Microcosmology Atom in Jain Philosophy and Modern Science

Author(s): Jethalal S Zaveri, Mahendramuni
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati

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Microcosmology : Atom electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces. In 1983, the three massive partners of photon were discovered at ECNR (European Centre for Nuclear Research) in Switzerland.
The success of the unification of the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces led to a number of attempts to combine these two forces with the strong nuclear force. The basic idea is : At high energies, the strong nuclear force gets weaker (as mentioned earlier), while the other two forces which are not asymptotically free, get stronger. At some very high energy called the 'grand unification energy,' these three forces would all have the same strength and so could just be different aspects of a single force. It is also predicted that at this energy (at least a thousand million Gev), the different 'spin-matter- particles like quarks and electrons would also all be essentially the same, thus achieving another unification.
At 'grand unification energy', there is no esseatial difference between a quark and a positron (anti-electron). There is, thus, a possibility of spontaneous decay of protons which make up the most of the mass of ordinary matter, into lighter particles such as positrons. Grand Unified Theories' (GUT) do not include the force of gravity. This does not matter too much, because gravity is such a weak force that its effects can usually be neglected when we are dealing with microcosmos i.e., sub-atomic particles or atoms. However, the fact that it is both long range and always attractive means that its effects all add up. So, for a sufficiently large number of matter-particles, gravitational forces can dominate over all other forces. This is why it is gravity that determines the evolution of the Universe. For macrocosmos i.e., objects of the size of stars, gravity can win over all the other forces and cause the star to collapse. Already there are first hints of a quantum theory of gravity yet to come.
Since the postulation of quark in 1968, quarter of a century has passed during which a spate of new theories --S-matrix, bootstrap, Bell's theorem, quantum field theories, quantum-electrodynamics, Gauge theory etc. have appeared in the field. All these are too complicated, though relevant for
1. See, “Nuclear Transformation in Nature" in the last Section of this Chapter.