In a mine in South Dakota, one mile below the surface of the earth, scientists wait patiently by tanks filled with liquid xenon, a material as dense as rock, each surrounded by outer tanks of 70,000 gallons of water. They are waiting for the arrival of dark matter particles which, supposedly, will tap out a distinctive beat when they collide with the xenon. According to these scientists dark matter outnumbers regular matter in the universe by a ratio of five to one. Dark matter is so elusive that it as yet has escaped observation, but it must exist, according to current thinking, to explain certain phenomena, like why the spiral arms of constellations don't spin out into the universe from centrifugal force, but continue to be held in place. Also, the expansion of the universe, supposedly from the Big Bang, is considerably slower than first predicted, which must be explained by all this extra, yet undetectable mass, slowing down the expansive force of the Big Bang. While these scientists labor underground in South Dakota, other subterranean scientists labor dilligently in Switzerland, colliding subatomic particles at enormous speeds in search of the Higg's Boson. Physicist Thomas Higgs postulates a Higgs field which pervades the universe but is, like dark matter, undetectable, and collides with particles a millisecond after the Big Bang or other collisions or explosions of particle busting intensity, conferring mass on some particles and none on others (see my post 'Higgs and Creation'). Dark energy, dark mass, the Higgs field and the Higg's boson, the exploration in South Dakota and the exploration in Switzerland seem closely related. They all stem from our bewilderment regarding mass, how to explain it's origin and how to explain why our usual Newtonian formulas regarding mass and force don't seem to come close to working when we are dealing with the gigantic forces and masses of the universe or with the forces at work within the minuscule dimensions of the atom.
The prevalent philosophy of most Western people on this planet at the moment is one of materialism. This philosophy is based on the 'real' things, the solid things that we can see and measure around us. It is terrifying to a materialist (at least to a thinking materialist, and those may be few and far between) that there may be no real solidity what so ever to the universe. Originally it was thought that solid matter was composed of tightly knit indestructable pieces of matter called atoms. It was later discovered that those atoms were really separated by large distances (large in relation to the size of the atoms themselves) from each other and connected, not by matter, but by force fields of mutual attractions and repulsions). Still later, the atom itself was discovered to be composed of a 'solid' nucleus separated by large distances (large in relation to the nucleus itself) from electron particles or an electron field, which again, was held in place by non-material forces of attraction and repulsion. Now we have been able to pierce the solidity of the atomic nucleus and we have discovered within these seemingly solid protons and neutrons a bewildering array of much smaller subatomic particles, of quarks and gluons and mesons, all connected within the proton and neutron by force fields of mutal attraction and repulsion. So are these quarks and mesons the 'ultimate' particles, providing the 'ultimate' solidity to the universe, or are these too, ultimately, composed not of matter, but of forces, in the case of quarks, of two opposing forces, one expansive and centrifugal, one contractive and centripetal, in a tight embrace? What if all particles were, in fact, not made of anything solid at all, but were combinations of opposing forces, neutralizing each other in a stable configuration?
These force fields, by the way, in fact all forces, cannot be seen or measured directly, but only by their effect on matter, on particles and waves. The forces themselves are not material. We fall off the roof of a building because of a force, which we call gravity. Whether our understanding of gravity is correct or not, it is a force and not matter. In other words we don't go crashing to the ground because little 'gravity' particles are pushing down on us. There are no particles involved. The positive poles of magnets or negative or positive molecular ions do not repel each other because of particles or waves that push in between them. This happens because of a force, which, in this case, we call an electro-magnetic force, but it is no more material than the force that we call gravity is material. In fact all forces, the so-called weak force and strong force, as well, have no material base in and of themselves, but can only be measured by their effects on matter.
We have been brought up on a basic Newtonian model of mass versus force. There is a big rock in the road. How much force will it take to move that rock to the side of the road? We exert force against the resistance of mass to accomplish whatever we want to accomplish in the world. Certainly mass must exist. It's as real as your older, bigger brother sitting on you when you were a child and you not able to muster enough force to push him off.
Our understanding of gravity has changed in the past century. We used to think of gravity as Newton would have it, as a mutual attraction between masses, the much larger mass pulling the smaller mass in toward it, but the smaller mass exerting a pull on the larger mass as well. With Einstein we have come to view gravity as a bending in the curvature of time/space, but this is also due to the mass, the solidity of large massive objects. We understand that when we are moving a large rock, it is hard to do because of the attraction of that large rock to the center of the earth and we are really exerting a horizontal force to overpower this downward vertical force. We also know that if we were in a gravity free zone, within a space ship, for instance, that that heavy rock would have no weight or mass and we could easily move it with the flick of a finger. Yet we still think of this downward force as being caused by, as emanating from, this solid, heavy quality of the material of the rock. Yet what if there were nothing really solid or massive about the rock at all. What if the seeming solidity of the rock and all the particles within the rock had the appearance of solidity and mass because of opposing forces in stable configurations and not because of any matter at all?
In other posts (Higgs and Creation and Yin,Yang and Beyong) I have written a fair amount about yin and yang, the two opposing forces that many people believe (at least many people in Asia believe) are the structural foundation of everything in the universe. Yin is the expansive, centrifugal force and yang is the contractive, centripedal force. You may have heard that yin and yang attract each other. This is not quite true. Yin and yang ensnare each other. Yin and yang combine to form particles and waves, the yang preventing the yin from expanding out beyond the boundaries of the particle or wave and dispersing into infinity, by pulling it in toward its yang center, and the yin preventing the yang from contracting into itself and disappearing from the physical plane into the non-physical vortex that holds the universe together and that was the site of the Big Bang. Waves are more yin than particles, but they each have a shape. Shape has dimension because of the yin force and has boundaries because of the yang force. This is not an attraction, but a mutual entrapment. Yin still wants to escape from the pull of yang and exapand out into Infinity, and yang wants to escape from the outward push of yin and collapse into itself. This dynamic tension, the intensity of this pushing and pulling is what gives us the illusion of solidity. Within the nucleus of the atom are quarks which are particles not of matter, but of yin and yang in a tight embrace. Some of these particles (mostly in the center of the proton or neutron) are more yang and some of these particles (mostly toward the surface of the proton or neutron) are more yin. The proton and neutron are arrangements of these variously charged sub atomic particles held in a stable balance by their mutual attractions and repulsions, although the proton, being slightly more yang, is externally balanced by the yin electrons or electron fields which circle the nucleus and at the same time as they are pulled centripedally by the yang force of the protons, push out centrifugally by their own yin expansive force.
The real attraction is between smaller yang and larger yang. Yang pulls other yang toward it. Large accumulations of yang energy continue to attract more and more yang energy to it. The yin that is bound with yang in all objects modulates this pulling force. But this attraction of smaller yang to greater yang is the real explanation of gravity, of weight and mass. Physicists run into problems and create enormously complex formulations because they look at the world as a single force versus mass. There is the force of the expansion of the Big Bang versus the mass of all the material of the universe. There is the centrifugal force caused by the spinning arms of galaxies versus the mass of the material in these galaxies. If they would forget about mass, forget about any real solidity at all, and view the universe as an interplay of two countervailing forces in various configurations, not the interaction of a single force with mass, then, they would not have this problem. Yes, there is the expansive force of the universe, perhaps caused by the Big Bang. But there is the countervailing contracting force still pulling from the non-physical center of the universe where the Big Bang took place. Yes, there is tremendous centrifugal force caused by the high speed rotation of galaxies, but there is the countervailing centripedal force pulling back toward the denser, more yang center of these galaxies.
Just as there is no real mass, there are no 'massless' particles, as Western scientists refer to them. Every particle and even every wave maintains a shape. For this shape to be maintained, for this wave or particle not to break the confines of its boundaries and disperse out into infinity, there must be some, at least minimal amount of yang. The pull of this minuscule amount of yang cannot be detected on the Earth where the strongest gravitational pull is toward the yang center of our planet. Yet when light waves, for instance, pass by the much stronger yang pull of large stars and the dense yang center of galaxies, light waves and electro-magnetic waves are pulled toward them and we get the bending of waves that led to much of Einstein's theories about relativity and space/time.
Gravity, dark matter, the slower expansion of the universe, can all be explained by an understanding of the simple principles of yin and yang. These increasingly desperate searches for mass conferring particles and dark particles are in a sense, the last gasp attempts by materialists to find any solidity in the universe what so ever. Crawl out of your mine shafts and tunnels and give all this nonsense up. We live in a 'seemingly solid' world, but really a world of forces, forces which have no material bases at all. These forces are laws. Just like there are laws of gravity and laws of electro-magnetism, which are human attempts to describe how forces behave, there are laws of yin and yang (see 'Yin, Yang and Beyong'). In human society the laws that we create have to be externally enforced. There is the law and included in the law are the methods of enforcing the law should anyone violate it, or as a deterrant to people that are thinking of violating these laws. But in nature, the laws and the enforcement are the same. The inviolability of natural forces demand that the universe behave in certain ways. These laws cannot be violated, although they can be overcome. Living beings and machines created by living beings, are the only things capable of overcoming, not violating, but overcoming, natural forces. We do this biologically by metabolizing energy to overcome gravity and inertia, for instance, and pump blood to our heads, move food matter through our digestive systems, etc. We do this behaviorally, by summoning the energy to overcome these same forces so that we can do what we want to do. And we do it with machines, which are themselves a kind of metabolic system, by gathering energy and funneling it through a certain kind of shape and a certain kind of material, to overome natural forces and accomplish the task that the inventor of the machine had in mind when he first thought of it, and the users of the machine have in mind whenever they use it.
The force of gravity is not executed through particles which push down on you. The Big Bang force of expansion is not executed by particles that push out on you. Forces are non-material. Stop thinking of non-material forces versus particles, or versus mass, and think of two countervailing forces. In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth (the earth as a planet not being created for two more 'days' the reference must be to heaven force and earth force). Infinity bifurcates into yin and yang. Two different religions (Judeo/Christian and Taoist) from opposite sides of the world, saying exactly the same thing. The universe begins not with a Big Bang but with an idea, an idea of two countervailing forces and how they can interact to form a 'seemingly' solid universe.
I not only welcome your comments, I hunger for them.
