Consider the humble electron.
An electron, for those of you who have never met one in real life, is one of the fundamental particles of the universe. In this case fundamental doesn’t refer to it’s religious beliefs, but to the fact that the electron is what it is.
If you ask what makes up water, for instance, someone might say its made up of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.
The word atom comes from the Greek word for uncuttable, or indivisible. Which is ironic, because each of those atoms is actually made up of smaller particles. The hydrogen atom, for instance, is the simplest of these, and contains one proton, which has a positive charge, and one electron orbiting about it, which has a negative charge.
The proton, in turn, is made up of quarks, typically three of them, two “up” and one “down”.
But that electron? As far as we can tell, it isn’t made of anything else. Unlike the atom, which can be divided, the electron cannot. It just hangs out there, orbiting it’s proton. Sometimes at a higher state, if more energy is introduced, sometimes at a lower state, if less energy is introduced.
While electrons can be destroyed if they are hit with their equal and opposite—but much less famous—sibling, the positron, for the most part, they just sort of exist.
An electron has no distinguishing features. Each electron is exactly like another. You can’t look at an electron and say “oh, that’s Bob, because he’s wearing a pink shirt today.” Each electron looks the same, acts the same, weighs the same, behaves the same.
Indeed, back in the 1940s, famous physicist Richard Feynman (I mean, he’s no Einstein, but he’s pretty well known) got a call from friend and theoretical physicist John Wheeler (who is pretty well known, but he’s no Feynman) with a crazy idea: “Feynman, I know why all electrons have the same charge and the same mass,” said Wheeler.
“Why?” asked Feynman
“Because, they are all the same electron!”
Things get kinda odd here, but Wheeler proposed that a single electron took it’s place in an atom, where it existed happily until the end of time, at which point it reversed direction and came back to the beginning of time as a positron, then reversed polarity and went off back to the future, this time playing the role of a pair bond in a different atom. Do this a few infinite number of times, and you suddenly have a single electron creating the entire universe.
Wheeler likened it to a string tied into an infinitely complex knot. If you could step back and look at the string, you’d see the knot, but because we move through time only experiencing a slice of that knot, we don’t see that it’s all one, man. Everything is one.
Whether that’s true or not is up for debate. But our single electron mentioned at the start? Doesn’t really care about that debate. It’s happily making it’s way around the proton. Let’s say it’s in a hydrogen atom, which is part of a water molecule. And that water molecule enters your body. The electron doesn’t care.
And it goes into a cell in your body. The electron? Completely oblivious.
Then, you die. But the electron? Doesn’t notice. None of the changes that happen to you once you die affect it one whit. Unless you get cremated. Then the water will probably evaporate and that electron will go off to be someone else. Or hang out in the ocean. Or something.
You’re dead, but the electron that was a part of you doesn’t care.
You know what else doesn’t care? The universe. Your demise is so statistically insignificant as to be unnoticed by Andromeda or Betelgeuse.
Heck, zoom in a few factors, and even Mars is unmoved by the news. Take a 10,000 km view (which is basically where the Earth’s exosphere ends), and you’ll see storms and clouds and oceans and islands, but you? Your passing affects the overall picture not one whit.
At the micro level, and at the macro level, you are not noticeable. For the electron, you are far too big. You are to the electron what the universe is to us, or near enough to make no mind (the electron is 10^-16, whereas the universe is about 10^26).
But somewhere in the middle? Life happens. Our electron doesn’t change unless obliterated. The universe changes, but over such long time periods that it appears static.
And yet…
And yet it’s life that makes it interesting. It’s life that makes the whole concept of an electron or a galaxy have meaning. Without life, without intelligent life, there is no meaning. There is still a universe and still an electron, but they are just…there. Life happens between the extremes.
The largest single organism on earth is Pando. It’s a quaking aspen that has sent out roots, and those roots have sprouted new trunks and branches and more roots, which sprout new trunks and branches. It looks like a forest, but all the “trees” are just part of one single tree. At 106 ha, Pando is visible from space, but not a lot of living things are.
At the other end of the scale, Mycoplasma genitalium is a parasitic bacterium which lives in the bladders, waste disposal organs, genitals, and respiratory tracts of primates. As far as anyone has discovered, it is the smallest known organism capable of independent growth and reproduction. At 200 to 300 nm, it’s still larger than an electron by a couple of thousand times. It is to the electron as the bacteria is to us.
Between a bacteria and a forest of one tree is a scale we can understand. It is the scale of life. And while it’s good to know that the scale goes farther in both directions, unless we are particle physicists or astrophysicists, it is here where we should live. Where we should find joy and happiness and love. Where we should eat and sleep and do all the things that give life meaning.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
