Let
us take a very close look at some important laws of nature. When you
go to the trouble of looking very closely at these laws, you may end
up being stunned by their seemingly programmatic aspects, and you may end up
getting some insight into just how apparently methodical and
conceptual the laws of nature are.
The
laws I refer to are some laws that are followed when subatomic particles collide
at high speed. In recent years scientists at the Large Hadron
Collider and other particle accelerators have been busy smashing
together particles at very high speeds. The Large Hadron Collider is
the world's largest particle accelerator, and consists of a huge
underground ring some 17 miles wide.
The
Large Hadron Collider accelerates protons (tiny subatomic particles)
to near the speed of light. The scientists accelerate two globs of
protons to a speed of more than 100,000 miles per second, one glob
going in one direction in the huge ring, and another glob going in
the other direction. The scientists then get some of these protons to
smash into each other.
A
result of such a collision (from a site describing a different
particle accelerator) is depicted below. The caption of this image
stated: “A
collision of gold nuclei in the STAR experiment at RHIC creates a
fireball of pure energy from which thousands of new particles are
born.”
Such
a high-speed collision of protons or nuclei can produce more than 100
“daughter particles” that result from the collision. The daughter
particles are rather like the pieces of glass you might get if you
and your friend hurled two glass balls at each other, and the balls
collided (please don't ever try this). Here is a more schematic
depiction of a one of the simplest particle collisions (others are
much more complicated):
The
results of a collision like that shown in the first image may seem
like a random mess, but nature actually follows quite a few laws when
such collisions occur. The first law I will discuss is one that there
is no name for, even though there should be. This is the law we might
call the Law of the Five Allowed Stable Particles. This is simply
the law that the stable long-lived output particles created from any
very high-speed subatomic particle collision are always particles on the following short list:
Particle |
Rest Mass
|
Electric Charge |
Proton |
1.67262177×10−27 kg |
1.602176565×10−19
Coulomb
|
Neutron |
1.674927351 ×10−27 kg |
0 |
Electron |
9.10938291 ×10−27 kg |
-1.602176565×10−19
Coulomb
|
Photon |
0 |
0 |
Neutrino |
Many times smaller than electron mass |
0 |
I
am not mentioning antiparticles on this list, because such particles
are destroyed as soon as they as come in contact with regular
particles, so they end up having a lifetime of less than a few
seconds.
This
Law of the Five Allowed Stable Particles is not at all a trivial law,
and raises the serious question: how is it that nature favors only
these five particles? Why is it that high-speed subatomic particle collisions
don't produce stable particles with thousands of different random masses and thousands of different random electric charges?
It is as if nature has inherent within it the idea of a proton, the
idea of an electron, the idea of a neutron, the idea of a photon, and
the idea of a neutrino.
When
particles collide at high speeds, nature also follows what are called
conservation laws. Below is a table describing the conservation laws
that are followed in high-speed subatomic particle collisions. Particles with positive
charge are shown in blue; particles with
negative charge are shown in red; and
unstable particles are italicized (practically speaking,
antiparticles are unstable because they quickly combine with regular
particles and are converted to energy, so I'll count those as
unstable particles). The
particles listed before the →
symbol are the inputs of the collision, and the particles after the →
symbol are the outputs of the collision. The → symbol basically
means “the collision creates this.”
Law |
Description |
Example of particle
collision or decay allowed under law |
Example of particle
collision or decay prohibited under law |
law
of the conservation of mass-energy
|
The mass-energy of the
outputs of a particle collision cannot exceed the mass-energy of
the inputs of the collision |
proton
+ proton →proton+neutron
+ positron+electron
neutrino |
electron+electron
→antiproton+
electron
(prohibited because an antiproton is almost a thousand times more
massive than two electrons) |
law
of the conservation of charge
|
The ratio between the
proton-like charges (called “positive” and shown here in blue)
and the electron-like charges (called “negative” and shown
here in red) in the outputs of a
particle collision must be the same as the ratio was in the inputs
of the collision |
proton
+ proton →proton+neutron
+ positron
+electron neutrino (two proton-like charges in
input, two proton-like charges in output)
At
higher collision energies:
proton
+ proton →proton+proton+
proton+antiproton
|
proton
+ proton
→proton+neutron
+electron+electron neutrino (two
proton-like charges in input, only one proton-like charge in
output) |
law
of the conservation of baryon number
|
Using the term “total
baryon number” to mean the total of the protons
and neutrons (minus the total of the antiprotons
and antineutrons), the total baryon
number of the stable outputs of a particle collision must be
the same as this total was in the inputs of the collision |
proton
+ proton →proton
+neutron + positron+electron
neutrino (total baryon number of 2 in inputs, total baryon number
of 2 in the outputs) |
proton
+ neutron →proton+muon
+ antimuon
(total baryon number of 2 in inputs, total
baryon number of 1 in the outputs) |
law
of the conservation of lepton number (electron number “flavor,”
there also being “flavors” of the law for muons and tau
particles)
|
Considering electrons
and electron neutrinos to have an electron number of 1, and
considering a positron
and anti-neutrinos (including the
anti-electron neutrino) to have an electron number of -1,
the sum of the electron numbers in the outputs of a
particle collision must be the same as this sum was in the inputs
of the collision |
neutron→proton
+electron+anti-electron
neutrino (total electron number of inputs is 0, net electron
number of outputs is 0) |
neutron→proton
+electron
(total electron number of inputs is 0, but net electron number of
outputs is 1) |
Each
of the examples given here of allowed particle collisions is only one
of the many possible
outputs that might be influenced by the laws above. When you have very high-energy particles colliding, many output particles can
result (and nature's burden in following all these laws becomes
higher).
Now
let us consider a very interesting question: does nature require
something special to fulfill these laws – perhaps something like
ideas or computation or figure-juggling or rule retrieval?
In
the case of the first of these laws, the law of the conservation of
mass-energy, it does not seem that nature has to have anything
special to fulfill that law. The law basically amounts to just saying
that substance can't be magically multiplied, or saying that
mass-energy can't be created from nothing.
But
in the case of the law of the conservation of charge, we have a very
different situation. To fulfill this law, it would seem that nature
requires “something extra.”
First,
it must be stated that what is called the law of the conservation of
charge has a very poor name, very apt to give you the wrong idea. It
is not at all a law that prohibits creating additional electric
charges. In fact, when two protons collide together at very high
speeds at the Large Hadron Collider, we can see more than 70 charged
particles arise from a collision of only two charged particles (two
protons). So it is very misleading to state the law of the
conservation of charge as a law that charge cannot be created or
destroyed. The law should be called the law of the conservation of
net charge. The correct way to state the law is as I have
stated it above: the ratio between the proton-like charges (in other
words, positive charges) and the electron-like charges (in other
words, negative charges) in the outputs of a particle collision must
be the same as the ratio was in the inputs of the collision.
This
law, then, cannot work by a simple basis of “something can't be
created out of nothing.” It requires something much more:
apparently that nature have something like a concept of the net
charge of the colliding particles, and also that it somehow be able
to figure out a set of output particles that will have the same net
charge. The difficulty of this trick becomes apparent when you
consider that the same balancing act must be done when particles
collide at very high speeds, in a collision where there might be more
than 70 charged output particles.
I
may also note that for nature to enforce the law of the conservation of
charge (more properly called the law of the conservation of net
charge), it would seem to be a requirement that nature somehow in
some sense “know” or have the idea of an abstract concept – the
very concept of the net charge of colliding particles. The “net
charge" is something like “height/weight ratio” or “body mass
index,” an abstract concept that does not directly correspond to a
property of any one object. So we can wonder: how is it that blind
nature could have a universal law related to such an abstraction?
In
the case of the law of the conservation of baryon number, we also
have a law that seems to require something extra from nature. It
requires apparently that nature have some concept of the total baryon
number of the colliding particles, and also that it somehow be able
to figure out a set of output particles that will have the same
total baryon number. Again we have a case where nature seems to know
an abstract idea (the idea of total baryon number). But here the idea
is even more abstract than in the previous case, as it involves the
quite abstract notion of the
total of the protons and neutrons (minus the total of the antiprotons
and antineutrons). This idea is far beyond merely a physical property
of some particular particle, so one might be rather aghast that
nature seems to in some sense understand this idea and enforce a
universal law centered around it.
The
same type of comments can be made about the law of the conservation
of lepton number. Here we have a law of nature centered around a
concept that is even more abstract than the previous two concepts:
the notion of electron number, which involves regarding one set of particle types (including both charged and neutral particles) as positive, and another set of particle types (including both charged and neutral particles) as
negative. Here is a notion so abstract that a very small child could
probably never even hold it in his or her mind, but somehow nature
not only manages to hold the notion but enforce a law involving it
whenever two particles collide at high speeds.
The
examples of particle collisions given in the table above are simple,
but when particles collide at very high speeds, the outputs are
sometimes much, more complicated. There can be more than 50 particles
resulting from a high-speed proton collision at the Large Hadron
Collider. In such a case nature has to instantaneously apply at least
five laws, producing a solution set that has many different
constraints.
For
historical reasons, the nature of our current universe depends
critically on the laws described above. Even though these types of
high-speed relativistic particle collisions are rare on planet Earth
(outside of particle accelerators used by scientists), these types
of particle collisions take place constantly inside the sun. If the
laws above were not followed, the sun would not be able to consistently produce
radiation in the way needed for the evolution of life. In addition,
in the time immediately after the Big Bang, the universe was one big
particle collider, with all the particles smashing into each other at
very high speeds. If the laws listed above hadn't been followed, we
wouldn't have our type of orderly universe suitable for life.
By
now I have described in some detail the behavior of nature when
subatomic particles collide at high speeds. What words best describe such
behavior? I could use the word “fixed” and “regular,” but
those words don't go far enough in describing the behavior I have
described.
The
best words I can use to describe this behavior of nature when
subatomic particles collide at very high speeds are these words: programmatic and
conceptual.
The
word programmatic is defined by the Merriam Webster online
dictionary in this way: “Of, relating
to, resembling, or having a program.” This word is very appropriate
to describe the behavior of nature that I have described. It is just
as if nature had a program designed to insure that the balance of
positive and negative charges does not change, that the number of
protons plus the number of neutrons does not change, and that overall
lepton number does not change.
The
word conceptual is defined by the Merriam Webster online
dictionary in this way: “Based on or relating to ideas or
concepts.” This word is very appropriate to describe the behavior
of nature that I have described. We see in high-speed subatomic particle collisions that
nature acts with great uniformity to make sure that the final stable
output particles are one of the five types of particles in the list
above (protons, neutrons, photons, electrons, and neutrinos). It is
just as if nature had a clear idea of each of these things: the idea
of a proton, the idea of a neutron, the idea of a photon, the idea of
an electron, and the idea of a neutron. As nature has a law that
conserves net charge, we must also assume that nature has something
like the idea of net charge. As nature has a law that conserves
baryon number, we must also assume that nature has something like the
idea of baryon number. As nature has a law that conserves lepton
number, we must also assume that nature has something like the idea
of lepton number.
This
does not necessarily imply that nature is conscious. Something can
have ideas without being conscious. The US Constitution is not
conscious, but it has the idea of the presidency and the idea of
Congress.
So
given very important and fundamental behavior in nature that is both
highly conceptual and highly programmatic, what broader conclusion do
we need to draw? It seems that we need to draw the conclusion that
nature has programming. We are not forced to the conclusion that
nature is conscious, because an unconcious software program is both
conceptual and programmatic. But we do at least need to assume that
nature has something like programming, something like software.
Once
we make the leap to this concept, we have an idea that ends up being very
seminal in many ways, leading to some exciting new thinking about our
universe. Keep reading this blog to get a taste of some of this thinking.