Tuesday, November 4, 2008

The Rules of the Universe

In my first blog, I drew the attention of the scientific community to find a solution to the vexing problems of cosmic origin, raised questions concerning the reason for our existence, the mysterious mechanisms that keep us alive and finally, why it is all so hard to know the truth about our role here and does God really play the dice with us? (See Modern Cosmology http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/blog/6797-modern-cosmology-17241.html - http://rsridharan.blogspot.com/ )

Once we know how to unlock the cosmic order, most of our daunting problems are solved. At present, the Universe appears to us like a magical World of Harry Porter, as we are yet to learn the rules of reality! Even the scientists wonder at every turn of event from the moment of Big Bang. (All experimental evidence leads us to believe in the BB – thanks to thousands of scientists all over the world who have approved the Large Hedron Collider (LHC), a Time Machine of the 21st century, catapulting us close to the beginning of time)

At the outset Physicists are perplexed as to the nature of things in our early Universe – Gravity the mother of all forces suddenly separates itself from the Strong, Weak and Electromagnetic forces and assumes unimaginable proportions! Locking together all matter in the Universe, this one gigantic force becomes a huge Monster, almost swallowing the entire Cosmos! Making large chunks of matter disappear in no time; gravity plays havoc inside black holes, crushing them into non-existence.

Dark Matter, the hypothetical Savior, presumed to constitute 23 percent of the entire Universe, with 4 percent of the visible matter, checks the gravity under control and protects the galactic structures from collapsing into oblivion! Then there is the all powerful Dark Energy like Dark Matter, another hypothetical omnipresent force in the Universe which permeates everywhere and counters the Monster gravity from annihilating the entire Cosmos! Suddenly the Dark Energy swells; the Dwarf Universe becomes a Giant! Called Vishwaroop in India, this phenomenon is a common place in Indian mythology.

At quantum level, the Entanglement (Entanglement is a term used in quantum theory to describe the way that particles of energy/matter can become correlated to predictably interact with each other regardless of how far apart they are) is a real and tested phenomenon, an instantaneous communication of the particles. Einstein called it "spooky action at a distance!”, because it defied the common sense. We live in a weird World!

Whatever man has endeavored so far, it has not become apparent for him to comprehend the Cosmos - he is at a loss to know the rules of the Universe! As the saying goes, man proposes God disposes, nature has inherent beauty and it is not easy for us to see the hidden order. For us it is more of a magical world than a logical reality! The rules are simple, but we can not see them – it requires the genius of an Einstein coupled with the logic of a Kasparov to know the rules of this Universe.

To quote an example, the chess analogy from the famous physicist Richard Feynman (the Nobel Prize winning physicist) once noted that discovering the laws of physics is like trying to learn the laws of chess merely by observing chess games. You notice that bishops stay on the same color squares; you write this down as a law of chess. Later, you come up with a better law – bishops move diagonally. And, since diagonal squares are always colored the same, this explains why bishops always stay on the same color. This law is an improvement – it is simpler, and yet explains more. In physics, discovering Einstein's theory of gravity after knowing Newton's theory of gravity is a similar type of discovery. As another example, noticing that pieces don't change their identity in a chess game is similar to discovering the law of mass-and-energy conservation.

Eventually, say, you see a chess game in which a pawn reaches the other end of the board and is promoted. You say, "Wait, that violates the laws of chess. Pieces can't just change their identity." Of course, it does not violate the laws of chess; you just had never seen a game pushed to that extreme before.

Now we are pushed to that extreme anyway! Things appear to make no sense. In place of reality, we imagine and create a God that work wonders for most of us!

Like a novice in chess, we blink at each moment in time and end up nowhere. We make wrong moves. We lose on time even before our adversary gets smarter! How do we beat this Universal Computer? First one has to know the rules in real life. The rules are very harsh indeed! You make one long move, you lose your life! We have sacrificed many lives to know the order of this Universe! With great endeavor we have even built an ultimate machine the Large Hedron Collider (LHC) – that will go back in time and see whether the hidden order exists. Do we still stand a chance to make a smart move? Time will tell!

As Feymann said it is not enough to accept nature as they are, one has to comprehend the entire order in it to know its beauty! A GM in chess visualizes the whole position at a time, and then uses his intuitive ability to see its hidden beauty, combines his technical skills and leads the game to a logical victory. This entire he does it in fleeting seconds!

It is a combination of modern physics, mathematics, logical order and intuitive ability that one requires to know the rules of our Universe. Unless one sees the entire hierarchy in order, we can never be able to piece together the complexity of this stupendous and infinite Cosmos! The rules of the Universe are so intricate that we require many Einstein working on different mathematical models, to uncover the hidden order! It requires the intuition of a genius and masterly of a mathematician to realize the beauty of our Cosmos!

Teach the modern computer a little intuition, there we are, we know the order of this Universe!
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