive wave is a wave that moves "matter" along with a waveform. (Like water does)

Let's summarize:

Matter is made up of atoms.
Atoms were considered solid particles.
When looked at, it becomes obvious that atoms are not matter as we thought.
Atoms aren't there, but they interact with "particles" in some manner.
Atoms create refraction patterns when "particles" pass through them.

This reads like sheer nonsense. It leaves entirely open the question of what it is that isn't there, yet interacts with things. And, if atoms aren't there, how do we manage to do things that seem like we're doing? If atoms aren't there, how do we operate a particle collider? Or set off an atom bomb? Where's the fizz in fission? How do we walk across the street???

We have accepted that matter and energy are the same (right?). We run atom bombs on that premise. Now we have to try to find out what we're doing when we do it. If the atom is some kind of energy matrix, then there is no such thing as solid matter!!!

Sorry I  had to let you have that one right between the eyes, but there isn't any honest way to soften the blow. And a huge chunk of physics and science in general just went up in a puff of non-smoke. I guess we can continue to call what we thought we had "matter". We need a tag and this one isn't attached to anything.

Something is making matter matter! If matter is real, perhaps an atom is a set of standing waveforms that is static and stable, although it can be modified via physics or chemistry. Where this leaves quarks, electrons, neutrons, and protons, I don't know. It's clear that we can't really see them either. And what about the small and large atomic forces? Where do they fit in? Do we think that a Higgs-Boson is also an energy waveform/matrix that parks itself in the matrix of the atom and somehow makes it 3-dimensional so that it can hang itself on the fabric of space? Or maybe the H-B connects the "atom" to space so that it can be moved. Then we could say that inertia is the resistance of the "atom" to being moved elsewhere away from the spot where it was hanging. Is gravity simply an electromagnetic effect that happens because the charge on the Boson wants to fill empty space in the matrix that surrounds it? Or is it something different now?

As you can tell, this discovery is a mite more impactful than any other discovery in A While. It's going to change our entire view of the universe and literally everything in it. We know a great many things work, but we now have no idea WHY. This brings up the minor question of why this news isn't being screamed from rooftops, but the main news item makes everything else inconsequential.

I hope that someone can come along to straighten things out. I don't like feeling that I could disappear at any moment. Perhaps, like Peter Pan, we can think happy thoughts and fly around the room while wait for an answer. At this point, there's no apparent reason we can't. As Waldo said, "Nothing is certain! Magic is everywhere!".

What keeps me up, nights

And no, it's not that... 😇

It's actually something I wonder about- if we sent a starship, would anyone go? And if they are willing to go, are they worth sending?

Yes, that's harsh, but I'm worried. Yes, there are actually 8000 or so people (out of 330 million) who are willing to turn their back on blue skies for the rest of their lives for whatever reasons. So out of those 8000, surely there will be 24 who have the right skillset to make it worth sending them. Right?

But my worry is this: the skillset isn't the whole story. The rest of the story goes like this. It takes a certain type of person to be a pioneer. Make no doubts about it, that's who these people are- pioneers. Pioneers are seldom people who fit in with others well or they wouldn't be good pioneers. They have to be willing to take the entire human race and kiss them goodbye. That's true for our future Martians and much more totally true for anyone willing to take that ride to the stars.

Our future Martians can have some hope that they can catch a ride back some day and that others will follow their lead to redder pastures, so to speak. The pioneers on the starship may have to give up even that much hope. No further influx of new faces, no messages from home after a half hour wait, no nothing.

So... how many hardy pioneers do we have now? When we get where we're going, we'd better dam well have more than a couple dozen in the crew! For one thing, we'd better have either enough people for a diverse gene pool or a wide selection of frozen eggs and sperm (inside heavy shielding, too). I would also think that the entire crew does a rehearsal of a few years in isolation. If someone can't get along during that period, they have no business on a starship! Maybe if the crew can stand being alone with that limited interaction, they can stand giving up the rest of us forever.

Pioneering in real life is not a walk in the park. Find in one person a good team player and someone able to stand very real isolation. Best to give the crew the opportunity to bring along whatever books, movies, or other trinkets they feel like bringing. Anything to maintain that delicate tie with the rest of humanity, even if it's mostly an illusion.

Perhaps the best thing would be enforced group activities. Our own pioneers had little (I speak of the Plymouth Colony folk) but their Sunday worship. They didn't have square dances or many group meals, unlike the pioneers 200 years later. Perhaps by then people had learned that lesson. I like to think that wagon train leaders had given that some tiny bit of consideration. And lastly, the captain has to maintain the discipline of crew structure. He's going to carry one helluva load, I assure you. I'm reminded of the hero of Robert Heinlein's book Tunnel In The Sky. He found all this out by having it smack him in the face. Sink or swim. So expect the crew selection team to experience any number of nervous breakdowns and anxiety attacks. Heaven help them if they pick the wrong people. I once went through the personality test for the theoretical crew of a theoretical starship and qualified for the captain's billet. I've never quite figured out if I was happy about that or not.

Most days I think I'm rather proud of that, so on those days I guess their testing may not have been too far off. Maybe.  I do know that I'm a lot closer to the needed type the older I get. Yes, that means that the crew really should have some 'village elders' along. There are things that we learn about ourselves and life that simply can't be learned in less time. Oh, it can be passed on, but it's really rare to find anyone younger who will not only listen, but believe and act on what he's told. Usually they're too busy making their own mistakes.

That's the value of age, you see- we've already made all the stupid mistakes.