Fun with Photons
In the beginning there was nothing
Then Ceiling Cat said “Let there be light”
And there was still nothing
But now you could see it.
So, say you’re in the center of the sun, and some hydrogen atoms fuse to produce helium. Why not? There’s really a lot of pressure in there. That releases two neutrinos, two positrons and energy in the form of gamma photons. Although photons travel at the speed of light, the center of the sun is full of or even consists of plasma so they can’t go very far and they bounce around going every which way, but finally they make it up to the photosphere. This can take as long as a million years and some say 500 million years. By this time you’d think they would be getting old but we know now that moving at the speed of light they don't age at all because Einstein. Next our photon shoots toward earth still at the speed of light and that takes around 8 minutes.
You have a plant growing in your yard. It is the culmination of millions and millions of years of evolutionary refinement. This has produced chlorophyll in its leaves which has the remarkable, even miraculous property of being a molecule that can absorb light energy and store it as sugars. So our photon hits the leaf and performs the miracle which results in the growth of the plant. The photon has done its job. And what do you do? Pick the weed, or ignore it. Better to grok it and admire and revere it. A weed is just a plant in the wrong place. It might even be a flower.
These are thoughts that occur to me every time I pull up a weed, or imagine fields sprayed with poison. This forms the basis of my “religion” and makes me appreciate every minute of my life.
I have shared these thoughts before, but they resurface as I spend time in nature, away from the almost constant flow of fraught world news. Carpe Diem. Seize the Day.
Mrs. side pocket was at the farm all day, and just called to say she was bringing home my first zucchini. And so it begins.