Monday, October 02, 2006

been thinkin bout quarks and the Trinity

"What are quarks?" you ask. Well, quarks are part of a model that describes matter very well. Most of you have surely heard of protons and neutrons and electrons I hope. When i was a child I was led to believe that these were the smallest elements of matter that existed, and I was content. "When I was a child, I thought like a child..." Also, my middle school science teachers probably weren't reading physics journal articles, but rather old high school science texts, so I forgive them.
Im not here to give you a lecture on the quark model. Consult the link on the title if you care to dabble. Im just here to philosophize about some properties of quarks that I find to be pretty interesting. First of all, there are 6 types of quarks. (12 if you include their anti-partical counterparts) They are called Up, Down, Strange, Charm, Top, and Bottom, and I believe that they have all been observed by now (which was not the case when I was an undergrad-- only 4 years ago). The most ordinary nucleons (protons and neutrons) are made up of only up and down quarks. The proton is up up down, and the neutron is up down down. The property that interest me for philosophical reasons is the property that wikipedia calls "confinement". The layman's definition of confinment, as I understand it would be that a quark cannot exist by itself. It must exist with its counterparts, or with at least one other quark. Its been descibed like old lovers... if you try to seperate them, they exert an enormous attraction to each other which otherwise you don't see.
I often think about philosophical things that are religious in nature, and I'm something like a scientist, so forgive me for thinking of something that must be quite a stretch, especially for people who actually know what they are talking about from either of these fields (science or philosophy). I was wondering what it means for something in nature to exist in such a way that that it is effectively one thing but is best described by three different parts. The proton is the best example. It is ultra stable. If it does decay into something else, we haven't seen it do so yet. Protons, as I said before are ( at the moment) best described as composed of two up quarks and one down quark. It is at the very least interesting to me that something so fundamental in nature could be analogous to a concept like the Trinity-- that of One God with three persons, or in the scientific language, a singular entity that is best described by three seperate things that are inseperable. At this time, I treat the similarity of the numbers as a coincidence without signifigance, however, it was probably helpful that the numbers were the same in order for me to make the connection. As for myself, i find it to be a beautiful similarity (if it is a good one at all) between the natural and the supernatural. There may be more meaning within, or not. I'd like to entertain the possiblity that understanding more about one could enhance understanding of the other. (in reality, the quark model will probably be replaced in some time and the links would break down). who knows...? (perhaps more later).

4 Comments:

Blogger Kevin said...

Those are some good thoughts friend. Although I doubt not the most useful analogy with which to explain the trinity to those who are not of the particle physics persuasion. It makes sense though that the nature of God would show through in many aspects of his creation. It is through creation in part that we know God. I like to think of creation as a sort of fractal. I used to have a program that let you "dive" (zoom into) fractals. I liked how at many different levels, you see the same pattern although it was changed slightly from the main one and in different context. Like that powers of ten video. Things have a similar pattern on a astronomical scale (particular clusters) as they do on an atomic one. Cool thought, thanks for sharing.

10:49 AM  
Blogger Beth said...

Not being "of the particle physics persuasion" as Kevin so eloquently puts it, I rather enjoyed your metaphor. I have no idea what Kevin's talking about, though. Can you put it into linguistics terminology for me, there, Kev? Can I call you Kev?

10:57 AM  
Anonymous Skeptic said...

How many Zen Masters does it take to change a light bulb? – Two: One to change it, and one not to change it.

All things are one, God is Man and Man is God, so it is by creation (when God created himself) that he enabled reflection of the universe, and hence the universe.

The quark relationship is good to illustrate the conundrum, and to further back this up with physics, think of Bell's theorem or John von Neumann's interpretation of the non-local effects in quantum mechanics as a contemporary model of the paradigms in eastern mythology, or the Jungian teachings: All brains are a carbon copy of one big Brain, when you hurt someone else you end up hurting yourself. The reason that we are not aware of this is that the universe is "non-simultaneously apprehended", as Bucky says. When you can manage to apprehend the whole universe as one thing at one time (no Heisenberg uncertainty principle), you will come to realize that you are God.

9:11 AM  
Anonymous Skeptic said...

Oh, sorry, I forgot: Note the origin of the word quark:
http://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-383.htm

10:21 AM  

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