FIGWINE

truth and beauty in art and life

Physics of the Future

My son took my hand today and led me down the street. It was the first time he has done this, and the draw of his intent was utterly compelling and absolutely undeniable. I felt pulled by a force unrestricted by muscle, gravity or magnetism. Later, shortly after the sun set, the full moon rose. I thought of its forces acting on the Earth from such a distance, undeniable and compelling. These thoughts drew me toward musings on the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy and to the oracle of Google where I read about the four fundamental interactions in the natural world-- strong force, weak force, gravitational and electromagnetic. The pull from my son's tiny hand and hurrying steps did not seem to be any of them. I am wondering under what classification the interaction related to intention and attention would fall. Or love. Or the feeling you get when speaking to two people after they have been speaking to one another about you. Or when you know someone is lying to you. I've spent years testing many "fundamental interactions" that occur in the social realm and in the non-human world of nature, but I did not know about these classifications. The distinctions are not entirely clear to me, but it seems there is something being left out of the research at the Large Hadron Collider, the 17-mile long tunnel buried deep in the Earth in which humans study the interactions of particles. Something closer to a unified theory may be discoverable, not through formulas or in laboratories and perhaps not verifiable by the current standards of physical science, in the pull of a young child intent on exploration. They supposedly have found that in fact weak force and electromagnetism are different manifestations of the same force-it's called electroweak force. I imagine they will find all the forces to be manifestations of the same power of interaction that begins with a pulsing of will, intent brought into action. The interaction of my son's tiny steps and tiny grip with my attention to his needs created a force immeasurable. We were particles colliding at invisible speeds creating as of yet undiscovered quantities of massless light, only detectable by the ripples left in the wake of its activity. Our walk down the street a demonstration of timeless forces still mysterious to the science of today but an open secret to children and those willing to be drawn by tiny footsteps.