We do not need to go to
a faraway land only to get to the frontier of the material world we live. We
are indebted to Planck (1900) who enabled us to discover this frontier beyond
which nothing exists but energy. Everybody can reach this boundary just right
from where he or she stands on, going deep inward into the center of
micro-realm, to the Planck level at the distance of 10-33 cm or
period of 10-44second below which neither space nor time has any
meaning.
Planck himself was not
aware of the broader physical meaning of his finding. We can derive those
values from his constant, h = 6.6 x 10-34 joule-seconds, the measure
of a unit of action which is a little bit weird and uncommon. So, why then we
are facing such an odd unit? What Planck had discovered was not merely a
measure of a unit of action which is an abstract thing but the real size of
four-dimensional discrete energy (quantum). Energy is like water phase
consisting of discrete four-dimensional "molecules," the smallest
constituent of the underlying four-dimensional sea of energy.
"Shortly"
after Planck momentous discovery, Minkowski (1908) revealed the
four-dimensionality of the macro-world. The unification of these theories would
lead us to conclude that the four-dimensionality of the spacetime is just the
manifestation of the degree of freedom of energy which itself is
four-dimensional. We have, then, a very consistent geometrical pattern of the
four-dimensional world, both microscopically and macroscopically, from the
tiniest thing like four-dimensional quanta to the largest ones such as the
four-dimensional spacetime as a whole.
However, still, nobody
grasps the critical implication of this quanta's four-dimensionality. The
fundamental particles, the smallest building blocks of the universe, which are
the derivative of these quanta as dictated by the energy equation E= mc2
should also be four-dimensional. As discrete both spatially and temporarily,
these little kinds of stuff are short-living.
The persistence of everything we see around us is just the appearance of
the underlying perpetual creation and annihilation of fundamental ephemeral
things, an action that takes place at the Planck level.
As these ephemeral kinds
of stuff made the macro-world, the same thing would happen in the macro-realm.
At any instant, our physical space appears and disappears in the same rhythm
with what happens in the micro-realm.
How could this happen? The notions of creation and annihilation are just
the terms we use to describe the transformations of energy into matter and vice
versa. Down to the Planck level the
energy equation, E= mc2 is highly reversible in which matter
and energy flashing to and fro at the pace equal to the speed of light.
The appearance and
disappearance of the whole thing from the space as a whole down to the
minuscule particles at the deepest level of reality give us a feeling that
something passes by. So this something is what we call time. The past, present, and future are just a
series of continuous process of formation and dissolution just like a single
water wave moves across the surface of the water; the peak of the wave is the
now, the flat horizon behind it is the past and ahead is the future. It is the
true nature of time that people are searching for a long time. Had everything
persisted there would be no time at all.
Now what we perceive as
the same persistent particle is a series of similar but different particles
appear and disappear rapidly at the speed of light. The constant c is nothing
but the rate of the constant creation and annihilation of the quanta, the
building blocks of the universe. Among this process what we can directly
measure is the rate of the continuous creation and annihilation of the photon
which is equal to the speed of light. It is an underlying fact why nothing can
move faster than the light; otherwise, there would be something running ahead
of its very own existence.
How this creation and
annihilation physically take place? The relativity energy equation E2 =
m2c4 + p2c2 implicitly
shows that the energy inherently consists of the opposites: the positive and
negative energies. As they are repulsive, they both tend to segregate
separating from each other. At Planck level, the interplays of these two
(the exchange of 4D-electric currents?) across the interface (thin 3D-surface)
create quantum sparks ("quarks"), analogous to the sparks appear and
disappear on our TV screen. These quantum sparks are what we perceive as
fundamental particles perpetually appear and disappear at a gigantic 3D- TV
screen -- our precious physical space.
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