The Largest and the Smallests

The US space agency, NASA, is planning to launch one of the most sophisticated and precise devices ever to leave earth into space: its large-area gamma-ray space telescope. This telescope covers an energy range that has hardly ever been examined, and it will investigate matter and energy in extreme situations that we know only in theory. This is something of cosmic proportions – "the largest, most powerful and furthest-reaching" a man-made device has ever been.

At the same time, the world's largest particle accelerator has begun operating in Switzerland. It is the largest and most expensive instrument in the history of science. Its design, construction and operation are being made possible through international financial and scientific cooperation. The accelerator was developed to study and resolve essential questions about the basic constituents of matter – subatomic particles – "the closest and smallest possible."

There are few instruments that scientists have anticipated with such excitement and enthusiasm. Few periods in the history of science have matched the eager tension of the past few months. Experts are predicting the advent of "a new physics" that will fill the gaps in the existing theories and models.

The realization that the largest and smallest hold the same secrets reflects the view of modern science that the same laws and basic forces apply to the entire range of natural phenomena. The more sophisticated the instruments for measurement and calculation become, the smaller the number of basic forces that are considered. It is becoming increasingly clear that the large and small share the same fundamental nature, that they are subject to the same laws.

The most advanced theories seek to link all phenomena, energies and particles to a single prime force, which in its different forms appears to us as the infinite variety presented in the creation of the universe. This is actually the truth of the all-embracing Divine oneness, a truth now being translated into the language of the human mind: the language of physics and math.

The teachings of the Kabbalah reveal and explain the order of evolvement, categorization, development and combination that result in our seeing the single force of the Creator as an infinite collection of places, times, phenomena, particles and forces. It is beautiful to see the unification of human science with the original teachings of the Kabbalah. The new insights teach us that the small and the large, the close and the far, the strong and the weak all are expressions of the power of the one and only Creator.

The main theme of classic Kabbalah – the explanation of the symmetry and parallels between the divine and all the phenomena of the physical world, of how eternity and the finite world unite – becomes clearer in the light of the recent developments in modern physics research.