ZABTUZE / Elixir / Pharmacopia

Basking in the enigmatic universe of Protons, Neutrons, Electrons, Baryons, Leptons, Neutrinos and such I am entitled to ponder.

Things are not always what they appear to be. This is a consistent law just about anywhere, but especially at the quantum level. The anti-conformists amongst us love the element of surprise that spurs the imagination and emboldens the spirit. Thus, both the behavior of particles (such as electrons and atoms) that manifest as waves and the behavior of light (electromagnetic waves) that manifests as particles intrigued me. This strange duality has not been yet elucidated. It becomes even more disturbing to acknowledge that the very act of observing a particle affects and modifies its nature. Is our conscientiousness all that powerful or is Nature simply unwilling to be scrutinized? It is as if an entity such as a particle behaves one way when nobody is looking and another way when it is being observed. Similar to a sleeper in a dormant cell who blends in by drinking in public (in apparent violation of religious laws) or by strolling on Sunday in a crowded suburban shopping mall, or by playing soccer with the kids or by winning the heart of the unsuspecting landlady. Then a year or so later, when you are not looking, these mild-mannered residents crash a commercial jet into your building. Some physicists questioned the very existence of these particles (just like the Platonists questioned the reality of matter 500 years ago) and some thought it may be meaningless to discuss their reality. Einstein, however, disagreed with any of these interpretations (he also wanted to believe that the Universe was static which has been proved wrong). Anyway, perhaps there are ghosts imbedded in the atom.

Perhaps parallel worlds do exist.

One thing is certain, careless choice of words can lead to deadly confusion.

At the sub-atomic level I stumbled onto the Baryons that appeared at 10^-33 seconds after the Big Bang. They consist of common particles such as photons, neutrinos and a host more. A photon is a quantum of electromagnetic radiation and neutrinos, my favorites, consist of uncharged elementary particles with little or no mass. Created in energetic collisions between nuclear particles, neutrinos travel by three (they may have inspired the mystics with the idea of trinity) and never collide with anything (like it is said in the Scriptures, never do onto others what……..). The Universe is replete with them. Leptons are light particles that coexist with protons (particles with a positive charge numerically equal to the charge of an electron), neutrons (uncharged elementary particle with a mass nearly equal to that of the proton), neutrinos, and photons. If you think we are alone in this mind-boggling universe, you are in for a surprise. Out of the 80 known exoplanets (extrasolar planets with orbital characteristics similar to Earth), we are bound to bump into aliens who resemble some of us. Wobbling planets (they wobble because they are affected by other planets' gravity) may not nurture life as we know it, but wobbling is not necessary the order of the day out there. There is a myriad (trillions multiplied by trillions) of infant planets that breed in the milky ways of stellar nurseries (the official astrophysics lingo includes the term "baby planets").

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