Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal: Buddhist Physics: Why the LHC Matters

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Buddhist Physics: Why the LHC Matters

Compiled and synthesized by Dharmachari Seven

Instead of meditating on the Four Elements (introduced below) and seeing for themselves, scientists have built a machine so we can all have a look. It's clumsy, but it's empirical. And it's much easier than the search for kalapas.

UPDATE CERN: Damage to new collider forces two-month halt

GENEVA -- A blip heard around the world: a blink of the computer screen and physicists everywhere (except perhaps Illinois) were celebrating. This blip was literally of cosmic proportions, representing a new tool to probe the birth of the universe.

The world's largest atom smasher passed its first test yesterday as physicists said their tool is almost ready to reveal how the tiniest particles [in Buddhist terms kalapas or hadrons] were first created after the "Big Bang," which is the theory that a massive explosion formed the elements, stars, planets, and everything else we see.

("God particle" DailyGalaxy.com)

Rivals and friends in pajamas turned out at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, to watch the event via a special satellite connection. Joining in from around the world were other physicists — many of whom may one day work on the new Large Hadron Collider (LHC, pictured).

Tension mounted in the control rooms at CERN as scien-tists huddled around computer screens and fired protons through the 17-mile tunnel of the collider under-ground along the Swiss-French border. Then they celebrated. "The first technical challenge has been met," said a jubilant Robert Aymar, director-general of CERN, and went on:

"What you have just seen is the result of 20 years of effort. It all went like clockwork. Now it's for the physicists to show us what they can do. They are ready to go for discoveries...Man has always shown he wants to know where he comes from and where he will go, where the universe comes from and where it will go. So here we're looking at essential questions for mankind."

The CERN experiments could reveal more about various forms of matter including the theoretical "God particle" (Higgs-boson). And maybe next science will tackle the ocean's growing plastic waste problem.

Smaller colliders have been used for decades to study the makeup of the atom. Scientists once thought protons and neutrons were the smallest components of an atom's nucleus, but experiments have shown that protons and neutrons are made of quarks and gluons and that there are other forces and particles.

European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) scientists look at a computer screen during the switch on operation of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the Cern's press center near Geneva. Particle physicists were jubilant on Wednesday after the long-awaited startup of a mega-machine designed to expose secrets of the cosmos passed its first tests with flying colors (AFP/Pool/Fabrice Coffrini).

The LHC project was organized by 20 European member nations. It has attracted researchers from 80 nations. Some 1,200 of those researchers are from the US, an observer country and contributor. India, Japan, Canada, and Russia are also observers and major contributors.

Reuters video of CERN's LHC project

The Eightfold Way of Kalapas
Britannica.com & AccesstoInsight.com (Tribe.net) &
Buddhist Dictionary: Manual of Buddhist Terms and Doctrines (Nyanaponika Thera)

The Eightfold Way: a classification of subatomic particles known as hadrons into groups on the basis of their symmetrical properties, the number of members of each group being 1, 8 (most frequently), 10, or 27.

The system was proposed in 1961 by the American physicist Murray Gell-Mann and the Israeli physicist Yuval Neʾeman. It is based on the mathematical symmetry group SU(3); however, the name of the system was suggested by analogy with the Eightfold Path of Buddhism because of the centrality of the number eight. One of the early triumphs of the Eightfold Way was the prediction of the existence of a heavy subatomic particle required to complete one of the groups.

The particle, called omega-minus, was discovered in 1964. That same year, Gell-Mann set forth the concept of quarks as the physical basis for the classification system, thereby establishing the foundation for the modern quark model of hadrons. See also quark.

The real meaning of Anicca is that "impermanence" or "decay" is the inherent nature of every-thing that exists in the universe — whether animate or inanimate.

Kalapa, artist's conception

The Buddha taught that everything that exists at the material level is composed of kalapas. Kalapas are material units very much smaller than atoms, which die out immediately after they come into being. Each kalapa is a mass formed of the eight basic constituents of matter — the solid, liquid, calorific, and oscillatory, together with color, smell, taste, and nutriment. The first four are called primary qualities and are predominant in a kalapa. The other four are subsidiaries, dependent upon and springing from the former.

BUILDING BLOCKS

A kalapa is the minutest particle on the physical plane — still beyond the range of science today. It is only when the eight basic material constituents unite together that the kalapa is formed. In other words, the momentary collocation of these eight basic elements of behavior makes a human just for that moment, which in Buddhism is known as a kalapa. The life-span of a kalapa is termed a "moment," and a trillion such moments are said to elapse in the wink of an eye.

Kalapas are in a state of constant change, a perpetual flux. To the observer during insight meditation (vipassana) they can be felt as a stream of energy.

Moreover, according to Pa Auk Sayadaw (and many who have trained under him to directly experience kalapas such as Rasmussen & Snyder), it is possible to literally see and know kalapas and their constituents, that is, their four elemental and four subsidiary qualities. The Sayadaw is alive and teaching worldwide (currently in Barre, Massachusetts). But Buddhist physics goes further, pointing out aspects of matter directly relating to the human experience.

"Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form" is a famous expression from the discourse on the core of wisdom, or penetrative knowledge, that has "gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond" (Heart Sutra). It enters the realm of Buddhism's Higher Teaching (Abhidharma), which was exploring physics long before the Greeks (themselves influenced by Buddhism and other Indian philosophies) ever thought to search for the "atom" (kalapa = building block of matter).

There are underived elements, namely, the four primary qualities of matter (dhatu). And there are 24 derived (upada) or secondary phenomena. These will make very little sense to modern students of Western physics. But they suggest that what we see on a relative or conventional level is designed into the subatomic or most minute aspects of materiality. These derived/subsidiary qualities (such as taste or color, which we presume to be macro-level only) are already seen occurring at a micro or constituent level. This is what a meditator sees and directly knows. It is experiential rather than theoretical (the theory is merely recorded in the ancient texts and confirmed by practitioners). Buddhism itself, therefore, is more concerned with the successful practice of directly knowing and seeing than with any textbook discussion of the universe.

SPACE

Space (akasa-dhatu), interestingly, is also a derived quality of the material world. (There are two kinds, limited and boundless or finite and infinite). Limited space is the derived aspect of form already mentioned. "The space element has the characteristic of delimiting matter. Its function is to indicate the boundaries of matter....its manifestation consists of being untouched [by the Four Elements]... Its proximate cause is the matter delimited" (Path of Purification XIV,63).

Space (ajatakasa or anantakasa), more interestingly, that is unlimited, unentangled, unobstructed -- empty or hyperspace -- is the object of the First Immaterial Meditation (jhana). It corresponds to an actual, literal plane of existence called the Sphere of Boundless Space. [See WQ for the "31 Planes of Existence"]. Whether this actually exists in the universe is a matter of debate: The German scholar-monk, Ven. Nyanatiloka, deduces that since it is not included in an all-inclusive Commentarial summary of reality, it does not have objective (but only conceptual) existence. He goes on to point out that later Buddhist schools "regarded it as one of several unconditioned or uncreated states (asankhata dharma)" whereas Theravada Buddhism regards only nirvana as an "unconditioned" [i.e., without constituents] element.

Ulitmately, whether discussing a material form or a psychological "element" (sensation, perception, mental-formation, and consciousness) the same thing may be said. "It still remains a firm condition, an immutable fact, a fixed law that all formations [i.e., all conditioned phenomena] are radically impermanent (in constant flux), unsatisfactory, and impersonal (empty)." Therefore, for practical purposes but not ultimately, it matters what the LHC finds: hadrons, kalapas, the "God particle," a Black Hole on the French side of the border.