We see the Earth as a solid and opaque thing, with so many colorful energies of photons constantly "reflecting" back at us. But to some sub-atomic particles our little planet is as transparent as a gypsy's crystal ball. Greatly outnumbering our precious photons, they pour straight through, night and day. What information might they be carrying? Neither our meager senses nor our science can yet say.
[This chapter continues the “assignment” from my Spirit Guide, See Do, to examine the complexities of our mundane reality. The specific construct given me to examine is a hypothetical cube ¼ inch on a side, floating in the air about a foot in front of my face. These meditations on our temporal reality will be followed by an examination of “See Do reality.”]
Up at the other end of the electromagnetic spectrum, toward the higher energies, things are different again. Just above the energies of visible light is ultraviolet. If you’re little cube is outside there’s a lot of ultraviolet radiation pouring through from the sun. With its higher energy, ultraviolet radiation can affect physical changes on certain living cells. That’s what we call sunburn.
Up the energy spectrum beyond that come x-rays. And our cube of air should be pretty safe from those. There are some shooting through from high-energy events in deep space, but nothing to worry about.
Then come gamma rays and cosmic rays. High energy cosmic rays from deep in space pour through our little cube all the time. Mostly they just shoot straight through.
And there are gamma rays flying around too, mostly from the natural breakdown and decay of the nuclei of atoms all around us, and in us. That’s what we think of as nuclear radiation. We live in a sea of it. It’s called the natural background radiation.
Inside our own bodies, there are over one billion atomic nuclei that decay every second. When they do, they send out a shower of very high energy photons. And protons and neutrons. And a whole new menagerie of other particles we won’t even go into. Some of those are whizzing through our cube too.
And I think I should mention neutrinos now. Although I don’t want to send your brain into overload.
You see, neutrinos are particles with a little mass but with zero charge. They move very quickly, like photons, but they almost never interact with anything. To a neutrino, the Earth is completely and utterly transparent. They pass straight through all the time.
Now, take a moment to reconsider all the photon information we talked about that is passing through our cube at any given moment. The visible light, the radio energy, the heat energy, the higher energies. And then read the next sentence very carefully: There may be almost twice as many neutrinos in the universe as there are photons.
It’s okay. Take a breath. Read that sentence again. And take another breath.
Well, that’s out of the way.
The cube is getting crowded. Or is it? This is just a passing glimpse at what modern science sees in an “empty” cube of our mundane temporal reality. And you’re looking for bigger answers? We’d better learn to crawl before we walk.
You might want to review a few earlier chapters. Then let’s get crawling.
— continuied (Next: What’s holding it all down?)
Magnetic fields are all around us. It is believed that birds can navigate so far and wide because they can detect magnetic fields. In fact, there is scientific evidence that birds may actually be able to see magnetic fields visually.
[This chapter continues the “assignment” from my Spirit Guide, See Do, to examine the complexities of our mundane reality. The specific construct given me to examine is a hypothetical cube ¼ inch on a side, floating in the air about a foot in front of my face. These meditations on our temporal reality will be followed by an examination of “See Do reality.”]
Then, at the very lowest end of the electromagnetic spectrum are the static fields. They’re called static, I think, because the frequency of the field is actually zero. There is this flux or flow of electromagnetic energy with zero frequency. Yeah, you may not want to think too hard about that. They’re what we think of as magnetic fields.
These are hard to explain. And apparently not entirely understood. With zero frequency, all that’s left is a flow of what’s called “vector energy”. What that means is that there is a very directional energy that, like all the rest on the spectrum, is mediated by photons. This flow of photons can change the vector or likely direction of movement of electrons that move through it. If the material in this field has a lot of susceptible electrons, like some metals, and the magnetic field is strong enough, then the whole material can be made to move.
This happens around us all the time. And our cube is criss-crossed with plenty of magnetic field energy. The most notable is the Earth’s magnetic field. If you were to put a compass in or near our cube, the needle would spin to point north.
The Earth’s magnetic field is very strong. It is driven from within the core of the Earth, where the outer core of molten metal spins or churns in a manner to create gigantic electric dynamos. This electrical energy has the side effect, as all electrical energy sources do, of also creating a huge magnetic field that reaches out from one pole, loops around and dives back in at the other pole. This looping energy passes through our cube and through our compass needle.
On its way through the needle it has enough energy to pull a large enough number of the needle’s electrons into alignment with the field’s direction of travel. Technically, these electrons are actually made to change direction in such a way that they loop around the magnetic flow line or flux perpendicular to the flux. This causes the needle, which is magnetic, in other words, it is metal that in a magnetic field will automatically align it’s molecules to its own internal north pole and south pole, to move to physically align with the greater outside flow of magnetic energy. The needle points North.
Oddly, the North Magnetic Pole of the Earth, which is not at the North Pole, but well to the Canadian side of the North Pole, is technically the Earth’s south pole, magnetically speaking. You see, magnetic fields loop around from their north pole to their south pole. A compass will point in the direction of the flow.
And, at the moment, the Earth’s magnetic poles are about eleven degrees off from the Earth’s actual axis of spin. I say at the moment, because over period of thousands of years, the pole moves around, and occasionally flips completely.
The Earth’s magnetic field also reaches out into space for hundreds of thousands of miles. It is this energy flow that protects us from a lot of bad cosmic energy. Without a magnetic field, the ionizing radiation that would pour in would make life on Earth all but impossible. There would just be too much radiation.
The energy of the Sun’s magnetic field, or the Solar Wind, would be a show stopper all its own. And the cosmic rays from the rest of the universe would add the knock-out punch. But the Earth’s magnetic field shields us from most of those energies.
And there are other magnetic fields moving through our little cube. All around us are electric wires, electric motors, appliances and various magnets. If you take a small compass and walk around the space you live in, you’ll see the needle spin and turn all around as you move it through the various fields. Some of the bigger ones are around the microwave and its magnetron, the refrigerator and its electric motor, your stereo speakers have nice strong magnets, the TV, the laptop. There are many.
These things aren’t dangerous, that’s not he point. But they do generate magnetic fields that are passing through our quarter inch cube.
It’s all right there in that tiny space. Right now. Think about it. Meditate on it. Just be sure to come back for more.
— continued (Next: We briefly consider the higher energies. And the stunning truth about nuetrinos.)
