Catching light and other interesting “wow” stuff

I’ll be flying to Halifax this weekend, so how wonderful to read in Marcus Chown’s The Quantum Zoo: A Tourist’s Guide to the Neverending Universe that the faster I travel, the slimmer I get.

Hallelujah to that. (Although, to be fair, runners have been telling us that for years.)

Chown’s book was full of other intriguing possibilities, too.

Some men (and some women) will be pleased to know that every breath you take could contain an atom breathed out by Marilyn Munroe. People working in the penthouse suites of tall buildings will learn to their chagrin that we age faster at the top of a building than at the bottom. It’s also interesting to know that a cup of coffee weighs more when it is hot than when it is cold.

My favourites, though, are these:

• Atoms are mostly empty space. Without all the empty space, the entire human race would fit in the volume of a sugar cube.

So much for needing personal space.

• If we were able to catch up with a beam of light, we would see a stationary electromagnetic wave. This is impossible. (According to some complex equations worked out by James Maxwell.) Since seeing impossible things is indeed impossible, we could never catch up with a light beam. 

Infinite, elusive light. It reassures me to know that something out there can’t be captured, tied down and made to conform.

It makes me wonder what else might have the same elusive quality?

“As a science writer I am constantly amazed by how much stranger science is than science fiction, how much more incredible the Universe is than anything we could possibly have invented.” —Marcus Chown

The Way: a reformed atheist’s poetic struggle with elusive spirit

This photo came into my Facebook feed last week. My reaction: “I’m not making things up. I’m experiencing things that you scientists haven’t figured out how to explain—yet.

This morning I read in the paper about a University of British Columbia study that showed that faith diminished after study subjects performed analytical tasks, or looked at Rodin’s “The Thinker.”

These are timely for me, because I spent last weekend in a Healing Pathway workshop. Think Reiki, with scripture thrown in. So, I spent my weekend working with something I could not see or measure.

Now, I am someone who insists on having one hand on tangible science while the other explores the divine. When I don’t have something solid to hold onto in the one hand, it creates some apprehensions and discomfort.

Most times a healthy balance is in order. It’s not wise to launch ourselves into airy-fairy ethereal worlds without ever touching down. But I don’t believe it’s wise to ground ourselves too thoroughly in the science either, for it would deprive us of gifts of intuition.

I couldn’t see or measure what was going on over the weekend, but I could feel it. In fact, I was left trembling by it.  I decided at the end of the weekend that I had to let go temporarily of my need for the solid facts on the science side of the equation. Science just isn’t there yet, but I believe it will be some day. Should I deny myself extraordinary experiences in the meantime? Nope. So, out of my weekend experience, this poem came through me to you.

And my message to science is this: Catch up, will ya? Find the way.

The Way

© 2012 Arlene Somerton Smith

A tree waits in a mid-summer field,
shimmering elm arms stretched wide,
refuge

A speck blooms on the golden horizon,
takes the silhouette of a man,
slow

He stumbles to the gnarled grey trunk,
breathes deeply of respite and rest,
slumps

Knees drawn up, head cradled and rocking,
soul carved hollow by pain,
waiting

A figure long of robe materializes,
neither male nor female,
cosmic

At a distance the figure waits and watches
for we must ask, that is
the way.

The man looks into eyes that hold infinity,
reaches out his trembling hand,
“Please.”

Palm to palm, light radiates through the pair from
the sire universe and the birthing earth,
aglow

The man unfurls with peace and power,
receives the healing, for that is
the way

When the light retracts, hands release,
the long-robed figure recedes,
vapour

The man trembles, rises, re-arms,
resumes his journey on his path,
doubting

Along the road he meets a friend. Smiling,
and curious the friend asks, “Who was that
stranger?”

Shrugging, “Oh, that? That was nothing.”
He turns. The tree and the long-robed figure,
imperceptible

Uneasy, two men continue down their road,
laughing and clapping each other on the back,
analyzing

But a tree and a figure wait in a mid-summer field,
when needed you will see them, for that is
the way

Stephen Hawking: one totally badass scientific wonder

The folks over at Online PhD sent me their original graphic bio (below) of the life of Stephen Hawking. Everything about the man is extraordinary: his mind, his career, and his reason-defying longevity.

On their site, they write: “As you work toward your PhD, there’s probably no greater inspiration than Stephen Hawking, who received his own PhD at the age of 23. Aside from that, he’s made some of the most notable scientific contributions of our time and dedicated his life to discovering how the universe works. He’s also been confined to a wheelchair for over 40 years. He’s the longest-surviving ALS patient, a certified genius, and a total badass.”

His life makes me ponder other dimensions and miraculous potentials that defy reason.

I don’t know if he would like that or not.

Quantum Wonders – Part III

“Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.”  —Niels Bohr

Read the quotations below and substitute the word “God” for “quantum theory” or “quantum mechanics.”

“Quantum theory can’t be explained.” — J.P McEvoy and Oscar Zarate

 “I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.” —Richard Feynman

“You don’t have to understand this—nobody understands it. You just have to accept that this is the way the quantum world works.” —John Gribbon 

Our eminent scientists start to sound an awful lot like theologians, don’t they?

Quantum wonders – Part II

A wonder-full world

Before Nicolas Copernicus came along, humans lived with the unquestioning conviction that they could believe what their eyes told them. The sun rose in the east, revolved around the Earth and set in the west. The Earth was the centre of the universe. Imagine how incomprehensible the idea of the earth revolving around the sun was to the uneducated masses in the 1500s. Their eyes clearly showed them something quite the opposite, and the powerful religious elite of the time strongly endorsed the idea that our world was the centre of everything. Copernicus was considered a heretic and a crackpot.

Quantum Wonders – Part I

. . . although the materialist viewpoint is undoubtedly the truth, it is not the whole truth . . . 

—from Creation: Life and How to Make It by Steve Grand

A story:

An English girl became pregnant at a very young age and, at the urging of her family, gave her newborn son up for adoption. Years later she decided to try to locate him and hired a detective agency to begin a search. One afternoon while the detective was still investigating, she walked along the river banks at Oxford. When an Oxford rowing crew passed by, her mouth grew dry and her adrenaline starting pumping. She just knew that her son was one of the rowers, and her detective later confirmed this “knowing” feeling. 

Her son’s adopted family discouraged contact with the woman so nine years passed before the two met for the first time. During this reunion she shared the story of seeing the team rowing at Oxford that day. He listened, fascinated, and said, “I was rowing that day, and I remember looking up to see a woman standing alone on the riverbank. I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck . . . Then the thought flashed into my head, ‘She is your mother.’” 

—from Unconditional Life: Mastering the Forces that Shape Personal Reality by Deepak Chopra