This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns
As they say, there is no question too big or too small to ask. I was eating my usual dinner of raisin bran and milk and this Physics question popped in my head. What if the smallest thing was also the biggest thing? From a Maths perspective, what if infinity and zero are the same thing? A sort of duality. A counterintuitive proposition. It's one of those thought experiments that does not make sense but makes sense at the same time. It is not for me to have a definitive and comprehensive answer but to spark my curiosity. I had time to sleep on this question. I am wide awake on a Tuesday morning and my goal as I do the laundry is to take this big question and package it into a small chapter and place it in a small corner of the internet that may one day be the cornerstone of a big idea.
Asking what if challenges us to think outside the box. To see beyond the obvious. To use our imagination. To simplify and translate our notions into forms that can be digested by others. To appreciate that things may not be as they seem. To make sense out of nonsense. One way I can help to visualize what I am thinking is what if I take the smallest particle of matter and put it under the most powerful microscope? I would be looking at the universe from the outside and if I used the most powerful telescope I would be looking from the inside. I would be looking at myself looking at myself.
There could be more than one way to think about this. Would being in a simulation make sense of this? A single point source of energy that can be either on or off but changes state so quickly to make up all the bits of the universe. Everything in the universe past, present and future can be seen through a single window. Each snapshot of the window can be represented with bits. The smallest the window can be is a pinhole. Everything can be seen through a pinhole. In Trinidad there is a rude saying that goes "small pin does chook hard”. It is a double entendre which is French for "double meaning". There are several concepts we can use to compare the duality of the question. Here are some other perspectives. A chain is as strong as the weakest link. The smallest things make the biggest impacts. To answer the biggest questions we have to answer the smallest questions. The biggest problems are felt most by the people with the smallest means. The word small contains the word all. The i in the word big contains a dot.
I don't know how to relate this to the discussion but I recently watched this video called "Why the i's have it". Have you noticed that ping pong, tick tock, zig zag and flip flop all have the word with the i first. We could easily say flop flip but we do not. Many things are often about perspective and we often hear that "it's all relative". The smallest thing to me might be the biggest thing to an ant. Thinking of the big bang theory - the biggest thing which is our universe was once the smallest thing. While showering last night I came up with another way to imagine an answer to the question. Imagine that there is only one smallest entity that is everywhere at the same time doing everything. How does this compare to the theory of everything? Where does string theory fit in with this thought? Plenty to think about and more than could be written even in the biggest book. I want to conclude this chapter with this common saying. To the world you may be one person but to one person you may be the world.
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