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These are two images from NASA. On the left is a spiral galaxy taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. On the right is the spiral of a huricane from the International Space Station.  

Space

Milky spirals: hives of of energy
four hundred billion stars by force embraced.
Within  the gravid coils spin synergy.
Without the spinning orbits’ frigid space
cross distances beyond imagination.
The dance is mathematically precise.
Atomic scales defy our calculation.
the quantum mechanical device
can only forecast probabilities
either where or when but never both.
Bizarre phenomenal uncertainties
a type of chaos which our senses loathe.
Opposed in scale and predictability
these involute at both extremities.

Looking out, towards the heavens, the vastness of space is astonishing. What is the most striking thing you see when you look at the night sky?

It is almost all space! While there are millions of stars and galaxies, all the light from all theses only occupies a fraction of the sky. Even peering into the darkest recess, there is far more space than there are stars.

Within our galaxy, the Milky Way, are some four hundred billion stars. Beyond that, millions of light years away, are other galaxies, each containing hundreds of billions of stars. The deeper into space we look we can see that our entire galaxy is but a dot in the bitmap of the Cosmos.

The mechanics of  motion in space are governed by the laws of Newtonian mechanics. We can launch satellites from Earth that can perform such amazing feats as capturing the dust from a comet’s tail because the Physics is so highly predictable.

Looking inwards, we seek to understand the fundamental particles which make up matter as we know it. In this search for the infinitesimal, the particles get smaller and the intervening spaces larger.

Imagine you could shrink down to the scale of an atom. As you watch it, an electron is about the size of a BB pellet, and the nucleus is about the size of a ping pong ball. The electron is swirling about that nucleus in an orbit that is nearly three football fields in diameter! Far more space than substance.

In the subatomic world the mathematical rules that govern motion defy our experience. Here the rules of Quantum Mechanics prevail, and our familiar world of cause and effect is replaced by laws of probability. In the teeming minutiae, the multitude of particles is so vast that nonsensical events can happen, although rarely. For example, in Quantum space a particle can move from point A to point B without traveling the intervening space. It can simply show up at B by “tunneling.”

In the quantum world, matter consists of minute wrinkles, quanta, in a field. The behavior of individual quanta may be chaotic, but when viewed from the macro perspective the jiggling and quirks are lost because we see the average of vast numbers of quanta.

Thus our concepts of space, cause and effect diverge in these two perspectives. Mechanics are, essentially, frameworks that define the rules to explain the relationship between things and the space they occupy, the mathematical Design that governs behavior.

Physicists have developed the Standard Model, which encompasses all the fundamental forces, electromagnetic, and the two forces that govern the behavior of nuclei (the Strong Force and the Weak Force) in an elegant model. However, this describes local behavior (meaning interactions between particles that are in close proximity.

Forces that act over long distances, like Gravity, don’t fit in the Standard Model. In these pages we are postulating that there are a whole set of very long range forces that we are only just beginning to appreciate. Force fields that connect us, not through space, but despite distances. A thread of unity that permeates the vastness of the Cosmos and draws us together through the infinite distances that separate us.

If space can expand, can it also twist and fold? Perhaps our understanding of space is confined by our current paradigm, and the future will bring a fresh understanding of the relationships in space?

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