The Meaning of Life

Those who know me best will tell you that I am a big fan of Physics. And I don't mean schoolboy Physics, the Physics of secondary school. You know the sort of thing, copper-plating iron rods, or collapsing oil tins under a vacuum or trying to get Trevor Rimmington to drink the Potassium Bromide, all for no apparent reason except making Rimmington drink the chemicals because that was fun. Nor am I talking about the Physics of Fulcrums and Levers and Weights, that impenetrable world of engineering and mechanics.

No. I am talking about the Physics of the very big stuff. The Big Bang, Galaxies and Relativity, etc... and the Physics of the very small stuff. Photons, Baryons and the really esoteric head swimming stuff like Quantum Loop Gravity.

Why? Well I suppose when I first got wind of all this it seemed incredibly exciting. The idea that you could look up at the night sky and begin to have a vague notion of how to make sense of it all seemed like too good a chance to miss. I suppose this is why some people turn to religion. But for me when I hear the question "What's it all about?" answered by "God", I can't help feeling a little short changed. If the answer starts, "Well, as Werner Heisenberg stated at the seventh Solvay Conference.." I get the feeling that someone has taken the question seriously and given it some thought.

I know that many are put off the so called 'New Physics" by it's sheer bizarreness. Quantum mechanics is SO counter intuitive that some are disinclined to even contemplate it. Take Quantum tunnelling for example. It appears that a photon (a particle of light) can pass through an otherwise impenetrable object by popping up in one of it's possible states on the other side of the barrier. Of course mention this in passing to people over dinner and they start measuring you for the strait jacket. But would you expect the Universe to be explained by anything less exotic. Even the religious claim that their explanation moves in mysterious ways.

It's strange to me that folk still try to de-bunk Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, the two theories at the heart of the very big and the very small. Because in many real, tangible ways they both affect everyday modern life. When the military where developing the GPS system that so many of us now rely upon in our cars, they would not believe that they had to build relativistic compensations for the satellites that serve it.

Relativity describes Space and Time. Put simply, the faster you move in Space, the slower Time passes for you. Even with the comparatively slow speeds of the GPS satellites, without relativistic compensation their atomic clocks would soon be out of synchronisation and the entire Global Positioning System collapse.

Equally, without the advances that have been made in our understanding of Quantum Mechanics, your fast computer or game machine could not exist. And the next time you admire the rainbow reflection on the back of a CD or DVD remember you are seeing an actual Quantum Phase effect.

And for most of this we have Albert Einstein to thank. In 1905 he produced three scientific papers. One dealt with Special Relativity and another (on the photoelectric effect) formed the basis for modern Quantum Physics. It was for this paper that he won the Nobel Prize ten years later which is ironic given that by then he opposed Quantum Mechanics and despised its probablistic nature. As he famously said, "God does not play dice." Sorry Albert, but if He exists, it appears he does.

So I leave you with the magnificence of the Universe. No one has summoned it better than Eric Idle in his sublime 'Galaxy Song'. There, in perfect meter and rhythm he lays out the mind-boggling dimensions of the Universe. And I join him in the hope he conjours in the last line of that song...

"And you better hope
There's intelligent life
Out there in Space
'Cause there's bugger all
Down here on Earth."

Right on Eric.