Quarks, Those Subatomic Particles, Are Also Organisms
Hear me out
This is yet another article in the organism series.
The argument I make concerns identifying new organisms previously outside the realm of biology.
The organisms we know from the past are hardly contestable.
You are an organism, and so am I. Indisputable. But what of the entities we consider lifeless?
Feynman asked what would happen if electrons had feelings. I also wrote an article about that, showing how they don’t necessarily need to have feelings as we know it.
We tend to understand feelings as humans, but humans are a complex life form. Attributing a complex and emergent property such as feelings to entities as simple as electrons is a bit of a stretch. Chances are that was not what Feynman was referring to.
However, before you feel, you need a baseline requirement. You need to have a tendency to avoid annihilation, human or otherwise.
Now, what about quarks?
Let’s start from the simple concepts.
First of all, what are quarks?
Quarks are subatomic particles, smaller than the composite protons and neutrons we see in atoms. Actually, they make up the protons and neutrons in atoms.
If you have an idea of the atomic structure — nucleus and electrons — then understanding quarks is only a single step away. Quarks merge to form hadrons, which combine further to form the protons and neutrons we see in atoms.
Their identity was first indirectly inferred and independently confirmed from various experiments in different labs throughout the world.
Quarks form atomic nuclei.
How, then are they like other organisms?
The organismal tendency to avoid annihilation
The first thing we have to discuss is the properties of an organism.
Organisms, as defined by the theory of Organismal Selection, are entities that exist physically and have a tendency to avoid annihilation.
You exist physically and you tend to avoid death. You do this daily, whether you’re aware of it or not.
Our shared universe is ever-expanding. You are part of the universe. But you do not expand. You keep yourself intact despite everything going on outside you. Keeping yourself intact is part of what every other organism does, whether defined by mainstream theories or as defined by the theory of Organismal Selection.
Now, quarks also contain this property, but in a weird way.
Four forces dominate the field of physics.
The electromagnetic force, gravitational force, weak force, and the strong force. We all know the electromagnetic force. We have also heard of the gravitational force. The weak force is that of radioactivity.
One property links these three forces — the farther particles are, the weaker the forces.
It only makes sense. It’s what we’re used to.
Bring two magnets closer and the force between them becomes stronger the closer they get and weaker as the distance between them increases. The same case applies to gravity.
The only force which has the opposite property is the strong force. Quarks are the only known particles that exhibit this force. It means then that the farther the distance between quarks, the stronger the force.
Mmmhn…it’s the quark way of saying the further you go, the more I miss you. A subatomic version of ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’.
For this reason, it is extremely difficult to find a quark all by itself. They always merge. The closer they are, the weaker the force. They are therefore easier to move and interact when closer together than when they are apart.
Suppose Thanos, the Titan, used his infinity stones to separate the quarks. What will happen is, that rather than separate them, he will generate enough force to produce more quarks.
He will not have succeeded in separating them. But he will have succeeded in creating more.
That is how strong the strong force is.
Separating quarks is so difficult that by the time you succeed (highly unlikely), you will have generated enough force to create new ones rather than separate the ones you wanted.
What they basically tell us is — they tend to avoid annihilation.
Circling back to our definition of an organism, quarks fit the bill. They are physically existing particles that tend to avoid annihilation. The strong force shows this in the strongest way. Pun is very much intended.
How quarks participate in mergers
Organisms resort to the simplest strategies of avoiding annihilation.
Seeking mergers is the single and simplest strategy as explained by the theory of Organismal Selection. Quarks, through the strong force, merge and hence support this assertion.
But they do more than that.
Quarks are the only known physical entities that experience all four fundamental forces. The strong, weak, electromagnetic, and gravitational forces. They started this process early when our shared universe was still young. Even then, they wanted to avoid annihilation.
They still want to avoid annihilation.
Quarks are practically the original organisms in our shared universe.
The higher you go in complexity, the more the merger diversity. It means the four basic forces in physics are not the only ways organisms can merge. I talk more about these mergers through my organism series.
You can also explore them yourself.
So, do you agree with me?
Well, there you have it.
Do you still disagree with me that quarks are organisms?
Maybe you don’t. I don’t blame you. I struggled with the idea as well.
But rather than stick to what I have always been used to, I decided to follow the theory and its logical consequences.
The first was pretty obvious. It satisfied what we have always known about organisms. The second one was not as easy.
You see, I use probabilities to identify organisms.
As long as you have a form of physical existence, you warrant being called an organism. The reason is that physical entities struggle to avoid annihilation. I’ll let you meditate on that and prove me wrong.
Quarks have a physical presence. They experience all four forces of particle physics. They have a tendency to avoid annihilation since all known forces swing on the side of mergers.
Quarks may not reproduce, but there are other organisms that also don’t reproduce. Bacteria and archaea can continue existing for millions of years without reproduction. If reproduction was one of the primary goals of organisms, then why wait for millions of years to do it?
Consider this thought experiment. Humans are going to live for only a million years. Within this period, our technology has advanced to the point of exploring the microcosmos.
We then discover bacteria. They satisfy all the properties we see in organisms but they do not reproduce. We continue existing for a million years but by the time we become extinct, we are yet to see a bacterium reproduce.
Would we exclude it from being called an organism?
We would likely consider ourselves the only existing organisms, plus a few others.
However, if we take the definition of organism as defined by the theory of Organismal Selection, these bacteria would be organisms.
By the same measure, quarks are organisms.
Do you agree with me?
