Rigil Kentaurus and Pluto's Re-Classification

Science is a field of constant change. Here, one cannot afford to get used to the current state of affairs, because the current state of affairs changes like the weather.

This realization hits hard when one thinks of Pluto's "re-classification". In 2006, the IAU - International Astronomical Union - laid down an official definition for planets:

1. It orbits a star (as opposed to a planet, in which case you're thinking about a satellite)
2. It's large enough for its gravity to pull it into a round shape (so it looks more like Earth and less like a potato, in which case it's an asteroid)
3. Does not share its orbit with anyone else (so it's the only object in its orbit and surrounding areas. If it isn't, it's probably leftover debris from the formation of the solar system.)

By this definition, Earth is a planet. But Pluto is not. Pluto does not have its path cleared of Uranus and Neptune, so it's classified as a dwarf planet.

As I understand it, there are still people out there who aren't over this revelation. It took me a while to get over my devastation, too (I was eight years old when I found out). At first, I handed myself over to the authority, thinking, "That's what the adults say, so it must be true." But now, I have a better explanation for my acceptance.

This is science. At the basic level, we try our best to describe the world around us. And for a while, we didn't even know how to define a planet. And now we do, and we find a conflict with what we'd always done and what we should have been doing. So we changed ourselves accordingly.

So what does Rigil Kentaurus have to do with this?

Well, the closest star to the Sun is Proxima Centauri, 4.23 light years away. A binary star system lies just ahead, what we've been calling Alpha Centauri. Only now, its name has been officially changed to Rigil Kentaurus by the IAU.

The IAU has its own rules for star nomenclature, which I'd like to argue be taught in high school with organic compound nomenclature, if not in place of it. The rules are complicated, but I don't doubt fun to learn about.

In the meantime, I will welcome the name Rigil Kentaurus with open arms and hope the name change won't be as controversial as Pluto's "demotion". The two events have a lot in common, I think.

On Curiosity, the Sequel

The incidents that happened to me eight years ago made me promise myself that I would never discourage anyone who approaches me with questions - be it my cousins or my juniors. I'm always happy to help - that is, if one is willing to accept my help.

One bus ride home from school, I sat with some fourth graders and we were discussing vegetarianism, when one of them asked, "Who defined vegetarianism and non-vegetarianism? Was it God?" How easily children accept dogma.

Well, from there to the rest of the long bus ride, we were discussing some pretty heavy stuff...for a fourth grader, at least. But I'm glad we were able to discuss frankly with no inhibitions something that was supposed to be taken for granted. And I could tell I had given those kids something to think about. And the rest of the way home, I marveled at the world we've been able to create around us. 

The next day, as I had hoped, the girl, the fourth grader, had more questions, which I was, again, happy to answer. And the day after that, I encouraged her to keep questioning and finding answers. I told her to hunt me down if she had to. But I have a feeling she'll find out what she has to, with or without my help.

It's one step towards fulfilling the promise I've made to myself. 

As the tagline for Discovery Science says, "Question Everything."

The Orionids: Thoughts

This event had been a few months in the making. It started with a Facebook post and ended spectacularly.

Also, I'm considering crossing this off my bucket list. Not sure.

Along with a spectacular display, I also had the opportunity to understand and question two main ideas. I'll get to that later.

So. The Orionids. Appropriate for the first meteor shower of my life, because Orion is the first constellation I learned to identify. And also because I had to skip school to view it. So we know what I'd choose, given the choice between attending school and witnessing an astronomical event for the first time in my life. Is it even a choice? And a fair one at that?

But I digress.

Leading up to the days before the meteor shower, I told my friends what I'd be doing pre-dawn at the peak of the meteor shower. The problem - "What is a meteor?" Because the common term for a meteor is shooting star, and that upsets me. Because it's not a star, precisely. If it were, we'd be burned to a crisp "over and over and over again" (Imagine Dragons reference).

I'm not suggesting we stop using the term. That's not my business. But I will express my frustration at having to explain what a meteor is using that phrase to someone who I expected better from.

It might just be me, but I question how anyone cannot possibly know what a meteor is. But heck. C'est la vie. But do know that I will use scientific terminology as best and much as I can if my interlocutor is around my age or older. So I've addressed the first of my ideas.

The second idea I understood more fully was that of why it's so easy to believe a supernatural being is out there, looking out for us. It's a beautiful lie, but that's just it. It's a lie.

The night of the meteor shower, I went to the terrace to get adjusted to the dark ahead of my family. The night sky I beheld was gorgeous. In fact, it was so gorgeous it was scary. I felt so small and vulnerable, like "one cosmic swipe and I'm dead." It wasn't the most scared or awed I've ever felt, but it definitely gave me a feel for why one might like to hold on to the idea of a benevolent force that keeps them alive. I've felt the need to express my gratitude, too. And it's sad that my existence probably doesn't - no, it definitely doesn't - count for anything in the lifetime of the Universe. But that doesn't hinder me. I exist, and the Universe has to deal with it. (You see? I'm talking about the universe as a living entity.)

Well, in conclusion, the Orionids themselves were a sight to behold. And the experience of waiting for it and finally watching it has me questioning and rethinking a lot of stuff.

Vulnerability, the Sequel

Turns out a cold can hamper the motivation to write an article. Heads up to aspiring bloggers.

But a sequel of more morbid thoughts was promised, and so it will be delivered. Ready or not, let's do this.

So, congratulations! You've survived asteroids, supernovae, and the death of our star. Let's see what's in store now.

5. The galaxy collission between the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies. While this won't happen for another five billion years, its consequences for Earth will be disastrous. She will be flung out of the new galaxy and will be lucky if another star pulls her into orbit atound itself. Or else...

6. Say that happens. But we'll still be under threat from supernovas and star deaths. But we've covered that, so let's get hypothetical for a bit. Say a black hole gets in the vicinity of Earth. Yeah, we'll be torn to bits and witness every second of it. Frenemies, those suckers are.

7. Venturing near a black hole is highly improbable. But say we, by some stroke of luck, get to be alive for the end of the Universe, the Big Chill. All the stars and black holes have disappeared. Literally nothing remains. But now, 10^35 years later, matter loses all of its meaning. Protons themselves start to decay. The human race, the only ones alive, start to disintegrate.

8. All of this won't even matter if a quantum fluctuation starts overwriting the univserse. Think of it as a Big Bang within a Big Bang. And the laws inside this new universe don't allow anything outside it to exist. So, yeah. Bye-bye, humans.

Thinking about this stuff puts one thing in perspective. We talk of "forever" and "immortality". But how long will that even last? Can we even conceptualize these words, or does the universe strip them of its meaning? How much do we really know, or have we really seen?

Vulnerability.

Basically this post highlights the ways in which we could die. Happy thoughts. If you're reading this in the morning, Hi! Enjoy your day.

Let's jot down the ways you and I and everything can be destroyed. Let's tear apart this house of cards. And not worry about the mess we make. Again, happy thoughts.

This list starts from stuff that we find easy to imagine, to stuff that will take an infinite time to happen. But these have a very real chance of happening nonetheless. Some stuff I cooked up from my morbid imagination. Good luck figuring out which is which.

So, here goes: 

1. An asteroid larger than 1.6 km across strikes Earth. This could create a mass extinction similar to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. Unless…we stop it first.   
2. A massive solar flare tarnishes all our satellite technology, and sends the digital age back to square one. Or negative infinity…    
3. The sun becomes a red giant and engulfs the Earth. In 5 billion years. The Earth will be charred, and so will humans, unless we become spacefarers.    
4. A supernova ravages Earth from just a few dozen light years. We won’t even know what hit us. Betelgeuse is pretty close…

Now, the next few will destroy humanity assuming we’ve braved the aforementioned disasters. And no amount of hope and prayer will save us. But they will have to wait. I think this enough to ponder, though we haven’t even gotten to the good stuff yet.

Perfection is Overrated.

If you haven't picked up on it already, I have a bit of an obsession with the origin of the universe. So here's another aspect of it.

In his documentary Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking, professor Hawking says three powerful words: Perfection doesn't exist. (What did you think it was?) It's easy enough to see that in real life, but a better way to say it on our level is that perfection is highly subjective. And in my case, it is also overrated. Let me explain.

We think our beautiful universe is perfect (kudos to you if you don't). But the reality is far from it. Heck, the things we think are so beautiful and awesome - the Pillars of Creation, the Whirlpool Galaxy, the Horsehead Nebula, to name a few - are results of a deep imperfection in the making of our universe. Which brings us back to the mother of all beginnings.

With the moment of creation came a huge (and I mean huge) burst of energy; energy that would later be converted to matter (oops.  Spoiler alert.). But this energy was uniformly distributed. It would take 10^-35 seconds to get closer to the composition of the present-day universe.

After that moment, the Universe started expanding  faster than the speed of light (no, it does not violate any laws of physics). This expansion rendered the energy distribution of the universe uneven: dense in some places, not so much in others. The denser places became the matter we see today.

Imagine if this hadn't happened, if the aforementioned "inflation" hadn't messed with the energy distribution. If the universe had remained...perfect. In equilibrium, and gravity would never be allowed to take over. Here are three more powerful and scarier words to describe what would happen:  We wouldn't exist.

 Basically, this entire post can be summed up in one sentence: if the universe was perfect, we wouldn't exist. So why do we go nuts for some weird form of perfection which, in the end, only makes sense to us? Why do that word, its usage, its synonyms and antonyms even exist in our languages and our minds?

 This is deep. This is rhetorical, and I fail to present an answer. All I know for certain is that perfection is overrated.

The End of Knowledge

What are some of the biggest questions out there?

Some that come to mind right off the bat are -
How did it all begin?
Can we see it all begin?
Are we alone? Are there life forms somewhere else?
Is our universe unique?
What's for dinner tonight, Mom?

(Okay, maybe not that last one. But I had you for a moment there, didn't I? What is for dinner tonight, anyway? Mom!)

Anyway!

Some questions we don't know the answer to today. But we're fairly certain we will have them in the near or distant future. The real question is: what happens then?

There'll be a day when we know the cure to cancer. There will be a day we can control pollution effectively. And there will be a day when we know what the M Theory, the Theory of Everything, is. But what will remain then? Will we have finally reached the point where there's nothing left to explore?

I feel like the answer is no. In an earlier post, I had said that one scientific breakthrough may answer some questions, but pave the way for ten times as many questions that now need to be answered.  As of now, I can't really say (neither can anyone else, I suppose) what those questions will be. But I do have two hypotheses for whether we will reach the end of knowledge.

The first hypothesis is that we'll be extinct before we get there. The human race is clever; maybe clever enough to outlast a global catastrophe. But there are only so many things we can escape. We can't escape the death of our star, or any star. We can't escape quasars or gamma ray bursts.  We certainly can't escape the upcoming galaxy collision between the Milky Way and Andromeda. Humans are just too small to control these events. Even if we do survive the next 5 billion years, we will meet these catastrophes. Every species has its end.

 My second hypothesis is that any discoveries we will make, like the Theory of Everything, will be appropriate only for a certain time (a concept similar to, if not the same as, model dependent realism). Which means a new theory will have to be formulated. So we may see some things through to the end, but some things we may just die before seeing.

The end result is: we'll die, or keep finding things to explore. There is no end to knowledge, nor are humans a species suited to "sitting tight, holing up, waiting for answers".

Poetry in Motion...Sort Of

It is a fact well accepted by me that my prose is better than my poetry. But once in a blue moon, I come up with something that has to be addressed poetically. So here goes nothing:

It was an explosion.
Nay, it was an expansion.
It was the birth,
In which was also written death.

It was the start of a story still in writing.
A story which could just as easily not have existed.
A species would later on term this "contingency",
A species, a member of which writes this today.

To witness it would have been agony.
To witness it would be a feat.
To witness it one would have to transcend reality.
To witness it is to witness everything.

Everything was brought into existence by it.
Everything which could easily not exist today.
Everything then is everything now.
And everything everywhere is a function of how.

Every sunrise, every sunset.
Every star to ever adorn the night sky.
Every galaxy to be a home to some wonder in this expanse.
Every species to ever marvel at the beauty around her.

It is a glass bowl waiting to shatter.
It is a glass bowl which could have shattered.
It is a glass bowl which will shatter.
It is a cosmic house of cards; one false step collapses it all.

All was written in it.
All was born with it.
All will die with it.
All is fundamentally bound to it.

Well, I can see why I don't wax poetic often.

The Origin of Everything, Part Two

You think a nuclear war is violent? Well, being witness to the Big Bang would give you nightmares for the rest of your life. (Of course, one could make the case that nuclear war is more destructive than the Big Bang, and vice versa for the latter. But let's just talk about the energy released in the moment of creation.)

 The Creation of Matter

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say you know Einstein's equation, E=mc². It's very elegant. It describes a lot - nuclear fusion in the sun, nuclear fission in our nuclear power plants, the power of our hydrogen, atom, and nuclear bombs, and also...how matter was created in the early universe.

E=mc² explains all of these in facets. You can use various aspects of it to describe phenomena, from why we can't go faster than the speed of light, to what happened in the early universe. And to explain that, I'm going to have to use the facet of E=mc² that says that all matter is essentially a condensed form of energy. It's an abstract concept, so I request you to bear with me.

There are some nights where your brain feels like it is on hyper drive - won't let you have a moment's rest. There's just so much flurry up there that you feel like you have to get up and make sense of it all before you get a good night's sleep. I don't know the technical term for it. But you have thoughts and thoughts and thoughts...an onlooker will see you get restless, always changing positions. It's not very pleasant.

In some sense, that was what was happening in the early universe. There was an extreme amount of energy all over the place. The universe could not calm down. And because of this, particles could not be made. Rest could not be had. If a particle was made, it would be destroyed. It would have nothing to coalesce with.

Of course, the situation changed. Maybe the universe had milk and cookies, because it calmed down. It started cooling. And as it cooled, it allowed the formation of particles.

 Think about that for a second. This is the beginning of the universe. You know the law of conservation of matter - "Matter can neither be created nor be destroyed, it can only change from one form to another"? Do you know what it implies? The atoms in you, in me, in that bookshelf to my right, and the most distant star are all nearly 13,820,000,000 years old. They just have a long history of being in lots of chemical reactions.

"What can come out of a man looking up at the night sky?" They said. 

Constants

When I was in elementary school and first learned of the Big Bang, I hypothesized a tiny little solar system and tiny stars inside something like a sun. And I imagined the Big Bang like the hatching of an egg. Like that fiery ball just spit everything out and that’s the way it’s been since. I was wrong in some respects, and right in some.

Because, essentially, the “cosmic egg” did contain the ingredients for everything. Matter was only one of the things that the Big Bang spit out. It also spit out the four fundamental forces, dark matter, dark energy – you name it. And what that means is that it also defined the physics, chemistry, math, and biology that we study today.

My physics textbook for this year has this question (which I’m paraphrasing) –

“Physicist P.A.M. Dirac was playing around with some physical constants (like the speed of light and the universal gravitational constant) when he arrived at a quantity whose unit was time. And this quantity was roughly equal to the age of the universe. What does this tell you about the constancy of these quantities?”

The answer seems to jump out – that these constants have remained constant for 13.82 billion years. They were literally born with the Big Bang.

This post and the last don’t really do justice to the story of creation. Maybe there’ll be posts sprinkled throughout this blog in the future regarding this subject. Till then, ponder over this: We’re a more integral part of this universe than we ever imagined. 

The Origin of Everything, Part One

The night sky directly above our heads holds many secrets (of course, they wouldn't have to stay secret if it weren't for light pollution). It was looking up that jump started our creative thinking.  And, indeed, The question that incites the greatest curiosity is -  how did it all begin?

Like the flat Earth hypothesis, and the geocentric model of our solar system, it was at first thought that the Milky Way was the only galaxy in the universe and that the universe was static. It has no beginning and will have no end.

Then in the 1920s, Edwin Hubble shook this belief by -  you guessed it - looking up. So groundbreaking was his discovery that we named a space telescope after him. And, heck, even the space telescope is as famous as he is. See, what Hubble saw was that there were some flecks of light that one could simply not call 'stars'. What Hubble realized was that these flecks were entire galaxies,  just like the Milky Way.

I'd like to pause for a moment here, to explain the chain that continues even today.

 We've gone from being only one planet to realizing there are seven (formerly eight) others, and further, that there are many other planets.  We've gone from a flat Earth belief to a round Earth theory.  We've made the leap from a geocentric model of the universe to a heliocentric model of the universe, and now Hubble was on the verge of adding one more tier to the metaphorical cake.

Hubble not only told us that we are in one galaxy among many, but also that these galaxies are moving away from or toward us. This was a major discovery, because it meant that the belief that the universe was static now had to be scrapped. Something had to be hypothesized to explain the movement of these galaxies. And so the Big Bang hypothesis was, well...hypothesized.

Like many theories, The Big Bang theory was not easily accepted.  In fact, the name itself was an attempt to ridicule it, given by Fred Hoyle. And today it's the most accepted  theory for the origin of the universe.

Think about it this way: if galaxies are flying farther apart, something is pushing them apart (seeing as galaxies can't move on their own). That means that space itself is expanding. Further, it means that space was once much smaller than this.  We call this starting point a "singularity".

So, the Big Bang theory states that the universe was, essentially, born out of a singularity that started expansion 13.82 billion years ago,  and it still hasn't stopped. What came out of it and how it affects us today will be a topic for the next article.

Past, Future and Disorder

We're given a glass of water and addressed to put a few ink-drops in the glass. What is going to be the most general observations?

The question may appear tawdry. However, with little speculation one must come up with the following data.
'The ink slowly starts blending in the water without any eviction untill it thoroughly mixes'. This certainly is assertion. But the ink had an ordered state at the beginning when it was just put onto the water surface. And since any natural process always tends to move from a state of higher potential to that of a lower potential, the randomness of the ink must be stable that it being in a well defined arrangement!

We know that a natural process is irreversible. Heat flows from a hot body to a cold body, water falls naturally. These processes are not reversible in nature and do not turn around unless some external work is done. Perhaps this is the second law of thermodynamics. 'The change in entropy of an isolated system can never be negative'.

Our ink dot has already evolved by this time into greater randomness, perhaps so much of randomness that it is hard to spot it. But since it has moved naturally from an ordered state to a state of complete disorder, it must really admire disorder then, than order. Mayhap this is the direction of any natural process. Order → Disorder. And now it can be pointed out that our system, the glass and the ink-dot, had a more ordered state in the beginning than in the end. One might easily say that a state of order must exist before disorder, perhaps past and future. Thus randomness has now become a way to distinguish the past and the future!

According to the Big Bang theory, the Universe was initially very hot with energy distributed uniformly. For a system in which gravity is important, such as the universe, this is a low-entropy state. As the Universe grows, its temperature drops, which leaves less energy available to perform work in the future than was available in the past. Additionally perturbations in the energy density grow eventually forming galaxies and stars. Thus the Universe itself has a well-defined thermodynamic arrow of time.

We're all moving from state of order to complete disorder and randomness. And perhaps this is the way of nature, this is the arrow, the direction of time.

The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything Else

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy says it’s 42.  It’s a pretty good answer, because it makes you think as much as the question itself (though not as productively).

But the question still stands – what is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything else?

Many find this a philosophical question.  But remember that science stems from philosophy, so maybe it’s worth it to explore this question on a science blog.

Part One: The Exploration

The meaning of life – wow, I have a knack for picking the hard topics.  Let’s see where this takes me.

Maybe the best place to start would be my beliefs - because I can’t really speak for anyone else.  I regard myself as an existentialist – which means I believe that the meaning of life is the meaning I decide to put into it.

This, I think, fits in quite well with a concept of science – model dependent realism.  Basically it states that you should use the model that best fits your current situation.  Let me cite an example here, the same example Stephen Hawking uses in his book, The Grand Design.

Imagine a goldfish in a spherical tank.  Its perception of the world is bent; it sees curves where we see lines.  But we can’t call a goldfish’s perceptions “flawed” – because to the goldfish, our perception is flawed.  Model dependent realism makes us face the fact that there is no one objective reality, the same way there is no one meaning to life, other than the one you put into it.  (This was the conversation that stemmed the creation of this blog.)

Now we’re getting somewhere.  Maybe there is no objective meaning to life, which is kind of a scary concept.  It put me in a state of dilemma for a good few weeks, and I still haven’t come to terms with it.

If there is no objective meaning to life, we are all terribly free with nothing to stop us.  People use this in many different ways.

Some people put objective meaning into life on purpose – using “divination” techniques.  Others take it to mean they can’t be held accountable for their actions and harm or kill other human beings.

Part Two: So, then, what happens at and after death?

I don’t believe in an afterlife – at least not the kind that says you get to be born again with your memory wiped and all that goes with it.  I do believe that you will leave a mark on this universe as you cease to exist and as it ceases to be your home.  I believe that one realizes the truth in the final moments of life, that that truth cannot be attained otherwise, and no matter if you’re buried or cremated (or if anything else is done with your corpse), nature will exact from you what you have taken from it.

This mindset carries me through.  If I am to leave the universe a different place than it was when I didn’t exist, I might as well make a good impact.  I only have a specific number of decades left.  I want to do what makes me happy and what leaves a good mark on the universe.

Part Three - The Conclusion

I don’t know what Douglas Adams was thinking when he said that the meaning of life was 42. But, in a weird sense, it feels like 42 had no real value of its own – it’s just a bunch of lines we have given meaning to, a concept discussed in the previous post.  The same way we give any meaning we want to 42, we give any meaning we want to life, the universe, and everything else.

Enjoy your brief moment in the sun.  

Mathematical Vomit (I Know. How Charming.)

This is a rant. It will be long. You have been warned.

Think of a number.  Big, small – it doesn’t matter.  Just visualize it.  Its face value, the way it aesthetically looks.  What meaning, if any, it holds for you.

Now think of all the stuff you can do with it.  At the basic level, you can add it to another number, subtract it from another number, have a number subtracted from it, multiply it by a number, divide it by a number, and vice versa.  All of this is basic.

Think of what it can represent.  It can represent the world – the same way it can be multiplied by the world.  Three words.  Three letters.  Just any number you can think of, followed by what it describes.  Such words, you may know, are adjectives.  And this is just the beginning.

Now think of the more abstract things you can do with your number.  If it is the length of a side of a right angled triangle, you can find the values of trigonometric ratios (put simply, if you take two of the three sides, in how many ways can you divide them by each other).  Anything more specific just gets harder to explain, but for now we’ve effectively breached the world which we want to fully unlock: a process which continues to this day, so not to worry if we can’t do it all today.

The thing is, what we were doing till now was math – a word and its representation feared by many, and, sadly, the butt of many jokes.  It’s Greek and Latin to some who don’t realize (or don’t want to realize) how powerful this is.

Do you realize that the colors of the clothes you’re wearing right now are mathematically defined?  Or that the device you’re using right now to read this blog is run on just two numbers – zero and one?  Do you realize your every intake of breath can be reduced to simple numbers, linked by mathematical operations?  What’s more is that every mathematical sentence can be reduced to four simple operations – add, subtract, multiply, and divide.  Operations learned in elementary school.  The phrase, “With great power comes great responsibility” comes to mind, because children are handed tools of great power, because math in itself is powerful.

Math is the power of a nuclear bomb.  It is the energy of the sun, the stars.  It is written in the cataclysmic event that is our mother, the Big Bang.  It is the power of a gamma ray burst set to ravage Earth.  All of which can be reduced to a few numbers and add, subtract, multiply, and divide.

But the way it’s taught – drilled into us from an early age, so much so that inevitably we loathe it as a reflex – is terrifying.  I remember thinking in math class till last year – I will be pressured into completing text book exercises for the rest of my life, when math could be so much more than this.

And it can be – heck, it is – so much more than what is taught till 10^th grade.  Why does it take 11^th grade to realize the beauty of math?

I had realized that kind of math I liked early on – the kind of math that can be translated into the kind of world I see around me.  I like the math that describes the curve of a leaf.  The math that shows the path of volleyball takes when it is served, to the moment it hits the ground.  Math that can be translated.  And math below 11th grade doesn’t really include that.  So I have pinpointed my problem.  As Richard Feynman one said, “At the base of all biology is chemistry, and at the base of all chemistry is physics.” And math is the language of physics, and languages can be translated.

Newton gave us the basic ideas of calculus.  And make no mistake – calculus is, at first glance, a bit terrifying.  But it is a life saver.  Once you start deriving equations with it, you realize that.  And you wonder how one man could come up with it at all.

But Sir Isaac Newton was great in that he took his cues from nature.  He looked at the world around him, and translated it to math.  And the reverse is just as possible.

I started this post by asking you to think of a number.  You might realize by now that, in retrospect, that number holds the key – is the key – to this whole world.  Once the weight of that starts to sink in, you never see the world in quite the same way again.

The Meaning of Life

So it had been a stressful day and in the classroom, all the discussions were lingering around suicidal attempts made by students when suddenly one of my friend jested "I would never do that. Who would like starting over from nurseries back!" It was funny a dido for then. But it gave me matter to ponder over. Do we really have a next chance? Can we rise back from dust just to set the wrongs or rights done by us in our pasts?

We've been told throughout our childhood about afterlife. But how much sense does it make when subjected to rational thought. Isn't it more of an entailment deduced from pointless opinions? There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has the responsibility to give to your life, meaning and point. The truly adult view, by contrast is that our life is as meaningful and wonderful as we chose to make it. By all means let's be open minded, but not so open minded that our brains drop out. Those ridiculously fatal arguements seems to be depriving all our Biology of its worth. Some complicated organism who've been thinking that they're alive for a reason is what all our Bioligy is subjected to and then we cross it for our intuitions! Shifting the burdens from one life to another will not make any difference ever. We must not kid ourselves that we're going to live again after we're dead, we're not. Realizing we're not contagious to dust is fine. It gives one an opportunity to live this life to its full potential. Won't it be sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring out of his bed eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be part of it. 

On Curiosity

I remember being an eight year old kid marveling at the world around me. Heck, some part of me still is that kid. That's why I want to be an astrophysicist.

But something happened down the road. I met a bunch of people who put down my questions; dismissed them as being not important. Because apparently one can't see an umbra and a penumbra in one's own shadow at a restaurant, and one sure as heck can't ask about it in class.

Yeah, I hold a grudge from eight years ago, but for good reason.

If it weren't for that experience, I wouldn't hesitate today to ask questions in class. There was a time this hesitation would have crippled me academically. And I'm only just starting to recover what has been lost.

But it makes me wonder - what is going on? How many curiosities are killed this way? Will those even be recoverable?

Losing one's curiosity is an incredibly dangerous thing. The reason is simple and elegant, like a lot of equations in physics today. So let me do this mathematically.

We are given that humans are very clever - they have built empires, cities, and are leaving a mark of their own. Why? It is that one game changer, Curiosity.

So, we have
Humans + Curiosity = Desire to do things better. ...... - (1)
Subtracting "Curiosity" from both sides,
(Humans + Curiosity) - Curiosity = (Desire to do things better) - Curiosity
Humans = Desire to do things better - Curiosity
Now, "Desire to do things better" is made up of two interlinked ideas - Curiosity and Innovation. And one cannot exist without the other. Remove Curiosity, and Innovation crumbles. And without either of them, you have a paradox.
Humans = No desire to make things better...? Have you ever heard of such a thing?

As said in an earlier post, curiosity is our defining characteristic. One does not simply take it away. And children are naturally curious. Killing that desire to explore...in my opinion, that is a huge evil.

"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing." - Albert Einstein.

Kardashev Scale and Our Imminent Doom II

Aliens are already on a course to visiting humanity. What, in all likelihood, are they going to discover? Will it really be humanity in all its senses? Or will it be a specie so much dependent on science, still so much in-cognizant of it? Won't they laugh on a specie so advanced to have got to those Mass-Energy equations, yet so asleep to have nuclear weapons aimed at themselves!

Our very civilization is going through a very mordacious, or let us say, chancy transition. We're making and alteration from a level-0 to level-1 civilization. We've already come through this scaling in a recent post. It is often conceived as a stage where most of civilizations destroy themselves through nuclear war. Perhaps, this might be the reason why we're still out of glimpses of aliens. Our civilization is like a child in its primary years of maturity. Nuclear weapons are like toys in her hands only way too dangerous. Yet all nations are in a race of increasing their stock of nuclear armory! Any world war can subvert us back at the start of civilization.

However sooner or later, there is yet another problem our civilization is going to face. It is that of increasing population. The human population is increasing at an ever faster rate. A rate high enough for the resources to contend with. In fact, there might soon come a time when when the exhausting resources will collide with the flourishing human population. At this point of time we'll have to realize the importance of interstellar travel. The Earth is off course our home, it is the cradle for humanity, however we're not supposed to stay in the cradle forever. As said "We're pioneers not caretakers". We'll be doomed by a world wide catastrophe, when the rising demands will crush everything. We have to be prepared before this event even occurs. And the only way we can substantiate our situation is through interstellar travel. We have to explore potentially habitable worlds to save humanity from the collapse. We must leave our planet as explorers and not in fragments as mere survivors of a likely catastrophe. 

The Scope of Science

This is something I've wanted to talk about for a long time.

I must confess: the first time I hear about any breakthrough in science, the first thought that comes to mind is - okay, what next?

This approach to anything new is ambiguous. Because you can take that to mean one of two things -

1. This new discovery that has been made has answered one question, but opened up many ten other questions that now need to be answered.
2. How can I or the community benefit from this discovery? What is its scope? 

The first one of these is fine. Explore away. Satiate your curiosity. Nothing wrong with that. The second one is a bit problematic.

See, when you ask about the "scope" of any scientific breakthrough, the answer at first is a wee bit unclear. Heck, sometimes there isn't even an answer at all. It's just something the rolling tide brought in. And it's too valuable to undo (not to mention it could be someone else's lifelong goal).

The thing is, just because something doesn't have any short-term benefits doesn't mean it's useless. A very good example is the quantum theory. It is at the base of this Digital Age. It has allowed the existence of smartphones, tablets, this new research called "Li-Fi" - making our lives what they are today. But when you sit to study it, it's mumbo-jumbo. There's no better way to put it. In fact, as one famous scientist said, "If you haven't been fundamentally baffled by quantum mechanics, you haven't understood it." (I'm paraphrasing, of course.)

Something as elegant the quantum theory rules our lives. But we didn't know that in the 1920's, when work first started on it. And it certainly doesn't seem like it when you're in your chemistry class and it's your first time learning about this.

Where I'm going with this is that scientific research shouldn't be stopped because you can't see what will come out of it. Humans are curious creatures. It is our curiosity and our ability to satisfy our curiosity that distinguishes us from the rest of the kingdoms. It has allowd us to practically rule the world, even though we are less in number than even the insects. The insects, who came before us.

A lot of the things we take for granted today have long story being discovered and being put to use. So the second question isn't even a valid one. It'll come to us, eventually. It is one bad habit I have to work to eradicate.

SCIENCE & FAITH

"Science is not for me.” “I’m not a sciency-type.” “I’m not interested in science.”

I don't usually encounter such question, I am already with people pondering over science. However the question is worth a thought. Why not? These same students, took science and math throughout elementary school often and did well academically. Where do they get the idea that science is something to avoid?

Science is bigger than any human-centered subjects. Perhaps it’s overwhelming to think deeply about the implications of concepts like evolution, the big bang, subatomic particles. We can get out of our comfort zone pretty fast.

Science is like a foreign language but is not taught that way. The vocab is pretty rough. Words like “biogeochemical” or “neurotransmission” or "warp drives" don’t work well in our texting, tweeting world. Neither are they very appealing to our senses (except warp drives, they'll be fabulous).

Science is an extreme sport. Meanwhile, the vocabulary may changed, the language is the same. The grammer is all what it was ever before. 

A lot of the time, what we’re learning about and discovering in science is not good news. It’s a bummer to learn about climate change. It’s a bummer to think about cancer. Ongoing human-caused mass extinctions are kind of depressing to think about, let alone acknowledge. This leads many of us to feel helpless.


Why is Science so important?

Perharps this is the most interesting section I'd like to address. A basic human motivator is to try to understand WHY. Why did something happen? How does something work? Curiosity about the world around us, about what makes it and us TICK is at the foundation of invention, of creativity. Teaching and in particular studying science well can nurture that curiosity, can satisfy some of that yearning to understand WHY. Understanding why a year is what it is for us on planet Earth feels good (it will when you realize what Mondays can be on Mars). Understanding how organisms are all connected by the long thin thread of evolutionary change gives depth to our sense of stewardship of the Earth.

Having a methodology to turn our native curiosity into knowledge gives us the power and possibility of invention, of finding solutions to problems

Science is the ultimate equalizer, the pathway to human rights and a better quality of life.

Our knowledge of how and why things are the way they are in the natural world is our greatest natural resource, second only to water. The way we acquire that knowledge and understanding, called the scientific method, is not difficult, nor does not require memorizing a list of words: observations, hypothesis, experimentation, interpretation. These are simply ways we go about learning.

Kardashev Scale and Our Imminent Doom

Yes, morbid topic. But there's no escaping the fact that we have hit our own self-destruction button.

But I wanted to talk about the pace at which the human race is progressing.

This year we received direct evidence of the violent side of our universe - gravitational waves. Combine this with news of pollution, global warming...well, is the glass half-empty or half-full? Are we like a three-year-old wanting to pay his own taxes and live independently? (Rhetorical question.)

Following that question, I have another one. But first, let me explain the Kardashev scale.

This is a scale that summarizes intelligent life, however hypothetical, in the Universe in four increasing levels -

Type 1 - Civilizations which can use the resources of one planet.

Type 2 - Civilizations which can directly use the resouces of its star.

Type 3 - Civilizations  which can directly use the resources of it galaxy.

Type 4 - Civilizations which can use space-time itself, manipulate it, go faster than the speed of light, etc. Yes, it also includes warp drive. (Awesome.)

Now, obviously we humans are a Type 1 civilization. And not even a very good one, going by our efficiency in use of resources. Sustainable development, anyone?
But my concern is that the path of our discoveries is taking us from a Type 1 to a Type 4 civilization. Humans can't inherently be blamed for that, the desire to explore is in our genes. But knowledge isn't always power. In cases like this, we may have to slow ourselves down. Before looking for a home, make sure we have one to return to, backups, things like that. Become an adult before handling taxes.

This is a painful hypothesis/realization for me. But science has no obligation to make me happy.

Introduction

Hi Everyone!

This is Soumya. 

Astrophysics enthusiast, avid reader, et cetera.
Hidden talents - uh, they're hidden.

As you probably know, also I'm a contributor to this blog.

Well, let me jump right into it.

Something that really bothers me is the amount of people who use inappropriate scientific terms. Let me clear something up.
Hypothesis - A claim made from observations alone, that needs to be tested.
Theory - A set of laws that have been experimentally and mathematically proven and hence assumed true.
Law - A prediction given by a theory. Every theory must have lots of them.

Example - Einstein's hypothesis was that a person in a free fall would feel weightless after some time. His theories of relativity have been experimentally and mathematically proven. They predicted gravitational waves which have now been observed.

So, there you have it.