Miracles of the Gods: A New Look at the Supernatural (426 page)

8th April 1971, 8 a.m.

Belline: Michel, what is it like 'over there'?

Michel: It is another world, a dream which cannot be expressed in words. Movement, transparency, thoughts. Here neither earthly good nor earthly evil exists. It is a kind of homelessness. a kind of dream in countless dimensions and vibrations. ... Here, time as you conceive of it at this moment, becomes a caricature. That's all I can say.

If it ever becomes possible to direct conscious energies from here to the 'other world', we should be able to ask those who live there for data about past and future. The reason: the 'other worlders' exist in a timeless dimension their state does not seem to be shackled to the passage of time.

In terms of physics this possibility is quite feasible. Variable states of energy - say elementary particles which can transform themselves into each other: a neutron into a proton, an electron into a neutrino -

have quite different 'life spans'. Many of them have such short life spans that they really ought not to exist. The life of a positron or sigma particle lasts for a trillionth of a second. How can we really conceive of that? A million times a million times a million = a '10' with 18 noughts! A neutral pion

'lives' exactly 10 15 (i.e. ten to the minus fifteenth) seconds and the luckless neutrino has no life span at all in a state of rest (rest mass = 0). But if such a neutrino is accelerated it 'lives' again.

In spite of their absurdly minute life spans, elementary particles conceal up to 10 22 electron volts.

They shoot out of the universe through suns and planets, later to transform themselves into myons and neutrinos - in 100/1,000th of a second.

Forty years ago physicists were convinced that they had discovered the smallest particle in the atom.

Today they know that there is a subatomic world which is tinier than the atomic nucleus and contains much more energy than anything that we can so far conceive of as 'nascent energy'.

The concept of time breaks down in this miraculous world. Physicists no longer know where or how they should classify the electron, that building stone and atomic envelope. With mathematically proven particles which travel faster than light - say, the tachyons, tradyons and luxyons calculated by Gerald Feinberg - all concepts of time collapse definitively. They behave in exactly the opposite way to our

'normal' elementary particles.

Instead of exhibiting infinite mass and with it infinite energy when they reach the speed of light - as Einstein reckoned they would — these particles lose mass and energy the faster they travel. What is really inconceivable is that the speed of light is the lowest limit of their velocity - above it they can reach a trillionfold the speed of light. If our concepts of time have already become hazy owing to the prospect of interstellar space travel, they fall into a state of total confusion when they tackle particles that move faster than light. Every normal person is convinced - and justifiably so until now - that before an effect exists there must be a cause. But here everything is upside down. With particles travelling faster than light, the effect can come first and the cause later. Something is going on, but we do not really know what.