David Peat

64 From Certainty to Uncertaintywithin the second, and so on. Now reverse the cylinder and, as before,the first drop appears but this time is followed by the second close by,then the third. Done at the right speed it looks as if a drop of ink ismoving on a path through the glycerin. In fact the overall effect israther like the way an elementary particle moves through a cloudchamber detector. 2This is exactly Bohm’s image of an elementary particle: An elementaryparticle is not so much an object but a process. It is a constantprocess of becoming and dying away, a process in which the “particle”unfolds from the whole of space into a tiny region and then enfoldsback again over all space. Wave–particle duality is explained as particularsnapshots (at one moment localized, at one moment spreadout) of what is not really a spatial object, but an entire process.In terms of enfoldment from all of space, think of what happenswhen you look at the night sky. Light from countless numbers of starsand galaxies enters the pupil of your eye to fall on your retina. Withinthat tiny region of space are enfolded light and information from avast region of the universe.A further image of the implicate order is given by a holograph. Inordinary photography each point on a snapshot corresponds to a particularregion in a scene. Here is a hand, there an eye, there a foot.There is a perfect matching of points in the scene with points on thesnapshot. Holography is quite different. Each point in the scene is enfoldedover the whole of the holography. Likewise, in each tiny regionof the holograph can be found information about the entire scene.This means that, if a piece of the holograph is broken off and viewed, itis possible to see the entire scene and not just one fragment.2In a cloud chamber very clean air is supersaturated with water vapor. Undernormal conditions small droplets of water could condense out on dust motes toform a cloud inside the chamber. However, because the air is totally clean such condensationis not possible. But when an electrically charged elementary particle passesthrough the cloud chamber it hits atoms of oxygen or nitrogen (the components ofair) and knocks off some of their electrons to leave electrically charged ions. Tinydroplets of water can now condense around these ions. The path of an elementaryparticle is recorded as a line of tiny droplets that traverse the cloud chamber. Theappearance is analogous to the trail of ink drops in Bohm’s double cylinder example.