Of indivisibility and near-nosed science

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Photo owned by tanakawho (cc)

The concept of the unknown has always fascinated me. Not particularly the X Files Lights in the Sky phenomenon or its ilk but rather how the passage of time throws scientific rules on their heads – effectively rewriting parts of our understanding of nature.

As scientists dip their toes into the realms of science, trying to comprehend the world around them in terms of repeatable, evidential research – the unknown stalks them. Or rather circumstances we like to label unexplained. Science, like any other discipline, is subject only to seeing just past the end of it’s nose. Innovation takes time. The endless march of science to quantify existence in little boxes is admirable.

Look to the classic example of the atom, from units of energy to the discovery of sub-atomic particles. An atom is the smallest unit of an element that retains the composition of that element. A piece whose entire mass is a crystalline skeleton of chemistry that reflects its whole. A slice of chemical recursion, if you would. The history of atomic research is a lush and multi-coloured tapestry of trailblazers overturning conventional natural laws over and over again, by confronting the unknown.

Evidence of atom theory stretches all the way back to early Indian society, some six hundred years before the birth of Christ, where matter was described as being composed of individual units of energy; units that closely mirror modern understanding of atoms and molecules. In time of Greek and Roman philosophers, the idea of material being built from tiny parts was formalised. Democritus coined the word “atom” and it quickly became part of our scientific lexicon. For the first time, matter could be described as being composed of minuscule building blocks. Of course, these theories were not based on scientific repeatability, rather they were philosophical conventions of the day. But, oh how close they were to natural facts we take as givens today.

Historical precedent sat on the side that atoms were the smallest part of an element for many centuries. As static as atomic theory was up to the late 17th Century, the most interesting part of it, was that widespread belief that atoms were composed of the four earthly elements – air, water, earth and fire. These elements were dusty artifacts of the classical schools of philosophy in Greece and Rome. It took humanism and the Great Schism from seat of Catholicism, to kick natural inquisition into gear and to question the philosophies of our forebearers. The atom was, again, turned on its diminutive head. This time by Waterford-born scientist Robert Boyle in his seminal work, ‘The Sceptical Chymist’.

Boyle professed that scientists ought to look past conventional thinking that matter was composed of the quadrangle of classical elements and open themselves up to the possibility that atoms were in fact motion machines. He theorised that all natural phenomenon were merely a by-product of the perpetual motion of particles. This was a revolutionary break from the schools of gentlemanly science, where alchemy proudly rode sidesaddle with physiology. For this and for his infamous Law, Boyle is recognised as the father of modern science. It took another two hundred and fifty years to pass for Einstein to mathematically prove that atomic perpetual motion was real.

Oh, but even well-regarded founders of learning find their theories upended by the cold march of time. Sub-atomic particles hid from the probes of science for another two hundred years until Thompson’s third cathode ray experiment of 1897 (a discovery for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1906). For the first time in the annuls of science, the atom, always believed to be indivisible was proven to be a composition of even smaller particles. The birth of the electron had come to pass. With a sweep of a magnetic field, Thompson turned hundreds of years worth of scientific research over. Again the cyclical spiral of scientific discovery turned and extended outwards, changing our perception of the natural world.

You have to wonder what lies in the fuzzy category of the unknown. How many other world-changing natural axioms are sitting within a generation of our scientific frontier? Discoveries that sit in the unknown, that may be currently tagged as errors or misnamed as side-effects of understood Laws. The Great Unknown is both our bounding rectangle of knowledge and the bait of constant research. Its promise continues to nurture generations of curious scientists to ask, “What if?”

July 23rd, 2008 at 12:12 pm • Filed in Geekery



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