March 16, 2006

I am following an online Chemistry class at College of Marin. I just watched a video on my computer made by the textbook author and video presenter, John Suchocki, in which I learned that H2O as ice is less dense than H2O as liquid (water), which is very unusual in comparison to other materials. I knew ice floated on top of water and that for this reason we do not have a frozen world, but I had not really grasped the reason why it floats, which is that its density changes. The mass does not change but when water becomes ice, the volume that it occupies grows, and therefore its density lessens.

I watched the pictures. As the temperature drops and the water begins to freeze, the molecules arrange themselves as though guided by an invisible device, locking them onto a grid. They do not form squares however. They form hexagonal circles—6 molecules of H2O to a circle. And in the center of the circle there is nothing. This was the final point of the lesson. The infectiously enthusiastic John Suchocki invited his audience to think about what this could mean. He said – "Do you think there is water vapor in the middle of the circle? No. There are no other molecules of H2O. Do you think there is some air there, some nitrogen or some oxygen? No. No atoms of anything are there. There is absolutely nothing there. So there’s something to think about—Nothing!"

So since he suggested it - to think about 'nothing' - I came to my computer to give 'nothing' some thought...

Where does the ‘nothing’ come from I wonder? The molecules do not shrink. Their atoms remain unchanged: 2 atoms of hydrogen bound tightly with one atom of oxygen. Atoms don’t change size just because of heat (thermal energy). So the molecules themselves are no different than when they tumble over one another to form our familiar water. Yet the space between them grows, as they form this circular structure under the influence of a cooling environment – and the volume they occupy increases. ‘Nothing’ seems to be growing…

If it is not absurd to say this, it seems to me that little pinches of ‘nothing’ actually come into existence. This business of water becoming ice seems to suggest that the ‘milieu’ of matter (what we conceive as space) is flexible, elastic and interactive – even though nothing is nothing and can DO nothing. But somehow there is a relationship such that if the temperature drops sufficiently, it summons up a response from the ‘milieu’ or ‘space’ and some more space is found (creates itself) to accommodate the electrical forces of attraction between the molecules of H2O, which when cold enough will form—have to form—a 6-molecule circular structure. There is indeed something to wonder about here.

It makes me wonder if space is responsive to matter. If nothingness and somethingness are dynamically interactive, then our conventional perspective on the world as objects ‘occupying space’ is not quite the way to see things. When water freezes into ice, I catch a glimpse – fleeting as the driving snow on a dark and windy night—of what may really be going on in this world. The glimpse is of a place that is more a process than a place. It is extraordinarily dynamic and mobile. It reminds me of physicist David Bohm’s proposal that the universe is ‘whole in movement’ for which he invented the word ‘holomovement’.

I see the ‘something’ that is water molecules invoking ‘nothing’ into being as they drop into their mandatory positions in a 6-point circle. It is almost as though the condition of ‘nothing’ – or nothingness – is an essential aspect of something existing. The substantiality of the world must rely upon nothingness being available otherwise it could not exist.

For me, this intimates that the whole is more whole than we think. Or that the way to think about wholeness – to notice it at all – must involve a new insight into the relationship between matter/energy and space-time. We must be able to perceive the reality that nothing is involved with something - or rather that something is deeply involved, deeply dependent on - Nothing!

How curious the lessons about our universe may be. All this deep philosophy from a Chemistry lesson! What a pleasure it is to learn new things.



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