Monday, November 12, 2012

Musings triggered by Quarks

There's an old, tongue in cheek idea that I first heard in relation to Dante's Inferno. What if hell as we envision it now, didn't exist until Dante imagined it, at which point, God made it so?

This month's (Nov. 2021) Scientific American contains an article titled "The Inner Life of Quarks: What if the smallest bits of matter actually harbor an undiscovered world of particles?" Chemists and physicists of the early 19th century thought atoms were indivisible, but in the 20th century they were found to be composed of even smaller entities: electrons, neutrons, and protons. Nothing could be smaller that that, could it? But yes. We now know these particles are made of still smaller ones. Most recently physicists thought that the smallest, indivisible particles were quarks and leptons. But now, Dr. Lincoln and others suggest they may be made up of still more miniscule particles.

I don't really believe this is the case, but it makes me smile to think that, just possibly, God is playing with us. Not as in trying to test our faith or anything like that, but as in having fun. What if God is engaged in a creative dance with some of our best and most determined researchers? What if each time they burst open and describe one group of "indivisible" particles, God lays down another one, like another geo-cache waiting to be discovered?

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