Spirituality Metaphysics
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Just as religion had to succumb to scientific knowledge, so now, science is beginning to unravel the mysteries of the universe with Quantum physics.
And their latest findings are stretching science into the realms of Spirituality Metaphysics.
Quantum science is going beyond the probe of atoms, and exploring the weird and wacky, new words are entering science, new ideas, theories and dimensions, String Theory, Zero Point Energy Theory, and Membrane Theory to mention a few.
Spirituality Metaphysics
Albert Einstein
Einstein was one of the first to go Quantum, here are some of his ideas and theories, which have become Law.
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Spirituality Metaphysics
The Birth of Atoms
Your body contains trillions of atoms, of many different elements. There are atoms of hydrogen and oxygen, carbon and nitrogen,...but your body also contains many atoms of calcium, nickel, potassium, iron...even gold!
In all, there are 92 different types of atoms, most of which can be found in the molecules that make up the tissues of your body.
Spirituality Metaphysics
Big Bang
The answer is quite startling...all of the atoms in your body, other than helium and hydrogen, were manufactured in the center of a supernova...a star that once existed, but destroyed itself in a gigantic explosion!
To understand how this is possible, we need to look at what atoms are. The simplest atom is hydrogen, which contains a nucleus composed of one proton, circled by one moving electron. The next simplest atom, helium, has a nucleus with 2 protons, and is circled by 2 electrons.
The biggest naturally occurring atom is uranium, with 92 protons, and 92 electrons.(For simplicity, we will ignore the fact that these atoms also contain neutrons in their nuclei.)
Spirituality Metaphysics
Nuclear
It is possible for small atoms to combine to form bigger ones...but only under intense heat and pressure...the millions of degrees found in the center of a star. This process is called nuclear fusion.
Large stars will be so hot in their interior that hydrogen atoms are forced together to form helium atoms, helium atoms are forced together to form still larger atoms,...and so on. Eventually, large stars will contain in their interior, shells of many different heavier atoms, some as big as iron (57 protons).
Spirituality Metaphysics
Supernova
If the star is large enough, when it runs out of fuel it will collapse in on itself. The relatively cooler outer layers hit the incredibly hot interior, and a massive explosion occurs, called a supernova. Stars that do this don't live very long...while a smaller star like our sun may burn for tens of billions of years, a massive star that is destined to become a supernova may burn out and explode in a matter of a few million years...a ten-thousandth of the lifetime of our sun.
During this explosion, temperatures rise once again; coupled with intense pressure, this is enough energy to force larger atoms to combine, creating all of the heavier elements from iron to uranium!
This explosion is so large that it propels the contents of the star out into space...including all the heavy elements it has made. Vast clouds of atoms of all types remain, where once there was a star.
Spirituality Metaphysics
In The Beginning
We know that at the beginning of the universe, there was only hydrogen and helium. Massive stars formed from these gases, burned out in a few million years, and spewed the heavy elements they created into space around them.
This process has occurred over and over since the universe began some 17 billion years ago. We can observe it still happening today, in our large telescopes.
When our star (the sun) and its family of planets formed from interstellar gases some 5 billion years ago, those gases were already well seeded with heavy elements formed in supernovas that occurred in our interstellar neighbourhood in the previous 12 billion years. All of the heavier elements that went into forming the earth, the ground, the biosphere,... everything... came from this interstellar gas cloud. And so did all the elements in your body!
Spirituality Metaphysics
E=MC2
Albert Einstein is perhaps the most famous scientist of this century. One of his most well-known accomplishments is the formula E=MC2
Despite its familiarity, many people don't really understand what it means.
One of Einstein's great insights was to realize that matter and energy are really different forms of the same thing. Matter can be turned into energy, and energy into matter.
For example, consider a simple hydrogen atom, basically composed of a single proton. This subatomic particle has a mass of 0.000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 001 672 kg. This is a tiny mass indeed. But in everyday quantities of matter there are a lot of atoms! For instance, in one kilogram of pure water, the mass of hydrogen atoms amounts to just slightly more than 111 grams, or 0.111 kg.
Einstein's formula tells us the amount of energy this mass would be equivalent to, if it were all suddenly turned into energy. It says that to find the energy, you multiply the mass by the square of the speed of light, this number being 300,000,000 meters per second (a very large number): = 0.111 x 300,000,000 x 300,000,000 = 10,000,000,000,000,000 Joules
Spirituality Metaphysics
Incredible Potential Energy
This is an incredible amount of energy! A Joule is not a large unit of energy ... one Joule is about the energy released when you drop a textbook to the floor. But the amount of energy in 30 grams of hydrogen atoms is equivalent to burning hundreds of thousands of gallons of gasoline!
If you consider all the energy in the full kilogram of water, which also contains oxygen atoms, the total energy equivalent is close to 10 million gallons of gasoline!
Can all this energy really be released? Has it ever been?
Spirituality Metaphysics
Antimatter
The only way for ALL this energy to be released is for the kilogram of water to be totally annihilated. This process involves the complete destruction of matter, and occurs only when that matter meets an equal amount of antimatter ... a substance composed of mass with a negative charge. Antimatter does exist; it is observable as single subatomic particles in radioactive decay, and has been created in the laboratory. But it is rather short-lived (!), since it annihilates itself and an equal quantity of ordinary matter as soon as it encounters anything. For this reason, it has not yet been made in measurable quantities, so our kilogram of water can't be turned into energy by mixing it with 'antiwater'. At least, not yet.
Spirituality Metaphysics
Fusion
Another phenomenon peculiar to small elementary particles like protons is that they combine. A single proton forms the nucleus of a hydrogen atom. Two protons are found in the nucleus of a helium atom. This is how the elements are formed ... all the way up to the heaviest naturally occurring substance, uranium, which has 92 protons in its nucleus.
It is possible to make two free protons (Hydrogen nuclei) come together to make the beginnings of a helium nucleus. This requires that the protons be hurled at each other at a very high speed. This process occurs in the sun, but can also be replicated on earth with lasers, magnets, or in the center of an atomic bomb. The process is called nuclear fusion.
What makes it interesting is that when the two protons are forced to combine, they don't need as much of their energy (or mass). Two protons stuck together have less mass than two single separate protons!
When the protons are forced together, this extra mass is released ... as energy! Typically this amounts to about 7% of the total mass, converted to an amount of energy predictable using the formula.
Spirituality Metaphysics
Fission
Elements heavier than iron are unstable. Some of them are very unstable! This means that their nuclei, composed of many positively charged protons, which want to repel from each other, are liable to fall apart at any moment! We call atoms like this radioactive.
Uranium, for example, is radioactive. Every second, many of the atoms in a chunk of uranium are falling apart. When this happens, the pieces, which are now new elements (with fewer protons) are LESS massive in total than the original uranium atoms. The extra mass disappears as energy ... again according to the formula! This process is called nuclear fission.
Spirituality Metaphysics
Manhatton Project
Both these nuclear reactions release a small portion of the mass involved as energy. Large amounts of energy! You are probably more familiar with their uses. Nuclear fusion is what powers a modern nuclear warhead. Nuclear fission (less powerful) is what happens in an atomic bomb (like the ones used against Japan in WWII), or in a nuclear power plant.
Albert Einstein was able to see where an understanding of this formula would lead. Although peaceful by nature and politics, he helped write a letter to the President of the United States, urging him to fund research into the development of an atomic bomb ... before the Nazis or Japan developed their own first. The result was the Manhattan Project, which did in fact produce the first tangible evidence of ... the atomic bomb!
Spirituality Metaphysics
Relativity
Einstein's also came up with ideas about time, the Theory of Relativity.
Strange things can happen when you move Fast...things you won't learn about in high school courses, and won't experience while driving down the road in your pick-up. But these things are still very real, and definitely Weird!
Light rays travel very quickly...they cover about 300,000 kilometres every second.
This is as fast as anything can travel; nothing can move as fast as light particles.
But if it were possible to build a very powerful vehicle that could move almost as fast as light...perhaps 200,000 km every second...then anyone observing this vehicle as it flashed past would notice some extremely
peculiar things happening to it.
The vehicle would appear shorter than normal, and in fact, it would be shorter. If the vehicle were ordinarily 3 metres long, it might now be only 2 metres in length. If you were able to weigh the vehicle, you would discover that it weighed much more than normal. Anybody riding in it would weigh many times their normal weight.. However, the people in the vehicle would not feel any heavier, or any thinner. They would feel and look normal to themselves...but if they looked out the window, they would see the rest of the world moving by, and it would appear to be shrunk.
If the vehicle were to move faster and faster, getting closer and closer to the speed of light, it and the people in it would continue to get thinner and thinner, while at the same time getting heavier and heavier! These strange occurrences, as described by Albert Einstein, can actually be observed. It is not yet possible to build a vehicle that will go this fast, of course...the fastest spacecraft only cover about 15-20 kilometres in a second. But tiny particles called 'cosmic rays' that are given off by the sun...the ones that cause the Northern Lights when they hit earth's magnetic field...move almost as fast as light, and their mass can be measured. When they move that fast, their mass IS much heavier than normal.
Spirituality Metaphysics
Time Travel
A much more dramatic effect of moving fast is what happens to time. It seems that the faster you move, the more slowly time runs!
At normal, every-day speeds (airplane speed, for instance), the effect of 'time slowing down' is just barely measurable. You could fly non-stop around the world in an airplane, and because of your increase in speed, time would run slower for you. Everyone on the plane, all the watches and clocks, the plane itself...all would be a small fraction of a second younger than if they had not gone anywhere! That experiment has been done. Want to live longer? Spend lots of time on high-speed planes, and time will move more slowly for you. You might live 2 seconds longer than you would have if you'd stayed on the ground.
Things get much more interesting if you fly off in a spacecraft that can go really fast...perhaps 200.000 km per second. Now time is really slowing down. Suppose you and a friend are both exactly 16 years old. He stays on earth, but you go off for a trip in our very fast spacecraft. Fifty years go by on earth. (It's a long way to the nearest stars!) You return to find your friend is now 65 years old. You, however, have experienced a phenomenon known as time dilation. Time has been running more slowly for you, in the fast-moving spacecraft. According to you, the trip took only ten years...and you are just 26 years old!
Spirituality Metaphysics
Fact
This effect would seem impossible...yet it has been demonstrated to be a fact. Once again, small particles can be observed and measured. Many are radioactive, which means they disintegrate with clockwork precision. The time it takes them to disintegrate can be accurately measured. When these particles are accelerated to high ('relativistic') speeds as in our example above, they live longer before disintegrating!
It has been almost 100 years since these Spirituality Metaphysics theories were first put forward by Einstein and others, and since then they have become accepted as fact by scientists world-wide. More evidence of their validity is also apparent from studies of objects in far distant space.
