- Life is a Braid in Spacetime ➶
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However, the most interesting property of your spacetime tube isn’t its bulk shape, but its internal structure, which is remarkably complex. Whereas the particles that constitute the Moon are stuck together in a rather static arrangement, many of your particles are in constant motion relative to one another. Consider, for example, the particles that make up your red blood cells. As your blood circulates through your body to deliver the oxygen you need, each red blood cell traces out its own unique tube shape through spacetime, corresponding to a complex itinerary though your arteries, capillaries, and veins with regular returns to your heart and lungs. These spacetime tubes of different red blood cells are intertwined to form a braid pattern as seen in the figure “Complexity and Life” which is more elaborate than anything you’ll ever see in a hair salon: Whereas a classic braid consists of three strands with perhaps thirty thousand hairs each, intertwined in a simple repeating pattern, this spacetime braid consists of trillions of strands (one for each red blood cell), each composed of trillions of hair-like elementary-particle trajectories, intertwined in a complex pattern that never repeats. In other words, if you imagine spending a year giving a friend a truly crazy hairdo, braiding the hair by separately intertwining all their individual hairs, the pattern you’d get would still be very simple in comparison.
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