I Want to Explore the Dark :: Graduate Admissions Essays

I Want to Explore the Dark The vacuum of space defined by modern particle theory is a strange place indeed. From an unchanging "void" it has become an active arena out of which particles might be created or into which they might be destroyed. Just as light was supposed to excite waves in the aether according to Newton, we now envisage elementary particles to be excitations out of the vacuum state. That vacuum might even be the "source" of all matter in the universe. We may have dispensed with the classical aether of Aristotle and Huygens, but in the process have come to speculate about matters which may seem even more bizarre. Perhaps we have just come full circle. After all, how much closer can we come to the "indefinite" of [the early Greek philosopher] Anaximander? Recall once again his words: the "indefinite". . . . . . is neither water nor any other of the so-called elements, but some different, boundless nature, from which all the heavens arise and the worlds within them; out of those things whence is the generation for existing things, into these again does their destruction take place, according to what must needs be. Anaximander's words now appear prophetically familiar. Although we have come a long way from the cosmogony of Anaximander and the earlier myths of the primeval ocean, and our explanations have become more sophisticated and more scientific, the basic questions driving our inquiries are the same. We are still searching for the fundamental constituents of the matter that we can see and touch, and we still wonder about the origin, nature, and existence of the dominant "stuff" in the universe. As our knowledge of one realm has improved so has our ability to speculate about and probe another.