The atom used to be the last stop in our descent into the micro-world. For convenience we learned to recognise its structure as a sort of planetary system with a central nucleus surrounded by orbiting electrons. There was magic in the atom. In reality, the electrons did not orbit around the nucleus and they were not particle miniature planets - they were fuzzy, wavy things. Particles are meant to have boundaries, whereas waves spread out and diffuse. Waves can get around solids whereas particles collide with them like billiard balls.
Waves spread out over space. The energy of waves depends on their frequencies i.e. how fast they rise and fall. The faster they change up and down, the more energetic they are. Think of a rope being shaken. The more energetically we shake it the faster the vibrations up and down that is the frequency of how many vibrations in a particular period of time. As the frequency goes up the wavelength becomes shorter and shorter until it's so compacted that we see the rope as one.
Just to make things more confusing, the waves of these fuzzy electrons are probability waves and we need to imagine what are such things as probability waves. The probability of an electron being found in a particular place is not certain and it may vary from zero to a 1. This variation then can be considered as a wave, and follows certain conditions but it is certainly not circulating evenly around the nucleus at all times. The electron has a probability of being found in certain places and buzzing full of energy according to how far out it is from the nucleus within different discrete bands.
The French scientist De Broglie called the vibrations of the electrons "matter waves" and that made sense, since the electrons are part of the atoms that make up matter. When De Broglie formulated his matter waves and the fact that energy is proportional to frequency, he also used Einstein's more famous formula of E=M*C squared to show the relationship of energy to mass and linked frequency to mass.
Mass can be made up of particles and at the same time waves as is the case with light photons and electrons. Electrons can behave as both particles and waves that can exist in discrete quanta but whose position is uncertain when their speed (frequency) is known as would appear with a wave. Light is made up of photons in its particle form and as electromagnetic waves that can be diffracted as is the case with the rainbow that splits the white light into its constituent colours across the visible spectrum. The energies of ultraviolet or even higher frequencies lie beyond our ability to see them and they pack a big punch as experienced by x rays.
Science starts by asking questions. If electromagnetic radio waves are all around us and we do not see them, then maybe thought waves can spread out from our heads and we are not aware of them. Waves can interfere or add to each other or cancel out. We have people who think alike. A group of people undergoing some sort of religious experience is thinking together and magnify the effect. We often talk of people being on our wavelength.
The effects of entanglement, interference, difraction, all seem to hold a lot of promise for research both in body and mind. Since we are also physically made up of atoms and we have mass, our frequencies must be immensely higher or our wavelengths so short that we appear as solid. In science fiction stories, our physical form is said to be defracted or split up and interfered with. It's this that fiction writers use to get teleportation where the atoms are separated, transmitted and reassembled at a distance.
Parallel universes and string theory are all part of theoretical physics, which have left conventional religious beliefs behind in some of their claims.
The French scientist De Broglie called the vibrations of the electrons "matter waves" and that made sense, since the electrons are part of the atoms that make up matter. When De Broglie formulated his matter waves and the fact that energy is proportional to frequency, he also used Einstein's more famous formula of E=M*C squared to show the relationship of energy to mass and linked frequency to mass.
Mass can be made up of particles and at the same time waves as is the case with light photons and electrons. Electrons can behave as both particles and waves that can exist in discrete quanta but whose position is uncertain when their speed (frequency) is known as would appear with a wave. Light is made up of photons in its particle form and as electromagnetic waves that can be diffracted as is the case with the rainbow that splits the white light into its constituent colours across the visible spectrum. The energies of ultraviolet or even higher frequencies lie beyond our ability to see them and they pack a big punch as experienced by x rays.
Science starts by asking questions. If electromagnetic radio waves are all around us and we do not see them, then maybe thought waves can spread out from our heads and we are not aware of them. Waves can interfere or add to each other or cancel out. We have people who think alike. A group of people undergoing some sort of religious experience is thinking together and magnify the effect. We often talk of people being on our wavelength.
The effects of entanglement, interference, difraction, all seem to hold a lot of promise for research both in body and mind. Since we are also physically made up of atoms and we have mass, our frequencies must be immensely higher or our wavelengths so short that we appear as solid. In science fiction stories, our physical form is said to be defracted or split up and interfered with. It's this that fiction writers use to get teleportation where the atoms are separated, transmitted and reassembled at a distance.
Parallel universes and string theory are all part of theoretical physics, which have left conventional religious beliefs behind in some of their claims.
