God and the Folly of Faith: The Incompatibility of Science and Religion (21 page)

The free electromagnetic field—that is, a field in a region of space where there are no charges and currents—is mathematically equivalent to an infinite set of harmonic oscillators. The quantization of harmonic oscillators is standard stuff, so the electromagnetic field is easily quantized. That is, a mathematical function can be written down to describe the field and the photon can be treated as an excitation, or “quantum,” of the field.

In 1927, Dirac showed that the wave function for an electron in the Dirac equation is also a quantum field with the electron being the quantum of that field. The new quantum field theory was completely relativistic—that is, consistent with the special theory of relativity, which the older quantum theories of Schrödinger and Heisenberg were not. Einstein's theory of gravity, the general theory of relativity, was not needed since gravity is negligible at the subatomic scale, so quantum gravity was put off as a problem for future study. It had no observable consequences with the technology of that time anyway.

Subsequent developments hit a snag, however, when attempts to produce a theory of interacting electrons and photons using quantum field theory led to calculations producing mathematical infinities in the results. As World War II approached and scientists were needed for the war effort, the problem was set aside. A solution to the infinities' problem was not needed to design radar systems or build a nuclear bomb. Richard Feynman worked at Los Alamos supervising a crew of human “computers” who used mechanical adding machines to solve numerical problems handed to them by the scientists working on the bomb. Julian Schwinger worked on radar at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology).

After the war, the infinities' problem was solved by a procedure known as
renormalization
, whereby one subtracts infinities from both sides of an equation. Dubious as this seems, it works. This led to the highly successful theory of
quantum electrodynamics
(QED), independently developed by Feynman and Schwinger in America and by Sin-Itiro Tomonaga in war-ravaged Japan. The three methods were shown to be equivalent by Freeman Dyson, an English physicist without a PhD working at Princeton. QED was able to quantitatively predict some tiny effects that could not be explained by previous theories.
The agreement was astounding. In one case, involving the electron's magnetism, the accuracy was one part in a trillion, agreeing with equally remarkable laboratory measurements.
¹⁵

TOWARD THE STANDARD MODEL

I began my research career in physics in 1959 as a graduate research assistant at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). At the time I entered a brand-new field called
high-energy physics
, also known as
elementary particle physics
, that had grown out of nuclear physics.

After Rutherford discovered the nucleus of the atom in 1911, and after the invention of the cyclotron by Ernest O. Lawrence in 1929 with particle accelerators, experiments with radioactivity probed nuclei with beams of protons or electrons of ever increasing energy. The experiments revealed that all nuclei were composed of protons and neutrons. The placement of each chemical element in the Periodic Table was determined by the number of protons in the nucleus of the corresponding atom. Protons are positively charged and so repel each other while neutrons carry no net electric charge. So they had to be held together by a previously unknown attractive force that was experienced by both protons and neutrons. Gravity is far too weak for such small masses. This new force was called the
strong nuclear force
.

Experiments also uncovered a fourth force called the
weak nuclear force
that accounted for the phenomenon of
beta-radiation
, in which a nucleus spontaneously emits an electron and a neutrino, thereby becoming a new nucleus with one more proton and one less neutron. The two nuclear forces are short range, operating only at distances smaller than the typical nucleus, in contrast to gravity and electromagnetism, which are of unlimited range. The energies radiated by our sun and other stars result from the weak force.

Intense efforts to apply quantum field theory to the forces between protons and neutrons using the same methods that proved so successful for quantum electrodynamics did not work. The infinities were intractable. People thought maybe quantum field theory was inadequate. For a few years around 1960, a radically new concept called
S-matrix
theory
was explored that applied highly
sophisticated mathematics to calculate the probabilities for particles to scatter from one another. Probability distributions were all that was being measured in accelerator experiments, so what else was there to explain? Even space and time were discarded, at least in the new model. The independent variables were momentum and energy, which are what is measured in particle collisions anyway. In this picture the particles themselves are not unique entities but are somehow composed of one another in what was called a “bootstrap.” S-matrix theory had a holistic quality about it that, along with other unsupported claims about quantum mechanics, attracted comparisons with Eastern mysticism.

The most successful proponent of this philosophy in the popular mind was Fritjof Capra, who in 1975 wrote a bestseller titled
The Tao of Physics
.
¹⁶
Capra at the time was a young theoretical physicist from Austria who was working on S-matrix theory at the University of California at Berkeley, which was the center of that activity under the capable leadership of Geoffrey Chew. Although Capra's book can still be found in bookstores, by the time
The Tao of Physics
was published, S-matrix theory had been largely discarded for two reasons: (1) it never produced a useful prediction that could be tested empirically; and (2) it was supplanted by the newly developing standard model of particles and forces that restored the tried and true atomic scheme in which everything is reduced to elementary particles.

At first, however, S-matrix theory did not seem so far off the mark. In the 1960s, accelerators reached higher and higher energies and the thousand or so physicists around the world, including myself, who were working in this previously unexplored regime found that particle collisions produced a profusion of new particles that did not fit into any known model. These particles could not all be elementary, yet they were not made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons, which were thought to be the only elementary particles at the time. A breakthrough was made in 1964 when Cal Tech physicist Murray Gell-Mann suggested that most of the new particles were composed of more elementary constituents, which he called
quarks
.
¹⁷
Quarks were characterized by having less than unit electric charge, which had never been seen before in any particle.

The quark scheme proved to work beautifully, and by the early 1970s, experiments bombarding protons and neutrons with very high-energy electrons and neutrinos confirmed that the proton and neutron were also not elementary
but exhibited a particulate substructure with fractional charge. These observations recalled Rutherford's discovery of the atomic nucleus in 1911.

The new picture led to a renewed attempt to use relativistic quantum field theory to understand the two nuclear forces in terms of the interactions of quarks and another set of particles that seemed to be elementary, the
leptons
. The electron, muon, and neutrino are examples of leptons. In the
standard model of particles and forces
that grew out of these developments, there are six types of quarks and their corresponding antiparticles along with six leptons and their antiparticles. They all are spin ½ fermions. The photon is also an elementary particle, joining a group of twelve spin 1 bosons called “force particles” because of their role in mediating the basic interactions.

The standard model combined the weak and electromagnetic forces into a single, unified force called the
electroweak
force. The strong force was described within the standard model by a model that was dubbed by Feynman as
quantum chromodynamics
(QCD).
¹⁸
These quantum field theories were all renormalizable, that is, their infinites could be subtracted out.

Further advances occurred swiftly, as they do in science when it is finally on the right track. When advances don't occur swiftly, science is probably on the wrong track. (String theory comes to mind). By the end of the 1970s, the standard model was found to be consistent with all observations. The only particle in the standard model that was not observed in experiments is the
Higgs boson
, named after the physicist Peter Higgs, who was one of several physicists who proposed its existence way back in 1964.
¹⁹
In the standard model the Higgs particle provides for one of the mechanisms by which elementary particles gain mass.

The standard model has remained unchallenged until the present day, when colliding beam experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva are finally reaching the enormous energies that are needed to uncover the next layer of matter. As this manuscript was going to press, the preliminary results from the LHC presented at a conference in India were reported in online media. The Higgs boson has not been seen as expected, although there still are some hopeful signs. Far from being a disappointment, if the Higgs is not confirmed, physicists will be excited that at least, after a generation, we may be beginning to learn something new about the nature of matter.

For our purposes here, we need not go into further detail, especially on something that will be changing rapidly in the next few years. The point is this: Despite the claims of theologians and quantum spiritualists, the standard model provided yet another triumph for reductionism, and further developments are not likely to change this in the near future. All the visible matter of the universe, from everything we see around us to the most distant galaxies observed by our most powerful telescopes, to the tiny life forms we view with our most powerful microscopes, are composed of just three fundamental particles: two quarks whimsically called “up” and “down” and the electron. Add in the photon and we pretty much cover everything of interest to most people. Whether or not the Higgs particle exists is not going to affect many lives in the foreseeable future.

In the
next chapter
we will explore the cosmos and see that the matter in stars and galaxies that gives off light constitute a mere 0.5 percent of the total mass of our universe. Another 3.5 percent is nonluminous but is still made of the same ingredients—quarks and electrons. Of the remaining mass, 23 percent is
dark matter
and, by far the dominant component, 73 percent is
dark energy
. These components, which are clearly not composed of known quarks and leptons, are “dark” because they give off no light or anything else we have been able to directly observe with current technology, although many experiments are in progress seeking that end. While not observed directly, the existence of dark matter and dark energy is inferred from their gravitational effects. Since gravitation is one of the defining properties of matter, the dark matter and dark energy still fit into our materialist model. They do not exhibit any properties at this time that require us to revise our worldview to include nonmaterial ingredients.

QUANTUM SPIRITUALITY

Now let us bring in the claims of those who think they see in quantum mechanics evidence for a world beyond matter. Quantum mechanics has provided both theistic and nontheistic spiritualists with a way to imagine a holistic cosmic consciousness that includes the human mind. For example, theologian
Philip Clayton asserts that these two complementary ways of describing a phenomenon are incompatible and “depend on the interests of the observer and the experiment she designs.”
²⁰
That is, reality depends on human thought.

Seeking a scientific basis for a world that cannot be reduced to particles, quantum spiritualists argue that human consciousness can affect the outcome of events. This comes about from the wave-particle duality, discussed previously, where it is asserted that whether an entity is a wave or a particle depends on what you decide to measure. If you decide to measure a particle property such as position, then the entity is a particle. If instead you decide to measure a wave property such as wavelength, then the entity must be a wave. The decision about what to measure could occur long after the entity has left its source, in which case, it is claimed, your act of consciousness decided the nature of the entity. If the entity was a light from a galaxy 10 billion light-years away, your conscious act reached out 10 billion light-years in space and 10 billion years back in time, since the light took 10 billion years to reach Earth. Yes, that's what the quantum spiritualists really claim, although they seldom state it so starkly else their listeners call in the straightjacket squad.

Note that even if the act of measurement could control reality, human consciousness need not be involved. That measurement could be performed automatically, with a computer deciding randomly what to measure. The only way the quantum spiritualists can work their way out of that is to assume computers are conscious too.

The behavior of the quantum wave function has also encouraged the mystically inclined to see a holistic universe with the human mind (and, I guess, computers too) as part of this grand cosmic consciousness. When a measurement is made on a particle, its wave function is said to “collapse” instantaneously all over the universe to a new function that represents the particle's newly measured position. It is asserted that consciousness causes wave function collapse. Clayton tells us: “The phenomenon known as ‘collapse of the wave function’ suggests that the observer plays some constitutive role in
making the physical world become what we perceive it to be at the microphysical level
.”
²¹