the universe is singing a song to us and we're all a part of it

hello world and breakbeats(z) NATION!!! I'm writing my blog on some quantum physics theories combined with my own interpretations and understanding of our universe. I'm also mostly going to go in-depth on my perspective and understanding of things. While much of this article is scientific, a lot of it is still theoretical and being tested as I write this all out. With that, let's BEGIN!!!!!

Photo taken from "Interstellar" (2014), Directed by Christopher Nolan

protons, neutrons, and beyond

Everyone is familiar with the atom, the matter that makes up pretty much everything in the known universe. In the nucleus (center) of the atom, we have protons and neutrons in the center, bound together. Orbiting around them are electrons, which are a lepton- something that will become important later. Many of us are familiar with these concepts, but let's take it one step further. If we were to zoom in even further into our protons and neutrons we will meet our new friends, QUARKS!!!!! I love quarks so much, I'm such a fan of quarks, here is a chart of the 3 families of quarks (With some extras I'll touch on later).

(Photo taken from the Lederman Science Center and FermiLab Education and Public Engagement)

Quarks

I understand that this chart may look complicated, but STAY WITH ME HERE!!!!!!! Okay, so we have three families of quarks (They come in pairs of two): Up/Down Quarks, Top/Bottom Quarks, and Charm/Strange Quarks. Up & Down quarks are the most common- we are made of these type of quarks. We don't see Top & Bottom quarks often because we're only really able to see them in particle accelerators (NOT something you see every day). Finally, we have Charm & Strange quarks, which also form in particle accelerators, but we see many of them in neutron stars, and these particles are called hadrons (They come from groups of quarks that bond together. Some trivia about Strange quarks is that they're named "Strange" because that was literally the reaction of the scientist when he discovered them. Also, another interesting fact is that we believe we have discovered ALL the quarks, which is pretty neat when you think about it. This essentially makes the chart above a complete chart.

Leptons

Leptons are much simpler than quarks because our good friend the electron is actually just straight up a lepton!! In a similar way to quarks, leptons help make up all of the matter in our universe. The biggest difference is that the lepton is kind of like the particle that holds the atom/matter together, in very simple terms. We have 3 types of leptons: the electron, the muon, and the tau. The electrons hold together stable matter, while muons and tau deal with more unstable matter. Each lepton also has a neutrino variant, which essentially enforces conservation of energy laws in nuclear and spatial processes.

Quark Theories

Before I get into actual quantum physics theories, there's one scientific fact I need to get out of the way that is important for this theory. Quarks are weird because they always come in sets of 2 BUT unlike gravity, friction, and every law of attraction, the pull between them to come back together actually gets STRONGER the FARTHER they are from each other. This leads to another odd reaction, if we separate 2 quarks from each other and we let go to let them collide, THEY CREATE MORE PARTICLES!!! ISN'T THAT FASCINATING???? This is where we enter into quantum theory land and I'm taking you to the greatest boxing match of the century BLACK HOLE VERSUS TWO QUARKS. Okay so pretty much, if I theoretically were to split two quarks and throw one into a black hole while holding the other here, what would happen if the quarks collided in the singularity? Well, we know that the black hole is sucking in everything around it with an insanely strong gravitational force, especially when we get closer to the singularity. This begs the question, what is a black hole?

Photo taken from apbiolghs on Youtube from their video "Gravity Visualized"

For starters, let's imagine that this blue trampoline is the fabric of space. Let's imagine the black object in the near center is the sun, it's a pretty big celestial body right? It has a very large mass so it sinks deeper into the trampoline (fabric of space). What a black hole is (theoretically) is an object that is able to bend this much space while being an astronomically smaller object. If our sun is a bowling ball on this trampoline, our black hole is like a marble that's able to cause the same amount of sinking into the trampoline as the bowling ball. This is realistically impossible, which is why we theoretically have these black holes. Anyways, BACK TO THE FIGHT!!!! If one of our quarks is heading straight into this black hole while our other one is still here with us, what would happen if I let it go? I think that theoretically there are two options here. Either option A, the quarks collide with an amount of strong force that creates an astronomically large amount of particles. This in theory could "fill" all the space the tiny, marble black hole is taking up on our hypothetical trampoline of space (Theoretically closing the black hole). Option B is the quarks collide and the universe ends SEE YA!!!

string theory

I will now be talking about, can I get like a marching band and chamber choir here, STRING THEORY!!! TRUST ME ITS NOT AS COMPLICATED AS IT SOUNDS!!!!! Okay it is super complicated, they have NOT fully proven it but they're getting really close to getting all the math correct. String theory as a concept is easy to understand but all of the math that goes along with it is beyond the understanding of most people, me included. String theory essentially states that if we zoom in to the farthest degree of the atom past the protons, neutrons, electrons, quarks and everything, we will encounter these rings of energy called "Strings". Strings are these one dimensional rings of energy that, depending on the way they're "plucked", constitute the entire way that the atom and it's parts form.

Photo taken from New Scientist

The universe is one big song and we're all a part of it. Everything is music, everything is strings being plucked, we are the song of creation. Music is everywhere, in every person, object, moment, these vibrations are omnipresent. Science and math are the language and alphabet of the universe and they're just ways to help us understand this great song that is creation. Math gives us the equations that can then be attributed to the sciences to help us understand a broader scale of the universe, our environment, ourselves, and more. Sorry, went on a bit of a tangent there. One of the biggest things about String Theory is that it requires higher dimensions, which I will get into now.

"But Dan, How are we able to conceptualize dimensions higher than our own???"

It's okay UIC Radio enjoyer, all will be explained, and then I like do a flip or something awesome, I'm not sure. The 0th dimension would just be a dot on a graph, it has no volume, mass, shape, or direction. The 1st dimension would just be a line, it can only go two ways and it has no depth. The 2nd dimension is where I will start to include demonstrations. The 2nd dimension would be like a drawing, they can go forward, backward, left, and right, but up and down do not exist to them because they lack the depth/volume we have in the 3rd dimension. If I draw a stick person then I draw a cube around them to imprison them and I say "Just jump over it", nothing will happen. They would have no concept of up and down, jumping or the up direction wouldn't exist. In a similar vein, in our 3rd dimensional existence, all we need is a cube to imprison us: 4 walls, a ceiling, and a floor. This leads to a theoretical 4th dimension which focuses on time. A being from the 4th dimension, while looking at you, wouldn't just be perceiving you as you are now but they would be seeing you in every second of your existence at once. In this sense, if they were to see you trapped in that cube, they would be saying, "Why don't you just go to a different TIME when you weren't in prison". These examples are all from Neil Degrasse Tyson, who was a great scientist until he began developing political opinions. I think one of the coolest things about the 4th dimension is we actually have a theoretical shape from it- the tesseract.

Photo taken from ScienceABC

The tesseract is essentially a cube within a cube BUT if we were to look inside of it we would see what appears to be endless rows of cubes in every direction. It's a geometric idea that will probably never be completely understood by us. Another interesting tesseract fact is that in Christopher Nolan's "Interstellar" when Coop goes through the black hole, the space that he's in is supposed to be a tesseract. The number of dimensions we observe really depends on what version of string theory you're looking into. A lot of the older ones suggest 26 while the modern theories are pretty solid on there being 9 spacial dimensions with 1 time dimension for a total of 10. I know all of this sounds really odd and imperceivable, but if you look at the image above, it's just adding another layer of depth onto the previous one. I think that if you think about it like that it's a lot easier to digest this concept of these higher dimensions.

The show's over YOU CAN GO HOME NOW

Thanks for reading my blog UIC Radio enjoyer!!! I hope it was understandable to a degree, my goal is to explain the concepts in a way that it's easy to grasp what I'm saying no matter your knowledge level. I hope you're all taking care of yourselves and I hope you always get home safe. I find myself looking deep into the faces of every passing stranger and finding a strange familiarity in each of them. If I truly believe that I feel love towards each person I see then that means everyone is loved, even if they don't know it. In this way, there is a reality that I take part in where everyone is universally loved. I mourn and I grieve for them all as well, I think someone ought to do it so I've been filling those shoes. But today is a time for joy and love, tell everyone around you that you love them and care for them. Everything in the universe is constantly changing and going through transduction, changing from one state to another. Love may change but it will never die.