It All Started With 1

 

“To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour.” - William Blake

Can you imagine the time when humans do not know how to count?  Not only that they do not know how to count, they do not have the concept of numbers except, perhaps, the most rudimentary kind barely enough for survival.

Numbers and counting must have begun with the number one. (Even though in the beginning, they likely didn’t have a name for it.) The first solid evidence of the existence of the number one, and that someone was using it to count, appears about 20,000 years ago. It was just a series of unified lines cut into a bone. It’s called the Ishango Bone. The Ishango Bone (it’s a fibula of a baboon) was found in the Congo region of Africa in 1960. The lines cut into the bone are too uniform to be accidental. Archaeologists believe the lines were tally marks to keep track of something.

 But numbers, and counting, didn’t truly come into being until the rise of cities. Indeed numbers and counting weren’t really needed until then. It began about 4,000 BC in Sumeria, one of the earliest civilizations. With so many people, livestock, crops and artisan goods located in the same place, cities needed a way to organize and keep track of it all, as it was used up, added to or traded.

Their method of counting began as a series of tokens. Each token a man held represented something tangible, say, chickens. If a man had five chickens he was given five tokens. When he traded or killed one of his chickens, one of his tokens was removed. This was a big step in the history of numbers and counting because with that step subtraction was invented and thus the concept of arithmetic was born.

 In the beginning Sumerians kept a group of clay cones inside clay pouches. The pouches were then sealed up and secured. Then the number of cones that were inside the clay pouch was stamped on the outside of the pouch, one stamp for each cone inside. Someone soon hit upon the idea that cones weren’t needed at all. Instead of having a pouch filled with five cones with five marks written on the outside of the pouch, why not just write those five marks on a clay tablet and do away with the cones altogether? This is exactly what happened. This development of keeping track on clay tablets had ramifications beyond arithmetic, for with it, the idea of writing was also born.

The Egyptians were the first civilization to invent different symbols for different numbers. They had a symbol for one, which was just a line. The symbol for ten was a rope. The symbol for a hundred was a coil of rope. They also had numbers for a thousand and ten thousand. The Egyptians were the first to dream up the number one million, and its symbol was a prisoner begging for forgiveness, which was a person on its knees, hands upraised in the air, in a posture of humility.

Egyptian Number symbols 

Greece made further contributions to the world of numbers and counting, much of it under the guidance of Pythagoras. He studied in Egypt and upon returning to Greece established a school of mathematics, introducing Greece to mathematical concepts already prevalent in Egypt. Pythagoras was the first man to come up with the idea of odd and even numbers. To him, the odd numbers were male; the evens were female. He is most famous for his Pythagorean theorem, but perhaps his greatest contribution was laying the groundwork for Greek mathematicians who would follow him.

Pythagoras was one of the world’s first theoretical mathematicians, but it was another famous Greek mathematician, Archimedes, who took theoretical mathematics to a level no one had ever taken it to before. Archimedes is considered to be the greatest mathematician of antiquity and one of the greatest of all time. Archimedes enjoyed doing experiments with numbers and playing games with numbers. He is famous for inventing a method of determining the volume of an object with an irregular shape. The answer came to him while he was bathing. He was so excited he leapt from his tub and ran naked through the streets screaming “Eureka!” which is Greek for “I have found it.” Archimedes made many, many other mathematical contributions, but they are too numerous to mention here.

The Greek’s role in mathematics ended, quite literally, with Archimedes. He was killed by a Roman soldier during the Siege of Syracuse in 212 BC. And thus ended the golden age of mathematics in the classical world.

Under the rule of Rome, mathematics entered a dark age, and for a couple different reasons. The main reason was that the Romans simply weren’t interested in mathematics (they were more concerned with world domination), and secondly, because Roman numerals were so unwieldy, they couldn’t be used for anything more complicated than recording the results of calculations. The Romans did all their calculating on a counting board, which was an early version of abacus. And because of that Roman mathematics couldn’t, and didn’t go far beyond adding and subtracting. Their use of numbers was good for nothing more than a simple counting system. The Romans' use of numbers was no more advanced than the notches on the Ishango Bone. There’s a good reason there are no famous Roman mathematicians.

The next big advance (and it was a huge advance) in the world of numbers and mathematics came around 500 AD. It would be the most revolutionary advance in numbers since the Sumerians invented mathematics. The Indians invented an entirely new number: zero. 

Though humans have always understood the concept of nothing or having nothing, the concept of zero was only fully developed in India in the fifth century A.D. Before then, mathematicians struggled to perform the simplest arithmetic calculations. Today, zero, both as a symbol (or numeral) and a concept, meaning the absence of any quantity — allows us to perform calculus, do complicated equations, and to have invented computers. 

Under Hinduism, the Indians possessed concepts such as Nirvana and eternity. These are some very abstract concepts that need some abstract math to help describe them. The Indians needed a way to express very large numbers, and so they created a method of counting that could deal with very large numbers. It was they who created a different symbol for every number from one to nine. They are known today as Arabic numerals, but they would more properly be called Indian numerals, since it was the Indians who invented them.

Once zero was invented it transformed counting and mathematics, in a way that would change the world. Zero is still considered India’s greatest contribution to the world. For the first time in human history the concept of nothing had a number.

Zero, by itself, wasn’t necessarily all that special. The magic happened when you paired it with other numbers. With the invention of zero the Indians gained the ability to make numbers infinitely large or infinitely small. And that enabled Indian scientists to advance far ahead of other civilizations that didn’t have zero, due to the extraordinary calculations that could be made with it. For example, Indian astronomers were centuries ahead of the Christian world. With the help of the very fluid Arabic numbers, Indian scientists worked out that the Earth spins on its axis, and that it moves around the sun, something that Copernicus wouldn’t figure out for another thousand years.

 The next big advance in numbers is the invention of fractions in 762 AD in what is now Baghdad — and what was then Persia. This does not mean that the earlier civilizations had no concept of fractions---they do. But their symbols and representations were so cumbersome that it was very difficult to do simple calculations. It was the Persians’ adherence to the Koran and the teachings of Islam that led to the invention of fractions in the form that we are using now. The Koran teaches that possessions of the deceased have to be divided among the descendants but not equally---the women descendants have lesser share than the men. Working all of that out required fractions. Prior to 762 AD they didn’t have a system of mathematics sophisticated enough to do a very proper job.

 The number of symbols or numerals used to represent numbers is the base of that particular number system. The most common is the base-10 or decimal system where we have numerals 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. With these 10 numerals, any number big or small can be represented. As an analogy, the English alphabet has 26 letters. With these 26 letters, any English word that you can think of can be written down.

 But there are other systems aside from decimal that have been used by different civilizations in different time periods. The base-12, called duodecimal or dozenal system had been used at one time or another and that’s the reason why until now we buy some things by the dozens. The base-60 or sexagesimal was first used by the Sumerians, passed down to the ancient Babylonians, and still in use today—in a modified form—for measuring time, angles, and geographic coordinates.

The base-5 or quinary system was not very popular but some civilizations used it in combination with the decimal system and is called biquinary system. A good example of this is the Roman system where the numbers 1, 5, 10, 50, 100, 500 and so on were assigned different symbols.

The advent of computers, bring newer number systems into use. The binary system (base-2) which uses only two numeral symbols zero (0) and one (1) is considered as the computer’s natural language because it corresponds to the dual states of the computer’s electrical components which is either ON or OFF, negative or positive. The octal (base-8) and the hexadecimal (base-16) are widely used by computer designers and programmers. If the binary system is the computer’s natural language, the humans have the most affinity to the decimal system due to the fact that we have ten fingers that we use for counting. The octal and hexadecimal systems serve as a transition for binary to decimal conversion and vice versa during man-machine interaction.

With the invention of the number zero, came the idea of positional or place-value notation where the value of a numeral or digit depends on its position or place among a group of digits representing a number. In the decimal system, the rightmost position is called ones, next to it to the left is called tens, followed by hundreds, then thousands, and so on… For example, the number 2635 can be written as “two thousands, six hundreds, three tens and five ones.”

 We can extend this idea by placing a decimal point right after the ones position. Every number after the decimal point represents a fractional part of a whole. The first position represents the tenth part, the next position represents hundredth part, then thousandth part, and so on… For example, the number 1.5 means one and five tenths or 1⁵/­₁₀. But since 5 is half of ten, the number 1.5 also means “one and a half” or 1½. Here’s another example: 0.465 is equal to ⁴⁶⁵/₁₀₀₀ and should be read as 465 thousandths since three positions after the decimal point are used. With this notation, any number, however large or small, can be represented by simply adding more positions to the left of the decimal point or to the right.

Convenient as it is, the positional notation reaches its limit of usefulness as the number we are dealing with becomes increasingly large. For example, if we are dealing with thousands, we only need 4 digits to represent each number. As we increase our numbers to millions, we need 7 digits---still easy to remember like our phone numbers without the area code. Billions require 10 digits which our ordinary 8-digit calculators cannot handle anymore. But nowadays, government accountants manage national budgets in the billions and trillions while physicists and astronomers deal with numbers much, much greater than that. It is therefore clear that we need new notations to represent large numbers.

Let us start by looking at repeated multiplication of a number by itself. For example, if we multiply 6 by 6, we can easily calculate it mentally to be 36. Numerically, we say: 6 x 6 = 36. At this early let me introduce a new notation to represent this kind of mathematical operation. It is called exponential notation. In this notation, 6 x 6 is represented as 6². The number 6 here is called the base and the number 2 which is written a little higher than the base is called the exponent. The symbol 6² should be read as “Six raised to the power of 2.” In general the symbol xⁿ should be read as “x raised to the power of n” where x and n represent any number.

 Example of exponential notation with 6 as the base.

 The figure above is an example of exponential notation when the base number is 6. The exponents 0 and 1 are extensions which can easily be proved mathematically and are included here for completeness. Next, let’s take a look at exponential notation when the base is 10.  

 Example of exponential notation with 10 as the base.

Interestingly, the exponential notation becomes highly intuitive when the base number is 10. From the figure above we can easily see that the exponent is equal to the number of 0’s after the number 1 when the number is written out expressly. The exponential notation base 10 is so widely used by mathematicians and scientists that it is called scientific notation. 

In 1938, mathematician Edward Kasner asked his 9-year old nephew, Milton Sirotta what would be the appropriate name for a number 1 followed by 100 zeros (10¹⁰⁰). After a short thought, Milton replied that such a number could only be called something as silly as a “googol.” The name stuck and the 9-year old Milton earned his place in the annals of mathematics. The googol is so large that it is much greater than the total number of elementary particles in the entire universe which is only about 10⁸⁰.

Later, Kasner coined the term googolplex as the name of the much larger number which is 1 followed by a googol zeros. To many people, this is the largest number with a name. The noted astronomer Carl Sagan, in episode 9 of his TV series Cosmos pointed out that googolplex has so many zeros that there is not enough room to write out all the zeros even in the entire volume of the known universe.

This chapter will not be complete without including the topic on “infinity.” Infinity is not a real number. It is a concept of something that is unlimited, endless, without bound. Its common symbol, “∞” called lemniscate was invented by the English mathematician John Wallis in 1657.

Early mathematicians have some vague notions of infinity although they did not know how to deal with it. The ancient Greeks, particularly Zeno of Elea (c. 490 - 430 BCE) hinted on it by constructing paradoxes which resulted to contradictions when applying finite reasoning to essentially infinite processes. In general, the Greeks had immense difficulties with infinity that they never could quite accept it as we do today. Their inability to deal with infinity and infinite processes may be considered as one of the greatest failures of Greek mathematical thought.

Following the Greeks, the Arabs and then the European mathematicians continued to dabble with infinity and infinite processes. After Wallis invented its symbol, the concept of infinity caught on with other mathematicians, and, in a way, made its entrance into the world of mathematics although it was only in the 19^th century that Georg Cantor (1845-1918) formally defined it. The acceptance of infinity as a mathematical object resulted in great advances in different branches of Mathematics: calculus, complex algebra, fourier series, set theory, among others. 

Today, our mathematics is so advanced and so powerful that we have now the capability to predict the weather, or pinpoint the location of any person or object anywhere in the world with amazing accuracy. Astronomers train the sights of their telescopes to faraway stars and galaxies and calculate their distances, densities and determine their chemical composition. We have developed mathematical models that predict the existence and behaviors of sub-atomic particles long before we obtain empirical evidence of their presence. Finally, we have now the mathematical models that describe how the universe came into existence and how it will end.

Leaves And Quarks

When I was a kid, I loved to hang out at the second-floor veranda of my grandparents’ house. There, different varieties of potted plants: bougainvilleas, ferns, cacti, orchids, roses and many others were neatly arranged, regularly watered and meticulously taken care of by my three unmarried aunts. Then I would pick a large leaf from among the plants and would start doing what had become a ritual to me. I would divide the leaf into two, toss away one of the halves and kept the other to be divided again into two. The cycle would go on for some time until the portion of the leaf left in my hands was too small to be divided further.

Then questions and possibilities would begin flooding my mind: If there’s a way of breaking down this leaf fragment further into smaller and still smaller pieces, would it come to a point where the remaining piece is no longer a leaf? What are leaves made of? What are the flowers and the trees made of? And the mountains? Then I would realize that my quest had come to a dead-end and my young mind would begin to wander elsewhere.

When I was already in grade school, our science teacher told us that everything---including us, is composed of matter. Anything that has weight and occupies space is matter: leaves, trees, rocks, water…Even the air which we cannot see is matter because it occupies space. But what is matter made of?

Two thousand four hundred years ago, the Greek philosopher Democritus was asking a similar question: Could matter be divided into smaller and smaller pieces forever, or was there a limit to the number of times a piece of matter could be divided? After spending countless hours and days (or perhaps years) pondering on this fundamental question, he came up with a theory: Matter could not be divided into smaller and smaller pieces forever, eventually the smallest possible piece would be obtained. This piece would be indivisible. He named the smallest piece of matter atomos, meaning, “cannot be cut.”

However only few learned Greeks of the time accepted Democritus’ position. Another school of thought championed by Aristotle supported the more intuitive and commonly held belief that all substance found in our world can be derived from or composed of the following four elements: earth (meaning, soil), water, fire and air. He contended that these four elements were not made of atoms but were continuous. Because Aristotle was more influential, his idea was widely accepted while Democritus’ unpopular treatise on “atomism” was forgotten and his scholarly works were consigned in the back shelves of the great libraries of the ancient world through the centuries.

As Renaissance transformed the cultural landscape of Europe starting on the 14^th century, the scientific world has also undergone its own renaissance especially after the invention of the microscope. There was a renewed interest in the study of atomism as preserved in the works of Democritus and that of his student Epicurus. Results of repeated and replicated experiments in leading laboratories at the time showed consistently that indeed, matter is made up of smaller components. Thinking that they have finally discovered the elemental component proposed by Democritus, they called that component “atom.” Thus Democritus was vindicated and the Aristotelian physics which reigned supreme in the centers of learning since the glorious days of the Greeks was unceremoniously dethroned. But Aristotle’s idea was not totally rejected. His four-element concept is now re-interpreted as the four states of matter: solid (earth), liquid (water), gas (air) and plasma (fire).

The discovery of the atom paved the way for fast advances in the fields of physics, chemistry and material science and led to greater understanding of electricity and magnetism. Intense experimentations and observations resulted to the discovery of different types of atoms. They discovered that atoms of different substances have different weights while atoms of one substance have uniform weights. The atomic weight, therefore, has become the identifying property of a substance. A substance which is composed of only one kind of atom is called “pure substance” or element while a substance that is composed of two or more different kinds of atoms is called “composite” or compound.

Several elements have been identified out of the common substances that man has been familiar with since the dawn of civilization. Iron, silver, copper and gold are among those identified to be pure and therefore they are elements. Some gases, too, have been identified to be elements: hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. The chemists and physicists started constructing an abstract table called periodic table where elements were placed in their logical order according to atomic weights and other characteristics. Today, you can see this periodic table prominently displayed on the walls of Chemistry classrooms and laboratories. You can also find it usually printed in the inside back cover of chemistry textbooks.

In 1807, English chemist John Dalton laid down 5 propositions describing the atom which later became known as the Dalton’s Law:

1. All matter is made of atoms.
2. All atoms of a given element are identical in mass (or weight) and properties.
3. Atoms are indivisible and indestructible.
4. Compounds are formed by a combination of two or more different kinds of atoms.
5. A chemical reaction is a rearrangement of atoms.

By this time, there was a budding field of study called Alchemy. Its adherents, which counted among them the notable Sir Isaac Newton, believed that there could be a formula to transform a base metal like lead or iron into gold. They tried and experimented on different procedures. Some even resorted to magic. There were so many false claims of iron turning into gold and the believers were fooled over and over again.

The proper understanding of the atom marked the end of alchemy. But not all results of alchemists’ researches and investigations went to naught.  Many of the chemists started as alchemists and many of their discoveries were reinterpreted in the light of the atomic theory. We can, therefore, safely say that the pseudoscience of alchemy was the precursor to the modern science of Chemistry.

By the late 1800s, Physics was now considered a mature science. There were those who believed there wasn’t much more to do than smooth out some rough edges in nature’s plan. There was a sensible order to things, a clockwork universe governed by Newtonian forces, with atoms as the foundation of matter.

 But then strange things started popping up in laboratories: x-rays, gamma rays, a mysterious phenomenon called radioactivity. Physicist J. J. Thomson discovered the electron. Atoms were not indivisible after all, but had constituents. Was the atom, as Thomson believed, a pudding, with electrons embedded like raisins? No. In 1911 physicist Ernest Rutherford announced that atoms are mostly empty space, their mass concentrated in a tiny nucleus orbited by electrons.

 There was a growing interest in the study of hydrogen---the lightest and the smallest among elements. Scientists discovered that the hydrogen atom has only one electron orbiting around the nucleus. The electron is a very small particle with a negligible mass and possesses a negative electric charge. They reasoned that since the electron is orbiting around the nucleus, this means that there is a force of attraction between the electron and whatever is residing in the nucleus. They cited as analogy the earth-moon system and the solar system in general, which was already well understood since Newton’s time. 

 The moon orbits around the earth because initially the moon was moving in the direction perpendicular to the center line between the moon and the earth. The attractive force between these two bodies causes the moon’s otherwise straight line of motion into a curve thus making it a circular motion around the earth. In the case of the earth-moon system, the attraction is due to the gravitational force; in the case of the hydrogen atom, the attraction is due to electric force.

 Since, like magnets, opposite electric charges attract while like charges repel, they reasoned correctly that the particle in the nucleus of hydrogen has positive charge with equal strength as the electron’s negative charge to make it balanced and stable, otherwise the hydrogen atom would have disintegrated long time ago. And since the mass of the electron is almost zero, the mass of the particle in the hydrogen’s nucleus accounts for the total mass of the hydrogen atom. They called that particle inside the hydrogen’s nucleus proton. The proton, therefore, is a particle with a positive electric charge and has a mass equal to that of the hydrogen atom. They assigned it a value of one atomic mass unit ( amu) and became a standard in measuring all the other atoms.

 Next, researchers discovered that Helium, the second lightest element in the periodic table, has two electrons orbiting around its nucleus. But when they measured the weight of Helium, it was found out to be 4 amus. That means that the Helium nucleus contains 4 proton-like particles but only two of these have positive charge to balance the negative charges of two electrons orbiting around it.

 In 1920, Ernest Rutherford, proposed the existence of a proton-like particle with no electric charge. He called it neutron. After years of experimentation, they were able to isolate and detect the neutron particle. The year was 1932. The discovery of the neutron solves the problem of seeming discrepancies between their theoretical calculations and experimental measurements. They introduced a new number designation to each element. They called it the atomic number which is equal to the number of protons in the nucleus (which is also equal to the number of orbiting electrons). The amu continued to designate the amount of mass of the atom which is the sum total of protons and neutrons. For hydrogen, both the atomic number and the amu is equal to 1. Helium has the atomic number 2 and the amu is 4. The heaviest naturally-occurring element, Uranium has atomic number 92 and atomic mass unit of 238 because its nucleus has 92 protons and 146 neutrons.

 

Figure shows the atom of the second lightest element, Helium, which has two protons (colored red) and two neutrons (colored green) in its nucleus and two electrons orbiting around it.

The discovery of the neutron led to the realization that the nucleus, after all, is composite and breaking it down into its component parts is a possibility. But before the scientists could take steps to break up the atom, they have to understand first what holds the nucleus together. They already learned in electricity and magnetism that like charges repel and opposite charges attract. Under normal condition, the positively charged proton within the nucleus should repel each other and should have disintegrated long time ago. The only possible explanation that a group of protons stick together in the nucleus is because they are being held there by a very strong force. They called it strong nuclear force.  It is logical, therefore, that to break up the atom is to bombard the nucleus with a force greater than the nuclear force that holds them together.

 In 1938, the German chemist Otto Hahn, a student of Rutherford, bombarded a uranium atom with neutrons and successfully split the heavy uranium nucleus into two lighter nuclei of approximately equal size. They called the process nuclear fission as an analogy to biological fission in living cells. In the process of breaking up the atom, the strong nuclear force that holds the protons and neutrons together is released and is converted into an unimaginable amount of energy. That’s how the atomic bomb acquire its destructive power. Today, nuclear fission is occurring everyday under a very controlled environment inside the reactors of nuclear power plants in many parts of the world for the purpose of generating electricity.

 The successful division of the atom into smaller components violated the third rule of Dalton’s 1807 proposition and the scientists realized that they have concluded too soon. The thing that they called atom is not the same “atomo” in the mind of Democritus. Nevertheless, they continue to call it atom since it had already been universally accepted but the search for the fundamental, indivisible component of matter went on.

 After the atom was successfully split, the scientific community thought that maybe, we have already found the fundamental components of matter in protons and neutrons. Surely, these particles are already too small to be broken further. But again, they spoke too soon. Not long after, researchers discovered that protons and neutrons are made up of still smaller particles called quarks.

 How did the scientists discover all these? By using similar techniques used by Thompson, Rutherford, Hahn and other physicists since the last century: smashing atoms and sub-atomic particles with other particles inside those devices called accelerators and taking inventory of all debris in the form of smaller particles and released energies that are detected by their instruments. The early experiments consist of trying to break up a heavy atom like uranium by bombarding it with protons and later, neutrons. A breakup is successful only when the energy of the oncoming particle is greater than the strong nuclear force that holds the nucleus together.

 Once they succeeded in breaking up the atomic nucleus into its component protons and neutrons, the next step was to determine whether the proton and neutron can be cracked, too. But breaking up the proton or neutron is a much more daunting task than breaking up the atom. Aside from the fact that the proton or neutron is much smaller and thus a more elusive target, the force that held the quarks together inside the proton is much stronger. To accomplish the breakup, the colliding particles must possess a much greater energy. It has long been established that speed is convertible to energy---the higher is the speed, the greater is the energy. So, to raise the energy level of the colliding particles, they should be traversing at very high velocities as they smash each other.

 To attain this extremely high velocities, the particles have to be positioned far from each other to give them sufficient time to accelerate. It is similar to a motorist driving on a city street and wanting to merge onto a high- speed interstate highway. The motorist has to increase its speed and sync with the highway motorists before merging otherwise he will be in danger of being bumped. To accomplish this, the highway builders construct ramps that connects a city street to the highway. The longer the ramp, the higher is the speed that is attained by the merging vehicle.

 In the case of the colliding particles, they traverse inside a specially designed tubes called accelerators surrounded with powerful magnets. Whereas the car’s acceleration is powered by its engine, the particles accelerate due to the action of electromagnetic force. The second function of the electromagnetic field is to keep the particles in their designated trajectories to ensure a hit.

 The first accelerator, called cyclotron was invented and patented by Ernest Lawrence of the University of California, Berkeley in 1932. It was so compact, it could fit in one’s pocket. But as experiments require longer and longer distances in order for particles to attain higher and higher velocities, larger and larger accelerators were constructed. Today, there are more than 30,000 accelerators in operation around the world of varying sizes and shapes. The second most powerful accelerator in the world with 3.9 miles in circumference is situated underground in Batavia, Illinois 27 miles west of Chicago and managed by Fermilab.

 With this worldwide effort to find the fundamental stuff that made up matter, they soon discovered that the sub-atomic space is inhabited with so many weird and exotic family of particles and anti-particles that they coined the term “particle zoo.” Whether one of these particles is the fundamental stuff that they have been looking for, they are not sure yet and many more experiments have to be conducted. At this level of smallness, scientists also discovered that the particles and the forces that are interacting on them are starting to become interchangeable; that is, beginning to merge and thereby losing their distinctions. One of the problems the particle physicists were tackling at the time was how come that in one family of particles with the same characteristics some have mass and the others have none.

 In 1964, Professor Emeritus Peter Higgs of the University of Edinburgh proposed a mechanism that purportedly explains this phenomenon. Higgs mechanism predicted the existence of a particle which gives mass to everything. The scientific world embraced Higgs’ proposal and named the yet-to-be-found particle Higgs boson. The mainstream media dubbed it the “God particle.”  Higgs explained that this particle permeates all space which gives rise to the idea of a Higgs field which, in layman’s term, we call Higgs ocean. If the existence of the Higgs particle is proven true, then “empty space” is not so empty after all. We are all immersed in the Higgs ocean which gives mass to our bodies just as the air in the earth’s atmosphere causes the drag of all moving objects like cars and golf balls.   

 To prove the existence (or non-existence) of the Higgs particle the European Organization for Nuclear Research, otherwise known by its acronym CERN, constructed the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator, 27 kilometers in circumference, in a tunnel as deep as 574 feet beneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland. They called it the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The LHC, which is a collaborative project of CERN and hundreds of universities and laboratories around the world, is the most complex machine man has ever built. It took thousands of scientists, engineers and technicians decades to plan and build it at a cost of ten billion dollars.

 On July 4, 2012, after executing a carefully planned experiment or experiments using the LHC, CERN announced they have sufficient evidence to conclude that the Higgs boson had been found. In the years to follow, that experiment will be repeated and replicated to confirm that particle’s existence with certainty. In addition, scientists will continue to conduct other related experiments to determine that particle’s other properties. Those properties have already been predicted in the standard model of particle physics but they need experimental data to confirm the results of their mathematical calculations.

 Have we finally found the fundamental building block of the universe? Probably we have. But then, it might be too early to say. But one thing is sure, we have gone a long way since Democritus’ time. Personally, I have gone a long way from my innocent ponderings about leaves and flowers to what is beyond quarks and Higgs bosons and the meaning of reality. And as long as we will not lose our imagination, the world around us will continue to be a source of awe and wonder.

  

Too Young To Die

By Shem Herbolingo

It was a typical summer morning in Iligan City, Philippines. The year was 1985. When I arrived in the office, our secretary handed me a telegram. The message was brief but crystal clear: “NOY, COME IMMEDIATELY, LOLOY KILLED.” It was from my younger brother, Joey, who, together with his older brother Chito, was working as a radio broadcaster in Davao City. “Noy” is a contraction of “Manoy”---a title of respect usually accorded to the eldest brother in the family. I am the eldest in the family and all my eight siblings call me Manoy.  “Loloy” was the pet name of our youngest brother, Joseph. It took me some time before the whole message sank in. My brother, gone. He did not die…he was killed.

While on our way to Davao with my wife, I had the luxury of time to reminisce and to reflect on the events in the past that led to the current situation. While I was growing up and started to understand the harsh realities of life in the farm where we were born and raised, I promised to myself to help my parents put my siblings in school once I finished college. After my graduation in 1978, I was hired by the university for a full-time teaching position and soon I was extending financial help to my brothers, Chito and Joey, who were attending high school in Cabadbaran City.

After my first year of teaching, Joseph finished elementary---at the top of their class. I asked my parents to send Joseph to stay with me in the university campus because I wanted him to study at the best high school in the region---the University Science High School--- where the students are selected from among the top and the brightest. Admission was competitive and tough but Joseph passed the admission test quite easily.

Our youngest brother Joseph.

Unfortunately, Joseph was unhappy with his stint in the Science High School. In the middle of that year, he approached me and told me that he wanted to go home. When I asked “why?” He said he could not excel in the science high because all students are smart and he was just an average student. “If I study in our hometown,” he explained, “I will be the smartest guy in our class. I want to graduate as valedictorian just like you.” “It sounds unconvincing to me,” I told him. “You see, I prefer that you’ll be the least among the brightest rather than the smartest among the mediocre and the dull-witted.” But he was so steadfast in his desire to go home so I informed my father about the decision and sent him home to our farm in Bayugan.

That was the last time that I saw Joseph alive. Assured that he was happy and safe in our home, I did not even miss his departure. Life in the university is pretty hectic with so many activities. In a couple of years, the university sent me on a scholarship grant to pursue master’s degree at a university in Manila.

Communication then was not as easy as now. No cellphone, no Internet or Facebook or Viber. Communicating with my parents was through handwritten letters once or twice a year. Telegram is reserved for emergency. I did not even know that Joseph stopped schooling, joined my two brothers in Davao City and worked in a charcoal factory.

While I was studying in Manila, my colleagues in the university formed a computer consulting company in Iligan City and upon my return, they invited me to join them as a consultant, in addition to my teaching responsibilities in the university. It was there in my consultancy office that I received that fateful telegram that shook our family to the very core.

**********

As we entered the city, (this was my first time to come to Davao), what first caught my attention were the wide and spacious avenues and streets. Buildings were sparse and there were so much vacant spaces. Of course, what do you expect on a city that has the biggest land area in the world!

But in the mid 80’s, Davao was a city in turmoil. The entire city became the battleground in a typical urban guerrilla warfare that you see on TV in other parts of the world. There was a semblance of normalcy during the day. By sunset, commercial establishments were already closed. At night, under the cover of darkness, armed communist forces roam the streets ready to eliminate any perceived enemies. The government forces returned in kind. Dozens of killings perpetrated by both sides happened during the night while some occurred even in broad daylight.

When we reached the place where my brother’s wake was held, my parents and all my siblings were already there waiting for us. I have not seen my family for a couple of years since the time I left for Manila and it was a sort of a family reunion for us but what a reunion that was. I went closer to the casket where Joseph was lain and I almost could not recognize him anymore. He was just a scrawny boy when I last saw him. The man in the casket, wearing a polo barong was already a full-grown man. I hastily made some mental calculation, in a few days that month, he would have celebrated his 20^th birthday. I continued observing his physique. His muscles both in the abs and the arms are discernible. His neck was strong but it bore a wound so long it almost encircled the whole neck although it was meticulously and neatly sutured by the funeral staff.

“That bayonet wound,” Chito whispered to me, “almost decapitated him. He has more wounds in his back and on the torso. It must be a long, agonizing death between early Saturday evening up to early dawn of last Sunday.”

I did not learn the whole story until late that evening when Chito had already the time to share it with me. Both Chito and Joey worked as radio broadcasters of Station DXMF otherwise known as Radyo Bombo. Joey was some kind of an anchorman and a news commentator while Chito was in Radyo Patrol, a team of field reporters roving around the city day in and day out reporting news on the spot  as they encounter them.

The entire team was named Apollo Patrol with each radioman given a number. Chito was Apollo Uno (Apollo One), the others followed in increasing order as Apollo Dos, Apollo Tres, and so on. The busiest part of their patrol was on the early morning when the happenings of the previous night got to be reported.

On the early morning of that Sunday, Chito received a tip from a funeral parlor directing him to go to a certain place where they heard something happened the night before. When he reached the place, Chito’s world crushed because he immediately recognized the first victim that he saw laying lifeless on the cornfield. It was Joseph’s buddy---his co-worker. To make the matter worse, Chito identified that the bloody fabric that was used to tie the hands, was Joseph’s shirt.

Then his driver who roamed on the other side of the cornfield, called Chito saying that he saw two more bodies in his location. Chito ran and immediately recognized that one of the dead lying there was Joseph. Trying to maintain his composure, Chito calmly reported over the radio, that they have found three dead bodies and that one of them was his own brother. 

Photo shows Chito and our mother during the wake. Chito blamed himself of what happened to Joseph. It was our father who consoled him that it was not his fault. The circumstances were beyond our control.

That Saturday, I attended church in Adams Center. After the religious service, a friend of mine introduced me to a certain Atty. Zerna who was regularly attending church there. Atty. Zerna was the chief of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) office in Davao. Upon knowing that I am a brother of Chito and Joey, he shook  my hand and he started briefing me on the status of their investigation. The main suspect was a Barangay Captain (Village chief) with some of his henchmen who also worked as paramilitary. It was a case of mistaken identity that our brother was a communist. It was a clear case of extra-judicial killing--- a summary execution. We, Filipinos, have a term for that---“liquidation.” My brother was liquidated on a mere suspicion of being a communist.

During our family’s days of mourning in Davao, we were not left alone. My brothers and sisters in faith, members of Adams Center Seventh Day Adventist Church were very supportive visiting us every night holding a religious service there. On the day of the burial,  a live chick was  placed inside the coffin and buried together with our brother. It was their belief, that the chick would exact vengeance to whoever perpetrated that heinous crime. A few months later, I heard that the village chief and his cohorts,  one by one, suffered the same fate as our brother. 

Bidding farewell. Our family gathered around Joseph’s casket before it was to be interred into the crypt. From left: Chito (in dark shirt), our father, this writer, our mother and Joey.

Looking back, I will never forget that bleak chapter of our family’s existence. Nineteen eighty-five was the darkest year in the annals of Davao City’s history. April 14, 1985 was our family’s darkest day.    

 Epilogue

The following year, Lt. Col. Franco Calida, the feisty head of the military’s Metropolitan District Command (Metrodiscom), with the political backing of the newly designated Vice Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, organized the Alsa Masa (literally, “People’s Uprising” against the communists”). My brothers Chito and Joey, together with Radiomen Jun Pala of DXOW and Leo Palo of DXRA were very much involved in this undertaking from the time of its inception.

While Calida was directing the military operations, the four radiomen were the mouthpiece of incessant psychological propaganda on the airwaves exposing the communists’ atrocities. Their involvement was not without peril.

On 17 January 1987, a 4-man team Sparrow Unit, the notorious hit squad of the communist New People’s Army barged into the announcer’s booth of Radyo Bombo looking for Chito. But Chito was having a break and it was Joey who was in there. They strafed the announcer’s booth with bullets and lobbed a fragmentation grenade before leaving the place. The grenade explosion was heard on the airwaves before the broadcast stopped. Joey was badly wounded but survived the attack. That incident will be a subject of another write-up.

Seven months later on August 27, the Sparrow Unit struck again, this time simultaneously on both DXRA and DXRD stations which led to the demise of Leo Palo and another radioman Al Hinoguin.  

It was a time of living dangerously. But their sacrifices bore fruit. Eventually, many people joined the Alsa Masa working  as eyes and ears of the military. It was Mao Zedong’s dictum that “The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea.” But in Davao’s case, the sea dried up and the communist “sardines” had to retreat to some hospitable places outside of Davao.

My brother's killing was included in a news report by William Branigin to the Washington Post dated August 8, 1985 titled "Davao known as Philippines' Murder Capital.'" 

Panta And Bondoy

    They were an odd trio. The husband’s name was Bondoy and the wife’s was Panta. Their daughter, who, I estimated to be my age (although she was taller than me), was named Perpetua. They arrived in our village in Calamba one day and became regular visitors since then---usually on weekends.  When I first saw them, their clothes were worn-out and they wore no shoes. Their skin were darker and coarse.

    Bondoy was reserved and would only say a word or two when talked to while Panta was gregarious and talked a lot. It did not take long for them to befriend most of the villagers including my parents who were very accommodating with strangers. Perpetua, on the other hand, was very shy and would not talk at all. When we invited her to play with us, she would run back to her parents and would not wander away again.

    One time, I overheard my father telling a neighbor that Panta and Bondoy were living in the hinterlands about half day’s walking distance from our village. They had no neighbors. Our village was the nearest community that could be reached from their home. I surmised that since our village was the nearest that they could go to, Perpetua would have attended the same village school that we children were attending. And since we were of the same age, we would have been classmates in the third-grade class under Mrs. Ala-an. But I had not seen her in our school and that was how I realized that she was not attending school. My young mind was wondering whether she ever had been to school at all.

    Their weekly visits were both time for socialization and for buying their household necessities for the week like kerosene, salt and sugar. Our village had three stores where we could buy our immediate house needs. Just like in  many rural areas in the Philippines, these stores contain a little of almost anything, that’s why we call them “sari-sari store.” The three sari-sari stores in our village had no signboards and no names so we simply referred to them after their owners’ name. One was Panyang’s store, the second was Femia’s store and the third one was owned by an elderly lady named Colet.

    We, villagers, do not really buy our groceries from the village stores. On Saturdays and Sundays we usually go to the town proper of Cabadbaran to get our needs in bulk from larger stores at lower prices. And if you patronize a single store, its chinese owner would even give you more discounts. We only buy from the village store anything that we run out during the week. Many a time while preparing our meals,  my mother would request me to run to Panyang’s store to buy, say, a packet of edible oil or a bottle of soy sauce. That Panta and Bondoy would buy their groceries in the village stores and not in the town added one more oddity of their existence.     

    One day, while Panta was walking alone along a foot path, she encountered a stray, mad dog. Its eyes were fierce, its tail was between its hind legs, it’s tongue was sticking out, dripping with rabid saliva. Of course, this description is just my imagination because that is how a mad dog looks like. Any ordinary person would have fled for one’s life, but Panta was a brave woman who would not back out from a fight. She picked up a big enough stone and held her ground.

    The crazed animal lunged at her and they struggled for a while. Eventually, she was able to strike the dog by the forehead with the stone she was holding.  The dog fell to the ground, its body shuddering and blood was gushing out of its mouth. In a matter of minutes, the dog was dead. But Panta did not come out of that battle unscathed. Her forehead had sustained a bleeding wound left open by the sharp canine incisors.

    That Sunday, when they arrived in our village, Panta’s wound on her forehead was still raw. The villagers were curious to know what happened and she told us the whole story. The villagers, especially the women,  were worried. They advised Panta to go to the town to see a doctor. But we, rural folks,  seldom go to the doctor for we have an assemblage of herbal medications for every kind of illness. Panta dismissed their suggestions and assured everyone that she was fine.

    By mid-afternoon, Panta became ill. She was so feverish that her closest friend in the village invited the trio to stay in her house for Panta to rest for a few hours until the fever subsided before they would start their trek toward their home in the mountains. But Panta’s fever never subsided and her condition only grew worse and worse. The next day, Panta was delirious. Her mouth was dry and she kept asking for water, but every time she was given a cup of water, she was frightened to look at it and pushed the cup away. Her behavior was akin to a wild, wounded beast, She became so strong that it required three or four muscled men to subdue her.

    Panta expired on the morning of the third day. Like a wedding, death in our village was a community affair. Everyone was involved. The men started fashioning a wooden coffin. The women congregated in the kitchen to cook and prepared meals. The young girls gathered flowers and arranged them. Embalming was not practiced so the dead had to be brought to the cemetery to be buried within 24 hours.

    The cemetery was situated at the outskirts of the town of Cabadbaran some 8 kilometers away. Every burial was a long procession of villagers walking by foot toward the cemetery. The wooden coffin had to be borne  on the shoulders of six to eight men which were rotated and replaced regularly by other waiting men all the way to the burial place.

    The following Sunday, Bondoy and Perpetua returned to the village and went to see Colet. Later on we learned that Bondoy offered to sell Perpetua to Colet for 80 pesos but Colet turned him down. That was the last time, the villagers saw Bondoy and Perpetua. Wherever they went, nobody knew.

    A few years later, after I completed my elementary education, our family moved to Bayugan a town some 50 kilometers away down south where my father bought a small farm. But I remained in Cabadbaran to pursue my secondary education in a school of my choice. I lived with my aunt and when out of school, I helped tend her store in the market.

    Today, the Panta and Bondoy episode must just be a blip in the collective memory of our village. They are just one of the countless faces of people who existed in this world, crossed our paths at some points in time and vanished  without really leaving significant imprints in our lives.  And if I write about them today, it is because I would like to preserve bits and pieces of my childhood before age and forgetfulness will overtake me.

My First Winter In New Mexico

Portales, NM, January 22, 2015, 7:28 AM.--- As I write, powdery snow continue to shower outside my house slowly covering my car, and the driveway. The forecast is that it will be snowing the whole day so I imagine that by noon my car will be melded with the driveway into one continuous form of white landscape.

This is my neighborhood as viewed from my yard. 3 January 2015.

I did not expect Portales to have this much snow considering that it is situated at a lower latitude compared to say, New York or Chicago. At 34o N, it has the same latitude as Los Angeles in California and for the past 15 years that I have been in the US, I have not heard that Angelenos have seen any snow in their city. But there is one big difference: LA is a seaside city so it is constantly fanned by a warm current of ocean winds. Portales, on the other hand, is situated on the central highlands near the Texas panhandle with an elevation of 4,000 feet.

My first winter in New Jersey, January 2004.

This is not my first snowy winter in America. A major portion of my first 4 years in the US was spent in New York – New Jersey area. I can still remember the excitement and the exhilarating experience when I first saw and touched a snowfall. They were fluffy like feathers in my hands. But when my car started skidding and sliding and became less manageable as I drove, I realized that winter is not my favorite season after all. It was there in New Jersey  where I learned the rules of driving on a snowy road: No sudden braking or turning, slower speed, keep a fair amount of distance from the car ahead of you, et cetera, et cetera.

 Twelve years later, just a day after we welcomed the new year, I had to retrieve those rules from my mental hard drive. I was driving my way back from  from Loma Linda, California where I spent the Christmas break with my wife. By late afternoon as I was approaching Albuquerque along I-40, white powdery mists started hitting my windshield. By sunset, snow shower started to intensify reducing road visibility that I decided to exit as I saw a sign of a gas station. There was only one vacant space in the station’s parking area and all the cars parked there were already covered with snow. As I parked, I searched my GPS for a hotel where I can spend the night and learned that the nearest hotel is 9 miles away. I cannot risk going back to the highway and drive 9 more miles so I decided to just spend the night in my car. The snowfall abated by midnight.

Early in the morning I resumed driving. Traffic was slow as cars formed a single line on the outer lane of the interstate where the pavement was still visible. As I took the exit in Santa Rosa for the last leg of my journey,  I did not expect to meet my hardest challenge as a driver so far. Portales was still 100 miles away. Coming from a busy highway like the I-40, I had some eerie feelings when I realized that I was driving alone on that barren piece of snow-covered highway. No tire tracks were visible. If there were some vehicles who passed there before me, the evidence  of passing wheels were easily covered with continuous snow shower. In fact you cannot see the outlines of the road. Your only guide were the few road signs sticking out on the sides like emaciated snowmen. 

 

I kept my speed at around 35-40 mph when I realized that there were two vehicles behind me. They must be driving faster because they got closer and closer. I expected them to pass me by my left but that did not happen. Instead they got closer---too close to me for comfort. Automatically, I increased my speed to 45 and that’s when I started skidding. I never expected that on the third day of a new year,  I would experience the greatest scare of my life for the entire year! First my car veered 90 degrees to the right then veered 180 degrees to the left before correcting itself back to its original position. All these while, my car was still moving on the forward direction of the road before it exhausted its linear momentum and stopped.

The two cars that were tailgating me must have slammed on their brakes for they parted to opposite directions. The one closest to me---an Acura SUV---fell, buried on the right side of the road and stuck. The other has turned left onto the middle of the road. I felt guilty that I caused the accident. So I got out of the car and started walking towards them to see if I could be of any help.  The two cars must be traveling together because the drivers seemed to know each other and had conversations. That’s when I heard the first driver telling the other that he had a shovel in his cargo bay. Then three passengers---all men--- stepped out and started pushing the vehicle. I wanted to come near to apologize but then I realized that it was their tailgating that caused  me to skid in the first place. And considering that they have more than enough helping hands and that I could not be of much help to them, anyway,  I went back to my car and continued driving.

 

When I told my wife later over the phone about my near-mishap, my mother-in-law butted in telling me that God must have protected me because she prayed for my safety. I believed her. I mean, I prayed, too, but I always consider my mother-in-law closer to God than I am so that it must be through her prayers that God spared me.

 

Approaching Portales, I could see that the snow cover was thicker here than the areas I passed by.  As I turned right from the road onto the alley that connects to my driveway, I got stuck. Fortunately, or because of my mother-in-law’s prayers again, an angel with a midsize snow plow was standing by. No, he was not really standing by---he was busy clearing the parking lot of a furniture company next to my yard.

The angel with a snow plow who helped extricate my car from a mound of snow.

He came to me and with the help of two other men passing by, they helped me extract my car from that mound of snow. Then with his snow plow he cleared the alley including the entrance to my driveway. My driveway, which had not been used for two weeks, was covered with about a foot of snow and my car could not move any closer to the house than at the entrance that was cleared by the angel with a snow plow. But that was good enough.

My car parked at the entrance of the driveway because it could not get any closer to the house.