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The universe is a major swap meet of varieties of energy. Mechanical energy can be traded for heat and vice versa. And so it goes for kinetic and potential energy as well. Even rest mass energy like organ donations are up for grabs. The only constraints on exchange are entropy and uncertainty; they demand an orderly exchange with agreed acceptance of the terms and exchange rates for all transactions.
This gets us to Dickens’ right honorable Lord Chancellor Krook. There was a time when it was believed by more than Dickens that people could suddenly, and without visible cause, burst into flames and die thereof. An adequate measure of nastiness should by its very nature turn into a fiery death. So Dickens thought it was a plausible demise for his antagonist ‘Lord Chancellor, Krook.’ But that does not seem to be a plausible phenomenon to us anymore. We are more reticent to accept explanations involving mysterious origins of events without understanding the mechanism whereby a deed is done. And yet… who are we? How much progress have we made?
When photographed tracks became available depicting the paths of a proton and an electron, receding from a point in a circular arc as they are wont to do in a magnetic field, with no track leading up to the origin of those arcs, the demise of an uncharged particle was assumed to have occurred at that point and time. These images are obtained from Wilson cloud chambers and Glaser bubble chambers. The neutron is presumed to have been the particle in demise. Whether any other neutral components had been involved in machinations leading up to the emergence of two charged particles cannot be ascertained directly. But assuming ‘decay’ of a single particle, rather than a response to an interaction of multiple particles, although simplifing the explanation – perhaps in accordance with Occam’s rule –is a bit presumptuous all the same.
I say presumptuous because although simpler in one sense, it is much more complicated in another, because the conservation laws are not satisfied without adding additional mysterious particles and associated behavior.
And in explaining the quantum phenomena identified by Planck as responsible for the blackbody spectrum, Einstein posited two distinct processes for the emission of identically similar radiation. Namely ‘stimulated’ and ‘spontaneous’. In the first of these processes, a photon is emitted as a direct consequence of an associated molecule having been ‘stimulated’ by a photon. The second completely separate process involves a photon being ‘spontaneously’ emitted from an identically similar molecule. These latter photons are emitted without external cause. Thus, however contorted the two ways of accomplishing the same physical behavior may be, the solution works – so well that it is now established as fact. Laser technology exploits the reality of the stimulated emissions. Spontaneous emission had been anticipated; it was the introduction of ‘stimulated’ emission that was the surprise. But why? Have we learned nothing about nothing coming from nothing?
Einstein is known to have said, “God would have done it that way about elegant solutions.” Two methods to accomplish the exact same function is not elegant.
However strange I consider them to be, these are normal physical phenomena, the occurrence of which we take for granted. But ‘scientifically’ interpreting them to occur without external cause is in my opinion a cause for concern. I think we need to discover causes in all cases rather than deciding that in some cases there are none. Does that imply determinism? I don’t think so, but if it does, we need to explore that too. Conservation laws, relativity, and quantum theories should preclude inanimate spontaneity from happening at all. Probabilities should not be used to reject causality but to determine reasons for variably deferring the precipitating causes. So we need to talk about it.
Charles Dickens justified his spontaneous combustion by a factual incident of a woman being found burned to death with no surrounding evidence of damage in her surroundings. In 300 years since that incident, 200 similarly unexplained incidents of people bursting into flames have been reported. Scientists discount every such incident as the “wick effect,” where clothing acts as a wick and body fat acts as fuel, causing the body to be totally consumed by a slow burning intense fire.
When I was very young, my mother had her night clothes burst into flames when she stood too close to a wood burning heater. She ran outside and rolled around in wet grass to douse the flames. She suffered a severe burn. Clothes were much less safe from catching on fire back then and there were more open fires. Perhaps if she had been alone and failed to run out and roll in wet grass, there would have been 201 cases instead of 200.
When something seems unreasonable or like God would not have done it that way, it’s time to seek a different explanation.
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