Sunday, May 24, 2015

Hansel A. Montalvo Castro: Components of Matter: A Contradictory Mystery

In daily life, it is not difficult to understand the way that objects move or how they interact each other. If a ball is released from rest at any reference frame near the surface of the Earth, it is known that it will fall freely approximately with a gravitational acceleration. By the other hand, it can be described a more complex movement such as a car displacement, using mathematical analysis of energy and force interaction. However, when scientist try to understand how atoms, electrons and light behaves, it is noticed that it is not so easily as describing a macroscopic object. 

Curiously, there exists a contradictory phenomenon. It is not completely possible to use kinematics formulas in order to describe or predict how an electron will move. In fact, there is a principle that states it is impossible to know the position and momentum of particles at the same time. In addition, if more precisely the position of a particle is determined, the less precisely its momentum can be known. The previously statement is known as the Uncertainty Principle, formulated by Werner Heisenberg in 1927. Thinking about this fascinating principle, arises an interesting question: If objects are composed by particles as electrons; why objects do not behave at the same way electrons do? As it is observed in the Universe, it is impossible for an object to be at two places at the same time, however, the electrons comprising an object can be anywhere, almost at different positions simultaneously! At this point of the XXI century, it is difficult to be the first one on thinking about something. Back in history, scientists as Niels Bohr and Max Planck began to study particles and discovered new physics laws to describe the microscopic behavior of matter. Complex mathematics and experiments related to the movement of particles gave way to the development of quantum mechanics. However, the understanding and acceptation of stablished statements in this physics’ branch were controversial in the scientific community.

This controversy is not surprising, human beings are scientist by instinct, people base their knowledge and opinions in what they can see and prove by themselves. In fact, the great mind of Albert Einstein disliked the idea of accepting that the laws of motion left room for such vagueness related to the particles behavior. Einstein said: “God does not play dice with the Universe”. It was difficult to him to accept that the intuitively notion of the kinematic physics was not useful to describe particles and the sub-atomic world. Nevertheless, now days the majority of physicists today accept the laws of quantum mechanics as an accurate understanding of the particle behavior. The truth is that, no matter how contradictory is the movement behavior of the macroscopic world against the sub-atomic one, the laws used to describe both are functional now days.

However, it cannot be ignored that for many years, space and time were used to think as fixed and unchanging; but Albert Einstein made up to demonstrate that these physical dimensions are relative to the observer. What if it can demonstrate that not only space and time are relative to the observer, but also movement? It is already known that describing the position and velocity of an object depends of a reference frame. Then, what if this idea is extended for the complete analysis of motion itself? Maybe with this analysis it can be solved the contradictory behavior of the movement of particles against the movement of objects. Analyzing this idea, it can be stablished the following statement: Since particles are very small in comparison to visible objects, it is difficult to describe their movement as the same way kinematics describe objects motion itself. Likewise, if it is consider the physical world (our world) as very small against a bigger one, the objects movement will be difficult to understand as particles, coexisting the possibility that at great differences of sizes, from a bigger reference frame than the physical world, the objects movement is also uncertain. If it is imagine that a person is able to be small as a particle, that person will perceive the electrons and light movement as normally a person observes a car’s movement. As the same way, if it is imagine that a person is large enough to see Earth equivalent in size scale as a particle, the Earth movement will be also uncertain to describe. 

In conclusion, it can be mention that the idea stablished in this short essay it can sound incoherent and meaningless. However, it is part of a creative analysis and natural intuition. Maybe after all, objects motion is not different from the fundamental particles motion, but instead humans and objects can also behave as particles if they are observed from a large scale. There exist the possibility that if Earth is observed from far away in space, it will appear to move as an electron does. After all, mater is composed by particles and it cannot be surprising that objects behavior are determined by its constituent particles.

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