Beyond Fusion: The Unknown

Worlds Within Worlds: The Story of Nuclear Energy, Volume 3 (of 3), by Isaac Asimov is part of HackerNoon’s Book Blog Post series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. Volume III, BEYOND FUSION: The Unknown

The Unknown

Physical theory makes it seem that particles and antiparticles ought to exist in the universe in equal quantities. Yet on earth (and, we can be quite certain, in the rest of the solar system and even, very likely, in the rest of the galaxy) protons, neutrons, and electrons are common, while antiprotons, antineutrons, and positrons are exceedingly rare.

Could it be that when the universe was first formed there were indeed equal quantities of particles and antiparticles but that they were somehow segregated, perhaps into galaxies and “antigalaxies”? If so, there might occasionally be collisions of a galaxy and an antigalaxy with the evolution of vast quantities of energy as mutual annihilation on a cosmic scale takes place.

There are, in fact, places in the heavens where radiation is unusually high in quantity and in energy. Can we be witnessing such enormous mutual annihilation?

Indeed, it is not altogether inconceivable that we may still have new types of forces and new sources of energy to 164discover. Until about 1900, no one suspected the existence of nuclear energy. Are we quite sure now that nuclear energy brings us to the end, and that there is not a form of energy more subtle still, and greater?

In 1962, for instance, certain puzzling objects called “quasars” were discovered far out in space, a billion light-years or more away from us. Each one shines from 10 to 100 times as brilliantly as an entire ordinary galaxy does, and yet may be no more than a hundred-thousandth as wide as a galaxy.

This is something like finding an object 10 miles across that delivers as much total light as 100 suns.

It is very hard to understand where all that energy comes from and why it should be concentrated into so tiny a volume. Astronomers have tried to explain it in terms of the four interactions now known, but is it possible that there is a fifth greater than any of the four?

If so, it is not impossible that eventually man’s restless brain may come to understand and even utilize it.

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Isaac Asimov. 2015. Worlds Within Worlds: The Story of Nuclear Energy, Volume 3 (of 3). Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved May 2022 from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/49821/49821-h/49821-h.htm#c41

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