A world of quarks, axions, electromagnetism, and dark matter, the field of quantum physics is mystifying. Even those who’ve never taken an introductory physics class are captivated by its ability to transport wonderers elsewhere—even if they only comprehend a fraction of what they hear. Author of A Beautiful Question and winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize for his work on asymptotic freedom, Frank Wilczek returns with a concise meditation on the tenets of contemporary science. Pulling resonant scientific facts from the challenging armor of mathematics, Wilczek’s work covers the lifespan of the universe, the wonder of dark matter, and the thorny dilemma of free will.

Living in England, Italy, or just about anywhere in Europe during the Scientific Revolution would have been a surreal experience. Seventeenth-century dwellers who had seen few inventions more technologically advanced than the printing press were caught in a blur of almost otherworldly equipment—different clocks, assortments of telescopes, and most importantly, a slew of unprecedented ideas. Concerns ranging from the mechanical workings of the natural universe to questions on humanity itself were the trending topics of the day. And, to explore these disorienting ideas, thinkers adopted a revolutionary thought method Frank Wilczek calls “Radical Conservatism.” Within the understanding of Radical Conservatism, 17th-century thinkers acknowledged the findings of their forebears but took their experimental accuracy with a grain of salt. These men and women strove to go beyond their ancestors. They wanted to find out if the world really did work the way they’d been told all along—and so, to begin, they contemplated the stars.

In a beautiful turn of history, one of the inquiries that binds together the ancient world, the 17th century, and even contemporary culture is the question of the sky. The study of what is commonly called “celestial mechanics” was nothing new to the thinkers of the Scientific Revolution, but it played a pivotal role in coaxing their wonder. In ancient Greece, Ptolemy got the celestial ball rolling with a little book he (not-so-humbly) called Almagest, which can be translated to “the greatest.” At the time, his work summarized what the world knew about the locations and trajectories of stars and planets as discovered through mathematics. Not surprisingly, his theories were a bit off. As a result, through the ages, a handful of thinkers got in line after him, salvaging the best bits of Ptolemy’s postulations and discovering their own.

The 16th-century genius Copernicus was the first to spot a star-sized problem in Ptolemy’s theorems. Beyond the thinker’s seemingly isolated equations, there was an underlying force he missed—the Sun. The planets weren’t simply floundering in space, inadvertently following similar routes for no reason. Rather, the Sun kept each of them on track as they moseyed through the air. The later 17th-century thinker Johannes Kepler progressed from Ptolemy and Copernicus, adding that not only were those planets winding around the Sun but they were doing so on not-so-circular trails, too. Not long after him, Isaac Newton, arguably the mascot of the Scientific Revolution, explained exactly why planets hitchhiked those elliptical roads in the first place. His theory of gravity compelled the birth of classical mechanics, an explanation that applies today even despite the 20th century’s introduction of quantum mechanics.

Leaping from one decade’s findings to another’s, these inventors considered what arrived before them to create a future that was truer, more comprehensive, and yet no less baffling than it was to ancient thinkers.

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If the scientific mastermind of Newton himself were to open a contemporary science textbook, even he would be startled. On the surface, it seems that modern scientists have wandered far from their 17th-century predecessors, due in part to the 20th-century discoveries of Albert Einstein. But, in truth, they’ve merely extended the family line. The Radical Conservatism of Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton’s day continues to inspire scientific inquiry even now, propelling the discovery of what Wilczek calls “fundamentals.” These are the primary components upon which the functioning of the universe is made possible, the first of which involves the same question that started it all. The cosmos sprawled above and before us may be grand, but its components—stars, planets, solar systems and galaxies—consist of similar chemical parts apparent throughout all of space. When scientists place all these pieces together, they get vivid insight into the workings of the universe.

The method astronomers use to accomplish this feat functions similarly to that of the steady, forward trajectory of scientific thought. With a bit of help from an aptly named tool called the “cosmic distance ladder,” scientists take known and typically smaller distances, such as that of the radius of the Earth, to help them calculate greater ones, such as that of the Milky Way galaxy. In a similar way, scientists employ what they know about how vividly one body shines to calculate how far it is from the Earth or another body in space. The astronomer Henrietta Leavitt discovered that one type of star in particular is especially useful for this. These stars are called Cepheid variables, and they function like tiny lanterns strung along the cosmos. Not only does their light help scientists quantify space, but it also gives them a hint into what it all looked like at the beginning.

The 20th-century astronomer Edwin Hubble took what he knew about Cepheid variables into the photographic darkroom and began to develop what Wilczek aptly calls a “snapshot of the early universe.” When Hubble peered at the stars of various galaxies, he witnessed a significant trend physicists now refer to as a “redshift.” Moreover, as Hubble looked further into the cosmos, the Cepheid variables within those regions glowed red, a color that’s apparent in increasingly long wavelengths. In this case then, the movement of light through space works like pulled taffy. The furthest, most taut ends of the taffy represent the deepest ends of light. By gauging the reach of light through its evolving color, Hubble found that the contents of the universe are like an endlessly pulled piece of taffy—the most distant parts are steadily racing away from the Earth.

With this finding, scientists intuit that since galaxies are moving away from each other at consistent rates, they must have been born in the same place, too. Scientists derive the oft-debated big bang theory from this assumption. Employing the wavelengths of light to calculate the locations of the universe’s most far-flung galaxies 13.8 billion light-years away, they arrive at the finding that space is an equivalent 13.8 billion years old. The outer regions of the universe are simply an extension of its beginning, the bright edges of a cosmic memory.

Without a microscope or even a magnifying glass to his name, Democritus sought to peer into the substance of things. In a famous quote, the ancient philosopher who lived during the fifth and fourth centuries BC insightfully proposed, “In truth there are only atoms and the void.” Astonishingly, he wasn’t wrong. Centuries before the Scientific Revolution and the 20th-century stir of quantum mechanics, Democritus foresaw one of Wilczek’s fundamental components of the universe. Put simply, a 13.8 billion-year-old cosmos stuffed to the brim with planets, black holes, asteroids, galaxies, solar systems, and a whole host of other wonders doesn’t require much to remain burning. The makeup of the entire cosmos can be counted on two hands. In quantum physics, the five tiny components that contrive the substance of everyday life are called “elementary particles,” and as they arise within what physicists call the four “forces” of the universe, they spill their life into being.

Each of these particles is a unique variation of just three qualities, what Wilczek notes are “mass, charge, and spin.” An electron, for instance, doesn’t have a particular look; rather, its specific mass, negative charge, and degree of spin indicate that it is indeed an electron. Along with these electrons, the other particles that underlie nearly everything in the world—from lions and oak trees to skyscrapers and human beings—are photons, “up” quarks, “down” quarks, and gluons. These “fabulous five” of particle physics eventually give way to the more well-known particles within the physical world, including the atoms that Democritus sensed long before. Each elementary particle has a pivotal role to play in bringing the world to light.

Photons, for one, provide the sealant within which atoms eke out an existence, while gluons allow those twin quarks to congeal, thus forming a proton. Those assembled protons, along with their buddy neutrons, form the basis of the atomic nucleus around which numbers of electrons swim. And there you have the atom—a tiny assemblage of subatomic bits.

Particles arise within one of four forces that make up what physicists refer to as the “Standard Model,” or what Wilczek replaces with “the Core.” These forces are pivotal to the physical world and exist as the substratum from which particles are born. As such, these forces consist of quantum electromagnetism or QED, quantum chromodynamics or QCD (which experts also call the strong force), gravity, and the weak force, and each one facilitates the life of a particular elementary particle. The frictionless, fluid interactions of particles and the forces that give them breath allow for the universe to sprout up from barely anything. 

And, as scientists pull the universe back to its start, they witness each of these functions in action. In 1964, physicists Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson followed Hubble’s lead. Using the redshift of photons rather than galaxies, the particles that comprise what is now known as the “cosmic microwave background” (CMB), their work brought physicists closer to the big bang than ever before. Physics acknowledges that even at the big bang, elementary particles and forces were mingling and preparing for the universe to come. But, as physicists would soon discover experimentally, these “necessities” weren’t the only ones there at the beginning.

Prior to 1964, physicists assumed that though they themselves conceived of time as a linear phenomenon, their beloved universe did not. According to what they called “time-reversal symmetry” or “T,” the binding features of the universe that Newton proposed during the Scientific Revolution were timeless, equipped to slingshot forward or stretch backward without a problem. The findings of physicists James Cronin and Val Fitch threw a quantum wrench into that illusion, though, showing that the universe wasn’t as seamless as it appeared. In 1977, Roberto Peccei and Helen Quinn set forward a theory that the tiny glitch in universal time physicists had witnessed in years prior was a product of yet another “quantum field”—one that may produce the particle Wilczek later dubbed the “axion” (as inspired by the laundry detergent brand), a beacon in physicists’ dim exploration of dark matter.

Despite the fact that the previously mentioned elementary particles are as Wilczek would say “fundamental” to the functioning of the universe, they occupy a meager four percent of its makeup. One of the more disturbing discoveries in physics reveals that the universe humans experience is primarily unseeable. Consisting of 25 percent dark matter and 70 percent dark energy, countless experiments and studies prove that the world physicists think they know so well may not be entirely knowable at all. For instance, according to the mathematically sound theories of Kepler, the thinker of the Scientific Revolution who proved that planets follow elliptical pathways, how quickly a body circles is proportional to its mass. As contemporary physicists peer into other galaxies, though, they witness something so baffling it would have sent Kepler spinning.

Put simply, the pivotal balance between an object’s mass and its rate of movement falls apart at the limits of galaxies. The stars in those regions orbit far too quickly for the rather insignificant degree of mass they contain. So, physicists knew that there had to be something else. Otherwise, the galaxy itself would literally spin out of control. This is where the simultaneously intriguing and perplexing concept of dark matter comes in. According to contemporary physicists, dark matter may function similarly to elementary particles, just with far less noticeable results, explaining why those cosmic bodies spin more rapidly regardless of their small size. Moreover, the “cold dark matter model” sets out that like the photons of the cosmic microwave background, dark matter also exudes what Wilczek calls a “lingering afterglow,” or a sheet of descendant particles, following its expulsion from the big bang.

Wilczek and hosts of other physicists are on the case, offering axions as possible embodiments of this inexplicable wonder. According to them, that imaginary particle checks off all the boxes required by dark matter, which as they witnessed, allows for the universe to grow from the unlikely circumstances of its beginning state. But, much to their chagrin, physicists have yet to witness that potentially conclusive axion in motion. When or if they do ever discover their persistently tested, much hoped for answer, chances are, that won’t be the last puzzle physics throws their way.

Like the symbiotic flow of waves and particles or the exchange between the dueling geniuses of Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, truth often arrives from a mix of different ideas or realities. For Wilczek, this “complementarity” undergirds everything—from the relations between particles to those between people. Even with an array of seemingly absolute theorems, facts, and equations, the sense of just falling short of a single conclusive answer is inevitable. Not even the acclaimed and ill-defined “Theory of Everything” would fulfill what its name suggests—and nor would physicists want it to. Differences in scientific equations or the workings of everyday life may be troubling, but they often provoke greater thought and exploration than any ultimate theory ever could.

This revelation is apparent even in the subatomic realm of waves and particles, a joint product of an equation physicists call the “wave function.” The wave function reveals relevant information about a particle, including what Wilczek notes are its “position” and “velocity.” While both factors contribute to the eventual outcome of the particle in question, physicists are unable to calculate both of them at once and are left with an incomplete, ambiguous portrait of their subatomic particle. This finding informs Werner Heisenberg’s “uncertainty principle,” which infuses the experience of not knowing into the tiniest realms of physical life. As Heisenberg bore the mathematics in experiments, he also recognized that he himself was a player in the particle’s eventual outcome—seemingly disjointed opposites, like particles and humans, feed into one another in an interrelated network of being. As Einstein acknowledged himself, “A human being is part of a whole, called the Universe, a part limited in time and space.”

Despite this relationship, daily human life often seems at odds with the unconventional world of the subatomic. In particular, the convention-defying inquiries of contemporary physics throw the notion of human freedom for a loop. Even a physicist as mathematically minded as Wilczek himself acknowledges that this needn’t be the case. Emptying the world of free choice is neither required by science nor beneficial for human life. Just as a particle holds two equally relevant realities that can’t be known together, the tangible life of humankind and the shadowy realm of the subatomic are surprisingly symbiotic—they exist in a mutual, poignant partnership even when they seem antithetical.

As soon as questions started to fall from the minds of the most ancient wanderers, true science like this has valued human speculation over calculated conclusions, inspiring people from every culture to carve history with their awe. Brought both by the learned and simply the curious, these inquiries are fueled by nothing less than an innate craving for truth. Curving across time and history, humanity’s questions brighten their knowledge of the universe and drop them onto the surface of authentic scientific thought.