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There
was a headline in the New York Times Science Section last week that read:
"Years
of Research Yield Nothing, and That's Good News for Physicists."*
The
article was about looking for glue-like particles believed to hold
protons, neutrons and other atomic building blocks together, but these
particles break down so quickly when matter is blown apart, that there’s
nothing left to detect. So,
instead, scientists look for signs that these glue particles existed, like
other particles that may form as a result of their decay, or holes of
missing energy that appear in their wake.
And sometimes they still find nothing, which provides valuable
information about what these particles aren’t. Actually
producing this glue in a particle accelerator would certainly make
history, but in the mean time, scientists already know so much about these
theoretical specs of matter just by zeroing in on the energy and
conditions required to produce them, and what may or may not be left
behind when they disintegrate.
Could it be that you don’t always have to see-touch-taste-smell-hear
something directly to understand how it works?
Maybe it’s the power behind that something---its
functionality---that makes it what it is.
And I’m not just talking about physics.
Maybe we’d understand life better by focusing on why something
happens as opposed to who’s doing it.
Perhaps reality lies in the blank spaces between all that tangible
stuff we perceive through our senses--in the power it takes to get
something going, and in the ripple it leaves after it’s gone.
If there’s anything I’ve learned from the particle physicists
it’s that there’s a whole lot of something in nothing.
Karen
*George Johnson, The
New York Times, February 5, 2002.
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