the lost man chronicles
73. feeling quixotic (about string theory)

"When I examine myself and my methods of thought,
I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy
has meant more to me than my talent
for absorbing positive knowledge."
~ Albert Einstein

I just felt what it is like to hold the secret of the universe in the palm of my hands.

Really.

I was in the rest room washing them, when for no special reason I decided to cup them, just like God might, and lo and behold, it now seems to me, that I saw what She sees.

I was bouncing the streaming gurgle of water lithely up and down and the chaos of tiny and large and round, as well as elliptical, bubbles jumping about in an otherwise clear solution— looked strangely familiar. A divine déjà vu of sorts which I could not immediately pin down or deduce or decide where this chronological glare gleamed from, nor what past it gleaned into.

Then, as most epiphanies do, it startled me with the realization of The Source.

It was the force and the energy that is imperceptibly imagined by String Theory and its haunted theorists.

Last night, I watched The Elegant Universe which attempts to explain what is the insane underlying and overriding premise of physics' hottest idea. Essentially, it is being touted as A Theory of Everything which ties what was once a troubling contrast between Einstein's general theory of relativity, which explains the forces of the universe as they are held together by the law of gravity—and the theories of quantum mechanics which continually scale down the guiding forces from atoms to electrons-protons/neutrons and ultimately, quarks.

String theory takes the widely accepted and used alphabet of quantum mechanics and proclaims that there are even smaller particles that make up these letters, which like serifs and lines and curves constitute a, b and c. These are what have been labeled "strings" —elastically oscillating, vibrating, twirling and jumping loops of infinity that chaotically tie everything we know, are and cannot see in the universe.

As a result, there is a great unraveling of what is known as the primary Gordian knot of contemporary theoretical physics. Long held to be incompatible, general relativity can now be reconciled with QM. Hence, it is the Holy Grail, the Quixotic Quest for the unified field theory which claims it proves that the grand Don of science, Albert E., was not such a quack with a far-fetched fantasy, after all. Thus, this is what I saw in my aqua divination. Believe or not. At least, this is what I thought to be the liquid sensation of the mirror image of the dynamic diagram which the show about the Theory of Everything presented as the visual flow of the bed of strings that hold us all together.

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
It is the source of all true art and all science.
He to whom this emotion is a stranger,
who can no longer pause to wonder
and stand rapt in awe,
is as good as dead:
his eyes are closed."
~ Living Philosophies,
Albert Einstein, 1931

Gordian knot: an intricate knot tied by King Gordius of Phrygia and cut with his sword by Alexander the Great after hearing that whoever undid it would become ruler of Asia






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