Imagine that light is neither a particle nor a wave.  Instead, we only see light because there is a potential path for light to travel between whatever object we’re looking at, and our eyes.  So then, what is dark?  Dark is the impossibility of light.

Now, I had a couple problems with this.  First off, if this is the case, then where does the light come from?  The only answer I was given was basically “we don’t know”.  But, I think I’ve solved the puzzle that is this proposition.  Again, let’s imagine that light is neither a particle nor a wave.  Instead, think of light as a field of potential.  If you don’t know what a potential field is, think about gravity or voltage.  We can describe both of these as a type of potential, and observe the potential compared to other places in the field.  These fields are not local fields, they are everywhere, but they are very weak away form the sources.

So, what is the source for light’s potential field?  Well, this is going to sound goofy, but light sources.  When describing a potential field, we can think of two different things that could set up the field: sources or sinks.  With voltage, with think about potential sources and sinks.  Electrons are sources, and protons are sinks.  With gravity, we really only think about sinks, and everything is a sink.  Everything will move toward a gravitational sink due to gravity.  With light, we can have both — potential sources: the sun, light bulbs, etc.; potential sinks: black dye, etc.

However, I’m not sure if this really gets rid of the idea of particles and waves.  For example, with gravity, we currently know that mass somehow affects other mass, but we’re not quite sure how.  We theorize, however, that there is a particle, the higgs boson, that “carries” gravity.  The same goes for voltage: we need charged particles in order to interact with the field.  How, then, do objects and our eyes interact with the field in order to affect and see light?

This is only one of the problems I have with this theory.  If potential fields are caused by particle interactions, then we’re really not changing the way we think about light.  I also have to wonder if math would work out if this were the case.  For example, would energy and mass still be related by the famous e=mc²?  How else would this affect math we’ve experimentally determined to be true?

Or does that really matter?  We know that Newton’s law of gravity, F=(Gm₁m₂)/r², works very well to compute the gravitational force. However, it is not the complete picture.  Perhaps it’s the same with light: we’ve discovered equations that accurately predict certain things, but we’re not looking at the complete picture until we assume that light is a potential field.

Besides that, can we test this theory?  Any scientific theory that can’t be tested is basically useless.  The example that comes to mind is String Theory.  With String Theory, we have beautiful math that could describe a bunch of things.  However, the theory is very convoluted, and we haven’t been able to come up with a way to test it.  So, it’s a useless theory.  Why, then, are people working on it?  Well, people who believe in String Theory are looking for a way to test it.  But, that’s beside the point.  If we can’t test the theory that light is a potential field, it has no use to us, and there’s not much point in looking at it, even.

On top of all this, I have to question what difference this view of light would make.  How would viewing light as a potential field alter how we view the universe?  If the answer is that this would greatly change the way we look at the universe, then perhaps we should look into this a bit.  If it proves to be true, we could learn a lot about our universe.

However, until then, this is just a fun thought experiment, and an interesting example of what is, and what isn’t a valid scientific theory.  As a final note, I should say that this idea was proposed to me not as a scientific question, but as a philosophical one.  Just need to point that out.

Science and religion are not at odds.  Science is just to young to understand.

In preparation for going to Fermilab, my AP Physics C class has been learning about quantum physics and string theory.  I find all of this rediculously fascinating.  Yet, when I start hearing dates, it sounds like all of this was figured out so long ago.  Then, I look at the LHC (Large Hadron Collider), and realize that the greatest discoveries are yet to come, and are even within my lifetime.

For those unaware, I’ll start off with quantum physics (which we know to be true).  The scale of things in quantum physics goes like this: an object is made of atoms.  These atoms contain electrons orbiting a neucleus.  This neucleus contains protons and neutrons.  And (this is where quantum mechanics comes in), protons are made of smaller pieces called quarks.  Without going into too much detail, there are six types of quarks, but we only need two of them to make up protons and neutrons.  So, to make up everything we normally see, we only need two quarks and an electron.  This sounds nice, but it leaves some mathematical gaps.

This is where string theory comes in.  String theory says that these quarks are made up of tiny, vibrating bits of energy called strings.  Now, when I say tiny, I mean MINISCULE.  These strings are going to remain invisible to us for quite some time.  Also, there’s another problem.  In order for this to make sense, there needs to be not three or four dimensions, but eleven dimensions (one of time, three of space, and seven additional spatial dimensions).  Assuming that all of this is true, the math works out beautifully, and everything seems to make sense.

But, this isn’t really science unless we can test it.  Since we already ruled out seeing these strings, what do we do?  We look at what isn’t there.  But, for that, we need the LHC.  String theory says that gravity is created by particles called “gravitons”, which “escape” into the eleventh dimension, so we don’t feel much of their influence.  This is where the LHC comes in.  When we turn it on and look at a collision, if the energy we put in, and the energy we get out doesn’t match, it must have “escaped” somewhere.  This could be a graiton escaping into the eleventh dimension, beyon our reach.

If you’re still reading, and understand all of that, let me first take this time to congratulate you.  But, there’s more confusion to come.  One of the things the LHC hopes to solve is how the big bang happened.  With conventional physics, it seems that there’s just no way the big bang could have taken place so suddenly.  Well, string theory has an explaination for this.  It says that our universe exists on a “membrane” in the eleventh dimension.  Of course, there are other membranes “parallel” to our universe in the eleventh dimension.  If another membrane touched ours, that could have created enough energy for the big bang to have happened.

OK, now I’ve gotten past most of the mucky technical details.  On to the point.  I was explaining this to, of all people, my mother.  She was, naturally and as I am, confused and perplexed by this prospect.  String theory is a very outlandish and strange-sounding claim.  So, she responded simply:

I have an explaination for you.  God.

Which reminded me that I truly don’t believe that science is “at odds” or “against” religion.  In fact, I think science and religion go hand-in-hand.

Let’s look at the whole prospect of some greater being, and intelligent design, without getting into too many mucky details.  Intelligent design has exactly my point in its title: intelligent design.  This implies that there was some “thought” process that went into creating humans, and we are as we are for a reason.  Doesn’t that directly say that God gave us brains so we can use them?

God didn’t mean for us to be wandering blindly in an unknown world.  He lets us learn about how the world around us works, and lets us explore.  He gave us brains so that we could be hit in the head with an apple and go “Hmm… gravity!”  He gave us brains so that we could build machines like Fermilab and the LHC, in order to further our understanding of what’s actually going on around us.

And, maybe, God fits right into string theory.  Of course, we have to go a bit away from religious norms, but that’s why I’m not Catholic.  What if there were eleven dimensions?  We know that any action in a higher dimension directly affects the lower dimensions.  Who’s to say that God isn’t an eleventh-dimensional being that is able to orchestrate the membrane that our universe sits on in the eleventh dimension?  Please, take this claim at face value.  I am not a religious scholar, just a person with thoughts.

The Catholic church has long been against science.  They have just recently made a formal apology to Galeleio, saying that he wasn’t crazy and that their actions were inappropriate.  It’s time for a more radical change in the way science and religion interact.  We need religion that supports science (no, not scientology), and science that supports religion.  The crazy thing is, that while we don’t see the former, we are starting to see the latter.

Our universe is amazing.  Really, just ful of beautiful… stuff.  If we look at the mathematical equations for how we can describe different events in our universe, we find about twenty different constants that are required to make these calculations.  Among these are a number that describes the strength of gravity, the mass and charge of an electron, etc.  Here’s where it gets crazy again.  If we change, even very slightly, one of these twenty constants… the universe falls apart.  It just doesn’t seem to work.

Doesn’t this seem to require some higher being.  The odds of these numbers being in perfect harmony with each other by pure chance, the odds of planets and galaxies existing, and the odds of life exisiting on Earth are enormously against us.  If everything were just random, I wouldn’t be here right now, writing this blog post.  So, it seems that science requires religion.

But, religion keeps saying that they don’t need science.  ”How does this work?”, you ask?  ”God made it that way.  Don’t ask stupid questions,” they say.  Well, here’s what I say: there is no such thing as a stupid question, only stupid answers.  And, it seems to me that “don’t ask stupid questions” is a stupid answer.  If religion were to embrace and support science, we could still have God, we would just view him in a different way.  As Angels and Demons puts it, scripture is never wrong.  However, how we interpret scripture could be very wrong.

Ignoring all this, string theory seems to have an answer to my random perdicament.  In the eleventh dimension, there are infinitely many universe membranes, so there are infinitely many universes.  This would mean that the numbers are bound to line up somwhere or other, so, we exist.  But, this doesn’t rule out the notion of an eleventh-dimensional being.

With all the evidence of beauty around us, I find it impossible to believe that there isn’t a God.  If for no better reason than to give us hope and a purpose in life.  I think that if we are to continue with scientific achievement, religion will eventually be forced to embrace science, and use scripture to fill in the details. Heck, we might even find that science needs to use God for things to make sense.

Disclaimer: I am not a religious or scientific scholar.  These thoughts are purely my own, and I engourage you to post why you agree or disagree with the points that I have brought up here.  All scientific details in this post are, to the best of my knowlege, true.  However, I always welcome corrections if I’m wrong.

Curious about string theory?  I would reccomend starting with Imaginging the Tenth Dimension (watch the video).  From there, browse YouTube for other videos about string theory.  Brian Greene has a good video or two explaining more.  Still looking for more?  Look for the “Elegant Universe” NOVA series.