Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Atoms Or Ripples?

4Gravitons has a nice little riff explaining the perspective that fundamental particles are excited ripples in fields (which are more fundamental) rather than truly being fundamental particles. From the closing stanza:
This is Quantum Field Theory, the universe of ripples. Democritus said that in truth there are only atoms and the void, but he was wrong. There are no atoms. There is only the void. It ripples and shimmers, and each of us lives as a collection of whirlpools, skimming the surface, seeming concrete and real and vital…until the ripples dissolve, and a new pattern comes.

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