THE ATOM
AND THE WORLD SUBATOMIC. (Chapter 3)
From de book: Quantum Mysticism. THE SPIRITUALITY OF QUANTUM PHYSICS. Second Edition 2021.
Author: Luis Eduardo Sierra S.
President of Universal Alliance
Chapter 3
Atomic theory of the universe – The tunneling microscope – The four basic elements – Mendeleev's periodic table – Atomic composition of matter – The vacuum is not nothingness but a plenum – Does life arise from inert, inanimate matter? – Composition of the atom – Quarks and quantum soup – Quantum chromodynamics – The eightfold path – Particles and antiparticles – The Higgs field – Time crystals, fifth state of matter – liquid light. The atom and the subatomic world.
The "atomic theory of the universe" is not new, it was conceived by Leucippus, mentor of the Greek philosopher Democritus (460-370 B.C.) and developed by the latter, who would coin the term ATOM (from the Greek indivisible, individual), to refer to extremely small entities that supposedly could not be subdivided, something like the bricks with which all things are built. The atom was then the smallest unit of a chemical element that maintains its identity or properties and that cannot be divided by chemical or any other processes. "At the beginning of the 20th century, the smallest fragment of matter we knew of was the atomic nucleus. The largest was our galaxy. Over the course of the century, our most powerful microscopes and telescopes have extended our vision to one-ten-thousandth the size of an atomic nucleus and up to a hundred thousand times the size of our galaxy" (Turok, 2015).
If we consider the technological development in the time of Democritus, 400 years before the Christian era, his atomic theory was simply amazing and revolutionary. The universe was made up of innumerable corpuscles or atoms that were substantially identical, indivisible, homogeneous, eternal and indestructible, differing only in shape and size and whose grouping gave matter its properties. To deny God and to present matter as self-created and composed of atoms would turn Democritus into a strong atheist and materialist. It took more than 24 centuries for modern physicists to understand that the atom is divisible, that it is not hard, solid, or immutable. The existence of the atom enunciated by the Greeks was only demonstrated in the twentieth century, with the help of the scanning tunneling microscope, which measures the size of an atom at about 0.1 nanometer, or one ten-billionth of a meter (10 million atoms aligned in one millimeter). The three most powerful microscopes are located in Tokyo, Germany and the most powerful of them in Madrid, at the Complutense University, the Grand ARM300cFEG. They allow you to see the lightest atoms in the periodic table, such as hydrogen, lithium, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen. The new microscope in Madrid crosses the boundaries of atomic resolution of any other equipment available on the market, making it the most powerful in the world in terms of resolution, around 0.05 nanometers. It is as if with very powerful glasses we could see from the surface of the Earth a chickpea placed on the Moon. Only the Large Hadron Collider surpasses all the microscopes ever created.
Six centuries B.C. Thales, Parmenides, and other philosophers in Greece considered that "reality," all matter, substance, was contained within the four basic elements: water, air, earth, and fire, consequently encompassing all the known chemical elements of the Periodic Table of Dmitry Mendeleev, who classified them according to their atomic number, their electronic configuration, and their chemical properties, and that it is the heart of chemistry. When all elements were thought to be discovered, four new elements were added to the Table in 2016: Nihomium, Moscovio, Teenecino, and Oganeson, which are not found in nature. Thus the 118 chemical elements with which all things are made were completed. What makes one atom different from another is the number of protons and electrons it has, for example Carbon has 6 electrons and that is why it ranks sixth in the Periodic Table, Nitrogen has 7 and so is the seventh element in the Table, etc.
In general, a molecule is defined as the smallest part of a chemical substance, composed of two or more atoms, which retains its physical and chemical properties. A varied group of atoms can form a chemical compound, such as water, which is H2O: two hydrogen atoms to one oxygen atom. Molecules conjugate with each other giving rise to all the objects we observe, and as complex as cells, which in turn organize themselves to create tissues and organs, as elaborate for example as a kidney, and several organs associate to constitute an entire system, such as the digestive or respiratory. When systems are integrated, the result can be a living animal, plant or human being, immensely complex while being simple and beautiful in its structures and functions.
A first great unknown that arises here for all science in general, and biology in particular, is to discover the secret by which original cells, all of them sharing the same genetic information, diversify into muscle, blood, nerve cells, etc. The second great question, even more disturbing than the first, is how to explain to us that from a set of atomic, inert, inanimate elements, life arises, beginning with the smallest unit of life, the cell. An atom of carbon, hydrogen, phosphorus, magnesium, to name any of them, present in a living cell, does not differ in any way from the same atom of carbon, hydrogen, phosphorus or magnesium present in a portion of earth. How can life, thought, and mind emerge from this atomic flow? At first glance it could be said that matter can take two paths, that of life and the whole evolutionary process that it involves, and that of inanimate matter, but this explains absolutely nothing. Life can never be explained on the basis of atoms, molecules, quarks or the like. But this topic is outside the framework we want to refer to at this time, where quantum physics comes from. It will be dealt with later.
The accepted theory today is that the atom is composed of a nucleus or central mass that concentrates most of the total mass of the atom (99.9%), made up of positively charged protons and neutrons, collectively known as nucleons, and around it a cloud of negatively charged electrons. Protons are so tiny that 500 billions of them could fit on the head of a pin, but they are huge compared to electrons. The concept that electrons moved in satellite orbits around the nucleus was reevaluated, replaced by the conception of a cloud of delocalized or diffuse electrons in space. That frenetic dance best represents the behavior of electrons as described by quantum mechanics. Matter is therefore made up of atoms, whose diameter is about 10 -10 m. Protons and neutrons have approximately the same mass, 1,674 x 10 -24 -28 gr. The mass of an electron is about 9,109 X 10-28 grams. It is estimated that the human body is made up of 20,000 trillion of trillion (2 X 10 28 ) protons, as many electrons and a slightly larger number of neutrons.
To the human calculator, figures like the above only succeed in overshadowing our understanding. Graphically speaking, if an atom were the size of a stadium, the nucleus would be the size of a marble placed in the center, and the electrons would be dust particles stirred by the wind around the seats. Another example: if an atom had the size of the point of this i, the point would have to be enlarged to a size of 5,000 kilometers so that our eye could appreciate its nucleus as another point. And it would be necessary to enlarge the point to a size of about 10 million kilometers to be able to appreciate that the nuclei are made up of smaller units called quarks. As a reference, let's remember that the diameter of the Earth is 12,742 kilometers. It is inevitable not to feel dizzy in the face of such disproportions.
It was considered that 99.99% of the volume of an atom was empty, so if we could eliminate the empty space of atoms, all of humanity compressed would fit into a sugar cube. Consequently, our bodies and everything we perceive as dense, solid matter, would be constituted by empty space, hence Democritus' concept that: "nothing exists, except atoms and empty space, the rest is opinion". Modern science, as we will see later, introduces us to the concept of "energy fields", and electromagnetism instead of empty space, and to information or morphogenetic fields instead of opinion. Thus, the vacuum is not nothingness but a plenum, as if nature were not willing to waste any space, in an incessant dance of electrons, protons, neutrons, photons, mesons, neutrinos and other species of matter, each of which only exists for tiny fractions of time.
Although matter is considered essentially empty, experience tells us that we cannot pass through a wall, because the "empty" space of atoms is impregnated with electromagnetic fields, the result of interacting forces between electrons and nuclear protons, which prevent our own atoms from easily interpenetrating with each other those of the wall.
Let's dive into the quantum soup now, speeding through the world of particles and sub particles that make up atoms. It has already been said that Proton and Neutron are the particles that make up the nucleus of the atom. With the progress in research, it turned out that these were in turn composed of other even smaller particles called quarks, the most recent candidates in the search for the basic building blocks of matter, a theory that was introduced in 1963 by GellMant and Zweig. It has not been possible to divide a quark to date, nor to isolate it from the other quarks with which they are grouped to form composite particles such as the proton or neutron. These quarks, hypothetical constituents of hadrons, have not yet been observed and generate many doubts among students of this universe, which is intended to be entered with the help of equations and fundamental constants. Particle hunters continue their transit through the meanders of the unknown.
One of the arguments against a lower level of structure is that quarks already inhabit a world 1015 times smaller than the atomic nucleus. Murray GellMann would win the Nobel Prize in physics in 1969 for his discoveries about elementary particles that led to the construction of a theory called quantum chromodynamics.
There are 6 types of quarks: up quark, down quark (DOWN); top quark (TOP), bottom quark (BOTTOM), charming quark (CHARM) and strange quark (STRANGE). Particles made of quarks are called hadrons, so the proton and neutron are from the hadron family (baryons to be more precise). Quarks also make up other particles such as mesons. There are also 6 particles called leptons, of which the most common is the electron. The others are the neutrino electron, the neutrino muon, the neutrino tau, the tau and the muon; The latter two are very similar to the electron but heavier. A neutrino, endowed with an average energy, can easily pass through many billions of kilometers of lead. Yuval and GellMann, in their subnuclear research according to which all-natural complexity is found in simplicity, were the first to discover the symmetries hidden in a collection of eight mesons, baptizing their new principle as "The Eightfold Path", deriving it from the teachings called the Eightfold Path of the Buddha. Physicists have already tested the structure of matter to scales of about a trillionth of a meter. The values of neutrino masses have not been determined experimentally until now. The forces that act on these particles (those that prevent us from passing through walls or from sitting through the chair and falling to the floor) are called bosons and each of these forces has an associated particle.
The photon is the particle associated with the force of electromagnetism. The photon is also the particle of light and is always moving at a constant speed called the speed of light. The gluon is called the "strong force" that holds the quarks together in the nucleus. The Z and W particles are associated with the "weak force", responsible for the decay of nuclear radiation. The graviton and the higgs are particles that are predicted in theory but have not been detected, there is no empirical evidence. The Higgs Field, like the gravitational field, also has to do with mass, apparently answering for its existence. The Higgs field is deduced from the mathematical structure of particles and their interactions, according to the standard model of particle physics. Although there is no definitive count, there is talk of about 200 atomic sub particles. There are so many particles that the set is usually referred to among atomic physicists as the "particle zoo." Anyway, there are particles that have been pre-announced through theoretical models, which have not yet been achieved experimentally. In any case, in quantum physics, a particle no longer fits the normal idea that one had about a particle.
In the 1930s, it was discovered that for every particle there is another twin, an antiparticle, the antielectron, called a positron because of its positive charge. Antimatter is the most expensive substance in existence, valued at $62.5 billion for a single gram. The energy concentrated in antimatter is about a billion times greater than that concentrated in the fuel of an ordinary rocket... When brought into contact, matter and antimatter can annihilate each other to produce pure energy.
In short, all things are made up of atoms; what makes the difference is the number of protons and electrons that each atom has, but in all cases they are the same electrons and protons. The new building blocks, three levels below the atoms, are the quarks. The hypothesis underlying quark theory is that they lack structure, that is, they are fundamental point particles, without internal parts.
As we shall see, atoms and subatomic particles do not have an independent, differentiated, individual existence. "Elementary particles" can be created, annihilated, and transformed, and this implies that they cannot be the primary or primal elements, they are rather relatively constant forms, abstracted from a deeper level of motion. These particles are produced as a result of collisions with high energies and have an ephemeral existence; they are not constituents that we can perceive in our usual environment. Each of these particles has an antiparticle as a partner, that is, a particle of identical mass but that is opposite to it in some other aspects, such as its electric charge.
Researchers at the University of Berkeley (USA) have been talking about time crystals, a new state of matter that adds to the four known ones (solid, liquid, gaseous and plasma). They are an example of matter that is in a state of "non-equilibrium", which oscillates without energy, but which has an atomic structure that repeats itself in space and time.
Since 2016, Norman Yao, a scientist at the University of California at Berkeley, outlined the bases by arguing that these crystals constitute a stable phase of matter, stable but not in equilibrium. This phase opens up a new field in which matter that is not in equilibrium is studied. Crystals such as a ruby or a diamond are stationary since they are in a ground state of equilibrium, but time crystals are kept oscillating in their ground or ground state like a jelly, only in this case the motion occurs without energy. These observations confirm the breaking of symmetry as something possible in all kingdoms of nature and that is what makes it an entirely new form of matter, unbalanced matter, absolutely incapable of standing still.
"We are looking at a new form of matter," explains Yao, "and this is really great because it is one of the first examples of unbalanced matter that we have. For the past half-century, we've been studying matter in equilibrium, such as metals and insulators. Now we're starting to explore a new landscape of unbalanced matter."
The discovery may seem abstract, but it inaugurates a whole new era of physics. Until now, the existence of many strange kinds of matter in the Universe had been predicted, matter that is not in equilibrium and that we have not even begun to study yet, including time crystals. Now we know that this matter is real.
Two independent teams from Princeton University and Microsoft's Station Q at the University of California (Nevis, 2016), managed to demonstrate, theoretically and against the majority opinion, that "time crystals" are not simple mathematical curiosities, but they can exist in reality.
Now, two other teams of physicists, one from Harvard University and the other from the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland, have managed to create time crystals in their laboratories for the first time and independently, experimentally confirming the existence of these extraordinary structures that, according to Nobel Prize winner in Physics Frank Wilczek, who proposed them in 2012, they would have the capacity for perpetual motion, violating one of the fundamental symmetries of the laws of physics. Both teams observed in the time crystals exactly the behavior predicted in 2016. It is not yet known what applications these time crystals may have, but it could be within the field of quantum computing.
Another recent discovery, related to the quantum phenomenon, has to do with light and its behavior as a liquid that flows and undulates around the obstacles it encounters. "Liquid light" is not a solid or plasma and it does not behave exactly such as a liquid or a gas. They call it the "Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC)" and are also considering it as the fifth state of matter, in which particles synchronize and move in unison, forming a superfluid, as pointed out by Daniele Sanvitto of the Italian Institute of Nanotechnology (Serrano, 2018). An ordinary liquid, when it hits a wall, would bounce back, but a superfluid, such as liquid light, would circulate along the wall. In 2017 they managed to produce liquid light at room temperature, mixing light and matter called polaritons. Nature (2020) points out that the International Space Station managed to produce this ultra-cold exotic substance, because to measure it accurately it has gravity as an obstacle. The feat of creating these condensates under microgravity conditions is a technological milestone that opens up new opportunities for quantum gas research and improves the understanding of fundamental physics. The researchers see great potential in it to transmit information and energy without waste, for example with the creation of optical computers, avoiding the heating of common computers, making them faster and with less energy consumption. This technology could also revolutionize the handling of lasers and solar panels, and could lay the groundwork for teleporting objects.
