Mentally picture an upside down pyramid to assist in visualizing the division of matter into two realms -- the visible and the hidden. Mentally slide a sheet of glass through the pyramid to divide it. Any visible object, micro or macro, is represented by the top two thirds. It is visible matter, both atoms and molecules, that is usually referred to as the existing space-time continuum. The bottom third, slanting down to a dimensionless point, represents the invisible portion of the object, the submicroscopic -- here in the Planck realm we have a roiling foam of quantum fluctuations. Everything rests on the vertex, , smaller than the Planck length (1.6 centimeter divided by 10 to the minus 33rd power). No one has any idea of how to magnify this foam realm into view. At the vertex lies the remnants of the singularity out of which the big bang exploded sometime, maybe 15 billion years ago.

The glass plane dividing the pyramid represents what I call a space net or the Planck lens. Beneath this plane lies the submicroscopic, virtual blueprint on which the neutrino particles have deposited the images of the objects they have so silently passed through. This Planck lens functions to focus and magnify the hidden, virtual energy. This hidden energy combines with particles of mass which can be seen in physicists' accelerators as photons, electrons, protons, neutrons, neutrinos and a slew of other names. Other theorists may term these bonded energies as superstrings, twistors, quarks or zero point fluctuations (See Part V below).

The bottom third of the pyramid is filled with the virtual energies, blinking in and out of existence. Each particle in our visible universe is cushioned in the submicroscopic sea of foam where space-time fades from view. Without this background, a foam screen, on which to project and magnify the energy in the sub-Planck realm, nothing in the universe could be seen. Just as without a coated TV screen, although all of the electrons were being emitted from the cathode tube, no picture would appear. As it is hard to accept that pictures on the 2-D screen are but a collection of dancing dots or pixels radiating colors, so it is even harder to accept that the forms in this 4-D space-time universe are collections of dancing 3-D shapes which have their origin in the submicroscopic foam.

It is difficult to accept the existence of this sub-microscopic quantum size lens which magnifies and reveals quanta of energy as mass -- the material world. The function of the subatomic particles, strings, quarks, leptons, mesons and baryons is to expand mass into clumps -- atoms and molecules that can be seen. Just as the night sky would be totally black or filled with hydrogen gas were it not for the clumping of mass into stars, planets and galaxies. But to say that the function or purpose of atomic structure is to magnify energy into visible matter sounds trite. To say the purpose of the big bang creative force was to produce energy magnified into matter, the visible universe, also sounds trite. Does it add to your understanding to collect together a huge chart of subatomic particles each with its own mass, spin, charge, antiparticle, mode of decay and average lifetime (often in trillionths of a second). Will spending 20 billion dollars to construct another super collider add anything but a few more species to this particles zoo already collected? What is important to know is that this atomic structure, by amplifying, compacting, solidifying, energy into mass furnishes the net result -- a world large enough for intelligent life forms to see and to exist in.

How does the Planck lens allow projection of material as hard as steel and diamond? One might just as well ask how the microscopic genes in man's chromosomes can give design to blue eyes and a seven foot bodily frame? Human genes, like virus, are composed of nucleic acids, DNA and RNA. A virus, smaller than the wavelength of visible light, can hardly be seen with an electron microscope. Size means nothing to mother nature -- a submicroscopic gene/virus still supplies the blueprint needed to replicate themselves from raw material found in a cell or chromosome. Many processes essential to life occur at a submicroscopic level. Crick who, with Watson, magnified the chromosomes double helix to man's view, wrote: "If proteins are the principle stuff of life, the nucleic acids are its blueprints -- the molecules on which the Secret of Life ... is written." Nucleic acids instruct the cells how to clump together, to multiply and grow to a size we call visible. In a similar manner plant life genes direct photosynthesis to magnify and clump together the atoms of water and carbon dioxide into visible starches and sugars.

With such evident examples of the tiny directing the large, why is it so absurd to theorize that the blueprint for matter also exists in the hidden realm? Science goes about its daily business of magnifying these hidden processes with their electron microscopes and giant accelerators. Except for Einstein, all new scientific progress stems from magnification of one kind or another. But there is no overt admission that it is the magnification that allows for knowledge. It is like the hiker, lost in the forest, who has a map but can't locate the forest for all the trees. The future launch of the satellite MAP will use a pair of onboard telescopes to amplify background microwave radiation from the big bang. MAP will attempt to confirm that just after the big bang an explosive inflation occurred -- and hopefully precisely date the age of the universe. The quantum foam becomes the great equalizer between scientists and philosophers, because no one will ever peek into the remnants of the singularity which is the vertex of the metaphorical pyramid. ThePlanck realm will be forever hidden from view. Only in fiction can this tiny view be magnified for all to see. Was the old Greek philosopher, Plato on to something when he dreamed of a hidden realm of perfect forms out of which the imperfect, visible world was sprung? Is there a process with a virtual gene directing the visible world? Is this quantum blueprint shaping the formation of roundish planets and the multitudes of shapes that molecules and crystals take on?

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