Matter, Energy, Space, Time, Life

13.7 billion years ago, there was a huge explosion – what we all know as the big bang.

A sea of particles formed due to big bang. Matter and antimatter collisions resulted destruction of almost everything that was formed from the bigbang. Only a billionth of what was left over goes into making the current universe after baryogenesis and Big Bang Nucleosynthesis.

300 million years after the explosion, stars start to form. Stars are formed due to gravity which causes hydrogen to come together. Temperature of stars begin to rise as Nuclear Fusion starts. Stars in close proximity form galaxies.

Milky way was formed 13 billion years ago. It is 6000 billion miles in diameter with 2000 billion stars. Earth was formed 4.6 billion years ago, nearly same time as the Sun.

As conditions became conducive, life formed on planet earth. Life is what matter does mysteriously. Bacteria have lived on without intelligence for over 3 billion years now. The last asteroid strike was 65 million years ago and it wiped out dinosaurs. For 10000 years now, humans have dominated the planet. They say that mass annihilation of life in this planet could happen in 2012. In year 2029, asteroid 99942 Apophis could strike the earth. At some uncertain time in the distant future, gamma rays from WR104 could fry our planet.

Even if none of that happens, within 5 billion years, the sun will grow in size as it ages. As sun becomes a red giant, the temperature of the planets in the solar system would rise. Oceans of the earth would evaporate. Tiny life forms would would outlive the human race by several million years. Will we have to escape to another planet? How about Gliese581d? Does Gliese581d have low gravity could possibly weaken muscles of future generations? Would it be void of an ozone layer like our Mars? Eventually, all life on earth would perish because of the heat. Even later, the earth will be pulled into the sun.

Like the earth, the sun will perish too. Gravity Vs Fusion. Gravity will finally win.

Not all stars would die quietly like the sun. Some stars explode as Supernovae. With the end of a life of a star by explosion, a black hole is bornGravitational singularity is the centre of a black hole where time and space stop. A singularity is where our present science stops. Its scientists way of saying “We dont know”.

A black hole will pull every thing towards it. A black hole the size of a golf ball will weigh as much as planet earth. But black holes can be as big as a solar system. Some of them can be super massive black holes.

A 11 million mile diameter super massive black hole is at the heart of our own Milky way. Stars revolve super massive black holes. A quasar is a compact region in the center of a massive galaxy surrounding the central Super massive black hole. Quasars are the brightest known things in the universe and we already know about thousands of quasars. Quasars calm down when galaxies age.

No mass or energy can escape a black hole. Matter and energy are but interchangeable things. What happens to all that that goes into a black hole? No one knows.

As you approach a black hole, you would reach the Event Horizon. Event Horizon is where time is stopped by gravity. Physical laws as we know them stop working at the event horizon. Black hole is an object that changes physical laws as we know them. Yet, our SWIFT mission reveals that a black hole is formed every day within the space known to humans. We dont yet know what physical laws govern a black hole.

Some feel that black hole might be the reverse of a big bang. Matter enters a black hole by gravity and exits through a big bang. Black holes seem to drink up matter and then spit it out into a parallel universe. A black hole could be the connection to a parallel universe. Black holes could be universe’s way of renewing itself.

While we know black holes can eat up stars and even galaxies, we also know that the expansion of the universe is accelerating contrary to all known laws of gravity.

Dark energy is the term used by cosmologists to explain why the expansion of the universe is accelerating rather than slowing due to gravitation. The behavior of dark energy would determine if the universe would be headed for a big freeze, big rip, big crunch, big bounce, multiverse or have no end with any cosmic certainty.

How will the universe end? We have many people guessing at it. Can you re-boot the universe? As in, end it and begin it again? Now that is a real question. Good luck figuring that out. Everything else is, but, of course, elementary.

Is there always a cause?

People are not always mindful of the cause. They prefer to stay focussed on what they desire. At least partly, that is the problem with the scientific method. Science is focussed on explanation of effects. The causes are only hypothesized.

Today, a kid cried for candy. The kid eventually obtained candy, but it seldom realizes the full story behind it. Mama gave me candy is not the full story. How did mama get the candy? Who made candy? Where? How did candy get there? If a child eating candy can be such a complex process, imagine the list of possibilities in a complex planet.

You may desire something, but to obtain what you desire you have to pursue a path of acquisition. For people who only desire something and dont understand what it takes to make it happen, the desire almost always turns to disappointment.

But to a learner, the pursuit of cause should not be driven by desire.

There are billions of people on this planet. They do billions of things every instant. There are zillions of things happening in this planet every instant.

These are caused by something and they in turn cause something. Understanding a single planet completely, is technically a zillion variable problem.

Understanding the universe may be even more complex.

But, of course, no human attempts to understand or remember everything. Our brains are so limited by capacity or at least we haven’t still exploited the full working capacity of the human brain because humans live in circles of understanding. An artist understands arts and a scientist understands science. Humans dont see past their limited circle of knowledge. And this circle of knowledge is as big as we make it by our effort.

Even knowing more within a circle of knowledge is a challenge to humans, knowing what to know is a bigger challenge.

How much can a human brain learn?

How big is the truth?

We know, at least generically, what causes the waves in the ocean. But do we know enough to understand ocean waves?

Is the knowledge of the effect sufficient to predict the cause or even is the knowledge of the cause sufficient to predict the effect ?

Is there always a cause? I can’t but help wonder.

What does it take to make one A4 size paper?

We start off by doing a small calculation from a reputed text book. The text book is Shreve’s Chemical Process Industries, which is a textbook adopted in the chemical engineering curriculum of many reputed colleges.

An A4 size office paper of normal quality weighs 5 grams. It is easy for one to pro-rate the above table and estimate what it takes to make 5 grams of paper.

Based on 1982 data, to make an A4 paper you would need:

  • 22.5 g  Chemicals
  • 665 ml  Water
  • 3.5 ml  Oil or 5 grams of coal
  • 20 cc Wood
  • 23.76 kJ Power

Well, the story does not stop here. I know that the paper industry has adopted better manufacturing methods and today the specific consumption for making paper could be a little different. Today’s processes use significant amounts of recycle paper, use lesser water. Again, the amount of paper recycled and water conserved in different plants /countries is different, so it becomes difficult to establish an exact global average in a brief article.

Nevertheless, a few parallels can be drawn.

Every time you waste an A4 paper at office, conservatively, I can assume that, you also waste a large cup of water, a spoon full of coal (or oil), another spoonful of various chemicals, energy sufficient to keep a 40 W bulb glowing for 10 minutes and wood whose weight could be 2-4 times the weight of the paper, depending on the amount of recycle paper used.

Every time you throw a piece of paper into a dust bin, imagine yourself wasting all the other resources as well. I’m sure you’ll find it a lot easier to save paper.

Will Smith, a role model to look up to

“I will NOT be outworked. Period… You might have more talent than me,
you might be smarter than me, you might be sexier than me, you might be
all of those things. You got it on me in nine categories. But if we get
on the treadmill together, there’s two things:  Either you’re getting
off first, or I’m gonna die. It’s really that simple.”

-Will Smith, on his work ethic

Rules for a planet

I’ve always believed in the truth of Agent Smith’s words:

“I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had, during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you aren’t actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with its surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply, and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we, are the cure.”

There is yet another equally powerful thought I came across in Yuva Anandan’s blog.

He points to an interesting comment on BBC – “…it’s not the planet we should be worrying about, it’s us.” In principle, I agree with the point of view that whatever damage human activity has caused to the planet till date is not major. With the race being supposedly being well past the peak oil, perhaps our ability to inflict further damage to the planet is limited. When the oil prices go up in the next few years, I would expect the food production to drop and people will dying of malnourishment. The population would drop and people would be forced again go back to living in fertile lands near water sources.

But for the human race, it has never been about the planet. It has always been about us. It is the same callous attitude that prevailed for centuries and still continues to do so. For once people should think about living symbiotically with the host planet. I wish there was a global political body that laid down rules for the planet. As a finite planet, the earth can only sustain finite human activity. What is that point? We will really need a careful scientific evaluation to find out. To me, ideally, politics should be simple human welfare. We need to have an association with this planet such that the damage we do is minimal and every person on this planet has a joyous experience of life on this planet. If it means limiting the population of the planet to a billion, then we should get there in the next 50 years with a clear plan.

Global politics, beyond regional interests, is the need of the day. Like in Starwars, we sure need a galactic republic and a Padme to decide for each planet.