Renewal of the World
"How great are your works God, with wisdom you created them all, the world is full of your possessions" - King David
I heard from my teacher that we should say not only, "How great are your works,'' but also, "How small are they," to be amazed by the smaller, finer details. Following our introduction of how we can look into the world and learn life lessons within the scope of Judaism, let's look into one of the smallest events that take place in 10 -24s: the weak force interaction that happens in nucleons usually to do with a decay of a proton or neutron. This takes place using an intermediate particle called a W or Z boson. A proton can turn into a neutron, positron and an electron neutrino using a Z + neutron as the intermediate interacting particle - this example process is Beta + emission used in hospitals for tumors larger than 0.5cm.
A strange phenomenon occurs during this particle interaction that seems impossible to happen. For a particle to exchange one of these virtual bosons it has to, in terms, 'borrow' energy from the universe to form the particle (E=mc 2 ) and then when the reaction has occurred the process 'returns' the energy back to the universe. The bigger the mass of the virtual particle means more energy will be borrowed and therefore the energy has a shorter time to be borrowed for. This is happening an uncountable amount of times every microsecond with so many millions of subatomic particles.
We have all just learned, one of the most fundamental concepts in physics, that energy cannot be created or destroyed, the first of the 3 laws of thermodynamics, this energy borrowing system seems to be bordering on the violation of this rule. Scientists are trying to figure out an answer by talking about vacuum energy, a certain underlying energy in the universe. I think we can explain as follows and the life lesson we gain is crucial to building ourselves. Possibly, the 'underlying energy' found to be distributing energy into this world is God's constant power he asserts into this world to keep it going. He supports this world constantly by lending energy on the condition He gets it back (not that He needs it) and whilst the energy level returns to normal, the result is the world being greater, more developed place due to having created a new particle, a new form of that matter which can be used in a more productive way.
The lesson I believe we can learn is two-fold. On a macro level, if each subatomic particle represents a person, the energy lent to us by God is our Soul - Neshamah that is pure and give us the life to be able to function for a short time on earth, and once that time is over Hashem claims the soul back and fits it back into his broader picture, all remaining is but one simple question, what interaction took place? In our short time we have to determine what impact we will leave, what change we want to make so that the world is a better place, more believing and hopeful, better functioning and more moral than the one we entered. The energy was donated not so that we give back and have nothing to show for ourselves but rather to leave the world with something fixed. For example, if someone were to borrow money for a business deal, and then 6 months later he hands you the money back and claims, 'These are the exact notes that you gave me,' you wouldn't be impressed. You lent the money so that something positive could be done with the money, so he could make much more and advance his business. This is the same with us, we get a huge chance to do the most impressive things in our short time, we are expected to pay back with different notes and have much more in our own bank.
More important than this, I think, is to highlight the significance that particles can borrow and return energy and how often it happens. This can be comparable to Maimonides seeing the world as being upkept at every moment in time, comparable to a person doing keepy-uppies, constantly working to uphold the ball. This is what we see with the virtual particles, God is constantly directing energy to these particles through what we call 'vacuum energy' to make sure that significant, although minute, processes occur which keep the world functioning.
As Jews say in the blessing before reading the 'Shema' - "He renews his goodness every day, continually." There is no such thing as 'old', because everything is new, recreated, each day is something that can be separate from the previous day if we choose to move on and improve ourselves. The Scriptures about Rosh Hashana (the festival that commemorates the Jewish new year) comments on when we are judged, and determines that every second we are judged as the verse says in Job - "you tested him every second." There is only significance in a person being judged in every moment if something has changed from the last. To make such a blanket statement like this, there must intrinsically be, according to the Scriptures, something different and separate from this second to the next, a new chance for everyone.