“Mysteries of the quantum vacuum”
from God’s Whisper, Creation’s Thunder, by Brian Hines
In somewhat the same manner, physics surmises that the vacuum contains virtually infinite energy, even though the exact nature of the all-pervading vacuum force remains a mystery. We are accustomed to thinking of a vacuum as being empty, like a jar with all of the air expelled from it. However, the new physics views it as anything but that. Danah Zohar says:
The quantum vacuum is very inappropriately named because it is not empty. Rather, it is the basic, fundamental, and underlying reality of which everything in this universe—including ourselves—is an expression….By analogy, if we lived in a world of sound, the vacuum could be conceived as a drum skin and the sounds it makes as vibrations of that skin. The vacuum is the substrate of all that is.
Roger Penrose asks how one can quantify the amount of matter in existence, which involves coming to grips with what the essence of matter is and where it can be located. He says, “We seem to be driven to deduce that if this mass-energy is to be located at all, it must be in this flatempty space—a region completely free of matter or fields of any kind. In these curious circumstances, our ‘quantity of matter’ is now either there, in the emptiest of empty regions, or it is nowhere at all!”
Recall that many physicists believe that a vacuum fluctuation was the event which produced the big bang and the physical universe. So whatever the vacuum is, material science tells us that it contains enough power to be the creator and sustainer of everything in existence. From this perspective, physical matter and energy are inconsequential waves upon the all-pervading sea of the vacuum. David Bohm and F. David Peat say:
Current quantum field theory implies that what appears to be empty space contains an immense “zero point energy” [which remains even at temperatures of absolute zero, when thermal energy oscillations are absent] coming from all the quantum fields that are contained in this space. Matter is then a relatively small wave or disturbance on top of this “ocean” of energy.
Using reasonable assumptions, the energy of one cubic centimeter of space is far greater than would be available from the nuclear disintegration of all the matter in the known universe! Matter is therefore a “small ripple” on this ocean of energy. But since we, too, are constituted of this matter, we no more see the “ocean” than probably does a fish swimming in the ocean see the water.
John Davidson likens the situation to a tug-of-war. When two evenly matched teams pull on each end of a strong rope with all of their might, the rope does not move. But though no motion is evident, it is full of potential energy (if the rope snaps, this energy probably will make members of the two teams fall on their backsides).
Similarly, we do not observe the vacuum energy because it is locked into the structure of physical reality. Only minute surface quiverings of that immense force, known to physics as short-lived virtual particles, are apparent. Larry Abbott says, “By convention, energies are often measured in relation to the vacuum. When it is defined in this way, the vacuum automatically has zero energy in relation to itself.”
But when attempts are made to calculate the actual energy of the vacuum (or cosmological constant, a term used in relativity theory), this energy ends up being infinite. Perhaps the greatest unsolved mystery in physics and cosmology is why this stupendous power does not produce the physical effects, such as curved space, that are predicted by current theories.
Anthony Zee says, “The naturally expected value of the cosmological constant [or vacuum energy] comes out to be about 10123times the maximum value that the astronomers tell us the cosmological constant possibly can have. This discrepancy of a factor of 10123between observation and theoretical expectation has been called the biggest error in the history of physics.”
Infinite energy pervading the universe
So physics knows that the superforce is still with us in the unimaginably vast zero-point energy of the vacuum, but cannot measure or experience it directly. The ancient conception of an all-pervasive yet invisible ether has been resurrected by modern physics, even though most physicists would reject that term (if not the concept). Hans Christian Von Baeyer says:
A vacuum that is utterly dark is nonetheless suffused with an electro-magnetic field that fluctuates in gentle random waves of all wavelengths, each wavelength with its own zero point energy. What’s more, since there is an infinity of these vacuum fluctuations, the sum total of all zero point energies, even in a compact volume of, say, a cubic inch, must be infinite. The impossibly dense ether has been replaced by an infinite energy density pervading the entire universe.
Infinite energy pervading the entire universe, this is how the vacuum is viewed by the new physics. Once again findings of material science have brought us back to the beginning and end of existence: spirit, the all-pervading conscious energy which, as God’s essence, manifests the attributes of omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence.
The laws of quantum physics imply that the nothingness of the physical vacuum contains much more energy than all of the matter in the universe. In fact, that nothing can be viewed as the source of everything in this domain of creation: the forces of nature, atomic particles, the structure of space itself.
In like fashion, mysticism teaches that the seeming emptiness of the inner sky seen within ourselves when the eyes are closed actually is the gateway to absolute truth, knowledge, and bliss. Rumi says, “The workshop and treasure of God is in nonexistence. You are deceived by existence, so how should you know about nonexistence?”
We fail to recognize that all of the thoughts and images of materiality which ceaselessly fly about in the mind distract us from realizing the essence of pure consciousness, spirit. That nothing experienced in the depths of contemplative meditation actually is the ground of everythingin existence.