Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Crappy theories.. brush'em aside!

(Let me forget my philosophy for a while!!)
I read one of the NYTimes articles of 1982 regarding the first of the new unified theories, the Weinberg-Salam theory, which views electromagnetism and the weak interaction as aspects of a single ''electroweak'' interaction. The electroweak interaction would have governed among particles when the universe was at the furious temperatures that existed only during the first hundred-billionth of a second after the big bang! Wow! What an imagination!! The first hundred-billionth of a second after the big bang! Hahaha.. I cant control my laughter. Excuse me please!

(For your information, I wrote to Prof. Steven Weinberg at Texas-that major physics Prof, who wrote the theory that I stated above. Pretty cool dude...I never expected him to reply, but he actually did!)
Disclaimer: Anyway, no offence meant to the Prof or the theory.

All theories begin with an explanation that looks somewhat similar to this:" When the universe was but one billion years old, we watch the galaxies being born in a blaze of blue-white infant stars."(Hahaha.. I am really amazed at the capability of the human mind to imagine such a thing. Hats off!!)
OR
"The universe in these first moments was in a state that physicists call a 'false vacuum' - a state in which it contained no particles but was permeated by energy - out of which the particles precipitated like raindrops congealing from a cloud"(hahaha). For Newton, the vacuum was but nothingness, an empty stage upon which the cosmic drama unfolds.
Who believes in the big bang? It is just an assumption so that based on this, these 'jokers' move ahead and "try" to explain scientifically about the evolution of the universe; haha..

(Ok, serious now.. no more laughing)

Anyway, be it the electroweak interaction or whatever, it all starts from one point- the beginning or big-bang or vacuum or blue infant stars or quantum foam or mass or anything similar. But how do you explain the 'existence' of this mass? (Dont ask me what I mean by existence.. I already told you in the beginning- Let me forget my philosophy for a while!!)
How could this hot mass or whatever have emerged? Does physics have an answer? Or even, talking about the minute sub-atomic particles that constitute matter, how minute are they? How minute can they get? (I know, they keep getting smaller and smaller for no reason!!) Do these exist?

You call them leptons, hadrons, quarks or whatever. Heisenberg's uncertainity principle proved that you can't really predict where you can spot the electron if at all such a thing exists. He himself was unsure! So, how do you explain all this- the origin, the existence, the particles within all these matter? Is it true that the key to understanding the fundamentals of matter and energy lies in understanding the infancy of the universe? Well, in that case, we would never understand it. As Einstein said: "God doesn't play dice"!

Dont give me a crappy reply that you have seen an electron or a quark.. Show me if you have seen one. I can point you to something that makes more sense than that!

Take the minutest particle that science has ever tried to explain. The last time I read about it, it was called the 'quark'. Well, it has been quite sometime since I read about it, so you never know, they might have found something smaller than that and given it a name!! You can go on dividing it till you reach a limit or you can go on expanding something or tracing back something to its ancestor till you reach a point from where you can't go further.

I am not saying that such theories shouldn't be believed. They all can be believed. The big-bang, the electroweak interaction, the theory of parallel universes (Hmm.. its another interesting theory), the sub-atomic world, the quantum physics, the theory of evolution and whatever your mind can imagine. I might create another theory today and will be able to convince more than 90% of the people, I am sure. Believe them- all of these theories, but also know that they are not self-sufficient. Of course, they are all true upto a certain point- till the point where YOUR MIND CAN REACH. Science stops there. Physics stops. The world stops. It looks for a help- an apparent external help at this point.
And what is that, which explains everything? What is that knowing which you feel comfortable that you have found a satisfactory explanation? What is that in which "alone" you can rest? What is that reaching which, you cannot(well.. "need not") go further? Thats the INFINITE! And can you really know it? Well, yeah, but not in the sense of 'knowing'!

We all know that theories don't help and discussions don't help. And.. and... the most powerful electronic/sub-atomic microscopes dont help;-)
Well, you know what I mean..

Saturday, November 11, 2006

The complete rain-y experience

I am sure a lot of people love rain and most of them also love to get wet in the rain! And of course, needless to say, I too belong to this category.
But just imagine the fate of the two-wheeler riders in rain. If any of you have had this experience, I am sure most of you would not say that it was one of the wonderful experiences. But it is, indeed, a wonderful experience.

It is very tough especially if you ride in the kind of heavy rain that I rode my two-wheeler in, quite a long time ago. I used to get jealous of the guys driving those cars and I used to feel that they are so comfortable driving in the rain, while I used to try hard to manage avoiding the water from getting on my face. Although I had the helmet, it was still extremely tough to manage to keep my eyes open! It is one of those biggest challenges, especially if you are riding in the traffic-crazy and the most wonderful city of Bangalore! When I said 'most wonderful', that was by no means a sarcastic remark or an exaggeration:-)

Anyway,that was just one experiment that I tried very intentionally- I WANTED to ride in the rain and I rode ~13 kms and I took 1/2 an hour more than what I normally used to take to reach home. Needless to say, everyone at home was damn shocked that I actually rode in the rain! But thats OK, I enjoyed it. (Dont ask me the after-effects of getting drenched for so long! The cold and fever and...)
Then I never got a chance to ride/drive in the rain till recently, when I drove. Yes, I was in the car this time. I recollected that day when I rode my bike and felt jealous of those car drivers. I was feeling that driving was easier as compared to riding. But it was equally difficult, but the advantage is that you get to enjoy the rain and also not get wet. But from the driving point of view, it is not really as easy as I had thought it to be.

I was trying to compare the two experiences and I thought I enjoyed the car experience better. I never drive slow, but this time I was driving intentionally very slow so that I get to stay out there for long! Well, I thought that the experience in rain wasnt complete till I drove in the rain recently- in the heavy rain. Yup, a bit crazy..