My Dark Scientist

08 | First day, second encounter

Picture in media : Prof. Langdon's messenger bag. I know its weird to put a messenger bag of all things in the media...its just that I ve been OBsesSEd with messenger bags lately, don't ask why.

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" I know you were way too bright for me I am hopeless, broken, so you wait for me in the sky...you're so golden "
~ Golden (Harry Styles)

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E L L O R A

"The process inverse to particle annihilation can be called matter creation. To put it precisely, we are considering here the T-symmetry or time reversal of the annihilation process. This process is also known as pair production - which can be described as light particles or Photons converted into one or more Massive particles or particles with non-zero rest mass."

"But that challenges the basic laws of science." A girl somewhere in the first benches blurts out. "I mean, how can matter be created from nothing? "

Professor Langdon smiles, chewing his apple, as he stops pacing infront of the blackboard. He pauses infront of his desk and leans back on it, crossing his legs, making himself comfortable. "Nothing..." he says nodding his head slowly. Then without any warning he shouts,

"Mr. Taylor!"

The few students scattered in the front desks, including me, turns around to look at a lean, blonde boy dozing in the fifth bench. Said boy sits up with a start. "Uh? Me?"

"In the language of Physics what is 'nothing'?" Professor Langdon asks before taking another bite from his apple.

Taylor looks blank for a second and then slowly turns nervous on realizing every single eye in class is on him. "Um...void..er, vacuum?" He says, clearly nervous at the sudden attention.

"Fantastic!" Mr. Langdon bellows, as his grin widens. "Vacuum. And to be precise, what is vacuum?"

"Um...empty space..?"

"Brilliant. Now can you tell us according to Quantum physics what is empty space?"

Taylor's brows furrows for a fraction of a second, before his face lits up and breaks into a smile. "Yeah...its that principle by some German Physicist we studied last term. According to him, there's nothing such as empty space.....um, even vacuums aren't completely empty. There's these energy fluctuations that take place constantly."

"Thank you Mr. Taylor. Go back to sleep." Professor Langdon turns towards the class and begins." Its like a boiling sea of appearing and disappearing particle pairs. The pairs made of one particle and one anti-particle exists only for a few moments. This peculiar nature of vacuum is referred to as Quantum Vacuum. There's a principle by a German physicist which explains the energy fluctuations in vacuum simply."

It all rushes to me like a gush of cold water in a dry desert, as every thing starts making sense. "Werner Heisenberg." I mutter the name under my breath just before Professor Langdon bellows to the whole class,

"Werner Heisenberg. According to his principle, at any definite point in space there must exist temporary energy changes in time. These constant fluctuations in energy can spontaneously create mass, not just out of thin air...."

"But out of absolutely nothing at all." I whisper under my breath excitedly just as Mr. Langdon finishes,

"....but out of absolutely nothing at all."