j.caldwellPicture a kid with a hula hoop. She gives it a shake and suddenly the whole system balances itself — her hips, the hoop, the rhythm. The hoop doesn’t belong to the left side or the right side, it flows around both, an endless circle. Miss the rhythm and it all collapses in a tumble of plastic and laughter.
That playground scene isn’t trivial — it’s a little parable about how the universe keeps itself in motion.
The Language of Atoms
Atoms talk in rhythm. Oxygen “speaks” most easily to oxygen because their shells match, their energy levels line up, they’re playing the same song. But sometimes atoms with very different vocabularies — hydrogen and oxygen, for example — find a common beat. When they do, their electrons don’t just sit politely side-by-side. They merge into a loop.
What you get looks uncannily like ∞ — the mathematical symbol for forever. One atom in each lobe, electron density flowing between them, never settling on just one side. The bond doesn’t come from compromise, but from an electron forever correcting toward both centers, held in dynamic circulation.
That sideways ∞ isn’t just math, it’s geometry whispering: permanence in nature is a dance, not a static arrangement.
When Light Isn’t Light
Now bring in photons. We’ve been taught they’re particles, little bullets of light. But really, photons are ripples — disturbances in the electromagnetic field.
When an atom “absorbs” one, the ripple throws its electrons into new spins. The atom tries on a new rhythm, like the hula hoop dancer adjusting her pace. If it can sustain the motion, it settles into a higher shell. If not, it releases the energy back into the field as another ripple.
So atoms aren’t lobbing marbles of light. They’re sharing vibrations, syncing frequencies, passing motion back and forth until something sticks.
The Rule of Three
Here’s where myth catches up with physics. The Greeks pictured the three Fates: one spins the thread, one measures, one cuts. Generate, measure, bound.
The structure holds. One element is simple. Two elements stabilize — the infinity bond, the hula hoop rhythm. Add a third, and you cross into emergence.
Two celestial bodies orbit predictably; add a third and their paths tangle into chaos that never quite repeats. Two atoms form stable bonds; add a third and you get molecules with geometry — water, carbon dioxide, ammonia. Angles, flex, chemistry. With three, the system braids into complexity instead of collapsing into stasis.
The Celtic Connection
This is why Celtic knots feel alive. Two loops give you ∞, but three or more weave into braids that never resolve. The knotwork is a visual echo of three-body dynamics — loops flowing through each other, no single path dominant, complexity born from interlacing.
The artists didn’t know about orbitals, but they saw the principle: life and art emerge not from smooth repetition but from knots that refuse to untangle.
From Atoms to Everything
The pattern scales:
- One loop converges.
- Two loops hold tension, stability through circulation.
- Three loops make emergence.
You see it in chemistry, in cells, in neurons, in human groups. You see it in thought: one idea is static, two create productive tension, but three ideas spark insight that belongs to none of them alone.
The child with her hula hoop has it right: stability isn’t stillness, it’s rhythm. And true creativity comes when you can keep three rhythms spinning in dynamic tension without letting any of them fall.
Maybe that’s why three keeps haunting our myths and religions. We’ve always known — one gives us structure, two gives us eternity, but three? Three gives us life.