The Illusion that is Us.

"Reality is often disappointing", said Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War. These words now have an avid memebase, just as so many other iconic phrases in the whole of cinema. But how can reality be disappointing if it doesn't actually exist?

The opinion of many people is that reality is probably the most abstract concept to be ever conceived by mankind (yet, I hope). We feel it, we use it, we say it's disappointing, but then, everybody, at some point in their life, has to think about how reality cannot be true. And my opinion is yes, a sensory reality isn't true. Advaita also says that our current reality is an illusion, but that is a topic that is best suited for another day, as today we are looking at the physical approach to the problem. A mental and more philosophical approach is what I had in mind, but it is better to start with the physics.

Some time ago, I looked at the short IBM film "A Boy and His Atom". Watch it once. Though it's just a small two minute video, you are moving around actual molecules (CO molecules) to get the film. Moving this trillion-atomed body itself when we awake is one of utmost difficulty. And these scientists moved around infinitesimal molecules. How amazing is that? 

But looking at something so extremely small begins to completely reprogram your feelings about the whole world. Just think, you are made up of trillions and trillions of those little atoms, and the only reason you can't see them is because photons are smaller than atoms. However, we can see atoms on a scanning tunneling microscope as raised coral-like structures. They are the defining features of matter, and it is amazing that we finally know that we are all made of atoms. 

Going smaller, we find quarks, bosons, gluons, muons, different flavours of quarks, and photons. However, beyond them lies the unknown. We do not have a clear idea of what exactly makes up those quarks, and also, we have a very limited explanation regarding the existence of matter from nothing. How a quark-antiquark pair, or an electron-positron pair suddenly emerge and disappear as quickly as they appeared baffles most of us.

If matter is truly just an energised disturbance in space-time, we can prove and disprove so many theories simultaneously. For example, we can prove that the string theory is true not just mathematically but also really. However, an energised disturbance must have a source. It must have some point of emergence to actually exist. However that won't be precise due to the uncertainty principle thus making the measurement semi-useless. You have to be able to visualise something that can actually disturb space-time. That is because, because in our current observations, despite seeing the large number of particles and their collisions, there are but few cases in which ultra-fundamental particles originate. Take the case of a typical Feynman diagram. 

An electron (e^-), and a positron (e⁺) annihilate each other to produce a photon, which in turn gives out a quark-antiquark pair and a gluon (the green squiggly line). 

Now, you see the photon, which is having a dual nature of being both a wave and a particle, is in fact, a disturbance. So, yes, it does make sense that some disturbances can give out things.  But what is it exactly that creates the illusion of matter if the interatomic space is so huge compared to the size of the atom?

We know that a difference in masses can get a lot of energy, by E=mc². It also means that some mass can give you energy. But, though seen experimentally in the opposite way, that is energy giving you mass, with  quark-antiquark pairs popping in and out of existence every few femtoseconds, you can see the disturbance, but you can't see where it began clearly. 

This matter that we are just energy is one of utmost importance, because, as in my previous blog, if mass is nothing but energy, then the universe actually can go kaboom at any time it wants to. Both the end and the beginning can be massless, thus negating the need for an "omnis universum e universum" style theorem.

But if we are pure mass, it would then imply the existence of a fundamental mass. We currently have the smallest ever mass to be the mass of a neutrino, which despite its mass, is not part of an atom. Trillions of them pass through our body per second, but the atoms do not care.

Now think, if a particle with a mass is travelling through your body, not one, not two, but trillions, shouldn't the atoms have noticed? A few might have, but the overall effect is so, so ridiculously small that we needn't bother measuring their biological impact. A small effect implies that it is between the intermolecular and interatomic spaces. And if a number like a trillion go through our body every second and nothing happens, it means that we are all just empty space.

That's it.

Our senses sense nothing but empty space.

We are empty space.

I mean, sure, we're made of atoms and their electromagnetic interactions control most of our daily lives, but look closer. We see, and we know, that we're way bigger than we're actually supposed to be, in life, as well as in the universe. Picture a dark and desolate wasteland, with some small luminous objects rushing here and there. That is what we look like inside. 

Well then, internal beauty then is truly black for everybody, and we are all wastes of space.