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least by contributions from Einstein in the same year, 1905, when he published his theory of special relativity and the photon hypothesis. In both cases, the modern and ancient atomic pictures, bodies not further subdivisible, the atoms, are postulated as the elementary building blocks of matter. But details of and motivations for the pre-Socratic theory of atoms strongly differed from the physical concept founded on observations, even if one disregards the ultimate divisibility of physical atoms as demonstrated more recently. The atomists developed their concept as an answer to Parmenides’ shocking assertion that all motion must be illusion. Parmenides founded this apparently absurd thesis on a few logical steps, based on the initial statement that nothingness does not exist. Then it follows that no motion can exist either, for that would require bodies to take positions where earlier the nonexistent nothingness would have been. This logical contradiction, maintained after Parmenides especially by Zeno, was countered by the atomists by simply and radically accepting empty space as a given, where atoms would move and form matter.

This philosophically impressive series of developments differs markedly from the emergence of the concept of atoms in modern physics. Nowadays, we are used to representations and direct images, for instance those of scanning tunneling microscopy, that, indistinctly yet unmistakably, show the construction of matter from single atoms. In physics, however, the concept of atoms was established much earlier, based not on direct but on indirect observations. Einstein, in one of his famous works of 1905, quantitatively attributed Brownian motion—a microscopic trembling of small particles such as pollen grains suspended in a liquid—to irregular bumping by molecules of the liquid. He not only raised this bold thesis, but was able to support it mathematically by providing an equation for the relationship of the rate of trembling to properties of the liquid particles. In the following years, precise and successful comparisons with observations quickly made the concept of atoms widely accepted, but it was another fifty years before Erwin Müller from Pennsylvania State University managed to produce the first direct images of atomic resolution using his own invention, field ion microscopy (figure 31).

31. The tip of a tungsten needle in a field ion microscope, showing the atomic structure.

With pictures of the emergence of the world, the situation is similar. Many proposals have been made throughout human cultural history, and they have often been garnished to the minutest detail. For some time, physics has been contributing to the resolution of such questions, and its methods have consistently been crowned by success: sensitive, though sometimes indirect, observations paired with a strong foundation of theory. Compared to the development of the concept of atoms, the phase we are presently in lacks a direct image; and it is questionable whether a direct image of the world’s own emergence will ever be available. What comes closest to an image right now is the picture of the cosmic background radiation from times shortly after the big bang, but a direct image of the big bang itself, or even of the previous universe, remains a fantasy owing to the density as well as the quantum theoretical properties of this phase. Still, just as indirect observations of Brownian motion secured the physical concept of atoms, it may be possible to peruse sensitive measurements of the cosmic background of microwaves and other forms of radiation to gain insights into the ancient history of the universe. We have not come that far yet, but testability in principle allows us to use current theories for speculations.

MYTHS:

UNIVERSAL LIFE

People go there after they die!

—GIRL FROM JOSHIMATH

When classifying creation myths of the world, we can distinguish between primary and secondary creation; an illustration is given in figure 32. Primary creation provides a reason for the emergence of the world itself, secondary