The Maya of Science 2

The Maya of Science 2

In the early 1930s, an experiment in quantum physics showed - yet again! – that the world was not what it seemed. There were two ways of interpreting the results of this experiment (which revolved around the paths taken by subatomic particles). The first one suggested that the parallel realities predicted by relativity theory were not far away beyond a Black Hole in some distant galaxy, but right beside us as we speak. In fact, according to this explanation, we weave in and out of parallel universes all the time, depending on which of a whole series of possibilities we realize.

The second explanation was a lot more far-fetched. It postulated that an act of observation could cause the universe to split in two, allowing for the emergence of two conflicting possibilities. The split universe would reform onto a single unit once a ``decision`` was made about which of the possibilities became actual.

The second, more far-fetched theory is accepted by a majority of physicists today, a measure of how far the findings of quantum mechanics differ from common sense. But if experiments like this have shown that reality works very differently to the way we perceive it, they still do not dismiss reality as illusional. That had to wait for new ways of examining the subatomic world. 

Since the days of the ancient Greeks, philosophers and later scientists believed matter to consist of atoms - tiny building blocks particles that were as small a lump of reality as it was possible to get. Consequently, by definition, you couldn't split an atom. 

But it turned out this wasn't so. Although atoms certainly were the building blocks of matter, they could be - and eventually were - split. What scientists thought they found inside was even smaller bits of matter. these were labelled subatomic particles: little bits of stuff that were smaller than an atom. Figuring out subatomic particles was a tricky business. many of them were invisible not just to the naked eye, not just to optical microscopes, but invisible by definition. 

Normally you see something because light bounces off it. But it turned out that light is not rays, as the early pioneers believed. We now know light itself is composed of subatomic particles (called photons). And light is just too grainy for some of the things scientists are interested in looking at. A light particle, instead of bouncing off, will knock any particle smaller than itself out of the way.  

Technicians eventually developed something called an electron microscope, which didn't use light at all, but recorded the result of bouncing electrons - which are smaller than photons - off the thing the thing they wanted to look at. This worked very well very well, but only to a point. Physicists insisted on finding sub-atomic particles that were even smaller than electrons. 

to be continued...

 
Magical use of Thought Forms
Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki, J.H. Brennan