The other night I had a discussion with my friend Plato. I don't know if it has anything to do with his name, but he sure likes to ask difficult questions. Our discussion went something like this.
Plato: If you don't believe in God, then how did this world come about?
Democritus (me): I don't know.
P: Doesn't it indicate that there must be a Supreme Being, God, who created it all? That is the only logical explanation.
D: So tell me more about that supreme being. What is it like, what created it, where does it exist?
P: We are incapable of knowing that.
D: In other words, you don't know either. So bringing up God doesn't explain anything. Might as well leave God out of it then.
P: OK smart aleck, let me ask you another question then. What caused the apple to fall on Newton's head?
D: Gravity of course. Newton realized that there is an attractive force between masses that causes things to fall down on earth, the Moon to orbit the Earth, the Earth to orbit the Sun, etc. It explained a lot of things that earlier were thought to be of divine origin. No need any longer to think that angels pushed the planets in their paths around the sky.
P: OK, so what is that gravity. What is it like, what caused it, how does it work?
D: That has been a difficult question, but Einstein finally figured it out. Gravity is caused by local curvature of the 4-dimensional universe around a mass.
P: Huh? You're speaking in tongues like a Pentecostal. What kind of mumbo-jumbo is that?
D: Well, you see, Einstein figured out that the universe has 4 dimensions, the usual 3 dimensions of location, like length, width, and height, and a 4th dimension: time. The curvature around an object is like a depression that causes another object to fall towards it. That is what causes gravitational attraction.
P (sarcastic): Can you draw me a picture of that? And how can 4-dimensional space be curved as well? What does that mean? The man is talking more nonsense than a hell-and-brimstone preacher. And you believe all that? How do you know it is true? Aren't you saying that you believe in gravity but you don't know what that is? Just like I said that God created everything but I don't know what God is?
D: Maybe so, but there is one crucial difference. God "moves in mysterious ways" as the preachers tell us. We can all pray for rain, or for the rain to stop, but that doesn't necessarily make it so. The assumption that there is a God doesn't predict anything.
Einstein's description of the 4-dimensional universe explains exactly why the planets move around the sun as they do. It allows us to send a spaceship to Mars and have it land exactly where and when we want it. It allows us to pinpoint exactly where we are with our GPS receivers, using data received from orbiting satellites, corrected by taking into account Einstein's formulas
Einstein's description of the 4-dimensional universe explains exactly why the planets move around the sun as they do. It allows us to send a spaceship to Mars and have it land exactly where and when we want it. It allows us to pinpoint exactly where we are with our GPS receivers, using data received from orbiting satellites, corrected by taking into account Einstein's formulas
P: But if it is so useful and real, how come you can't give me a better description than what you just said?
D: I could, if you and I knew how to speak the most difficult language of mankind: mathematics. Thanks to mathematics we can be aware of many strange and wonderful things that our senses are unable to perceive. Maybe some day mathematicians will be able to describe something like God in the language of mathematics.
Physicists have been working for over 100 years trying to define the ultimate nature of matter. They have found dozens of elementary particles that together constitute matter and energy as we know it. Most have been observed indirectly in large, complicated equipment. The particles are best described in the language of mathematics.
In particular, mathematics predicts that there must be another, as yet undetected particle, that would explain why some particles have mass and others don't. That particle, known as the Higgs boson after the physicist who suggested it, is sometimes referred to as the "God particle." Whatever that means, it certainly doesn't refer to a God who created the universe and personally worries about our well being.
Physicists have been working for over 100 years trying to define the ultimate nature of matter. They have found dozens of elementary particles that together constitute matter and energy as we know it. Most have been observed indirectly in large, complicated equipment. The particles are best described in the language of mathematics.
In particular, mathematics predicts that there must be another, as yet undetected particle, that would explain why some particles have mass and others don't. That particle, known as the Higgs boson after the physicist who suggested it, is sometimes referred to as the "God particle." Whatever that means, it certainly doesn't refer to a God who created the universe and personally worries about our well being.
P: So how about Dark Matter and Dark Energy. Do you believe in those too?
D: Let's call it a day. Enough is enough.
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