Don’t be alarmed, the end of this article might be more shocking than Quantum Physics.
Reality is basically everything you can (at the hazard of dying) touch and observe. Yes, air you can (and hopefully do so every moment) touch every day. Rocks you can touch. Snakes (though they can bite) you can touch. Even the sun you could touch, IF you were not incinerated by the fusion process already miles from the star itself (like in a nuclear reaction (because that is basically what the sun/star is, not a fire ball in the sky).
The depth of things
Now, we know that what we observe isn’t everything we can touch, and what we can touch isn’t everything we observe. Many fields of science and research direct themselves onto the ‘underlying’ part of what makes up things. For instance, we know that gold is a metal, just like lead. In the days before science became leading method of inquiry, there was a field between religious/fantasy thinking and what we call science.
Fall of the apple
Many well known scientists, like Newton for instance, was an avid practitioner of Alchemy. Alchemy is named to be the ‘the medieval forerunner of chemistry, concerned with the transmutation of matter, in particular with attempts to convert base metals into gold or find a universal elixir.’. The practitioners of this type of magical science, run all the way back to 200-300 CE (Common Era), but as far as today still.
Imagine, turning Lead into Gold. Looking at what we know now about the atomic structure of both:
Gold (Au). Diagram of the nuclear composition and electron configuration of an atom of gold-197 (atomic number: 79), the most common isotope of this element. The nucleus consists of 79 protons (red) and 118 neutrons (blue). 79 electrons (green) bind to the nucleus, successively occupying available electron shells (rings). Gold is a transition metal in group 11, period 6, and the d-block of the periodic table. It has a melting point of 1064 degrees Celsius. The trends across the transition metals are due to electrons filling an inner d-subshell (here, within the 5th ring), shielding the outer electrons from the increasing nuclear charge. 
Lead (Pb). Diagram of the nuclear composition and electron configuration of an atom of lead-208 (atomic number: 82), the most common isotope of this element. The nucleus consists of 82 protons (red) and 126 neutrons (blue). 82 electrons (green) bind to the nucleus, successively occupying available electron shells (rings). The stability of an element’s outer electrons determines its chemical and physical properties. Lead is a post-transition metal in group 14, period 6, and the p-block of the periodic table. It has a melting point of 327 degrees Celsius. Excessive exposure can cause poisoning. Uses include batteries, weights and bullets.
Value of change
It is understandable that people would want to turn the cheapest type of metal into the (in the eyes of European humans) most valuable (at that time). As you can see, they don’t differ too much on the scale of electrons, protons and neutrons. But though the limited eye would say: Well, with such a limited difference, there surely should be a way to transfer protons and electrons from one to another… Well, no. Because of the strong interaction force makes the atomic bond nearly unbreakable, except by infusing extreme amounts of energy or force. This is all great, but the effects of infusing such energy and force, is unpredictable too. So you could end up with Steel, Gold, rock or air (these are unlikely, because most would be combined elements, but still).
Alchemy lead in new bags?
The idea of alchemists was that elements that were closely related, should be in some way ‘evolved’ from each other. As we are (even back then) able to ‘breed’ livestock to our wishes, so should we be able to influence the anorganic matter. And we can. We do. But not in the way alchemists wanted.
Mold theory, germ theory, grave theory
Since the time of Alchemy (and I dare say, even due to the fantastice imaginations OF Alchemy) we as humans have evolved our understanding and recognition of reality, the universe as to say. But…..we still fall for the same mistake as alchemists did. We project onto reality our expectations and find answers we look for. This is great! This gives us options to develop. BUT, it also causes us to mold our theories based on genetically evolved insights. We don’t use control moments, where we re-evaluate our insights and say: Okay, we came this far, did we at some point, limit ourselves by our knowledge and might come to different conclusions if we use our current understanding in earlier steps.
May the force be with you
For instance, we know we have identified four ‘forces’ or ‘interactions’ in reality.
– Weak interaction (Effect in the Electroweak theory)
– Strong interaction (Effect in the Quantum chromodynamics theory)
– Electromagnetic interaction (Effect in the Quantum electrodynamics theory)
– Grativational interaction (Effect in Einstein’s General Relativity Theory)
(Do understand that these theories are so thoroughly researched that they are solid. There is little question regarding their legitimacy.)
We came to most of these, after gravity was recognized as a universal force by Isaac Newton (As mentioned someone who also practitioned Alchemy and was like most people in his time, Religious). Einstein added the observational variation to it and from there on many scientists evolved our understanding of matter and energy adding Quantum Physics/Mechanics to the Standard Model (of Physics) and Theoretical Physics.
Selfcentered?
Our reality severely changed by understanding what Copernicus said about the non-heliocentric universe we lived in. Many people know how amazing things can be when you are raised in a small countryside village and suddenly at 18 years old, you go to the big city. Imagine that you are Columbus and you sail through dangers and such for weeks and find that the world isn’t just Europe and Africa and Asia (which as you know are three continents, but one landmass), but America too. The world became bigger for him and slowly for those in other societies as well. The theory of Copernicus was great, but it didn’t hit home yet because of Columbus found a new continent.
Global recognition
The idea that the world was really a globe, like the Greeks already had deducted, was still a stretch for most. Copernicus had given a vision of more than just our world. Only when we finally got the technological advancement to test it, we came to realisation (as humanity), that the universe was bigger than Earth. Only decades ago, we came to the conclusion the universe is bigger than our solar system and even that our solar system isn’t the only one. All ‘zodiac signs’ were merely bigger stars that we had made patterns over, but in reality all were ‘solar systems’ of their own, in galaxy parts not even close to each other.
Paternal or patternal
Humanity learned that patterns were not random and patterns weren’t based on intention (Though humans learned that their own influence on patterns were often intentional). Gods started to lose their meaning.
We skip ahead and see humanity evolve their knowledge of the universe and even matter and energy. The ideas of Aether left and Oxygen, Nitrogen, Argon, Carbon Dioxide and other elements replaced it as ‘air’.
But as our understanding of the universe grew, so did we want to pass on this information and knowledge to other generations. We ‘schematized’ all findings to a level that people that where smarter would have to ‘jump the bandwagon’ and people who weren’t would consider the ‘bandwagon’ a fata morgana.
Breath, breath!
If you learn that this is Oxygen:
How do you then jump to this:
To this:
For some of you who have read this now, will say: WHAT?! (for two different reasons).
Some will start examining the first two images and learn how crude the first schematics is to the second schematics, however still a schematics (like a cave drawing of an mammoth to a Van Gogh or Rembrandt). The third is how we are able to actually detect the ‘form’ of the actual element.
Eventhough we now KNOW that what we observe in the latter is an ‘excited’ state of a field, we still refer from the ‘particle’ perspective. Even while we know that the particle as such ‘doesn’t exist’.
Two steps forward, one step back
I propose to look back and imagine how we would calculate the forces and models, if we started with what we know now.
We are pretty certain that what we observe as a particle, is the observed excited state of a field. This seems unintuitive, but it is not.
Imagine the universe being a expanding bubble field group:
Not to burst your bubble.
They aren’t these kind of bubbles exactly. These are fields, fields of energy frequencies. They started with a high amplitude and high frequency, but slowly start to stretch. Because they are ‘pushed’ by their original force, the space called the ‘period’ causes some of the forces to exist. The wave is a one dimensional observation of movement for the frequency. When two field-waves touch, they cause an excited state we observe as a particle. Because the frequency if stable and constant, the particle remains stable. This also explains why at point of observation of particles we recognize energy increase. Which direction on the field the wave moves and hits another field/wave, determines what we observe as spin.
Bubble fields, really?
This results in the idea (yes, just an idea), that reality, however real, is a bubble universe of fields. This is also why a particle can have different states at the same time, because, the particle doesn’t really exist. The particle is merely an effect of the frequency of the universe/reality. This means that there is much to find out still. But as always, very possibly, reality is stranger than fiction. The frequency of the universes fields and corresponding waves. How it will result into a bigger universe still and whether at some point reality will change if the field/wave frequencies collapse or start to misallign. Will physics change?
