Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Stephen Hawking, Indeterminacy, God & Quantum Physics


"Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics."

- Stephen Hawking, The Grand Design, pg 5


"The universe itself has no single history, nor even an independent existence."

 - Stephen Hawking, The Grand Design, pg 6



Our everyday world-of-the-large confirms to our visual senses a reality that is not found present in the quantum world of subatomic orders and microscopic perplexities unseen, unknown and downright curious even to our adjusted scientific observations. We find ourselves in quantum worlds that violate everything that we sense and know in the world-of-the-large made up of a lifetime of experiences that tell us of our own version of reality. A reality that is naive and incompatible with the modern world of physics, and the quantum paradoxes that will confront our subjective form of model-dependent realism which we have attributed qualities of reality and truth to that cannot be supported at the particle level of quantum theory.

Model-dependent realism applies not only to scientific models but also to the conscious and subconscious mental models we create in order to interpret and understand our everyday world. There is no way to remove the observer in us from our perceptions of the world created either by our sensory processing and by the way we think and reason. Our models of realism are shaped by our interpretive structures, experiences and personal histories. It is the way that we perceive things. Some of us more acutely, more perceptively, more uniquely. In a sense, we see in 2D, our brain interprets in 3D, and we feel in 4D. But nevertheless, we build mental pictures, or models, of what we see, sense, and feel.

In the case of subatomic particles we cannot see them but our studies from science confirm to us that they exist. And that they exist unlike anything else we can compare them to in the macro worlds of our experiences. From these observations have come a wealth of information that gives to us the chemical world of the elements, their microscopic bonds of covalence, mutual attraction and non-attraction, nuclear forces, electron clouds and atomic charges. Continuing down to the sub-sub-atomic world-of-the-small we observe the even further perplexing minutia of quarks, leptons, neutrinos, muons, gluons, bosons  as the very, very, tiny forces of the universe. Elements and forces that contain a duality of nature to them... a duality that can at once be observed and explained as a wave pattern or as an individual particle.

Starting with Isaac Newton's classical models of physics, then James Clerk Maxwell's theory of electro-magnetism (which also includes the properties of light as an electro-magnetic wave particle called a photon; hence EM particles travel at the speed of light), and finally with Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity (dealing with gravity, space-time, and light) we come to the field of study known as quantum physics. Which takes each of the above theories to the microscopic level:

  • Per Maxwell we study the behavior of atoms and molecules in interaction with one another;
  • Per Newton the study of gravity at the subatomic level affecting subatomic bonds; and,
  • Per Einstein the quantum effects of gravity brought to bear upon particles warping space-time and thus creating gravitational warpage and dimensionality. That is, space-time is not flat but is curved and distorted by the effects of mass and energy upon one another making both space and time are intertwined within one another.

From these discoveries science can study the quantum nature of the universe as it looks at the gravitational affects of solar systems upon their parts; the hot surfaces of stars and their massive nuclear interactions within; how time-and-space are bent and ripped apart within black holes; and even construct histories of the universe backwards to its formative event known as the early primodial universe condensed to less than the size of a pin prick; containing no time as we know it (considered at this stage as a spatial dimension because of intense gravitational warpage); undoing all the natural laws of today's quantum physics because of its immense deflation; and scientifically indescribable when telling of the universe's initial state of chaos before its intense and immediate inflationary birth by the term "singularity."

By mathematic formula, and through scientific observation, quantum physics has found that our universe can have any possible history. And that it can have all possible histories simultaneously (the concept of multi-verses). However, in Einstein's theory, time still had a linear point of origin and was different from space. But when quantum theory is added to Einstein's theory of relativity, in extreme cases like that of black holes, or as the beginning point of early primodial universes, dimensional warpage can occur to such a great extent that time behaves like another dimension of space. Consequently, there can only be three effective dimensions of space and none of time (as a quality different from space). Time did not exist. It was however all of one beginning and ending intermingling with space as space-time. It was neither linear, compressed or stretched. It had no existence except as a spatial dimension (just as space had no separate existence unbound from time). They each were all one surface without boundary (called the no-boundary condition).

For the Christian theologian or philosopher this has important bearings to the biblical understanding of ex nihilo creation, meaning that in the beginning God created the world. In a sense, from the standpoint of quantum physics, this is not true. The universe already existed as a singularity with no beginning. There was no nothing to be created by YHWH (Yahweh) and the great I AM. The early universe was already present in its eternity-less form of pure energy and light. In a form we describe as small but within itself could be described neither as small nor large because there was nothing to compare it too. Space did not exist. The concept of large did not exist. Just as time did not exist. It was ageless. Pure. Filled with potentiality. Raw. And unformed like the metaphysical concepts we struggle to apply to describe this state of cosmic history.

But in another sense, the traditional Christian understanding of Genesis says that creation was formed from nothing. And in its formation it had a beginning. Perhaps this could be modified to mean that God sparked the universe from its state as a singularity into that of an inflationary universe. But in the classic sense of God being God, the traditional preference still posits that the universe could not exist even as a singularity without the hand of God giving to it its formless form and potential purpose. Who then sparked its creation as an energetic light event (from darkness, light!) and gave to it its cataclysmic birth. If not, we then confuse God and the universe as one essence and being (a form of pantheism). Or may speak of God and the universe as co-dependent upon one another, and mutually enabling each other's constructive being and essence (panentheism; held by process theology). However, the classic theistic standpoint still holds that God and His creation are separate from one another, and more importantly, that the one is born of God and not the other way around (thus, classic theism's postmodern equivalent is known as relational theism and is a synthetic blended position between classic theism and process theology).

Hence, God created the universe as a singularity, fashioning it into its many multiple versions of itself by creating from it an infinite series of multiverses bubbling into instant cosmic universes chaotically inflating and deflating with a rapidity too quick even for the human eye to behold in a blinding array-event of light and energy. Fashioning the universe we have today with just enough irregularity to give to us the necessary building blocks for life and necessary matter. This also will allow for the idea of indeterminacy which Einstein had noted when thinking of the quantum fluctuations of the universe and remarked that it was as if God were playing dice. In the Christian understanding of creation (and evolution) we call this idea the freedom (or, free will) that we observe within nature. Of its randomness, its indeterminate structure, its chaotic form of structure and development/sustenance of life systems. Even at the quantum level it can be shown that a single particle has no preference for its path, but takes every possible path simultaneously, giving to it different possible states of travel. We might pin down its location by our act of observing it, but in-between our observations, it takes all possible paths (according to Richard Feynman's Sum of Histories).

Consequently, we can describe the collapse of quantum space as that of a state of singular infinities. Where the universe doesn't just have one single history, but every possible history, each with its own probabilities and potentialities. And that our observations of its current state affects its past and determines the different histories of the universe, just as our observation of particles can affect their history and outcome. (However, in quantum reality this is not so... we are simply seeing one version of the many infinite versions of the universe's simultaneous forms). In the Newtonian sense, the past was assumed to exist as a definite series of events. In the quantum sense this is no longer true. It is affected and affecting. Almost circular because every probability had been explored. But more importantly, it describes to us the indeterminacy of nature, which is an important concept to think about when thinking of sin and this world's lament under the reign of sin. God gave to His creation the beauty of indeterminacy to offset the effects of sin's destruction upon creation (and humanity by extension). Without indeterminacy sin would have devolved God's majestic creative order without hope or help. But with it, God has wisely out-maneuvered the sustaining effects of sin upon His creation and creative purpose. (Curiously, some of the more subtle poems by men who have observed this same effect we simply thought fools for saying as such to our hastily pronounced errors... we can even find these same similar poetic observations in the Psalms and Proverbs.)

In the next article on quantum physics we will explore a little further the aspects of particle indeterminacy, probabilities and histories. If only to show the infinite largeness and wisdom of God as our Creator and Redeemer. Though creation is indeterminate and uncertain the Christian believer still understands that God is its mover and shaker. Without His will, determination, and divine action, even quantum's indeterminacy and uncertainty would boil away for naught, never giving to any multiverse its exquisite divine character of singularity and uniqueness. This then is the Christian understanding of creation.

R.E. Slater
May 30, 2012


continue to -






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Other related articles that I've written may be found here:

...In the quantum world of physics we have at-the-last but two interactions - one composed of matter particles and antiparticles (generally described as fermions), and the other composed of force particles (generally described as bosons, gluons and photons) - which interaction may either be absorbed or recoiled from in a series of quantum collisions that changes the motion and constitution of the particle itself. Thus, quantum electrodynamics (QED) says that all interactions between charged particles and antiparticles (fermions) can be described as an exchange of force particles which then forms the basis for quantum (force) field theory. From this postulation quantum physics then looks at how force particles can interact with each other starting with the weak nuclear forces ( of bosons W and Z), the strong nuclear forces of gluons (g), and than that of gravitational force particles (not pictured in the Standard Model below). The last force particle is the photon (or light) particle which is an included as an electrodynamic force particle.

When combined we get the following formulas:

Electromagnetism (EM) + Light/Photons = QED, Quantum Electrodynamics

QED + Weak Nuclear Forces (WNF) = EWF, Electroweak Nuclear Forces

The Strong Nuclear Force of quarks, or Quantum Electro-Chromodynamics = QCD (chromo for the colored/colorless pairs  and triads of quarks and antiquarks, known as mesons and baryons)

QED + WNF + QCD = GUT, the Grand Unification Theory (quantum physics holy grail)

G - gravitational forces are the weakest of the four forces but is long-range and has the greatest effective range of all the forces. And because it is accumulative as an attractive force it means that it can add up and dominate all the other forces. We see this strength in the destructive force of black holes which rips apart all the quantum bonds  of atoms and molecules as it draws in stars and cosmic matter into its event horizon and condenses them into infinitesimal singularities. The standard model cannot unify the first three forces (EM, WNF, SNF) with gravity. Hence, they are treated separately from gravity. In fact, gravity is not even included in the Standard Model's table of interactions.

QED + WNF + QCD + G = TOE, the Theory of Everything (later replaced by M-Theory's supersymmetries and other quantum postulations)



The Standard Model showing three generations of
matter particles (fermions) and force-carrying particles.






Study of the Four Quantum Forces
from Wikipedia.com


1 - The Electromagnetic Force (QED)

Electromagnetism is the branch of science concerned with the forces that occur between electrically charged particles. In electromagnetic theory these forces are explained using electromagnetic fields. Electromagnetic force is one of the four fundamental interactions in nature, the other three being the strong interaction, the weak interaction and gravitation.

Electromagnetism is the interaction responsible for practically all the phenomena encountered in daily life, with the exception of gravity. Ordinary matter takes its form as a result of intermolecular forces between individual molecules in matter. Electrons are bound by electromagnetic wave mechanics into orbitals around atomic nuclei to form atoms, which are the building blocks of molecules. This governs the processes involved in chemistry, which arise from interactions between the electrons of neighboring atoms, which are in turn determined by the interaction between electromagnetic force and the momentum of the electrons.

Electromagnetism manifests as both electric fields and magnetic fields. Both fields are simply different aspects of electromagnetism, and hence are intrinsically related. Thus, a changing electric field generates a magnetic field; conversely a changing magnetic field generates an electric field. This effect is called electromagnetic induction, and is the basis of operation for electrical generators, induction motors, and transformers. Mathematically speaking, magnetic fields and electric fields are convertible with relative motion as a 2nd-order tensor or bivector.

Electric fields are the cause of several common phenomena, such as electric potential (such as the voltage of a battery) and electric current (such as the flow of electricity through a flashlight). Magnetic fields are the cause of the force associated with magnets.

In quantum electrodynamics, electromagnetic interactions between charged particles can be calculated using the method of Feynman diagrams, in which we picture messenger particles called virtual photons being exchanged between charged particles. This method can be derived from the field picture through perturbation theory.

The theoretical implications of electromagnetism led to the development of special relativity by Albert Einstein in 1905.


The Photon (Light)

The Photon is an electromagnetic force particle. In physics, a photon is an elementary particle, the quantum of light and all other forms of electromagnetic radiation, and the force carrier for the electromagnetic force. The effects of this force are easily observable at both the microscopic and macroscopic level, because the photon has no rest mass; this allows for interactions at long distances. Like all elementary particles, photons are currently best explained by quantum mechanics and exhibit wave–particle duality, exhibiting properties of both waves and particles. For example, a single photon may be refracted by a lens or exhibit wave interference with itself, but also act as a particle giving a definite result when its position is measured.

The modern concept of the photon was developed gradually by Albert Einstein to explain experimental observations that did not fit the classical wave model of light. In particular, the photon model accounted for the frequency dependence of light's energy, and explained the ability of matter and radiation to be in thermal equilibrium. It also accounted for anomalous observations, including the properties of black body radiation, that other physicists, most notably Max Planck, had sought to explain using semiclassical models, in which light is still described by Maxwell's equations, but the material objects that emit and absorb light, do so in amounts of energy that are quantized (i.e., they change energy only by certain particular discrete amounts and cannot change energy in any arbitrary way). Although these semiclassical models contributed to the development of quantum mechanics, many further experiments[2][3] starting with Compton scattering of single photons by electrons, first observed in 1923, validated Einstein's hypothesis that light itself is quantized. In 1926 the chemist Gilbert N. Lewis coined the name photon for these particles, and after 1927, when Arthur H. Compton won the Nobel Prize for his scattering studies, most scientists accepted the validity that quanta of light have an independent existence, and Lewis' term photon for light quanta was accepted.

In the Standard Model of particle physics, photons are described as a necessary consequence of physical laws having a certain symmetry at every point in spacetime. The intrinsic properties of photons, such as charge, mass and spin, are determined by the properties of this gauge symmetry. The photon concept has led to momentous advances in experimental and theoretical physics, such as lasers, Bose–Einstein condensation, quantum field theory, and the probabilistic interpretation of quantum mechanics. It has been applied to photochemistry, high-resolution microscopy, and measurements of molecular distances. Recently, photons have been studied as elements of quantum computers and for sophisticated applications in optical communication such as quantum cryptography.


2 - The Weak Nuclear Force (WNF)

Weak interaction (often called the weak force or sometimes the weak nuclear force) is one of the four fundamental forces of nature, alongside the strong nuclear force, electromagnetism, and gravity. It is responsible for the radioactive decay of subatomic particles and initiates the process known as hydrogen fusion in stars. Weak interactions affect all known fermions; that is, particles whose spin (a property of all particles) is a half-integer.

In the Standard Model of particle physics the weak interaction is theorised as being caused by the exchange (i.e., emission or absorption) of W and Z bosons; as such, it is considered to be a non-contact force. The best known effect of this emission is beta decay, a form of radioactivity. The Z and W bosons are much heavier than protons or neutrons and it is the heaviness that accounts for the very short range of the weak interaction. It is termed weak because its typical field strength is several orders of magnitude less than that of both electromagnetism and the strong nuclear force. Most particles will decay by a weak interaction over time. It has one unique property – namely quark flavour changing – that does not occur in any other interaction. In addition, it also breaks parity-symmetry and CP-symmetry. Quark flavour changing allows for quarks to swap their 'flavour', one of six, for another.

The weak force was originally described, in the 1930s, by Fermi's theory of a contact four-fermion interaction: which is to say, a force with no range (i.e., entirely dependent on physical contact[1]). However, it is now best described as a field, having range, albeit a very short range. In 1968, the electromagnetic force and the weak interaction were unified, when they were shown to be two aspects of a single force, now termed the electro-weak force. The theory of the weak interaction can be called Quantum Flavordynamics (QFD), in analogy with the terms QCD and QED, but in practice the term is rarely used because the weak force is best understood in terms of electro-weak theory (EWT).[2]

Weak interactions are most noticeable when particles undergo beta decay, and in the production of deuterium and then helium from hydrogen that powers the sun's thermonuclear process. Such decay also makes radiocarbon dating possible, as carbon-14 decays through the weak interaction to nitrogen-14. It can also create radioluminescence, commonly used in tritium illumination, and in the related field of betavoltaics.[3]


3 - The Strong Nuclear Force (QCD)

In particle physics, the strong interaction (also called the strong force, strong nuclear force, or color force) is one of the four fundamental interactions of nature, the others being electromagnetism, the weak interaction and gravitation. At atomic scale, it is about 100 times stronger than electromagnetism, which in turn is orders of magnitude stronger than the weak force interaction and gravitation.

The strong interaction is observable in two areas: on a larger scale (about 1 to 3 femtometers (fm)), it is the force that binds protons and neutrons (nucleons) together to form the nucleus of an atom. On the smaller scale (less than about 0.8 fm, the radius of a nucleon), it is also the force (carried by gluons) that holds quarks together to form protons, neutrons and other hadron particles.

In the context of binding protons and neutrons together to form atoms, the strong interaction is called the nuclear force (or residual strong force). In this case, it is the residuum of the strong interaction between the quarks that make up the protons and neutrons. As such, the residual strong interaction obeys a quite different distance-dependent behavior between nucleons, from when it is acting to bind quarks within nucleons.

The strong interaction is thought to be mediated by gluons, acting upon quarks, antiquarks, and other gluons. Gluons, in turn, are thought to interact with quarks and gluons because all carry a type of charge called "color charge." Color charge is analogous to electromagnetic charge, but it comes in three types rather than one, and it results in a different type of force, with different rules of behavior. These rules are detailed in the theory of quantum chromodynamics (QCD), which is the theory of quark-gluon interactions.


4 - The Gravitational Force (G)

Gravitation, or gravity, is a natural phenomenon by which physical bodies attract with a force proportional to their masses. Gravitation is most familiar as the agent that gives weight to objects with mass and causes them to fall to the ground when dropped. Gravitation causes dispersed matter to coalesce, and coalesced matter to remain intact, thus accounting for the existence of the Earth, the Sun, and most of the macroscopic objects in the universe.

Gravitation is responsible for keeping the Earth and the other planets in their orbits around the Sun; for keeping the Moon in its orbit around the Earth; for the formation of tides; for natural convection, by which fluid flow occurs under the influence of a density gradient and gravity; for heating the interiors of forming stars and planets to very high temperatures; and for various other phenomena observed on Earth.

Gravitation is one of the four fundamental interactions of nature, along with electromagnetism, and the nuclear strong force and weak force. Modern physics describes gravitation using the general theory of relativity by Einstein, in which it is a consequence of the curvature of spacetime governing the motion of inertial objects. The simpler Newton's law of universal gravitation provides an accurate approximation for most physical situations.


Quantum Gravity

Quantum gravity (QG) is the field of theoretical physics which attempts to develop scientific models that unify quantum mechanics (describing three of the four known fundamental interactions) with general relativity (describing the fourth, gravity). It is hoped that development of such a theory would unify into a single mathematical framework all fundamental interactions and to describe all known observable interactions in the universe, at both subatomic and cosmological scales.

Such a theory of quantum gravity would yield the same experimental results as ordinary quantum mechanics in conditions of weak gravity (gravitational potentials much less than c2) and the same results as Einsteinian general relativity in phenomena at scales much larger than individual molecules (action much larger than reduced Planck's constant), but moreover be able to predict the outcome of situations where both quantum effects and strong-field gravity are important (at the Planck scale, unless large extra dimension conjectures are correct).

If the theory of quantum gravity also achieves a grand unification of the other known interactions, it is referred to as a theory of everything (TOE).

Motivation for quantizing gravity comes from the remarkable success of the quantum theories of the other three fundamental interactions, and from experimental evidence suggesting that gravity can be made to show quantum effects.[1][2][3] Although some quantum gravity theories such as string theory and other unified field theories (or 'theories of everything') attempt to unify gravity with the other fundamental forces, others such as loop quantum gravity make no such attempt; they simply quantize the gravitational field while keeping it separate from the other forces.

Observed physical phenomena can be described well by quantum mechanics or general relativity, without needing both. This can be thought of as due to an extreme separation of mass scales at which they are important. Quantum effects are usually important only for the "very small", that is, for objects no larger than typical molecules. General relativistic effects, on the other hand, show up mainly for the "very large" bodies such as collapsed stars. (Planets' gravitational fields, as of 2011, are well-described by linearized gravity except for Mercury's perihelion precession; so strong-field effects—any effects of gravity beyond lowest nonvanishing order in φ/c2—have not been observed even in the gravitational fields of planets and main sequence stars). There is a lack of experimental evidence relating to quantum gravity, and classical physics adequately describes the observed effects of gravity over a range of 50 orders of magnitude of mass, i.e., for masses of objects from about 10−23 to 1030 kg.


Comparison of Electromagnetic and gravitational fields

Sources of electromagnetic fields consist of two types of charge – positive and negative. This contrasts with the sources of the gravitational field, which are masses. Masses are sometimes described as gravitational charges, the important feature of them being that there is only one type (no negative masses), or, in more colloquial terms, 'gravity is always attractive'.


The relative strengths and ranges of the four interactions and other information are tabulated below:



Quantum Field Theories

Quantum field theory (QFT) provides a theoretical framework for constructing quantum mechanical models of systems classically parametrized (represented) by an infinite number of degrees of freedom, that is, fields and (in a condensed matter context) many-body systems. It is the natural and quantitative language of particle physics and condensed matter physics. Most theories in modern particle physics, including the Standard Model of elementary particles and their interactions, are formulated as relativistic quantum field theories. Quantum field theories are used in many contexts, and are especially vital in elementary particle physics, where the particle count/number may change over the course of a reaction. They are also used in the description of critical phenomena and quantum phase transitions, such as in the BCS theory of superconductivity.

In perturbative quantum field theory, the forces between particles are mediated by other particles. The electromagnetic force between two electrons is caused by an exchange of photons. Intermediate vector bosons mediate the weak force and gluons mediate the strong force. There is currently no complete quantum theory of the remaining fundamental force, gravity, but many of the proposed theories postulate the existence of a graviton particle that mediates it. These force-carrying particles are virtual particles and, by definition, cannot be detected while carrying the force, because such detection will imply that the force is not being carried. In addition, the notion of "force mediating particle" comes from perturbation theory, and thus does not make sense in a context of bound states.

In QFT, photons are not thought of as "little billiard balls" but are rather viewed as field quanta – necessarily chunked ripples in a field, or "excitations", that "look like" particles. Fermions, like the electron, can also be described as ripples/excitations in a field, where each kind of fermion has its own field. In summary, the classical visualization of "everything is particles and fields", in quantum field theory, resolves into "everything is particles", which then resolves into "everything is fields". In the end, particles are regarded as excited states of a field (field quanta). The gravitational field and the electromagnetic field are the only two fundamental fields in Nature that have infinite range and a corresponding classical low-energy limit, which greatly diminishes and hides their "particle-like" excitations. Albert Einstein, in 1905, attributed "particle-like" and discrete exchanges of momenta and energy, characteristic of "field quanta", to the electromagnetic field. Originally, his principal motivation was to explain the thermodynamics of radiation. Although it is often claimed that the photoelectric and Compton effects require a quantum description of the EM field, this is now understood to be untrue, and proper proof of the quantum nature of radiation is now taken up into modern quantum optics as in the antibunching effect.[1] The word "photon" was coined in 1926 by physical chemist Gilbert Newton Lewis (see also the articles photon antibunching and laser).

In the "low-energy limit", the quantum field-theoretic description of the electromagnetic field, quantum electrodynamics, does not exactly reduce to James Clerk Maxwell's 1864 theory of classical electrodynamics. Small quantum corrections due to virtual electron positron pairs give rise to small non-linear corrections to the Maxwell equations, although the "classical limit" of quantum electrodynamics has not been as widely explored as that of quantum mechanics.

Presumably, the as yet unknown correct quantum field-theoretic treatment of the gravitational field will become and "look exactly like" Einstein's general theory of relativity in the "low-energy limit", or, more generally, like the Einstein-Yang-Mills-Dirac System. Indeed, quantum field theory itself is possibly the low-energy-effective-field-theory limit of a more fundamental theory such as superstring theory. Compare in this context the article effective field theory.


String Theory

String theory is an active research framework in particle physics that attempts to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity. It is a contender for a theory of everything (TOE), a self-contained mathematical model that describes all fundamental forces and forms of matter.

String theory posits that the electrons and quarks within an atom are not 0-dimensional objects, but rather 1-dimensional oscillating lines ("strings"). The earliest string model, the bosonic string, incorporated only bosons, although this view developed to the superstring theory, which posits that a connection (a "supersymmetry") exists between bosons and fermions. String theories also require the existence of several extra dimensions to the universe that have been compactified into extremely small scales, in addition to the four known spacetime dimensions.

The theory has its origins in an effort to understand the strong force, the dual resonance model (1969). Subsequent to this, five different superstring theories were developed that incorporated fermions and possessed other properties necessary for a theory of everything. Since the mid-1990s, in particular due to insights from dualities shown to relate the five theories, an eleven-dimensional theory called M-theory is believed to encompass all of the previously distinct superstring theories.

Many theoretical physicists (e.g., Stephen Hawking, Edward Witten, Juan Maldacena and Leonard Susskind) believe that string theory is a step towards the correct fundamental description of nature. This is because string theory allows for the consistent combination of quantum field theory and general relativity, agrees with general insights in quantum gravity (such as the holographic principle and Black hole thermodynamics), and because it has passed many non-trivial checks of its internal consistency.[1][2][3][4] According to Hawking in particular, "M-theory is the only candidate for a complete theory of the universe."[5] Nevertheless, other physicists, such as Feynman and Glashow, have criticized string theory for not providing novel experimental predictions at accessible energy scales.[6]


M-Theory

In theoretical physics, M-theory is an extension of string theory in which 11 dimensions are identified. Because the dimensionality exceeds that of superstring theories in 10 dimensions, proponents believe that the 11-dimensional theory unites all five string theories (and supersedes them). Though a full description of the theory is not known, the low-entropy dynamics are known to be supergravity interacting with 2- and 5-dimensional membranes.

This idea is the unique supersymmetric theory in eleven dimensions, with its low-entropy matter content and interactions fully determined, and can be obtained as the strong coupling limit of type IIA string theory because a new dimension of space emerges as the coupling constant increases.

Drawing on the work of a number of string theorists (including Ashoke Sen, Chris Hull, Paul Townsend, Michael Duff and John Schwarz), Edward Witten of the Institute for Advanced Study suggested its existence at a conference at USC in 1995, and used M-theory to explain a number of previously observed dualities, initiating a flurry of new research in string theory called the second superstring revolution.

In the early 1990s, it was shown that the various superstring theories were related by dualities which allow the description of an object in one super string theory to be related to the description of a different object in another super string theory. These relationships imply that each of the super string theories is a different aspect of a single underlying theory, proposed by Witten, and named "M-theory".

Originally the letter M in M-theory was taken from membrane, a construct designed to generalize the strings of string theory. However, as Witten was more skeptical about membranes than his colleagues, he opted for "M-theory" rather than "Membrane theory". Witten has since stated that the different interpretations of the M can be a matter of taste for the user, such as magic, mystery, and mother theory.[1]

M-theory (and string theory) has been criticized for lacking predictive power or being untestable. Further work continues to find mathematical constructs that join various surrounding theories. However, the tangible success of M-theory can be questioned, given its current incompleteness and limited predictive power.




Supersymmetry

In particle physics, supersymmetry (often abbreviated SUSY) is a symmetry that relates elementary particles of one spin to other particles that differ by half a unit of spin and are known as superpartners. In a theory with unbroken supersymmetry, for every type of boson there exists a corresponding type of fermion with the same mass and internal quantum numbers, and vice-versa.

There is no direct evidence for the existence of supersymmetry.[1] It is motivated by possible solutions to several theoretical problems. Since the superpartners of the Standard Model particles have not been observed, supersymmetry, if it exists, must be a broken symmetry, allowing the superparticles to be heavier than the corresponding Standard Model particles.

If supersymmetry exists close to the TeV energy scale, it allows for a solution of the hierarchy problem of the Standard Model, i.e., the fact that the Higgs boson mass is subject to quantum corrections which — barring extremely fine-tuned cancellations among independent contributions — would make it so large as to undermine the internal consistency of the theory. In supersymmetric theories, on the other hand, the contributions to the quantum corrections coming from Standard Model particles are naturally canceled by the contributions of the corresponding superpartners. Other attractive features of TeV-scale supersymmetry are the fact that it allows for the high-energy unification of the weak interactions, the strong interactions and electromagnetism, and the fact that it provides a candidate for dark matter and a natural mechanism for electroweak symmetry breaking. Therefore, scenarios where supersymmetric partners appear with masses not much greater than 1 TeV are considered the most well-motivated by theorists[2]. These scenarios would imply that experimental traces of the superpartners should begin to emerge in high-energy collisions at the LHC relatively soon. As of September 2011, no meaningful signs of the superpartners have been observed[3][4], which is beginning to significantly constrain the most popular incarnations of supersymmetry. However, the total parameter space of consistent supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model is extremely diverse and can not be definitively ruled out at the LHC.

Another theoretically appealing property of supersymmetry is that it offers the only "loophole" to the Coleman–Mandula theorem, which prohibits spacetime and internal symmetries from being combined in any nontrivial way, for quantum field theories like the Standard Model under very general assumptions. The Haag-Lopuszanski-Sohnius theorem demonstrates that supersymmetry is the only way spacetime and internal symmetries can be consistently combined.[5]

In general, supersymmetric quantum field theory is often much easier to work with, as many more problems become exactly solvable. Supersymmetry is also a feature of most versions of string theory, though it may exist in nature even if string theory is incorrect.

The Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model is one of the best studied candidates for physics beyond the Standard Model. Theories of gravity that are also invariant under supersymmetry are known as supergravity theories.


The Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM)


An example of a flavor changing neutral current process in MSSM. A strange quark emits a bino, turning into a sdown-type quark, which then emits a Z boson and reabsorbs the bino, turning into a down quark. If the MSSM squark masses are flavor violating, such a process can occur.

The Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) is the minimal extension to the Standard Model that realizes N=1 supersymmetry, although non-minimal extensions do exist. Supersymmetry pairs bosons with fermions; therefore every Standard Model particle has a partner that has yet to be discovered. If these supersymmetric partners exist, it is likely that they will be observed at the Large Hadron Collider, which began operations in 2009. If the superparticles are found, it is analogous to discovering antimatter [1] and depending on the details of what is found, it could provide evidence for grand unification and might even in principle provide hints as to whether string theory describes nature.

The MSSM was originally proposed in 1981 to stabilize the weak scale, solving the hierarchy problem.[2] The Higgs boson mass of the Standard Model is unstable to quantum corrections and the theory predicts that weak scale should be much weaker than what is observed to be. In the MSSM, the Higgs boson has a fermionic superpartner, the Higgsino, that has the same mass as it would if supersymmetry were an exact symmetry. Because fermion masses are radiatively stable, the Higgs mass inherits this stability. However, in MSSM there is a need for more than one Higgs field, as described below.

The only unambiguous way to claim discovery of supersymmetry is to produce superparticles in the laboratory. Because superparticles are expected to be 100 to 1000 times heavier than the proton, it requires a huge amount of energy to make these particles that can only be achieved at particle accelerators. The Tevatron was actively looking for evidence of the production of supersymmetric particles before it was shut down on 30 September, 2011. Most physicists believe that supersymmetry must be discovered at the LHC if it is responsible for stabilizing the weak scale. There are five classes of particle that superpartners of the Standard Model fall into: squarks, gluinos, charginos, neutralinos, and sleptons. These superparticles have their interactions and subsequent decays described by the MSSM and each has characteristic signatures.

The MSSM imposes R-parity to explain the stability of the proton. It adds supersymmetry breaking by introducing explicit soft supersymmetry breaking operators into the Lagrangian that is communicated to it by some unknown (and unspecified) dynamics. This means that there are 120 new parameters in the MSSM. Most of these parameters lead to unnacceptable phenomenology such as large flavor changing neutral currents or large electric dipole moments for the neutron and electron. To avoid these problems, the MSSM takes all of the soft supersymmetry breaking to be diagonal in flavor space and for all of the new CP violating phases to vanish.




Thursday, May 24, 2012

Stephen Hawking, Multi-Universes, and God's Grander Design




God's Grander Design

by R.E. Slater
May 24, 2012


It is not enough that you should understand about applied science in order that
your work may increase man’s blessings. Concern for the man himself and his fate
must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors; concern for the
great unsolved problems of the organization of labor and the distribution of goods
in order that the creations of our mind shall be a blessing and not a curse
to mankind. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.

- Albert Einstein
                            (http://www.bartleby.com/73/1661.html)


I have lately been re-reading Stephen Hawking's book, the Grand Design, with the purpose of re-acquainting myself with quantum physics in light of the added discoveries being made to Hawking's Big Bang singularity concept describing the quantum concepts of the "bang" itself. From which has lately been postulated a very large number of multi-universes that are being spawned within this same singular event. To this Brian Greene was recently featured in a Newsweek article describing this "singular event" as a continuing physical event spawning universes at a very rapid rate (perhaps at the rate of one per second! - although time wouldn't actually exist in this space, being warped and stretched) in a very efficient renewal of self-sustaining energy. Universes which differ from each other because each universe would have a different set of natural laws differing from not only our own cosmos, but from all of the other multi-universes being spawned as well. Universes that we cannot know, see, or test, because of self-limiting natural barriers that confines us to our own universe (unless, it is theorized, that another universe somehow "overlaps" into our own and disrupts the natural laws that we have discovered; which seems to me to be a good hypothesis to test). Universes which are being birthed from Planck-size specks of infinitesimal energy which instantaneously self-rejuvenate and rapidly inflate to span incredible cosmic distances (the size of our own universe, as example) in less than the flick of our eye lash. And then repeats itself again. And again. And again. At a very high rate of speed. It seems like science fiction. It reads like a mythic tale. But the quantum world of the multi-universe is mathematically real defying our abilities to comprehend the orders of magnitude of energy that this would require.

And with this statement comes the birth of M-theory which is a theory of all theories that cannot be resolved into a single theory of poetic elegance that was once thought possible through Einstein's General Relativity theory. It is a grand network of all irreducible quantum theories into a supercomposition of theories. Similar to the lattice-like membrane found in a sponge's internal lattice network where a multitude of mathematical formulas and quantum theories stand unresolved, but integral to one another. Each seeing a different portion of the quantum "pie" but each approaching quantum physics from a different line of perspective. And with each theory standing separate, but equal, in proposition and theoretical effect to one another. Consequently, I like to think of M-Theory as "Membrane-Theory" instead of similar intriguing linguistic derivatives of "master, miracle, magic, mystery, mystical, or even manifold (as in the Calabi-Yau manifold found in quantum strings; or even, as a manifold of M-Theories quantitatively)." Moreover, the membrane example is also useful to me for envisioning the lattice-like network of our universe's local-and-supercosmic-clusters extending in a grand web of galaxies which compose the internal structures of our universe. As well as the "membrane-like" dimensionality of vibrating torus strings folding in-and-out, and twisting-in upon themselves, that create the very substances of our physical universe (that is, its particles and forces). So that M, for membrane, can picture a lot of things necessary to an explanatory theory of our cosmos.

From M-Theory we get the scientific worlds of infinities, supergravity's supersymmetry (from which we then get torus string theory, point particles and p-branes), quantum uncertainty, curved space, quarks and forces (there are four: electro-magnetism, weak and strong nuclear, and gravitational), dimensionality and the birth of 10 to the 500 different universes each with 10 to the 500 different sets of natural laws (which is a lot). It all boils down to the observation that we live in a very unique cosmos. But apparently one that isn't so unique after all, from the viewpoint of a "singular" cosmic event that we find replicated over-and-over-and-over in a very efficient, and never-ending stream of self-propagating, very high-energy creative events called singularities. Or singular cosmogonies. Or singular infinities that leaves with us a black hole to our linguistic understanding and symbolization in grasping the intense magnitude of God's ceaseless, majestic, mysterious, miraculous, mystical creation. Wherein divine action, through chaos and indeterminacy, is birthing never-ending worlds without-end.

And this is where the wonder comes in, for we once had thought (that is, in terms of newly devised quantum theorems over the past several decades) of our universe as collapsing in upon itself by the gravitational attraction of dark matter. A substance that we can't find or isolate but can measure as roughly 23% of the known universe (it makes up 84% of the known mass-energy of our universe - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter). In cosmological terms, once the Big Bang had spewed out our universe instantaneously, it then began a 5-6 billion year journey of collapsing inwardly upon itself. However, dark energy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy) then counter-acted the force of dark matter and reversed this process over the past 7.5 billion years (roughly). What is dark energy? We don't know. But it composes 73% of the universe and works as a repulsive force that accelerates the universes' expansion outward, leading scientists to propose that all will go cold and dark in scenarios known as the Big Freeze, the Big Rip, the Big Crunch, a Heat Event, or some similar kind of catastrophic cosmic ending (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_time).

So if we do the math and add dark matter's 23% of mass-energy to dark energy's 73% m.e. we come up with 96% of the universe as unknown. Which leaves 4% that we do know (or think we know), can see, and have measured - stuff like stars, planets, galaxies, local galaxy clusters, and super-clusters. Only 4%? Apparently so. The stuff that permeates - and radiates - uniformly throughout our cosmogony we don't understand. Nor is it the same as the vacuum of space which is a quantitatively barren desert of blackness that experiences quantum fluctuations, or jitters, of particles and (force) fields quivering in-and-out of existence.... meaning that space is never empty. Nor can it carry a zero value of energy because of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle but must always bear some minimal level of energy which we abstrusely call the "vacuum of space" (which seems more like an oxymoron actually) where elementary particles are in sparse existence (but virtual particles are infinitely numerous!).

What does this mean? That the Earth's evolution came from a very intricate history of cosmological inflation and formation. Without the Big Bang there would be no hydrogen, helium or lithium, the building blocks of the universe. Without stars blowing up as supernovas there would be no heavier elements used in the formation of carbon-based ecosystems. Without Earth itself absorbing the skewed collision of a Mars-sized planet there would be no Earth-moon symbiosis that gives to us Earth's rotational spin, the orbital incline around the Sun, the internal core mass of magnetic fields protecting us from cosmic radiation, or even the basic tidal / seasonal rhythms that sustains life. Without the outer planets absorbing the myriads of incoming stellar debris Earth would not exist. Without our own Milky Way in proximate constellation with Andromeda and other locally situated galaxies there would be additional correspondent fluctuations and disturbances created upon our Sun - or even the Milky Way's very own black hole sitting in the middle of it! Each of these factors tell us that we live a very delicate balance between life and lifelessness (which is yet another one of those things that we may infer from M-Theory's postulations).

Essentially this means that life on Earth developed because it could develop under these scenarios. Without those indeterminant coincidences there would be no us. And from part 1's earlier argument it has been said that this randomness is but the beauty of the creational sovereignty of God's rulership. From chaos, order. From darkness, light (Or is it from light to light?!). From nothing, all. (Which refers to ex nihilo creation; though I am beginning to re-think this paradigm in "both/and" terms but without necessarily identifying God as creation, and creation as God; which would then lead us to panentheism, which has already been discussed under the sidebars of "Theism;" which many process theologians posit but here I am positing a synthetic position called Relational Theism keeping some, but not all, of the elements of process theology). Hence, it could be said that we are a random creation bearing a random cosmic history. But when all is added up, and placed into epistemologic terms, we find rather the active activity of a Creator-God "nudging" the universe into formation so that it might bring forth living life which He may commune with, find pleasure in, and gain deep satisfaction from the work of His hands. Creating from joy (or even, from divine necessity) much like an artist creates out of the deep well-being of his soul, fashioning art to convey insight, purpose and artistic resonance from joy (or from a deep personal necessity) that reverberates within his soul of creative mastery and hollowed inspiration (meaning, us, our cosmos, and all that it contains!).

For the real mystery is that we are constituted as relational beings (science refers to man as sentient beings, which seems to be a mostly cold and impersonal pejorative). Who may walk in fellowship with the divine Godhead's co-Trinitarian fellowship, and each with the other, the finite with the infinite, the living with the everlasting. That we should not get lost in the numbers, and formulas, of scientific statements, discoveries, or arguments. But see the mystery of God through the grandness of His creation. A cosmic creation made all the grander in its design-and-outcome through astute and brilliant physicists like Stephen Hawking seeking the internal, quantum structures of natural laws, and consequently discovering the intricacies and wonders of God's natural laws, that some would deny ontologic purpose and design to. However, even agnostics and atheists cannot but declare the majesty of God's creation though they titillate on the epistemologic value of God's grander ontology and metaphysics of divine being and wisdom. Hence, if this is what we have discovered of our own known universe, can it be of any further value when inferring the wonder of God's power and depth of being? His knowledge and majesty? As Job was once asked by God, "Who darkens knowledge with words?" (Job 38.2)... So be the knowledge of man!"

In part 3, I will describe quantum indeterminacy, some aspects of quantum physics itself, and speak to probabilities and histories, all of which forms the subject lines of today's commentary but require some further examination as we continue the theme of divine action and process theology from part 1's discussion. For now, I wish only to take the discoveries of science and apply them to the larger design of our universe. One that is as mysterious as it is majestic. As convoluted as it seems plain. To envision a Godhead that is vast, fearsome, and beautiful. And to think through the incredibility of this Earth's evolution from the aspect of its wondrous cosmological origins.



Job 38

English Standard Version (ESV)

The LORD Answers Job

38 Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:

2 “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
3 Dress for action[a] like a man;
I will question you, and you make it known to me.

4 “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
5 Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
6 On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone,
7 when the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

8 “Or who shut in the sea with doors
when it burst out from the womb,
9 when I made clouds its garment
and thick darkness its swaddling band,
10 and prescribed limits for it
and set bars and doors,
11 and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther,
and here shall your proud waves be stayed?’

12 “Have you commanded the morning since your days began,
and caused the dawn to know its place,
13 that it might take hold of the skirts of the earth,
and the wicked be shaken out of it?
14 It is changed like clay under the seal,
and its features stand out like a garment.

15 From the wicked their light is withheld,
and their uplifted arm is broken.

16 “Have you entered into the springs of the sea,
or walked in the recesses of the deep?
17 Have the gates of death been revealed to you,
or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?
18 Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth?
    Declare, if you know all this.

19 “Where is the way to the dwelling of light,
and where is the place of darkness,
20 that you may take it to its territory
and that you may discern the paths to its home?
21 You know, for you were born then,
and the number of your days is great!



Job 40

English Standard Version (ESV)

40 And the Lord said to Job:

2 “Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty?
He who argues with God, let him answer it.”

Job Promises Silence

3 Then Job answered the Lord and said:

4 “Behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer you?
I lay my hand on my mouth.
5 I have spoken once, and I will not answer;
twice, but I will proceed no further.”


* * * * * * * * * * *



continue to -

Index to past articles on "Particle Physics, Quantum Science, and the Universe"





Other related articles that I've written may be found here:

Seeing Indeterminancy and Randomness in God's Creation




That’s Random! A Look at Viral Self-Assembly

by Kathryn Applegate
May 16, 2012
Related topics: Math/Physics/Chemistry


"The BioLogos Forum" frequently features essays from The BioLogos Foundation's leaders and Senior Fellows. Please note the views expressed here are those of the author, not necessarily of The BioLogos Foundation. You can read more about what we believe here.

Today's entry was written by Kathryn Applegate. Kathryn Applegate is Program Director at The BioLogos Foundation. She received her PhD in computational cell biology at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif. At Scripps, she developed computer vision software tools for analyzing the cell's infrastructure, the cytoskeleton.

That’s Random! A Look at Viral Self-AssemblyWhile the BioLogos Forum continues to bring new voices and ideas to the science and faith conversation, it is also worth looking back to essays and articles we've posted previously–especially when they touch on topics we're approaching from other angles right now. As the connected concepts of divine action, chance, and purpose in evolution are the subject of active discussion in recent posts and among our commenters, we wanted to highlight this essay from Kathryn Applegate on what randomness as a scientific concept really entails.

You hear it all the time: “That’s so random!” When used by people of my generation, the word “random” can simply mean “cool” or “surprising.” Or it can mean something like “disconnected,” as in the phrase, “I had a random thought” (which returns 189,000 hits on Google, by the way—random!).

Despite this usage, most of us know that randomness has something to do with probability, and that it often implies a lack of conscious intentionality. But what do mathematicians and scientists mean when they say something is random? Can a random process lead to an ordered, even predictable outcome? Is there evidence that God makes use of random processes to fulfill his creative purposes?

These are big questions, and we won’t address them all today. But I think randomness is an important topic to cover for two reasons: 1) it is integral to many processes in biology (and math, physics, chemistry, etc.), and 2) it is commonly misunderstood to be incompatible with Christianity.

As I said above, most of us know that randomness has something to do with probability. If you pick a card “at random” from a shuffled deck, you have a small probability of drawing an ace (4 out of 52, or a 7.7% chance). If you flip a coin, you have an equal probability of getting heads or tails.

Randomness also seems to imply a lack of intentionality or purposefulness. After all, you might hope for an ace when you draw a card, but you can’t choose one on purpose. You might call heads when you flip a coin, but you can’t know beforehand what the outcome will be. Thus the outcome is indeterminate, but is it purposeless? Not necessarily. Indeterminacy simply means the result cannot be predicted from the outset.

It should be noted that indeterminacy does not imply that God does not have foreknowledge of future events. Christians ought not to be uncomfortable with the idea of God interacting with his creation through chance. We often describe a seemingly-random (i.e. unplanned by us) sequence of events as being “providential,” or planned by God. A good introduction to the way divine action could drive physical processes can be found in this Question.

In biology, it is very hard or impossible to calculate precise probabilities for most processes, so when we say a process is random, we typically mean it is extremely unpredictable. Eventually we will discuss randomness within biological evolution, but first we must consider some simpler processes, like the self-assembly of a virus.

Viruses are remarkably efficient entities. Coiled tightly within a protein-based shell is a small amount of DNA needed for self-replication. The shell, called a capsid, is made of many repeating protein subunits and is therefore highly symmetrical (see figure). Important biomedical insights have certainly been gleaned from structural studies of viruses, but viruses also teach us about the emergence of order from non-order.

The virus life cycle has four main steps: 1) enter a host cell, 2) hijack the cell’s replication and translation machinery to make many copies of itself, 3) assemble into many virus particles, and 4) exit the cell to invade another host.

When I first learned about this process, I found it very hard to believe it just “happens.” The idea that a bunch of molecules bumping into each other inside a crowded cell could spontaneously assembly into a fully-functional virus seemed a bit far-fetched. Many viral capsids have over 100 protein subunits that must interact with each other in just the right way, or it won’t work. Surely there must be something driving this process, right?

There is! Random motion. I had to see it to believe it. I distinctly remember sitting in class during my first year of graduate school when the professor demonstrated self-assembly of a virus using a 3D model as shown in the following video. In less than 30 seconds, you can watch a jumbled heap of proteins become a beautifully ordered structure.

self assembling virus



As the narrator explains, sub-assemblies form and break apart en route to the most stable structure, the full capsid. As the sub-assemblies begin to form, further associations with free subunits become more favorable and as a result occur rapidly, while the final steps may take considerably longer. While the subunits in the model are rigid, in reality the proteins take on multiple conformations, allowing the capsid to “breathe.”

Amazing as it is, the system we just considered—one virus capsid in a jar—is pretty simple. One wonders how self-assembly can happen in a crowded cell, where there are countless other molecules diffusing around, potentially getting in the way. We can’t directly see how it happens in a cell, but we can reconstitute the process in a test tube using different combinations of constituent molecules.

Consider two viruses, where each protein subunit in one virus is the mirror image of the corresponding subunit in the other. Putting the two viruses together by hand would be pretty tricky, because the constituent parts look so similar. But random motion can do the job in short order:

chiral resolution of virus models



From this model, we can see clearly, in real-time, how distinct complex structures can arise from their parts randomly interacting with one another. Many large viruses also use special scaffolding proteins to assist in the assembly process, and some even use their own genomes as a scaffold. In addition, two closely-related viruses that happen to infect the same cell can exchange parts to create a new virus. This is one way viruses can evolve quickly to evade the host’s immune system.

Here we have seen how viruses demonstrate a principle inherent in God’s world—that order can emerge out of chaos from random processes. In my next post, we will look at some other biological processes that make use of—rather, depend on—randomness. This will set the stage for us to see that such processes can not only assemble a structure within seconds or minutes, but also generate complex, information-bearing molecules over billions of years. Even though the freedom inherent in nature sometimes produces unintelligently-designed structures (like viruses, which can kill us), we see that God has made, and continues to oversee by his providence, a good creation that, at least in part, is capable of creating itself.