The Cosmos

Although my career path has strayed a long way from astrophysics, which was my dream topic of study back when I was a child, that doesn’t stop me from being wowed by the cosmos every now and then! I mean how could it? After all, one of the, if not the greatest, minds of our time, Albert Einstein spun crazy theories in his head sitting in a patent office that were later proven to be right! There is so much that we do not yet understand and so much that intrigues me, I wouldn’t know where to start...

Just for instance... Try to wrap your head around general relativity and you’ll surely have some sleepless nights! So, how can you visualize your mass increasing with velocity and reaching infinity at the speed of light? Well, I figure the faster one goes, the more the space-time fabric curvature, which is what mass really is, and close to the universal speed limit of light, this fabric reaches its breaking point beyond which it can stretch no further.

Similarly, let’s say I’m going from point A to B with velocity ‘v’ in time ‘t’, while you are covering the same distance with velocity ‘2v’... You should ideally reach in time ‘t/2’ right? Wrong! At normal earthly speeds the difference is negligible, but close to the velocity of light your mass, and as a result your gravitational pull would increase so much, that from your perspective the point B would appear closer than it actually is or we could say that your perception of time itself would change with respect to mine! This is what is meant by time dilation looked at from a layman’s point of view. With this, Einstein explained that a person travelling close to light speed would age much slower than a stationary person. But there is no need to think so big for experiencing time dilation as it is being practically used as a correction factor in our GPS on a daily basis!

Moving on to some modern day theories that are taking the world by storm: string theory and M-theory... 11 frigging dimensions! Seriously? Well, try to use your common sense and it’s really not that difficult to visualize... 3 space dimensions and 1 time dimension can be easily understood by all as these accurately describe your position in the space-time fabric. But what about choice? Even at a single instant there can be infinite possibilities and if you consider all instants since the beginning of time (if there indeed is such a thing) you can see the higher dimensions piling up leading to a multitude of parallel universes, the sum-total of which is referred to as the multiverse. The mathematically elegant M (membrane) theory further suggests that the relative weakness of gravity can be explained in terms of open strings that leak gravitational force to a parallel universe, as compared to other natural forces which exist as closed loops. Furthermore, it theorizes that the ‘big bang’ actually resulted from the collision of two parallel universes!

Oh! Well... Not everything has been proven yet but one genuine doubt that I have is, what was it like before everything as we know it came into existence? This question, leaving all the other holy grails of science aside, has pricked me most of all... How can nothing exist?? The very terms ‘nothing’ & ‘exist’ are contradictory to each other, which is what has led me to think that may be positive & negative mass particles existed together and their sum total was zero. The existence of negative mass particles, anti-matter and what not has already been partially proven although we don’t have much knowhow of these strange elusive particles... May be even now nothing exists... We just cannot perceive our negative counterparts!

Last but not the least, reverting to a thought touched upon in one of my previous articles 'A Recurring Doubt', what purpose does our existence really serve? That might be a pessimistic way of looking at life but I mean, come to think of it, what difference would it have made if none of us were ever born? ...if life never existed? ...if the earth never existed for life to have flourished on it? Would it make a shred of difference to anything else that’s left? Truth is we don’t know yet but do we really want to know? What would remain if and when we figure out everything? All this has made me realize that the best way to perceive life is to take it as an unending exploration hoping that answers keep unveiling themselves at opportune moments but this crusade of discovery will probably never culminate... You reach a wall and theoretically there will always be something beyond it! And that is precisely what makes it all the more exciting! As a result, I've been led to believe that at the end of the day no matter what field of life you’re in, striving towards achieving success in it will contribute to this mass quest of ours... So, let us all be the torch-bearers for humanity & see how it all unfolds!