beakman & jax --- from the comic strip in sunday newspapers:
st. louis post -- sep 29 - 1996
dear jax:
what are the laws of the universe --- from lee kear --- woodbury, TN
dear lee
that's kind of a mind-expanding question. The best questions are the ones that make you think a bit. And Beakman and i thought a lot about this one. Genius Nobel-prize-winning physicists like Leon Lederman are out look for the one law of the universe. But when we answer questions we keep seeing the same powerful laws pop up over and over. Today's comic might seem all cosmic, but the Universe is a pretty cosmic (and comic) place to be. --- Jax Place.

Leyden note:
this might be what Einstein was looking for --- the Unified Field Theory (i think).

There are four forces in the universe: electromagnetic -- gravity -- atomic: weak fields & atomic: strong fields ----- and scientists wonder if there is one theory can be that brings together all these force fields -- a unified theory.

Note: anyone reading this who would like to make corrections -- or re-phrase what is said by me (or Beakman) please email me with your version. Thanx. This is difficult poetry.


#1 the universe likes balance

Leyden note:
the use of the term "likes" is anthropomorphic --- giving life-like qualities to something that is not alive. It should be avoided when explaining things.


the universe working toward balance is why airplanes fly, why balloons lose their air, how fish can get oxygen from water, how batteries work, why the wind blows and lots more. Balance is reached from there to be matter. If an atom wasn't balanced it couldn't exist. The forces of nature will push tirelessly and forever to make things balance. Yow!


2. nothing ever disappears

there is only so much stuff in the universe. None of it disappears even when things seem to disappear, they're really only changed their form. Like fire. Where did the wood go? It mixed with oxygen and transformed into other gases particles in the smoke, and even into light and heat. An important part of the law is that energy is just another way for matter to be, and vice versa. Radical !


#3 there is no darkness only light

You cannot make something that is not a thing. Negative things like darkness or cold are not really things at all. They're the absence of things. There is only more or less light. There is only more or less heat. To make dark you must block the light. To make cold you must remove the heat. Energy will move into cold or dark spaces, until all of the spaces shares equal light, equal heat. See the Law #1.


#4 There are different truths.

Energy can be a wave, like a radio wave or a light wave. A whole set of laws of Nature flow from energy being a wave.

But energy can also seem to be a quantum - a little chunk or particle of energy. Photons are particles, chunks of light. And who new laws flow from the view that energy is in chunks. We call this view quantum mechanics. both views are ways different. Both are completely true. They are different truths.

Leyden Note:
the 'fact' that light can be polarized 'proves' that it is a wave.
the 'fact' that the elevator door is triggered by a light beam 'proves'that light is a particle.

some people call light a 'wave-acle'.


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