I: Life, Death and the existence of a Creator

Life, Death and the existence of a Creator

An Introduction

Where did we come from? Why are we here? For thousands of years humanity has looked to the stars and pondered these questions. This entry will deal entirely with the former question, with a discussion about the origins of life in the universe and the idea of a divine creator or super being, the human eye and the possibility of life after death. My approach will be almost entirely a scientific one, however i am no skeptic and i am a firm believer that one day science will reconcile with the world of the paranormal. Accordingly, i urge the reader to keep an open mind while reading this article.

The Big Bang theory

Apart from being a popular television program the big bang theory remains an integral part of our understanding of the origins of the universe and remains a topic of lively discussion among both the scientific and the lay community. When the universe began some 13.8 billion years ago some strange events were afoot. An infinitely dense and hot object had decided to spread it's heat through what can only be described as empty space. In doing so, this singularity began the creation of the universe. Small particles began bonding together to form larger particles known as nucleons, later these nucleons went on to form the elements of the periodic table we now know today. During this period of creation, gravity was believed to be an extremely strong force (binding these small particles together was a tough job but somebody had to do it). Curious then that some 13 billion years later that this incredible force can be over come by simply standing up from your chair. Why is that so? One explanation for such a phenomenon is the existence of a theoretical particle called a Graviton which governs the force of gravity. Before we discuss the Graviton i would like to explain something. When the singularity decided to create the universe it made 4 building blocks. The first was dark energy, which makes up about 73% of the universe, dark matter which contributed 23%, matter which contributed less than 4%, and neutrinos which are so small and light that they make up less than 1% of the universe. So what does this mean for our Graviton? Well it was discovered that as the universe got older (and colder) that the energy density (that is the amount of energy contained in some finite area) got smaller for objects that were constructed using matter, if we assume that the Graviton itself was constructed using matter, it follows fairly naturally that gravity would get weaker over time. But this is only an assumption. So why did the singularity choose to create 4 building blocks? This i fear will remain a mystery and relates more to my former question in the introduction. More disturbingly, why do we exist in a world made of matter which represents a mere 4% of the universe and why can't we see the other building blocks? I will discuss these questions later when we examine the human eye, But for now ponder this; If we accept the big bang theory as gospel can we view the singularity as our divine creator or is there an even greater power behind the birth of the universe?

An image of the cosmic web, the theorized connection between matter, dark matter and dark energy

The Human Eye

The eye is the only true connection we have to the outside world, without it we could not fully comprehend the objects which make up the world we live in. It is the ultimate tool of reason. The eye works much like a pin hole camera. It allows light to fall on a small area at the back of the eye called the fovea centralis where a set of photo receptor cells called rods and cones interpret the light and turn it into a signal which is interpreted by the brain. So what is light exactly? Well light refers to any electromagnetic (EM) wave, that means radio waves, infrared, ultraviolet, microwaves and even x rays! So what range of light frequencies can we actually perceive? The answer is a very small range. The human eye can see from about 400nm (red) to 700nm (violet) nothing smaller and nothing larger. To illustrate this please see the figure bellow.

An image of the visable light spectum, compared to the entire EM spectrum

It can be seen then that our ultimate tool of reason has some rather serious limitations. Which rather begs the questions; what is it that we are not perceiving? Can we believe what we are seeing? This brings me to the idea of the virtual particles. In science 101 we all learnt that matter is mostly empty space, but imagine for a second that all this space was suddenly removed and the whole world shrunk to an infinitesimally small size. What's to say that this is not in fact the true state of affairs and that our eyes simply create this space so we may comprehend the macroscopic world? Well this is in fact the case, the so called empty space between atoms is full of virtual particles which are completely unobservable. I mean surely if matter was mostly empty space then passing through walls should be easy, right? But it's not, because the empty space is occupied by matter which we cannot even perceive or detect. On a side note however, according to quantum mechanics there exists a very small probability that if you place your hand to a wall that your hand is in fact on the other side of the wall, however the probability that you are not on the other side is greater and so the prevailing outcome is that you remain on the same side of the wall, so passing through matter may be statistically improbable, but not impossible. Another huge limitation of the eye is that it can only process information in three dimensions when in fact there are up to 25 spacial dimensions which are simply to small for us too perceive. So to recapitulate, we see only a small fraction of the light in the universe with the naked eye. Of this light we can only perceive it in 3 spacial dimensions, and this perception is an adaptation of the true nature of reality that your brain can deal with, and not a true representation of the world around us.

An image of the neurons of the brain, remind you of anything?

Life after Death

No one truly knows what happens after death, we may only speculate and form opinions based on tried and tested principals, and a principal which i feel best describes the events of postmortem are those of thermodynamics, specifically the first law of thermodynamics. The first law of thermodynamics is one of conservation of energy, specifically it says that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only changed from one form to another. Despite all of our strides in technology, the human race has not truly gotten any closer to quantifying the human soul. But if i had to try i would describe it simply as energy and when you die that energy has to go somewhere, it can't just disappear. Perhaps it is stored energy in some other spacial dimension, perhaps it is kinetic, moving through time and space. Regardless of the answer the truth of the patter lies in front of us, we simply do not have the means to perceive it.