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Al-Ahram Weekly 21 - 27 October 1999 Issue No. 452 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 21 - 27 October 1999 Issue No. 452
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Zuweil and the
By Mohamed Sid-Ahmed
Theory of Everything
As a layman, I am not qualified to comment on the technical aspects of the discovery which earned Nobel laureate Ahmed Zuweil the highest honour any scientist can hope for, although I know enough to recognise the tremendous impact it will have on such diverse fields as medicine -- particularly cancer treatment -- pharmaceuticals, biology, genetic engineering, space exploration, etc. But his groundbreaking work in the field of laser technology also carries philosophical implications touching on the very essence of matter itself. It is this aspect of Dr Zuweil's discovery that I would like to comment on.
Described by the Swedish Academy as a 'revolution in chemistry', the laser technique developed by Zuweil is the ultimate slow-motion camera, which allows scientists for the first time to observe atoms during chemical reactions, when they are moving at speeds measured in femtoseconds (one millionth of a billionth of a second). We are talking here of a time scale that is totally alien to our normal, that is, biological, time scale. As such a condensed time scale lies outside the scope of our senses, the discovery will have no discernible impact on our everyday life, even if its importance for numerous fields of scientific endeavour cannot be overstated.
Generally speaking, there is often a correlation between the dimensions in space of a given event, such as a chemical reaction, and its dimensions in time. Stated otherwise, the smaller the space coordinates, the shorter the time-frame. By allowing us to actually see the dynamic process involved in a chemical reaction, Zuweil's 'camera' can eventually lead us to discover that what was once described as qualitative change is nothing more than quantitative change under special conditions occurring under tremendously high speeds.
To be sure, even before the discovery, we knew much about phenomena lying outside the scope of our senses. But our knowledge relied heavily on mathematical models, which relied in their turn on theoretical assumptions that could not be empirically verified. Thanks to Zuweil, we can now observe with our own eyes the unfolding of processes at speeds hitherto beyond our range. This raises a critical question: is 'reality' in space and time coordinates that are totally different from ours comparable to the reality we know from our senses?
The reality we can grasp by virtue of our senses is necessarily limited by the limitation of those senses. And yet we tend to believe that the laws governing the universe as a whole, at both the micro and macro levels, are similar to those which govern the world we actually know, and that we can accordingly extrapolate the reality of our own familiar world onto those other worlds. Recent developments in science and technology are proving the fallacy of such an assumption.
At the macro level, the Hubble telescope has allowed us to 'see' the universe from a vantage point outside the biosphere, offering a whole new perspective on the reality of a different world. Thanks to Hubble, we now know that our galaxy is made up of millions, possibly even billions, of stars similar to the sun, and that the galaxies themselves can be counted in the billions.
At the micro level, we have also managed to extend our knowledge beyond the limitations of our senses, discovering in the process fascinating worlds which defy what we believe to be the very rules of logic. Let us assume that we could devise a 'lift' that would take us not from a lower to a higher level or vice-versa, but from the tiniest to the largest, a lift that would expand rather than move in any specific direction. The passengers in this lift would first 'visit' the world of elementary particles, of which the quark is believed to be the smallest discrete entity in existence. As the lift expands, it will reach another critical threshold, the world of electrons, then another, the world of atoms, then yet another, the world of molecules. Then will come the critical thresholds of the world of organic chemistry, of unicellular living creatures, of viruses and bacteria, then of multicellular life forms, the plant and animal kingdoms, then our own critical threshold, the world of intelligent beings, of humans with the ability to perceive all this. Further expansion will bring the lift to the solar system, then to our galaxy, the Milky Way, then to the Universe, with all its billions of galaxies.
The worlds witnessed from the window of our lift will be very different from one another. There might be similarities in the respective proportions of the different worlds as we move up the scale from one threshold to another: the distance between an electron and the nucleus of the atom around which it revolves can appear similar to the distance between a planet and the star around which it revolves, but the scenery the observers in the lift will 'see' as they move from one critical threshold to another will undergo tremendous change. When it comes to the macro-world, the rules of Einstein's theory of relativity apply. The micro-world, on the other hand, is governed by the theory of quantum mechanics, which is incompatible with the theory of relativity, indeed, with what we believe to be the rules of logic.
Used to interpret physical phenomena on the atomic scale, quantum mechanics allows us to know either the position or the velocity of a given particle, not both at the same time. Though the theory has proved to be accurate in application, its mechanisms have yet to be satisfactorily explained by scientists. A major concern of the scientific community today is to come up with a unified theory -- ambitiously dubbed the "theory of everything" -- that would incorporate the rules governing the micro-world and those governing the macro-world, a synthesis of the theory of relativity and the theory of quantum mechanics.
Can Ahmed Zuweil's discovery help solve the dilemma? Will his laser camera reproduce images from the world governed by the rules of quantum mechanics or will it operate only in the field of chemical reactions? Whatever the answers to these questions, Ahmed Zuweil is a source of great pride and inspiration for all Egyptians, and a morale-boosting reminder that Egyptian talent can flourish in the right environment. For it is not by brilliance alone that scientific breakthroughs are achieved. A necessary but not sufficient condition, brilliance can achieve its full potential only in the context of a solid scientific and technological infrastructure.
The last Nobel Prize for Chemistry in the millennium was awarded to an Egyptian who made a scientific breakthrough in a foreign environment. It is to be hoped that other Egyptians will be similarly honoured in the coming millennium for outstanding contributions to science realised in an Egyptian context. Before this can happen, however, there must be many changes made to our science and technology system, indeed, to our whole approach to education and culture, which must be geared to helping young Egyptian talent achieve its full potential.
