A Whole New Universe
Science classes in the sixties were different than they are now. While hippies
protested, science kept its calm. Matter was arranged in tidy molecules of
atoms with tiny electrons spinning around. Everything was in order and
could be predicted with a slide-rule. Sir Isaac Newton may have died in
1727, but he still got us got us to the moon and back.
Some two centuries or so after Sir Isaac, physicists, chemists, mathematicians,
statisticians, and who knows who else, got together and decided to go into
cosmology. The universe of Newton and Einstein was set on its random ear.
Quantum Mechanics was in, and became cooler than absolute zero.
Electrons started jumping randomly from one energy shell to another around
their bewildered nucleus, instead of circling like planets in an ordered,
predictable fashion. The constantly-changing universe the scientist saw
became a function of the moment in time the scientist observed it. Subatomic
particle-waves were discovered which could not decide whether
to be matter or energy. Space was not empty after all, but filled with darkmatter.
Everything was expanding. And now, string theorists talk about arallel universes!
It’s enough to give anyone a headache. A universe actually affected by
the onlooker’s looking? Empty space filled with unseen dark matter?
Matterenergy or energymatter? Parallel whats? Sorry, Dr. Einstein, but it’s
beginning to look like God may role dice with the universe after all.
I still want to believe, though, that God created the dice, and the odds, and
knows the outcome in advance. I know it sounds counter-counterintuitive,
but really now, how else could God risk the random nature of human choice
in a quantum mechanical cosmos? We’ve already changed our minds about
some pretty basic stuff.
Sometimes I think I’ll put all my energy into becoming a particle-antiparticle
pair. Then I can disappear in the mutual annihilation of both of me, and
take a break for a while. Oh, wait just a cosmic nanosecond . . . is mutual
self annihilation reversible?
Maybe I’ll just go out in the yard tonight and see if I can spot some of that
dark matter lurking around the stars.
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