Conversation with Nature - II

In response to the emailed question:

Oh Nature!, 

I wonder what you are and what language you speak? 

 - From your friend and admirer. 

   

One theoretical physicist wrote:

   

Oh Admirer!

 

I wonder at your hubris, marvel at your simplicity.

 

The vanishingly small part of me you perceive already captures all possible languages comprehensible to you. The contingencies upon which your particular perception of me was formed will always limit your understanding of me. And yet you persist, and I am proud of you for that.

 

 - Nature

Normal?

Trying to settle in your brilliantly sunny office.  I move out of my first chosen seat by the window shielding my eyes. 

And you tell me I’ve been spending too much time with physicists who aren’t normal, who are too extreme and only think about physics and that most of you are normal.

I say, fine – I’m here to learn.

You don’t really answer my questions and you bounce around the room and show me a beam splitter which beautifully divides the photons from your laser pen into two teams at different points on the wall and as always I wonder how they decide.

You ask me what is in a completely dark and empty sealed room and after a while, I hit the nail on the head when I tell you that there is always the ghost of half a photon coming and going.  And you say this is evidenced by the Cassimir Effect, where two infinitesimally thin metallic sheets are suspended micrometers apart and attract each other - due to a dipole effect caused by these ghosts of photons.

Then you show me a photograph of a shipwreck.

You theorise extreme physical situations realized in the lab by some of your colleagues who ‘puff’ atoms off surfaces and hold them by electric forces.

You tell me I should meet more of these normal physicists and that their personalities will be reflected in their work.

I have met them all and you are right about that.

Though when I mention you, they shut the door and say that you, like them are far from normal.

Anonymous