I recently wrote that we are actually a package of organized
energy. I wonder how many discounted me as crazy or, at best, a comedian. In
reality, I am absolutely serious (and correct). Most readers have heard of
Einstein’s development of the equation E=MC2. No scientist has yet
been able to disprove this as not true. I
do, however, question whether C is really the speed of light or was that simply
a known very large number which was convenient to use. In any case, it should
really be written M=E/C2. Looking at it that way, so far as we know
energy (E) has no weight, and speed does not carry any assumption of weight, so
what are we measuring when we stem onto a scale? We are measuring the
attractive force holding our mass to the surface of an extremely large mass, or
package of energy, called “Earth.” That force is conveniently called “weight”
and the magnitude is proportional to the size of two energy packages. Slowly,
but surely, scientists are beginning to understand what is going on.
Let’s take a tour through the understanding of human bodies
– opening of the doors of understanding is becoming more and more rapid. In the
earliest days I am sure that there was no thought other than the unity of a
human being. It may have been magic to see a woman’s stomach gradually enlarge
followed by production of a baby. It probably was not long before this was
associated to an enjoyable activity in which man and woman engaged. People,
animals, trees, etc. were simply considered units which started out small and grew
to “adulthood.” Humans, however, are curious and inventive. By the sixteenth century,
AD, it was known that, if carefully formed, one could enlarge items by looking
through glass. Hans Janssen was a lens maker, which provided his son,
Zacharias, with plenty of lenses to play with and in 1595, at the age of seven,
he invented the compound microscope (perhaps with his father’s help?).
The microscope opened up whole new worlds to investigate.
Not only was it turned to the heavens in the form of a telescope, but very
small things could be enlarged for examination. In 1665, Robert Hooke reported
the discovery that wood was actually a collection of cells. In 1674 Antony van
Leeuwenhoek was first to describe living cells, in this case, the green
charophyte alga, Spirogyra. As a result
of his work, the complexity of our makeup began to become understood, but how
was a different story.
Even so far back as the Greek philosophers it was thought
that everything was somehow made up atoms, but the atoms of the time were
earth, fire, air, and water. (this, of course, led to the belief you could rearrange
the components to form different materials, i.e. alchemy). In 1799, the French
chemist Joseph Louis Proust established the fact that compounds were made up of
atoms, and would always be of the same “recipe.” About 460 B.C., the Greek
philosopher, Democritus, develop the idea that atoms would be the smallest unit
into which a substance could be broken. However, it was not until the early nineteenth
century that people begin again to question the structure of matter. An English
chemist, John Dalton, reported that matter consists of elementary lumpy
particles (atoms). Although he couldn’t describe a structure, the evidence
pointed to something fundamental. In 1897, the English physicist, J.J. Thomson,
discovered the electron and proposed an atom structure. Knowing electrons had a
negative charge, Thomson proposed that the atom matter must also contain positive
charge. His model looked like raisins stuck on the surface of a lump of pudding
-- i. e. the “pudding” model of the atom.
In 1909, Ernest Rutherford found that most of the mass and
positive charge of an atom is concentrated in a very small fraction of its
volume, assumedly at the very center. Further experimentation indicated that positive
charge of the atom must be concentrated in a very tiny volume producing an
electric field. Rutherford therefore proposed a planetary model in which a
cloud of electrons surrounded a small, compact nucleus of positive charge. An
excursion into theoretical theory ensued in an attempt to understand what kept
the electrons away from the nucleus. I won’t go into that, but simply say that,
in 1913, Niels Bohr developed the Bohr model of the atom, in which electrons orbit
the nucleus in particular circular orbits. The Bohr model was taught to me in
High School Chemistry (1952-3) and college introductory Chemistry (1958). The
Bohr model still had some theoretical problems, and has been displaced by a “modern
model” which basically says the electrons are not in orbit, but in a cloud around
the nucleus. I won’t go into that here either. I will just say that I was not
introduced to this model until undertaking Physical Chemistry. By the time I
finished graduate school, the Bohr model had been abandoned in Introductory
Chemistry, and it wasn’t much longer until it had been abandoned in High School
Chemistry.
By default, within this development, the electron was displaced
as the smallest possible unit of mass. It has now been possible to split electrons
into something even smaller. When it is split, there are small units flying
away in different directions. Each with a unique path, so the units are given
unique names. Are they, in fact, the smallest possible unit? Whether they are
or not, we may have to stick with the idea, because these units only exist for
microseconds and are gone. Why? Because they are small units of energy, which
is quickly dispersed. All evidence also indicates that atom nuclei are also
nothing more than conglomerations of energy. The whole idea carries some very
interesting implications, but I will go into that elsewhere. For now, I will
stop at the understanding of all mass being nothing more than organized energy.
