Sunday, March 09, 2008

Worlds and Atoms Collide

My friend and fellow Sam Harris critic R.C. Metcalf and I had dinner last night at the great Old Hickory Steakhouse in the Opryland Hotel. R.C. is in town for the annual National Religious Booksellers meeting, and he was kind enough to give me a copy of his latest book, Colliding with Christ, an account of the Physics of the Resurrection.

I am really looking forward to reading it, and asked R.C. for a second copy, which I am sending to my friend and mystery writer extraordinaire, Keith Raffel, whose upcoming novel is tentatively titled Smasher! and tells of the inner workings of physics research and entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley.

Keith is smashing atoms while R.C. has neutrons and electrons colliding with life after death. Both tell me that my understanding of physics is long outdated. Neutrons, protons, and electrons aren't the smallest components of matter these days-- those components are now the quarks and gluons which make up the neutrons, protons, and electrons !

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