Why Subatomic Motion Never Ends and What It Reveals About the Structure of the Universe

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“If rest and retirement mark the final stage of human life, then the universe is made without an endpoint of rest.”

Over the past year, as we have explored the Universal Law of Increasing Complexity, we have repeatedly seen that the domains of reality we tend to separate, physics, chemistry, biology, and society, are in fact deeply interconnected. From this understanding, a method gradually emerged, one in which unresolved problems in human systems are examined through more neutral domains, such as physics or chemistry, before returning to the social level with insights that would have been difficult to reach from within it alone.

In this column, I would like to invert that familiar path. Instead of beginning with a social dilemma and searching for its reflection in nature, we will begin with a fundamental and unresolved phenomenon in physics, and only gradually reveal, through its structure, the social question it helps illuminate. This also invites the reader to experience the method directly, to notice how conclusions formed in one domain can be carried, almost unchanged, into another. As always, the closing of the column will complete the loop and make that connection explicit.

Eternal Movement without Recharging

Everything around us is made of matter that carries the memory of the universe: the bodies we inhabit, the fields that nourish our crops, the air we breathe, and the light that warms our days are all composed of atoms whose origins stretch across cosmic time. The hydrogen in the water we drink was created in the first seconds of expansion, while the heavier elements in our cells were forged in the burning cores of ancient stars that lived and died long before our planet existed. Even the photons that reach us each morning began their journey deep within the sun long ago. Despite these differences in age and origin, the subatomic components of this matter behave in precisely the same way. A particle that appeared in the first moments of the universe and one produced today in high-energy experiments share the same intrinsic baseline energy and the same restless motion, as if the universe had inscribed a single pattern into the structure of matter and preserved it unchanged across billions of years.

This fact raises a question that extends far beyond ordinary experience. Everything we know about energy suggests that it weakens with time. We cool objects and their motion slows. We watch heat dissipate into the surrounding air. Stars shine brilliantly, then dim as they exhaust their fuel and release their remaining energy into space. Yet the smallest elements of matter do not follow this familiar logic. Their internal motion persists without decay and without dependence on the moment of their creation. An electron in a star that exploded long ago moves with the same irreducible energy as an electron produced this morning. If motion requires energy, and if energy in all known systems diminishes over time, how can the subatomic world continue to move with the same unwavering vigor throughout the entire history of the universe?

The Unanswered Question

The persistence of motion at the smallest scales forces us to confront the foundations of our understanding, because although physics can describe with remarkable accuracy how particles behave, it cannot explain why the universe is structured such that stillness is impossible. When matter is cooled, and temperatures approach the lowest values nature permits, motion does not disappear. Electrons continue to fluctuate in their orbitals. Quantum fields, which fill every region of space whether matter is present or not, continue to oscillate. These motions persist even when all external energy has been removed, revealing that the lowest possible energy state is not a state of rest but a state of unavoidable activity. Vacuum fluctuations, meaning the irreducible oscillations of quantum fields even in the absence of matter and heat, provide direct evidence of this fact.

Quantum mechanics requires that motion never reach zero, because a particle occupying a perfectly defined position would possess infinitely uncertain momentum, a condition under which stable atoms could not exist. This constraint is essential for the coherence of matter, since without it the probability fields that define electrons would collapse into singular points and the structures that make the universe intelligible would disintegrate. Physics, therefore, demonstrates with great precision that motion cannot vanish, yet the mathematics that enforces this requirement does not explain why reality itself is built upon a framework that forbids stillness.

If stillness were possible, atoms would lose their stability, fields would collapse, and no structure could endure. The persistence of motion at the smallest scales is therefore not an incidental feature of nature but a precondition for the persistence of matter. Physics acknowledges this necessity, yet it does not uncover its structural origin. It provides the mathematical conditions under which motion must persist, but not the deeper reason those conditions exist. To approach that reason, we must look beyond the equations and consider whether the universe is grounded in a condition more fundamental than energy, mass, or force.

What We Know and What We Do Not

To understand why the smallest elements of matter never come to rest, we must first distinguish between the aspects of the phenomenon that physics can describe with great precision and the deeper questions it does not yet answer. Quantum mechanics establishes that motion cannot vanish because a particle with a perfectly defined position would possess an entirely undefined momentum, and such a condition would render atoms unstable. This principle is essential for the existence of matter, and it has been confirmed through countless experiments. The stability of atoms, the structure of chemical bonds, and the behavior of light all depend on this rule. Physics, therefore, gives us a complete description of how motion persists when external energy is removed.

Yet this mathematical necessity does not explain why the universe is built upon a framework that forbids stillness in the first place. The equations describe the consequences of that framework with precision, but they do not uncover its origin. This distinction becomes clearer when we examine explanations that appear intuitive yet collapse under scrutiny.

It is tempting to imagine that the energy sustaining subatomic motion is a fading echo of the Big Bang, as if the universe were still vibrating with its earliest impulses. This interpretation fails because particles that appear today in high-energy experiments behave with the same irreducible motion as particles that have existed since the earliest moments of cosmic history. If the energy were a remnant of a distant event, it would weaken over time, and newly produced particles would reveal different baseline properties, a state not supported by any measurements.

Another common explanation attributes this energy to nuclear processes such as fusion, as if the heat of stars were responsible for the motion we observe. Yet fusion explains how nuclei acquire or release energy during reactions, not why an isolated particle fluctuates in the complete absence of heat, interaction, or external influence. The energy sustaining subatomic motion is present even in emptiness itself, and it appears when no physical process is underway.

A more subtle argument appeals to the conservation of energy, as though the persistence of motion required no explanation because energy cannot be destroyed. Yet conservation tells us only that the total amount of energy in a closed system remains constant. It does not tell us why energy exists, why the lowest possible energy state contains motion rather than rest, or why the universe cannot settle into perfect stillness. Conservation is a rule of accounting, not a principle that explains origin.

These limits do not reflect a weakness of physics, but the boundary at which description ends and deeper architectural questions begin. Physics excels at describing phenomena within its theoretical framework, revealing structures that recur across scales with astonishing consistency. Yet it does not attempt to explain why the universe adopted these structures rather than others, why its foundations have the form they do, or why certain principles appear indispensable to the persistence of matter.

This boundary becomes most evident in the problem of vacuum energy. Quantum field theory predicts that even in a perfect vacuum, fields must fluctuate, and these fluctuations contribute a measurable baseline of energy to every region of space. Yet the predicted magnitude of this energy differs sharply from the value inferred from cosmological measurements, and no existing model reconciles the discrepancy. Vacuum energy is therefore both indispensable and deeply mysterious. It must exist for matter to persist, but its precise nature and magnitude remain unexplained.

What emerges from all of this is a landscape of precise knowledge framed by profound uncertainty. We know that motion cannot end. We know that the stability of matter depends on this perpetual activity. We know that motion neither fades with time nor depends on the particle's history. What we do not know is why the universe is built on a structure that forbids absolute rest, why the lowest energy state includes motion rather than stillness, and why existence itself appears to require a baseline tension that no process can release. These unanswered questions point toward a deeper logic of the universe, a logic that physics reveals but does not yet explain, and we now turn to this deeper architecture.

Contradiction as Motion

The boundary reached by physics invites us to consider that the universe rests on a condition more fundamental than energy, force, or matter, a condition that cannot be reduced to the equations describing how particles behave yet shapes the very framework in which those equations hold. When the smallest units of matter never come to rest, and no physical process can silence their internal motion, we are confronted with the likelihood that persistent motion is not a secondary outcome but a structural necessity.

In the language of the Universal Law of Increasing Complexity, this necessity arises because existence cannot form or endure without contradiction, and contradiction cannot remain latent. It must express itself, and this expression appears to us as motion. In this framework, contradiction does not refer to conflict or opposition in the ordinary sense but to the simultaneous presence of tendencies that cannot be satisfied within a single resolved state and must therefore remain active within the structure.

Within the ULIC framework, contradiction is not an external conflict between objects or forces but an internal condition in which tendencies that cannot be reconciled within a single state must coexist within the same system. At the smallest scales, the tendencies toward concentration and dispersion, localization and uncertainty, and attraction and exclusion must inhabit the same structural space. No single configuration can satisfy all of these demands at once. The system, therefore, cannot settle into perfect stillness, because stillness would require a resolution that the structure does not permit. Motion arises as the necessary expression of these incompatible yet coexisting tendencies.

Seen in this light, quantum fluctuations are not merely the outcome of mathematical rules; they are the physical signature of contradiction within a structure that cannot collapse into a single fixed state. The electron does not fluctuate because something pushes it; it fluctuates because the relational conditions that define its existence cannot be reduced to a state of rest. The nucleus does not remain in motion because of an external disturbance but because interactions among its constituent particles create tensions that can only be expressed dynamically. Even vacuum fluctuations follow from the same principle, because a region of space that appears empty contains quantum fields that cannot be reduced to silence without erasing the relational fabric on which matter depends.

The persistence of subatomic motion therefore reveals that the universe is shaped by a structural requirement beneath forces and energies, one that makes certain outcomes inevitable independent of physical history. Because this motion neither fades with time nor varies with the particle's origin, it cannot be explained by initial conditions or historical residue. It must instead reflect a condition embedded in the structure of existence itself. Seen this way, persistent motion points to a universe whose architecture is fundamentally asymmetric, one in which perfect balance has never existed and cannot exist without dissolving the very possibility of structure.

At this point, the concept of Change becomes essential because it clarifies that the asymmetry in question is not a property of matter, radiation, or forces but a structural condition present from the first instant of existence. In this sense, asymmetry is not the cause of Change but its earliest structural expression, the moment at which Change becomes unavoidable rather than merely possible. To understand why motion persists at the smallest scales, we must recognize that the universe never existed in a state of perfect balance, because existence itself began with a structural asymmetry so fundamental that it has shaped every layer of reality since the first moment.

This asymmetry is what we call Change, not as a force acting on particles but as the primordial condition that makes all forces and motions possible. Once existence is not perfectly even, it must continue to unfold, rearrange, and express its internal tensions across time. In this view, the persistent oscillation of subatomic particles is neither an external source of energy nor a mystery that demands an unknown reservoir. Rather, it is the most elemental expression of a universe whose structure cannot rest in absolute stillness and whose unfolding therefore appears to us as ceaseless motion.

By framing the puzzle this way, the ULIC shows that motion is neither an attribute of particles nor a temporary condition awaiting replenishment, but the visible manifestation of a deeper architecture that binds existence together. The smallest oscillations in quantum fields and the largest rotations of galaxies express the same principle: where contradiction exists, motion must arise; where motion persists, structure can form; where structure forms, complexity can appear and evolve. Motion is therefore both the expression of unresolved tension and the requirement that allows structure to persist once formed. The persistence of microscopic motion is therefore not an isolated puzzle but the first indication that the universe is built on a condition that favors transformation over stillness, tension over equilibrium, and relationship over isolation. From this condition, all higher forms of coherence and complexity emerge.

Why Stillness Is Impossible

When we bring together what physics reveals and what the ULIC framework clarifies, a unified picture begins to emerge. The persistence of subatomic motion is not a hidden quirk of quantum mechanics, nor is it a rare feature of microscopic phenomena. It reflects a structural condition built into the universe itself. Stillness would require a state in which every tendency is resolved, every constraint is satisfied, and every contradiction disappears. Such a state would contain no distinctions, no relations, and no capacity to sustain form. It would be a configuration devoid of the tensions from which structure arises and, therefore, a configuration in which existence could not hold.

At the quantum scale, the impossibility of stillness appears in the principle that position and momentum cannot both be exact. A particle cannot satisfy these incompatible demands simultaneously, and the structure of quantum mechanics forces a dynamic expression of this incompatibility. At the atomic scale, the interplay between attraction and repulsion prevents electrons from collapsing inward or escaping outward, and the atom remains stable only because these opposing tendencies cannot be fully reconciled. At the scale of stars and galaxies, gravity and expansion operate as competing influences whose unresolved relationship drives motion across cosmic distances. In every case, stability relies on tensions that cannot be flattened into equilibrium. This same logic will later reappear at the social level, where attempts to eliminate tension do not produce stability but instead erode the structures that allow societies to hold together.

To appreciate this principle, consider what would be required for stillness to occur: a particle at perfect rest would have no uncertainty in position or momentum, violating the structure of quantum mechanics and collapsing the wave function into a singularity. An atom at rest would lose the dynamic equilibrium that keeps its electrons distributed in stable orbitals. A region of vacuum with no fluctuations would eliminate the quantum fields whose activity gives rise to particles. Such states are not merely unlikely; they are structurally impossible, because they would remove the very contradictions that make matter stable and allow the universe to hold its form.

Many people naturally assume, as we were often taught in early chemistry lessons, that at absolute zero everything comes to a standstill; that atoms no longer vibrate, that molecules stop rotating, and that all internal motion fades into silence. Yet a molecule brought to absolute zero retains a pattern of internal activity that never disappears, because the structure of matter does not permit complete rest. This minimal activity is known as zero-point motion, a term describing the irreducible motion that remains even in the lowest possible energy state.

In every molecule, the atoms within a chemical bond share electrons whose distribution is spread over space, and this distribution cannot collapse into a fixed arrangement without destroying the bond itself. The competing tendencies of attraction and repulsion within the bond cannot be reconciled into perfect stillness, and zero-point vibrational motion arises from this unresolved tension. The molecule also retains zero-point rotational motion because its orientation cannot be defined with absolute precision without violating the conditions that keep its momentum finite.

The electron cloud continues to fluctuate because electrons cannot fall into the nucleus or occupy a perfectly defined position without destabilizing the atom. Even the nucleus itself retains a faint internal motion, because the forces that bind its protons and neutrons together create tensions that must remain active. These forms of motion survive even when all thermal energy has been removed, revealing that zero point motion, vacuum fluctuations, and molecular persistence are not separate exceptions to stillness but nested expressions of the same architectural constraint, one that makes absolute rest structurally impossible rather than merely unlikely.

This impossibility is not limited to physics but reflects an architectural principle of the universe itself. Coherence requires distinctions, distinctions require tension, and tension requires the presence of incompatible tendencies that cannot be resolved into a single final configuration. A universe that could flatten into perfect stillness would be one in which coherence could not exist, complexity could not develop, and time would have no medium through which transformation could occur. The ULIC reveals that unresolved contradiction is not an occasional feature of existence but the foundation that makes existence possible.

This architectural condition expresses itself across all scales: the trembling of particles in vacuum, the orbital dynamics of planets, the flow of energy from warm to cold regions, the evolutionary paths of living systems, and the interactions within societies all rely on tensions that never fully resolve. These tensions do not drive systems toward equilibrium but toward coherence, and coherence is maintained only when the underlying contradictions remain active. In this sense, the universe does not drift toward rest, because rest would dissolve the conditions that allow form to persist.

This clarifies why subatomic motion neither ends nor weakens. Motion is not sustained by an external reservoir of energy but by the structural asymmetry that has existed since the universe’s first moment. Because this asymmetry cannot be eliminated, contradiction cannot vanish, and motion remains its necessary expression. The smallest fluctuations in quantum fields and the largest motions of galaxies, therefore, arise from the same principle, both expressing a universe whose architecture cannot settle into stillness without dissolving the conditions of existence.

From this perspective, the persistence of microscopic motion is no longer a puzzle but an essential feature of a universe shaped by unresolved tension. Motion endures because the universe is structured in a way that cannot sustain stillness without dissolving itself. The continuous expression of contradiction is the foundation upon which matter, coherence, and the emergence of complexity depend.

From Motion to Emergence

If persistent motion is not a secondary effect of the microscopic world but the structural expression of contradiction, then its significance extends far beyond the boundaries of physics. What first appeared as a narrow puzzle about particles in constant motion now reveals itself as the earliest and simplest manifestation of a principle that echoes through every layer of existence.

Wherever incompatible tendencies must coexist within a single structure, motion arises to express their tension. Wherever motion persists without dissolving the system, coherence becomes possible. And wherever coherence holds under active tension, new capacities for organization and transformation can appear.

The logic first revealed at the scale of particles becomes clearer when we observe how structure persists at higher scales. Molecules remain stable because the electrons that bind them cannot come to rest, since the opposing tendencies of attraction and repulsion within each bond cannot resolve into silence. Life endures because living systems transform internal tensions into flows of matter and energy that preserve their organization through time, turning contradiction into metabolism, adaptation, and growth. Societies hold together not because their members erase their differences but because these differences remain active within structures that channel movement, negotiation, and change without collapse. The same principle appears in larger human systems, where structures that allow differences, resources, and ideas to move through channels of exchange sustain coherence, while those that confine or suppress such movement accumulate tensions that eventually fracture the system.

This reveals that emergence is not an inexplicable leap but the natural outcome of architectures that neither fall into disorder nor flatten into equilibrium. A system that reaches perfect equilibrium loses the distinctions on which its structure depends, while a system that decays into chaos loses the coherence required for any higher pattern to endure. Between these extremes lies a narrow structural region in which tension remains active yet contained, where motion is continuous yet not destructive, and where contradiction becomes the engine of new structures and new capacities. In this region, atoms remain stable, organisms remain alive, and societies remain capable of transformation.

What this means for societies is both unsettling and clarifying. If motion is not an accidental feature of the universe but the structural expression of unresolved tension, then social systems cannot expect stability by eliminating difference, conflict, or internal contradiction. Just as matter collapses when motion is suppressed, societies begin to decay when they attempt to resolve tension by freezing it, silencing it, or forcing it into artificial equilibrium. The persistence of coherence at every scale depends not on the absence of contradiction, but on the ability of structures to hold it without collapse.

In this light, social vitality does not come from harmony understood as sameness, nor from order imposed through rigidity, but from institutions, markets, and cultures that allow energy, ideas, and differences to circulate continuously. Where movement is permitted and channeled, societies adapt, renew, and grow. Where movement is blocked, tension does not disappear; it accumulates, distorts, and eventually fractures the system. The lesson carried upward from physics is therefore not metaphorical but structural: just as the universe cannot settle into stillness without dissolving the conditions of existence, societies cannot arrest internal motion without undermining the very coherence they seek to preserve.

This closes the loop the column opened; motion is not a problem to be solved, but a condition to be designed for. At every scale, from particles to people, survival and emergence depend on structures designed to channel active tension rather than suppress it.

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See you soon,

Nimrod

Dr. Nimrod Israely is the CEO and Founder of Dream Valley and Biofeed companies and the Chairman and Co-founder of the IBMA conference. +972-54-2523425 (WhatsApp), or email nisraely@biofeed.co.il

P.S.

If you missed it, here is a link to last week's blog, “The Beginning of Everything: Why the Universe Began Changing“.

P.P.S.

Here are ways we can work together to help your agro sector and rural communities step forward and shift from poverty into ongoing prosperity:

* Nova Kibbutz and consultancy on rural communities' models.

* Local & National programs related to agro-produce export models - Dream Valley global vertical value and supply chain business model and concept connects (a) input suppliers with farmers in developing economies and (b) those farmers with consumers in premium markets.

* Crop protection: Biofeed, an eco-friendly zero-spray control technology and protocol.

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*This article addresses general phenomena. The mention of a country/continent is used for illustration purposes only.