Milky Way over Jackson Lake, Wyoming

For Robert Eichenberg, Jonny Joe – The Hadron Accelerator – a personal journey

Beyond Newton and Einstein

on the New Frontier of Physics

by Timothy Ferris

© The New York Times Magazine

September 26, 1982

  A seminal article linking the teachings of the Buddha profoundly, although not realized at the time—perhaps its value not even fully realized today. The article certainly enlivened progress along “the path to gaining Buddha-knowledge.” Today, 2015, returning once more to this eloquent resource for practice. [italics added, indicating links to “gaining mindfulness.”]

  we talk of “the universe” as if it were far away, but of course it is right here too. Its history concerns not only the remote stars and galaxies, but our world as well—down to the atoms that make up these words, this page, you and me.

  This insight has long been entertained by poets and philosophers. Now it is bearing fruit in science, as physicists probing the tiny nucleus of the atom are uncovering evidence of how the universe as a whole may have taken shape in the first moments of time.

  Responsible for the breakthrough are new theories o physics—known as “unified theories”—that seek to improve scientific understanding of how nature functions from the very smallest to the very largest scale. These theories which stand on the frontier of physics, are most precisely expressed not in words, but as mathematical equations. They imply that all the known forces in nature are manifestations of one basic interaction and that once, long ago, all were part of a single universal force or process.

  That view might sound farfetched were it not for the fact that cosmologists—scientists who study the nature of the universe as a whole—have found evidence that everything that now exists began in a “big bang.” (See chart) That explosion would have generated the tremendous amounts of energy and pressure that the unified theories say would have been needed to fuse the apparently separate forces into one.

  The consequences of their discoveries and the newest ideas in cosmology is pro­ducing a new physics, one that sees matter, energy and the laws according to which they behave not as immutable and eternal, but as evolving processes in an evolving universe. Like archeologists unearthing the ruins of an ancient city, theorists are uncovering the outlines of a new, more profound and in some way, simpler physics, a physics that could reveal and explain much of the history of the cosmos.

  The consequences of their discoveries promise to reverberate throughout science and beyond. Textbooks may have to be rewritten and philosophies revised. Just as Newton’s work served as the basis for much modern science and technology, and as Einstein’s discovery of the equivalence of matter and energy, E = m c², led to such advances as the harnessing of nuclear power, so too the new understanding provided by the unified theories may lead to unexpected leaps in our ability to manipulate nature.

  It is, of course, impossible to predict where, specifically, those leaps will land us. But a unified physics would promote a scientific vision of nature worthy of Zen masters and Old Testament prophets alike—a vision revealing that everything about us belongs to a chain of cosmic revolution that leads back to the birth of the universe and forward to a glimpse of the fate of the universe.

*  *  *

  Physicists have hit upon this new vision of a unity of large and small not through the mystical transports of a William Blake who saw the world in a grain of sand, but while trying to do little more than put their scientific house in order. Their goal is not to rewrite Genesis, but only to craft a theory that would explain the interactions of the myriad particles – from the now-familiar quarks to obscure muons – that inhabit the subatomic world.

Later in article – quote sent to AW (and Cody)

  Normally we think of virtual particles as restricted to the quantum world of the very small. But in the first moments of cosmic history, the universe was very small. Con­ceivably, the whole show could have begun as a speck of quantum foam in a vacuum. “Nothingness contains all of being,” writes the physicist Heinz Pagels in his “The Cosmic Code.”

  “All of physics – everything we hope to know – is waiting in the vacuum to be dis­covered.”

Article concludes:

  “The belief that the world is understandable justifies itself by its results,” John Wheeler said one day recently. We sat in his living room, surrounded by books and paintings, watching the river town of Austin turn gold in the slanting rays of the sunset. “We find the world strange,” Wheeler said quietly, “but what is strange is us. It seems to me that we don’t yet read the message properly, but in a time to come, we will se it in some single simple sentence. As we say that sentence to each other, we’ll say, ‘Oh, how beautiful! How could we have missed it, all that time?”

3/10/12 – Comment from DFS:

  Perhaps that one simple sentence is from the Buddha’s teaching: “We are caused to live by the great life-force of the universe.”