yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal
riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking. The contemplation of this world beckoned like a liberation.”
Many physicists, including Einstein, have been
inspired by the hope that under the complexities of this vast, observable Universe we might find something simple. One discovery
after another, in the long history of our physics, has seemed to indicate that we were moving in that direction. Richard Feynman
once remarked that some of us regard it as good physics if what was to be explained is complex and the explanation is simple.
Yet, since this search has been attended by a certain measure of frustration, I should like to address myself to what I see
as a very serious problem: Is there any basis for thinking that the reality underlying our physics might be simple?
An enormous simplification in our understanding of the Universe came when Mendeleev
and others reduced the number of building blocks to some 92 chemical elements of the periodic table, and Prout even suggested,
in 1815, that all the other elements might be made from hydrogen. But by the time Burbidge, Burbidge, Fowler and Hoyle had shown that, with the possible exception of some of the helium,
all the other elements could be produced from hydrogen by nucleosynthesis in the interiors of the stars and in stellar explosions,
the number of elementary particles was beginning to compete with the number of elements in the periodic table.
Another great simplification in our understanding was the reduction of the energies
of the Universe, by the ancient Hindus, to the five great elements of antiquity, gravitational energy, kinetic energy, radiation,
electricity and magnetism, perceivable by our five senses.1 We have had to add the nuclear energies to their list, but the list is still small and getting smaller. Maxwell's
equations reduced electricity and magnetism, and optics, to electromagnetism, and we now have the electroweak of Glashow,
Weinberg and Salam which loosely connects the weak nuclear force with electromagnetism. Now the aim is to reduce the list
still further with the grand unified theories and supergravity. But thus far, none of these efforts has turned up something
It is in the face of this frustration that I suggest a search for fossils,
cosmological fossils. If an underlying simplicity does exist, should it not have left its traces in what we see? After all,
we know of the existence of the dinosaurs from the traces which they left in the rocks before the advent of the flowering
plants. Can we find fossils of an underlying simplicity?
Usually, when we think of fossils, we think of evidences,
in the rocks, for life forms that existed long ago. We think of such things as petrified wood or trilobites or the petrified bones of dinosaurs. But our
question here is this: Can we find evidences, in our physics, for the existence of a simple reality behind the world which
we see? Is there a way of looking at this thing which allows us to understand that the nature of such a reality would have
to leave its traces in the behavior of matter, just as the dinosaurs have left their traces in the rocks?
Needless to say, I think there is. I think that such a way of looking at things lies hidden in Einstein's special
theory of relativity, and it is his equations and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle which we shall use as the tools for our excavation. It is my opinion that the full consequences of the Einsteinian
revolution have not yet hit the fan.
So first let's take a look at our tools. What is Einstein's special
theory of relativity, and what makes it so different from the rest of our physics? And why are the details of our physics
always blurred by Heisenberg’s breath of uncertainty?
All through my youth Einstein’s
relativity theory was presented as a great mystery. In those days it was said that there were only five people in the world who understood it. And every time I looked at the equations there
was the square root of minus one. Now that I am older, I think I understand why it was presented as a mystery. It is because
it was presented by the mathematicians, and Einstein himself is said to have said, “Ever since the mathematicians have
started on relativity, I myself no longer understand it.”
But the reason that relativity
fell into the hands of the mathematicians
is because it
is a geometry
theory, not something else, and that is what makes it so different from the rest of our physics. Most of our physics is about
the behavior of matter and energy in the framework of space and time, but special relativity theory is about the framework
Classical physics, like our genetic programming, saw time as independent of the three
dimensional framework of space, which it took to be Euclidean. Most of us have been exposed, somewhere along our educational
careers, to Euclid's geometry in two dimensions, and in three. I was galvanized by it, and the instructors of my youth would call on me only when no one else
in the class could answer the questions. But Euclid's geometry is a theoretical geometry about a theoretical space which does not in fact exist, and what Einstein pointed out in 1905
was that some of the problems of our
physics were connected with a misunderstanding of the space‑time framework against which we see them. He suggested that
the geometry of the real world is 4‑D rather than 3‑D and that time is the fourth dimension.
time does not come into Pythagoras' equation (for four dimensions) like another dimension of space. It comes in with a minus
sign, because space and time are opposites. Although all four dimensions come into the equation squared, time comes in squared
with a minus sign. And that's where the mystery began. Because it is easier for mathematicians to handle all four dimensions
squared with plus signs, Minkowski put the square root of minus one in front of the time dimension and put a plus sign in
front. Although that wouldn’t confuse a mathematician, it certainly
confused the general public, and helped to make of relativity a great mystery. I believe it also kept people from noticing
that space and time are opposites. To quote Gerard Pardeilhan, “We owe this extravagance to the First Church of Minkowski.”
Space and time come into Einstein's equations as a pair of opposites in the sense that if
the space and time separations between two events are seen to be equal, then the total separation, in space-time, between
those two events, will be seen to be zero. And this is true for all observers, regardless of their states of motion. Although
the observers may disagree on the time separation and on the space separation between the events, they will all agree on the
total space-time separation. The ones who see the bigger distance between the two events will also see the bigger time.
this changed geometry sees the emission and absorption of a single photon as adjacent events in space-time, and the problem
of how the photon gets from one event to the other, is seen as a Newtonian problem in an Einsteinian Universe. This geometry sets the separation between
the perceiver and the perceived at zero, whether the message comes by photon, graviton, meson or neutrino. (We see an event away from us in space by seeing
it in the past.)
But in 1905 Einstein changed the physics as well as the geometry. In the appendix
to his relativity paper he pointed out that what we call mass is just potential energy (E = mc2). And when we found
that mass and energy are the same thing we had a problem. We had two units for the same thing, the gram and the erg. Now one
gram is the energy of an atomic bomb, and one erg, as someone has pointed out, is the kinetic energy of a two‑gram beetle
walking one centimeter per second. So the c2 in Einstein’s equation tells us that carefully handled, the
kinetic energy of 9 x 1020 two-gram
beetles walking one centimeter per second would vaporize Berkeley.
But if what we see as
mass is simply potential energy, as suggested by Swami Vivekananda to Tesla in 1896, (and it's 500 atom bombs per pound),
then what kind of energy is it? There are three answers. The astronomers see it as gravitational. The particle physicists
see it as nuclear. And we all see it as electrical. These are the two sides and the edge of the same coin. The particles are
wound up against their electrical fields by being so small. They are wound up against the gravitational field by being
so dispersed. And they are wound up against the uncertainty principle because we can know where they are in space and time.
Mach felt that inertia here must somehow depend on inertia there, i.e. the inertia or mass of nearby matter must somehow be
influenced and determined by the inertia or mass of distant matter. But before we understood that inertia or mass is
simply energy, and before we understood what kind of energy it is that makes this Universe massive, it was difficult
to connect Mach's principle to the rest of our physics. Einstein tried to build Mach's principle into relativity, but it is
generally conceded that
he failed. But when we see that the electrical wind-up of the particles against their smallness, and the gravitational wind-up
of the particles against their dispersion
are two sides of the same coin, the connection between Mach's principle and the rest of our physics becomes obvious. The particles
have gravitational rest energy (or inertia) by being spaced out, in the gravitational field, from all the rest of
the matter in the observable Universe. So we see that the inertia of a particle is not determined by the proximity of nearby
matter but by the remoteness of distant matter.
In order to appreciate what
has happened to our physics at the hands of Einstein's equations and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, let's look back to a time before 1900. The world view of classical
physics saw the Universe as consisting of real particles with real mass and real energy, moving through real space in real
time, and we may represent it by a diagram.
In 1905, mass, energy,
space and time were still considered to be separate and independent entities. Although as far back as 1896 it had been suggested
to Tesla by Swami Vivekananda that what we call mass is simply potential energy, it did not immediately become part of our
physics. (It did not become part of our physics till Mileva Einstein, who was a close friend of Tesla, put it in the appendix
to the relativity paper in 1905.) It was then that Einstein's geometry took out the line between space and time, and his physics
took out the line between mass and energy, leaving us with a mass‑energy discontinuum in a space‑time continuum. But we
have already seen that the line comes out between the continuum and
the discontinuum because the wind‑up of the particles is geometrical. The particles
are wound up against gravity by being spaced out, and they are wound up against electricity by being small (space in). And
finally, they are wound up against the uncertainty principle if we can know where they are in the continuum.
Now with the lines of demarcation between mass, energy, space and time obliterated,
we are not left with a new model of the Universe. We are left with a question mark, and with the suggestion that whatever
it is, it must be beyond space and time, and perhaps, outside of our physics. That might go a long way toward explaining why we have not been able to put our fingers on an underlying simplicity.
But we can still say something about it. If it's beyond space and time, it must be changeless, infinite and undivided, since
the smallness and dispersion of the particles can be only in space, and since their changes can be only in time.
If this suggestion is correct, and thus far it's only a suggestion, then why do we
see the changeless as changing? Why do we see the infinite as minute electrical particles? And why do we see the undivided
as dispersed through the far reaches of space and showing gravity and inertia? It is conceivable that, through a breath of
we might see
the changeless as changing without producing any change in it, and that we might see the infinite as minute particles without
dividing the undivided. After all nothing happens to a rope when you mistake it for a snake. But why should the minute particles
be electrical? Why should the dispersed particles fall together by gravity? And why should the changing resist every change
in its state of motion?
I believe it is because you cannot mistake a rope for a snake without
seeing the rope. Otherwise you could mistake it for a Chevy. It is the length and diameter of the rope that are seen as the
length and diameter of the snake. And that is where I see fossils. We have no other explanation for gravity, electricity and
inertia except as fossils of what I see as an underlying simplicity beyond space and time and outside of our present physics.
As I see it, gravity, electricity and inertia are fossils. It is a fossil of the undivided
that makes the dispersed particles fall together. It is a fossil of the infinite that makes the minute particles electrical.
And it is a fossil of the changeless that makes what we see as matter resist every change in its state of motion. The gravitational
energy of the Universe could go to zero only if the dividedness of the Universe could go to zero. And the electrical energy
of the particles could go to zero only if the size of the particles could go to infinity. As I see it, if the nature of the
underlying reality had been different, the fossils would have been different, and our physics would have been different. Recently,
after one of my lectures in Calcutta, someone asked me, “How do you know it's not superimposed on nothing?” “No,
no, no!” I said, “Then the zero would show in our physics.” That's not what shows. It's the infinitude that shows as electricity.
It's the undividedness that shows as gravity. It's the changelessness that shows as inertia. And that's why the Universe is
made of electricity, gravity and inertia and not of something else.
Now if these things
are fossils, and if this Universe is apparitional rather than actual, then we should see the evidences for it elsewhere in
our physics. Is that the significance of the conservation laws? The Universe cannot be actual. It cannot have arisen through
any process of our physics without completely violating the conservation laws. The energy at the end of such a process is
always equal to the energy at the beginning. Only the form of the energy changes, never the amount. Energy cannot arise by
any such process. It cannot be actual. It must be apparitional, a fossil. Only its changes could be actual. (Only its changes
could arise by action.)
But if the Universe which we see is made of pairs
of opposites, it represents no actual change, just as when you mistake a rope for a snake, it represents no actual change.
We see space against time, the gravitational plurality against the electrical duality, plus against minus, and spin-up against
spin-down, and it all balances out. If the momentum of the Universe in one direction is balanced by its momentum in the opposite
direction, and if the angular momentum of the Universe in one direction is balanced by its angular momentum in the opposite
direction, and if the positive charges are balanced by the negative charges so that the total charge of the Universe is zero,
then the Universe represents no change in the changeless.
(Are there any other evidences that
the first cause of our physics is apparitional? I think so. I see Pauli's Verbot and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle
as such evidences. If the first cause is apparitional, and if the Universe which we see consists of an electrical duality
seen against a gravitational plurality, then there should be some mechanism for preventing the demise of the one in the presence
of the other, lest the dancer disappear and leave a pirouette behind. As I see it, the uncertainty principle prevents the
demise of the duality in the presence of the plurality, and the exclusion principle prevents the demise of the plurality in
the presence of the duality. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle prevents the electron from sitting on the proton in
the hydrogen atom because the proton is gravitationally different from
the positron, and Pauli’s exclusion principle prevents the neutrons from sitting together in a neutron star because
each of them has only half a unit
of spin, only half of the spin duality.)
It is a little difficult to say what these suggestions predict in the way of physical
measurements, but I suspect that they predict that the protons will not decay. If hydrogen is the primordial apparition, then,
it seems to me, that neither the protons nor the electrons should decay.
If the first cause of our physics is apparitional, and we have seen that it cannot be actual, and if the Universe is like the snake for
which a rope has been mistaken, then we can understand why everything we see is blurred by this ‘breath of uncertainty,’
and why the observer is always mixed up in what is seen. When a rope is mistaken for a snake, although the length and diameter
of the rope are seen, there is always an uncertainty in the nature of the snake, and the observer participates in what is
seen. The observer participates in the perception of the snake. As John Archibald Wheeler has suggested, we live in a “participatory
We are all genetically programmed, along with the
seagulls and the dogs, to see the Universe through a classical, Newtonian bias. All I am suggesting is that we lay that bias
aside, take Einstein's equations a little more seriously, and take a long, hard look at these cosmological fossils and the
evidence that the first cause of our physics must be apparitional, to see if there could really be some basis for thinking
that under the complexities of this vast, observable Universe there might be something simple.
1. Our orientation in the gravitational field is sensed by the saccule in the ear. Kinetic energy,
as temperature, is sensed by the skin. Radiation is sensed by the eye. Electricity and magnetism are sensed by the tongue
and the nose. (Protons taste sour and the molecular structures sensed by the nose are held together by magnetic bonds.)