Space Creation

Following is an excerpt from a paper being written by astrophysicist Piet Hut and philosopher Ron Bruzina:

Space and time form the stage on which a scientific description of the world unfolds.  All forms of matter and energy are seen to be structured by and positioned in space and time.

At first sight, energy and matter seem to be visitors that somehow occupy space.  While they need space, as actors need a stage to act on, they themselves do not seem to be part of the stage as such.  However, this first impression is not correct.

We all know that matter is made out of a few types of relatively elementary particles, such as neutrons, electrons and protons.  In itself, it is remarkable that all the different forms of matter we encounter can be seen to be built out of only a few elementary building blocks.  But this fact becomes even more remarkable when we realize the significance of this statement: it means that space is responsible for the differences between the different forms of `substance' we encounter in our life!

Isn't it marvelous, to realize such a high degree of unity, underlying the vast diversity of materials and processes in our physical world?  Whether glass or stone, wood or water, smoke or mud, all these materials are manifestations of the same three types of building blocks.  The differences between different materials are simply consequences of the different configurations of the electrons, neutrons, and protons.  These three particles are all that is needed to build up the nearly hundred different types of atoms found in nature.  These atoms, in turn, form the building blocks for a vastly larger variety of molecules.  But for all the differences in appearance between materials, science tells us that we are dealing with the same substance.  The different properties are consequences only of differences in the configurations of the building blocks.

In a very real sense, then, one could assign the properties of different materials not to the protons, neutrons, and electrons they are built out of, but rather to the arrangement of empty space in between those building blocks.  A strange notion, that all we see around us in its bewildering variety is due largely to spatial, rather than material properties.  Sticks and stones and bricks and bones are different by the different way in which the same constituents use space in a different way.  So much for the notions of material substance we grow up with, based on our very real and tangible experience.

Piet posted the excerpt above on the TSK online forum.  A response to the posting was sent by molecular biologist Cynthia Smagula:

I strongly relate to what you are saying from my own experience as someone who has had the good fortune to stand at the cutting edge of molecular and structural biology….I find that when contemplating the three-dimensional spatial organization of a protein structure that there is invariably a moment when I'm no longer looking at that particular read-out of a molecule or at that particular representation of atoms and  of the bonds between them, but I have made a transition to another dimension, the space between the atoms.  At this moment I always have the feeling of weightlessness, of being one with  space instead of grounded in space.  It's as  if I experienced myself at the molecular level and then spontaneously moved past that limit to the limitless. There is always a combined sense of quiet euphoria, elation and relief, as if to say, that even the most highly refined, precise knowledge of the molecules of life is not all there is, there is more: life is immersed in a vast field of limitless creation.