We live in a mathematical universe:

They say the outcome of a coin toss is governed by probability. But, if you toss a coin, then toss it a second time with the same exact force (thrust) as the first, to the same exact height, from the same exact position, in the precise direction and orientation, under the same exact environmental conditions (wind, temperature, humidity, vibration, noise, etc.), then you’ll get the exact same outcome. In other words, if you take all the variables (initial conditions) from the first toss and make them constant in the second toss, the probability is 1 that you’ll get the same exact outcome. So, if you carryover all the variables of today (what you think, what you eat, who you meet, where you go; the ecosystem and what elements within it are in interaction, all energy transfer and conversion and transmission media in play; the acoustic environment – the soundscape in its variety (geophony, biophony, anthrophony); temperature, thermal equilibrium, radiative forcing; the atmospheric density, pressure and consequent airflow, direction, exchange and entropic dynamics in every square-inch in every nook and corner, compound and expanse of the surroundings;  the climate, the cosmos, at what angle the earth is tilted and what position the earth is in its orbit around the sun; etc.) into tomorrow and maintain them as constant, then tomorrow will be exactly the same as today. But (and a very big but), the parameters of variables surrounding any one entity in existence or life is more or less infinite – and to borrow from a popular saying, ‘infinity is a very large number, especially towards the end’. But sometimes, in pockets of existence and life, this does happen – we seemingly rendezvous at a seemingly deja vu.

Light:

1. No object in the known universe travels faster than the speed of light.
2. Light is the reason we can observe and quantify anything in the universe.
3. Drawing from 1 and 2 above: what happens when we look up into the sky at night and see a star? Our closest star in the milky way (to the sun), Proxima Centaun, is 4.22 light-years away. A lightyear is the distance light can travel in a calendar year. A lightyear is 6 trillion miles (9 trillion kilometers). So when you see the twinkle of Proxima through a nice clear night sky, you only see it 4 year later; the journey of that twinkle started 4 year earlier than that moment the image registered on your retina. (Take thunder and lightning, for example – charged clouds discharge, and the spark and sound take off (happen) at the same time, but the flash of the lightning reaches us much earlier – an average of 5 seconds earlier)
4. Consequently, we postulate to measure the rate at which an object moves, travels or is at rest, relative to the speed of light – everything in the universe is traveling through space and time at the speed of light, but is restricted by its relative mass; that is, the bigger the mass, the slower the velocity it can travel through space, unless its relativistic energy is boosted or augmented
5. If you can reduce an energy by a factor of square the speed of light, you will produce mass; and if you can accelerate a mass by square the speed of light, you can convert all the mass into energy (E=mc^2).
6. The closer to the speed of light an object travels, the slower time passes; the closer to rest the object is relative to the speed of light, the more spread-out in space the object becomes (the longer its length): if you can travel as fast as the speed of light, you will observe the whole world come to a standstill, but your spatial occupancy would be measurably diminished; if you travel faster than the speed of light you will go back in time – and possibly observe yourself in dippers… but then, you will have been diminished into non-material existence.
7. Light (light wave) – where unimpeded – travels (propagates) in a straight line (evenly) in all directions or along any path in a space-time curvature; propagating in the manner of a particle and in the manner of a wave simultaneously. But if a mass causes the warping of space in which it (the mass) is present (aka gravitation), light traveling in that space will bend correspondingly. If you can bend space and light back far enough that it meets the origin (the source of that light in space) you can travel back in time and see what happened – what caused the twinkle; if you can bend the entire fabric of space and time along with its compositions – of quantum fluctuations that generated oscillations conveying energy (waves) resulting in cosmic inflation producing formation of elementary particles, of proton formation and nuclear fusion, of the radiation of the electromagnetic spectrum, of the formation of chemical elements and of formation of atoms, molecules and planetary bodies – and converging it all back to the source, you can journey back to the sight of the primordial phenomenon of 14 billion years before, and witness what happened in the instant of the Big Bang.

The Theory of Everything:

We’ve introduced light and our mathematical universe – the order and precision. But quantum mechanics takes this and turns it all on its head. We’ll get to that, but first, the elements.

The periodic table is an arrangement of 94 naturally existing, plus a growing number of synthesized chemical elements (distinct atom) in the universe. These elements come together (combine, permutate), symmetrically structured by the four fundamental forces of nature (gravity, electromagnetism and the weak and strong nuclear forces) and orchestrated by the random processes of nature and evolution to produce everything from the genes of a DNA to a rose’s petal to a star system of a galaxy.

Atoms are made up of electrons (occupying the orbits) and the nucleus (protons reside in the nucleus) – the number of electrons always equals the protons in an atom. Deeper in the structural breakdown of an atom – in the breakdown structure of electrons and protons – is what is known as subatomic particles (fermions – matter particles, and bosons – force particles). Under certain natural principles, when atomic make-up interact electrically, the outcome is light (aka light waves, or electromagnetic waves). The subatomic particles (bosons) of light are called photons. It can also be viewed that the less of the other subatomic particles (fermions) a medium has, the more space constituting bosons there is. Subatomic particles (fermions – like quarks, bosons – like photons) display both wave-like and particle properties – otherwise known as wave-particle duality: they can behave like particles and be at only one place at a time – they can be either up or down, right or left (discreet); and they can behave like wave and be in multiple places at the same time (diffractive), or combine and cancel-out each other (interference). A stream of subatomic particles is a quantum quantity. Electromagnetic waves are quantum quantities (we’ll explore this further when introducing ‘quantum mechanics’). Electromagnetic waves are a product of electromagnetic radiation.

‘Electromagnetic radiation’ is a process that occurs as a result of interaction between electrically charged atomic and subatomic particles. Electromagnetic radiation produces a broader electromagnetic spectrum, which encompass the following, whose properties of ‘frequencies’ and ‘wavelengths’ instruct mechanisms at the quantum scale, and thus the driver of technological applications in our modern world: All forms of light (‘electromagnetic waves’) [laser, sight (optical)]; radio wave [AM, FM, cell phone, WIFI, TV]; X-ray [medical x-ray]; gamma ray [nuclear plant for power generation]; microwave [microwave oven, satellite, GPS]; light that we can see (otherwise known as visible light), infrared and ultraviolet [sunlight, living organisms]. Visible light – wherever it occurs (whether in the heart of a cosmic supernova (star), the eye of a lit candle stick, from a flashlight, Dracula’s glowing eyes) – is generated by the process of electromagnetic radiation. In the electromagnetic spectrum, visible light propagates between infrared and ultraviolet waves with wavelengths within the range 400-700 nanometers [×10E-9, or 1 billionth of a meter] (some form of infrared and ultraviolet are however, visible when emitted at certain specific frequencies/wavelengths, or with alterations in physical properties for perceiving light, like with the use of devices). When you pass visible light through a prism, it diffracts into 7 color (ROYGBIV) – each color corresponding to a specific angle at which the light enters the prism – same phenomenon occurs in the formation of a rainbow: sunlight strikes a set of raindrops in series at the specific angles; the raindrops acts as a natural prism diffracting (separating) the light into the colors of the rainbow. (You see 7 colors because humans see color space in 3 dimensions. A good number of other animal species see color space in much more dimensions. The mantis shrimp has the capacity for 12 dimensions of color space vision).

Frequency and wavelength are two most critical properties of the quantum universe and ultimately explicate the characteristics of all things at their fundamental and microscopic levels. A wave propagates in a sinusoidal movement: travels to a peak, comes down to the valley, travels to the peak, comes down to the valley, up and down, up and down ; and in a pure (without interference) wave, the peak and the valley being exactly the same distance apart from their central axis (an imaginary straight line drawn from the wave’s point of origin in its direction of propagation). This wave propagation is also called a ‘signal’, which when harnessed into a digital device, the peaks and valleys function to represent 1’s and 0’s, up and down, left or right, go back or come forward, etc. Frequency is the number of cycles a wave can complete in a second. The wavelength is the distance one cycle covers as measured on the central axis. Frequency (f) and wavelength (₩) are related by the mathematical equation: f=1/₩. In other words, frequency and wavelength are inversely proportional. So, for the same wave, if you increase the number of cycles per second, you shorten the wavelength by the same factor, and vice versa. But to apply this to the real world, we need to introduce two physical constants (a physical constant is a property that is universal in nature and constant through time and space):

1. the ‘speed of light’ (c) – recall: “everything in the universe is traveling through space and time at the speed of light”; so, f=c/₩.
2. Plank constant (h) – which when factored in, we can expresses the energy (E) of a propagating wave as: E=h*f = h*(c/₩). The wavelength (₩) can also be expressed in terms of the momentum of the propagator (momentum is mass (m) of the atomic structure that emits the propagating wave or quantum stream, times the velocity (v) at which it is traveling): ₩=h/mv. The implications from all of the above – given the very small mass of atomic structures, and consequently that it can travel at very high velocity, and that the wave (streams of quantum particles) traveling at the speed of light can propagates at very large frequencies having very short wavelengths, that it possesses the potential to conserve, expel or convey extremely large energy – altogether mandate a behavior of quantum mechanics that is yet to be quantified by science; it mandates that on the quantum level, the weirdest things happen: interference, diffraction, entanglement and light-matter relativity: an object can be in two places at the same time; particles can pop in and out of existence, and can absorb, emit and annihilate one another; particles can pass (tunnel) through solid objects; can seemingly travel faster than the speed of light (or backwards in time); act like a wave behind your back, but like a particle when you observe; display no particular order – the occurrence of a particle is random; that two non-connected particles – not connected by any medium, force or contact – can respond to the effects of one another: that is, when you cause one to go left, the other will go right, cause one to go up, the other will go down, tickle one on the right side, the other will feel the effect on the left side; and even further amazing, is what I call “the nuclear world of awesome” – the nucleus of an atomic structure – in its beautiful and concise yet elaborate arrangements of complexities – spur the interactions that produce and drive phenomena in nature.  Quantum mechanics – with its branches of discoveries like the uncertainty principle, Pauli exclusion principle, quantum electrodynamics, quantum chromodynamics, spontaneous symmetry breaking and superconductivity – is the reason your computer, your touch-screen devices work the way they do; the reason your smartphone can do all the cool stuff it does; reason you still turn on the TV remotely with big sis in the way; the reason you can stream live and wireless. Also the reason a detonation of a few hundred nuclear warheads can render the earth inhabitable. In the quantum world, at that quantum scale, anything and everything that is possible, is feasible.

Since all things are made fundamentally of the chemical elements (atoms), and therefore can be drilled down to atomic and subatomic levels, it thus implies that all things emit some form/level/degree of electromagnetic wave – all things can exhibit wave-like characteristics. Ok, then why are you not capable of being in two places at the same time? Why are you not walking through walls? Does it mean that someday we will evolve to be mutants of the X-men genuses? Ahh… Nope! Why? You have too much mass; very sluggishly low frequency as a body; very long and slobbery wavelength; owing to your mass, your velocity with respect to the speed of light is minuscule and insignificant; and all together, the maximum energy you are able to generate having quantum properties is simply deficient in the effect of producing anything beyond a discreet presence [You could say, what if evolution permits it? OK, you got me. But for such drastic evolutionary processes to be a reality, factors – time and place (space + composition) – have to favor natural selection and genetic variation: (a) over an immense period of time, and/or (b) under extreme and immense environmental pressure, and/or (c) through a discovery of a capacity in our beings  to hit certain frequencies and wavelengths, and that sync with other media, or by an advancement from a discovery in an environment like space; or realized by some scientific, bio-climatal, bio-environmental or bio-technological shift… (I know, long shot). But maybe, by some nature-sustained or artificial genetic modification and genomic, environmental and climate engineering in future – we mutate or transmute].

There are therefore three sectors of our mathematical universe:

1. Quantum scale (subatomic level): E=hf=h(c/₩)
2. Macro scale (level of the object – the immediate environment constituting the observer): E=many forms of energy represented by [force (ma) x distance traveled in the direction of the force]; in other words, E=Process or product of transformation or transfer of one physical property of an object to another object or physical property
3. Cosmic scale: E=mc^2

The ultimate goal of scientists, in particular theoretical physicists, is to develop the equation that ties all three sectors – the mathematical proof of ‘The Theory of Everything’ – from the Big Bang to Evolution to the effects and mechanisms of the quantum universe. If we can make that happen, when we make that happen, we just might time and interstellar travel.