I Am Back

Welcome back. I am returning after many months to the blog.
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I now know what "I don't have time" means. But Blogging is like doing "Pranayam". It removes toxins from your thinking. Otherwise thoughts are like a precipitate coagulating to the bottom of test tube.I need to shake the test tube much more now than before. There are lots of undigested thoughts in my mind. Must chew them like a cow.

Child is the father of Man

Child is the father of Man. If we want to understand hows and why of behaviour of early Humans, lets look at what is relevant to an infant.
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Understanding Physics by early humans is not surprising - since even a child learns of laws of nature by an intuitive interaction with the world. But I wonder, how and why did humankind learn to understand numbers and then on to mathematics? For numbers do not have that direct a day to day relevance for an infant - except for that acquisitive instinct to possess more of what it likes. But why numbers to mathematics and then application of mathematics to Physics. It does not make evolutionary sense.
Only explanation could be that numbers, mathematics and physics in mathematical language is hard-wired in human mind. BUT WHY?
Will a community isolated from learned mankind arrive at the same mathematics and physics? If we are hard-wired - it should and if we are not then the Human knowledge is only a soft skill passed on and extended from generation to generation.
In Andaman Island there are two tribes (The Jarawaks and ?) in some islands, who have shunned contact with rest of humans - except at a distance. They are known to understand numbers and arithmetic. They are so averse to human contact - that we cannot find if they have knowledge of any rudimentary mathematics or physics. But their mere knowledge of arithmetic supports the hard-wired conjecture.

Nothing Mattered

I have not written this blog for past 7 months. If you become too busy - nothing matters.
Oh! Boy was it hectic? You Bet! Note even the change of city in my profile!

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My fascination with science continued. I read about demotion of Pluto, discovery of 3.3 million old fossils and a star which exceeded the Chandrashekhar-limit.


But I could not bring myself up to write about these. There was "Nothing" in my motivation to do that. But a few very sweet comments prodded me to return.

Meanwhile may I welcome you to the old posts - even these have not yet become dated.

My First Girl Friend

The hit counter on this blog is entering into that range of figures - about which I feel very nostalgic. In 1953 I was 3 years old. Chubby, naughty, playful - 4th child out of five.
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I was very greedy about food and used to steal goodies from kitchen. I had started going to Nursery School at that age - which I hated. I remember feeling very lost and crying on the first day - when a very pretty classmate came, hugged, kissed and consoled me. I can recall even the pillar against which I leaned to cry. Thereafter I think I must have stopped crying and started playing with her. Its not a love story, the girl left school after 2/3 years - I don't know her. I graduated from the same school at 17 years of age. Its a rosy feeling to recall that act of kindness. Oh! no! Let me not cry again.

Spiritual Physics

Classical Physics had the certainty like mother's womb since everything was based on directly observable parameters. In particle physics we are far out on a limb since its all model-based interpretations of indirectly observed parameters.
Read Further on ...Abandonment of physical moorings is so distinct that the two physics are in fact fundamentally different disciplines. Particle physics has to walk on crutches like quark (which are theoretically unobtainable singly). In this aspect its more akin to spirituality - which is based on presence of soul, spirit and GOD - which cannot be observed. Particle Physics is Spiritual Physics.
But I believe this is a passing phase. In ancient societies (like in India) simplified theories could explain lot of observed phenomenon very satisfactorily. A whole lot of system of medicine (Ayurveda) was based on theory that body is made-up of five basic elements (Earth, Air, Water, Fire & Vacuum/ether). Lots of diseases could be explained as imbalance in these five elements - and cures were prescribed on that basis. Even now Ayurveda system is successful in many ailments - where modern medicine has no known cure. But this theory of body elements is now definitely known to be in-exact if not wrong. For More on Ayurveda click this link
Most of particle physics experiments are ultimately based on measurements of voltages and currents (or photographic trails) in Hi-Energy Collider experiments.
Its like my GP using stethoscope on me when I complain of knee pain - he has got only that method of measurement - no method to directly observe the pain.
I hope that we will be able to find more direct methods - and the spiritual-like methods would be avoided.

The Unseen Dimension

We live in a four dimensional space-time. Three are spatial dimensions and the fourth one is Time. Have you seen time go by.
Read Further on ...The three spatial dimensions are quite accessible to our physical senses. Although we are sure that Time does exist, but we cannot physically connect with it. Its the unseen dimension.
String theory propounds a universe consisting of 10 or 11 dimensions. Are other 6-7 dimensions also as ephemeral as time. Once we accept that in our 4-dimensional universe one dimension is already ephemeral - its not difficult to come to terms with an idea of higher-dimensional universe. The additional dimensions can be curled up or extended finitely/infinitely.
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I have written about the enigma of time before. Suffice here to highlight that time as a dimension is substantially different from other three dimensions.
Time is always flowing - moving, but the spatial dimension are stationary. Time is only uni-directional, but other dimensions can freely be traversed in either direction.
Still time and spatial dimensions are considered to be an integral whole space-time. Its only we, who try to discern different dimensions to it. For example fixing three mutually perpendicular dimensional axis is just an arbitrary exercise. For space the three dimensions are not distinguishable from others - the three are integrated enough - that we cannot de-integrate or differentiate them. We can substitute one of the spatial dimensions by any one of the rest of two - without changing the equations etc. So should be time. It should not be differentiable from spatial dimensions - we should be able to substitute any spatial dimension for time and vice-versa. But that is not true.
What gives?

The Old Classical-Mechanic Bottle

It has been long since I wrote. Ironically the last post was - "Updates Keep You Happy". This pause caused by other problems, gave me time to ponder - Am I going nuts on my hypothesis?.
Read Further on ...Sometimes we make castles over wrong foundations and these can come crashing down at the first whiff of introspection. Life is too short and I am at the short end of it at 55. It would be pathetic if after years of study and research it turns out to be a wild goose chase.
I do realize that although the questions that I posit are genuine. The hypothesis is also within realms of possibility. This model building in physics is most fascinating but too conjectural.
I realize that the hypothesis I give is too much coloured with classical-mechanics. So I have decided to look inwards for inspiration and fit the genuine questions into new bottles - rather than in old classical-mechanics bottle.
Hope I do not disappoint my readers.

Updates Keep You Happy

Many Readers have urged me to update the site more frequently. Being creative work requiring lot of reading and research -- its difficult to update as regularly as I would like to. Hope I would be able to do that after I retire from my job!Anyway here is updated

• Excerpts from comments and Guest-book entries


• My Hypothesis

Square The Cube

Lets go back to my post about "Voyager Shortchange", in the light of my post below, on Dr Lisa Randall's theory of negatively warped 5-dimensional space around us. The two have much in common.
Read Further on ...We had seen that Voyager Spacecraft is approx. 8,000 miles too close to us, than it should have been according to calculation as per latest theories of gravitation. Among the various hunches, one was about modification of Newtonian inverse square law of gravitation.
Now Dr Randall postulates that we are surrounded by a five dimensional space, which would have given us an inverse cube law of gravitation, but for the propounded negative warping of this dimension, so that we perceive it as only 10^-31cm wide. (De ja vu - I Have been proposing that space also comes in quanta - you can't have space less than a minimum size - which I had rough guessed as 10^-31cm.)
If we were in a full fledged 5-dimensional space, law of gravitation would have been inverse cube law. But because of warping of the 5th dimension, the gravitation inverse square law would have very close fit, over short distances. But over astronomical distances, the miniscule effect of curled up 5th dimension would make gravity a wee bit weaker than inverse square law.
We may recall that Voyager craft derived its speed from gravitational sling-shot trajectory around large outer planets like Jupiter and Saturn. Therefore this slight weakness of gravity would explain the voyager shortchange over large planetary distances.
This is easily verifiable by precise measurement of gravity, in laboratory or of astronomical bodies.
Voila! that will also be a verification of RS-1 and Rs-2 theories.

Dogs Bark Louder On Home-Turf

Four forces of nature - Strong force; Electromagnetic force; Weak force and gravitation, have varying strengths. Strong force is strongest and gravitation is the weakest (billion on billion times weaker than others). This extreme weakness of gravitation makes it difficult to comeup with a unifying theory of all four forces together - although the standard model does cover rest of the three. Scientists call this a "hierarchy problem".
Read Further on ...Dr. Lisa Randall, string theorist, Harvard professor and a very graceful 43 year old, developed a model of universe based on string theory(alongwith Dr. Raman Sundram), which explains why the gravitation is so weakly felt in our universe though in the beginning of universe all the four forces were indistinguishable from each other.
String theory (M-Theory) says that all particles and forces are nothing but a different vibrational states of thin stringlike structures which exist in 11 dimensions.
Universe consists of 3-dimensional membrane (jargon="brane") surrounded by a higher dimensions.
In their model called RS-1 and RS-2(published in 1999), they propounded that while all other forces are on the same "brane" as our universe, gravity resides on another "brane" separated from our universe by a five dimensional space with extra fifth dimension (time being the fourth). Gravitons (a loop of string), the particle associated with force of gravity is free to travel from gravity-brane to ours. However the space is warped in a negative way by the gravity-brane (anti De Sitter space), due to which though there is a large cluster of gravitons near gravity-brane only a small number are able to make it to our universe-brane. This explains why is the gravity so weak compared to other three forces which are resident on home-brane. Is it not familiar - Dogs bark louder near home-turf.
The extra 5th dimension of the 5-dimensional space separating us from gravity-brane is large enough but appears to be only 10^-31cm wide to us because it is warped in negative fashion. Otherwise Newton law of gravitation would have been inverse cube law instead inverse square it actually is.
This theory and other competing ones (Arkani-Dvali-Dimopoulos= ADD) would be put to test in CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, when it fires up in 2007.
Dr. Randall recently published "Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions" to convey to the lay readers the excitement of her work on RS-1 and RS-2.
Happy Reading!!