Explaining the Universe: Microcosm

In 1939, particle physics was scarcely distinguishable from its parent discipline, nuclear physics. Only a handful of the particles that were to occupy the attention of physicists in the latter half of the century were known. Probing the structure of nuclei and of the sub-nuclear particles, and studying their interactions, requires high energies. This is again a consequence of the uncertainty principle: to explore fine detail requires a probe of small wavelength, which implies large momentum, and therefore high energy. For the highest energies, the naturally occurring cosmic radiation was (and continues to be) used as a source. But cosmic radiation is increasingly sparse at higher energies, so artificial accelerators were already being designed and built in the 1930s. At the very highest energies ever observed (the highest energy yet recorded for a cosmic ray is a staggering 3.2×10²⁰ electron-volts - the kinetic energy of a tennis ball at nearly a hundred miles an hour concentrated on a single sub-atomic particle!), cosmic rays are so rare that detectors ranged over 6000 square kilometres would only be expected to detect a few thousand particles a year with energies above 10¹⁹ electron-volts . But such an array of detectors is now under being constructed. This is the Pierre Auger Observatory, which consists of two arrays of detectors, one in Utah in the United States and one in Argentina, located so as to allow coverage of the whole sky. Each of these sites will have 1600 particle detectors deployed over 3000 square kilometres.

Modest by comparison with the engineering feats of today, the cyclotrons built by Ernest Lawrence were in the vanguard of the new breed of "atom-smashers". The largest of these was commandeered during the Second World War, to be used to separate the fissile fraction of uranium for the construction of the bomb that devastated Hiroshima. Physicists along with their machines were redeployed on new missions. When peace came, they had achieved stupendous success, not only with new scientific discoveries that had fed the war-machine. These had profoundly troubled the conscience of men like J Robert Oppenheimer who led the Manhattan Project which developed the atom bomb; others had deliberately set themselves aside from project. (I know of only one who actually resigned from the Manhattan Project having joined it to begin with, and that was Joseph Rotblat , who in 1995 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He was a Fellow of Queen Mary, and an Emeritus Professor here.) The physicists had also learnt the skills and methods needed to bring to fruition gigantic collaborative enterprises, designing and engineering new technical devices that both incorporated the fruits of discoveries only just achieved, but also addressing problems at the frontiers of knowledge -- and beyond. They had acquired courage from their confidence in their science, and audacity in its application. Their science had moved from the laboratory bench to the factories of Oak Ridge and Los Alamos; from a team of a few individuals to the co-ordinated efforts of hundreds. Big science was born. As an example of this legacy of big science, the ATLAS collaboration which will use the Large Hadron Collider (or LHC) at CERN - the European laboratory for particle physics (in this aerial view the superposed circles show where the complex of accelerators and storage rings run underground)- already has over 2000 scientists as participants from 150 institutions (including Queen Mary) in 34 countries; their detector is planned to start taking data in 2007.

The juggernaut of big science, as some would see it, though inaugurated in the exigencies of war, has persisted and burgeoned in peacetime. Huge laboratories have grown up, and not only for high energy physics. CERN, for example, which spans the frontier between France and Switzerland at Geneva, is host at any one time to some 2,000 physicists, not only from its 20 member states, but also from dozens of other countries. One of the great rewards for working in this field is to know oneself to be a partner in a truly international enterprise; no flags or other national insignia are permitted inside CERN. It is probably inevitable that all future laboratories of this scale will be international, not only in their scientific personnel, but also in their funding. The United States wrote off an expenditure of some two billion dollars and six years of planning and construction when it abandoned the project to build the Superconducting Super Collider in Waxahachie, Texas, leaving behind a useless incomplete 14.5 mile section of the tunnel which would have housed the machine, and putting hundreds of highly specialised scientists and engineers out of work. The US has now joined the LHC programme at CERN.

The discoveries of particle physics in the past half-century have led us to a model of the structure of matter, a set of fundamental particles and the forces which bind them, which has the scope to embrace all the phenomena of particle physics and so up through the hierarchy of nuclear and atomic physics to chemistry and beyond. (But beware the hubris of supposing that there is nothing to be added at each level of the hierarchy! Nothing however would seem to be contributed from above to this level of understanding). We have then a Standard Model for the fundamentals of particle physics. Standard, because it is accepted by most particle physicists as being correct in its essentials. A model only, because although it provides a marvellous, tightly interlocking framework for the explanation and description of all the observed phenomena, there are still significant loose ends. There are predictions which although in principle are believed to be calculable, have so far eluded our technical capabilities. And there are still too many arbitrary parameters which have to be "fed in by hand" for theorists to be comfortable with this as a truly fundamental theory. (One might reflect on the audacious optimism that discomfort reveals. A century ago, most physicists would have accepted that there were very many quantities which entered their description of the world which should simply be accepted as given. They were to be measured, with ingenuity and accuracy; but it was unreasonable to suppose that they could all be calculated from just a handful of fundamental constants. Now as a new century dawns, most physicists would agree that it ought to be possible, in principle at any rate, to determine all the basis of physics from just such a handful of parameters. And the 26 or so constants needed to define the Standard Model are generally regarded as too many!)

Remember that when I speak of particles, I am also speaking of fields; the particles are the basic quantum excitations of the fields which bear their name. We may distinguish two different varieties of field. One, of which the electron field is an example, has as its quanta particles which obey Pauli's exclusion principle; no two of them may occupy the same quantum mechanical state. Electrons, and other particles like them, spin like tiny gyroscopes or tops, with an amount of angular momentum equal to one half in the natural units of quantum mechanics (Planck's constant h divided by 2 pi). Collections of fermions satisfy a different kind of statistical mechanics from the distinguishable particles of classical mechanics; they are called fermions after Enrico Fermi , who along with Dirac first described their statistics.

Another kind of particle, and the photon is one such, carries spin angular momentum of one unit (the spin of the photon is associated with the polarisation of light.) Still others have zero spin. Particles with zero or integer spin are called bosons after Physicist Satyendranath Bose.

The Era of Consequences

Looking at the disproportionate, misdirected and inappropriate response by the leaders of my country to the flabbergasting and mind-numbing attack on her sovereignty and integrity made me recall a quote by former British Prime Minister: Winston Churchill-

"The time of procrastination, of half-measures has come to a close. In its place, we are entering an era of consequences.

Losing Faith in "Engineer Managers"

Today, after watching two documentaries on what were possibly the worst disasters to hit space exploration, a thousand thoughts race through my mind. It has been a revelation and an eye opener for me that both the Challenger Space Shuttle (STS 51) and the Columbia Space Shuttle (STS 107) disasters occured not because of a failure in engineering but a failure in management. It will probably take me days to settle into this reality, and I cannot even begin to imagine how hard it must have been for the families of the deceased.

Never before have I felt more profoundly sorrowful for the loss of human life, and more faithless on the Engineering Managers. My heart screams denial, but the facts in front of me are simply too unequivocal. Being a die-hard engineering student, I had always thought that I ought to cut those in the management a bit more slack. I thought that I was simply too prejudiced, but, to use a cliche, my worst fears have come true.

Engineering and management do not mix.

Now the skeptics in you might not see this prudent - me taking sides based on a documentary. But this was a National Geographic series in which they stuck to the facts and kept the speculation to a minimal. As you read through, it is I who will speculate.

The Challenger Incident

On a cold Tuesday morning of January 28th 1986, hundreds of spectators gather at a Florida coast to witness the launch of the 25th Space Shuttle members. Amongst them are the family members of the seven astronauts on board. Little did they know that they were about to see their loved ones blown into a million pieces within the hour. The weather was by far the coldest of all shuttle launches. This has already delayed the launch by a week.
At 11:38 am eastern time, the shuttle lifts off the Kennedy Space Centre. Within about 65 seconds, it has cleared the "max Q" - the region of atmosphere where the forces on the shuttle are maximum. 8 seconds later, it explodes into a massive fireball, killing all astronauts on board.
.


what went wrong?
The cause of the explosion was determined to be the failure of the solid rocket boosters' O-rings to expand easily, resulting in burning rocket fuel leaking out of the boosters. This severed the contact between a booster and the main fuel tank, and the booster crashed into the tank, causing millions of tons of fuel to ignite in an instant - an explosion.

While I will not elaborate more on the technical aspect of the failure - you can watch the documentary for that - what I will meditate upon is the human factor. Roger Boisjoly, an engineer with Thiokol - the company that manufactured the O-rings, had found conclusive evidence from previous shuttle launches that the O-rings fail to expand properly under extreme cold, and that this can potentially cause burning solid fuel to leak out of the solid boosters. Why, then, was the launch okayed on such a cold day? Was it because of the corporate pressure of keeping schedule, that put human life on the backseat? Boisjoly declared, under oath, to have barged into the Thiokol office on the morning of the launch insisting vehemently that they not go ahead with the launch, and that the shuttle was in grave danger in its current configuration, in this weather.

Now what I saw on that table where Boisjoly presented his findings were a bunch of so-called engineering managers. These are folks who probably have a bachelor's degree in science or engg. enough to understand what he meant. But their management caps clouded filtered the scientific facts and clouded their judgement. Unsure of what to do, they informed the senior managers up at NASA recommending a launch abort. However, the NASA guys snubbed Thiokol for pestering them right before the launch and asked them to arrive at a conclusive decision while they held the phone.

What followed rocked my heart to the core. One of the guys on the conference table where Boisjoly had just arrived decided to take a vote. Take a vote? TAKE A VOTE? The fate of seven people's lives was to be decided by simple majority??? Oh my God. I guess that guy had read about it in some of his B-school textbooks on how to handle tricky meetings - take a vote. Being a manager and not and engineer, he never appreciated the grevity of the facts and photographs lying on the table in front of him. He never appreciated the frenzy of Roger Boisjoly on how worried he was. Roger was an engineer, he knew only too well what the loss of those lives meant. But to his managers, loss of dollars and loss of promotions was probably all that mattered. Boisjoly was voted out, and so were the seven astronauts.

The managers adviced him to take off his engineering cap and put on his management cap. Only one expression comes to my mind - "What the fuck???" Didn't the management retards understand the simple truth in scientific facts, and that they were not a cap that could be taken off at will. I mean, no matter what cap you are wearing, doing anything to prevent loss of human life ought to come first, doesn't it?

Roger Boisjoly will never forget what happened in the next 20 minutes. The fact that he knew about it would have eaten him from inside. The powerlessness in front of the system that we engineers feel can do that to you. Haven't you felt like throwing your head against the wall when someone in front of you pays no heed to what you are saying? I guess that was how Roger felt. He resigned soon after, and suffered a nervous breakdown. That is the sad end met by all those who raise their voice. This is what happens when you care for your countrymen more than your job.

The NASA senior manager on the other hand, having demonstrated textbook managerial skills, was promoted to the post of Director of All Propulsion Sytems. Morton Thiokol Inc. was awarded a US$1.8 billion contract to build a new line of solid rocket boosters.

And thus, Dick Scobee, Mike Smith, Judy Resnick, Ellison Onizuka, Ron McNair, Greg Jarvis and Christa were killed not by the faulty O-rings, but by system of management at NASA.



This has shown how the interaction between pure talent (science and engineering) and shrewd pennysaving (management) has not been a good one. Scientists and engineers are not meant to be handled by managers. I guess what Roger Boisjoly saw on that conference table was a bunch of managers trying to handle an overenthusiastic, exaggerating technical guy like him, probably recalling some textbook they read.

In my fucking arrogant opinion, just because managers operate like robots, based on specific instruction sets and their execution, they should not assume that the whole world should descend to their level. We do not want an intellectually rich world to be run by fools.


The Columbia Incident

On February 1, 2003, Space Shuttle Columbia prepares to wrap up its thus successful mission. Little do they know that there is a gaping 25cm hole in the carbon-carbon reinforced coverings of its wings. As the crew re-enters the earth's atmosphere, the gases around the shuttle heat up more than a thousand degrees celcius , pretty routine during re-entry. What is not routine is the breach in the wing shield. The hot gases enter the wing from there and and heat up the inside, ultimately causing fracture and break- up of the Shuttle, 
somewhere over Texas.



This incident is close to my heart primarily because there was an Indian on board, and also because it happend in my life time, a time when I can vividly recall watching it on the news. It was a classic example of misplaced priorities, and wrong people in charge.

Just after the liftoff, a chunk of foam broke apart from the main fuel tank of the space shuttle. It hit the shuttle wing's leading edge at about 300 km/h relative velocity and disintegrated. Pieces of foam breaking off are not unusual.
However, due to the size of this one and its way of impact, it punched a hole 25 cm wide in the wing's insulation. The footage was analysed after launch and concern was raised on whether it jeopardised the re-entry scenario. Despite all this, the Shuttle crew was not informed about the possible damage. The rednecks at NASA did not trust the astronauts to keep their cool, probably. Astronauts- whom NASA selects after a highly competetitive selection process and who undergo years of physical and psychological training.

Although NASA knew a piece of foam had hit the orbiter, they did not know as to whether or not it had caused any serious damage. They requested high-resolution satellite imagery of the orbiter so that they could see for themselves.

They were declined.

Watch how the human life again takes the backseat. NASA wanted this mission to complete as scheduled so that the International Space Station could be completed on time. The US Sentate had threatened to cut its funding if it was not. It seems as if NASA feared that if they let the satellite images be taken, then they might reveal something fishy, which would delay the landing. So, so very childishly, they denied the permission to use the imagery. The guys who were in-charge of the denial were not scientists or engineers who understood the grave consequences, but managers. All they really cared was to keep schedule.

In a way it represents the management structure of NASA today. The real scientists and engineers - the men and women actually labouring to get this organisation going - are merely subservients of the management "bosses". The managers consider them as the "Science guys", who should do all the numbers but leave the decision making upto us. In their twisted vision of things, science is some isolated phenomenon that has nothing to do with real scenarios. If such a management hierarchy is to be retained (although I don't see why), then these managers ought to realise that the scientists and engineers are the best at what they do, and their work must not be considered in isolation.

Alas, that did not happen for Columbia. Oblivious of all what was going on, they continued with the re-entry and met their Maker later that morning.



Allow me to raise one last pertinent question in my mind. Had the satellite imagery been allowed and the breach disovered, could Columbia be saved? or more importantly, would it? Would the present government, sucked up by the managers, have done all in its power to save the astronauts? Would we have seen heroes out of this mission like we saw in Apollo 13??
Or would NASA have chosen to simply ignore the problem, or have some bunch of white collar executives vote on whether or not the astronauts lives were worth more than the money it would take to rescue them???

I leave you at that...

Republic of Singapore Airshow 2008

The video says it all...

The past and the paradox

Was watching Déjà Vu today. For those who haven't heard of the movie, click here. The movie might be entertaining for most of you but for me it raises quite a few questions in my mind. What happens if you change the past? What happens if you observe the past? Does anything change? Well the concept of the multi-dimensional universe offers us an explanation for one of them: What happens if you try to change the past. The other question- does anything change if you observe the past- still hangs as a question, at least in my mind, waiting for a moment of divine revelation.

Changing the past

Suppose we devise a machine that enables us to travel to the past and observe things that have already happened, actions whose outcomes are already known. Does our presence there change anything? Does the realm of physics offer a plausible explanation that makes time travel possible without violating any of its Laws? Well the answer is YES. Having read many books on the subject matter, I have prepared this explanation right here.

The ground rules dictate that we assume a universe with dimensions other than the 4 known ones. We humans are 3-dimensional creatures who perceive the world through their eyes in 3 dimensions. We also experience the fourth dimension of time as a unidirectional arrow from past to the future. However, according to the 10 dimensional concept of the universe, each point on this arrow branches off to infinitely many directions, each indicating an alternative reality. Let me illustrate this using an example. I woke up today at 11 am when my alarm clock rang. When you are a college student like me, you have to weigh your choices when the alarm rings – you either wake up, or you go back to sleep. The split-second before you make the choice is a highly symmetrical one- any of the possible outcomes can happen, and each is equally probable. However, as soon as we make the choice, we break this symmetry by choosing one of the ways. Once we have made a particular choice, it will affect our next choices and so on. Theoretically speaking, the state of the entire universe after 11 am depends on your choice at that moment.

But what happens to the other choices? Since each outcome was equally probable, the symmetry must be preserved somehow. What really happens is that the other choice triggers another set of choices and we get a totally different reality that stemmed from our choice at 11 am. In other words, the outcome of the other choices does take place, although in a parallel universe of its own. Take a moment here to consider how many choices you make in your life each minute, and how many parallel universes sprout from those choices, and you will understand how immensely vast the network of space-time is.

The parallel universe concept does bust one of our assumptions – that of a linear space-time arrow. As you can see from the illustration, each branch has its own past and future, and each exists in the realm of the Laws of physics, and none of these is more favourable than the other. They all simply exist. The anthropic principle of the universe dictates that we see our universe the way it is because of our own choices, causes and effects. Thus, each universe which is present is an outcome of choices. You make a choice now; all the other choices you could have made were made. You only feel the outcome of one of those choices and that becomes your universe. There are countless other universes with countless other similar yourselves
who have made other choices and are living in their own universes.

So far so good, let us come back to our focus area of time-travel. Suppose I go back in the past and kill my great-grand father. Consequently, my grand-father is not born, hence my father and hence me, never came into this world. In that case – who is the one who killed my great-grandfather? Certainly, this leads into a paradox. What will happen if try to kill my grandfather? - Will I not be able to do it, Will someone stop me? Laws of physics certainly not prevent us from committing murder. What will really happen is that a parallel universe will sprout from the point that I kill my great-grandfather. In that universe, I, my father and my grandfather will never have been born. The choices that we made in our lives will never have been made. However, this universe does not alter the one in which we were born and lived. Hence, if we try to change the past, the change that we bring will be but one of the many parallel possibilities in space-time. In a layman's perspective, a deliberate change in the past does change the future, but along the same line through which the change has been made.

 

Observing the past

Let us come back to Déjà Vu. Suppose I have a screen that shows me what happened in my past. Will that affect my future? If yes, then why, and in which reality? Again let us consider the following example. I am a big gadget freak and am fascinated by the iPhone. Alas, it will not arrive in Singapore until June this year- that is when I plan to buy this baby. Suppose I use a screen to observe the past and look into the Apple Labs 3 years ago when the iPhone was being manufactured. I see that, for whatever reason, Apple have installed a chip in the iPhone that will make it self-destruct in December 2008. Note that I am simply observing the past, and am in no position to change it. But will this observation affect my decision to buy the iPhone in June 2008? Has the mere act of observation of the past affected my future? In geek lingo, does observation count as interference? As to that, I have no answer at the moment. I will refer to it as Adi's iPhone Paradox!

RESOURCES
1. Imagining the 10th Dimension by Rob Bryanton :Amazon.com
2. Parallel Worlds by Dr. Michio Kaku :Amazon.com

The Quest for Unification: Emergence of String Theory

Unification of physics. Some of you readers know what that is, some don’t. In my opinion, unification does not necessarily mean the amalgamation of ALL known physical theories into one equation that governs the Heavens. Though this might be the ultimate goal – the Holy Grail of modern physics, it is not the only one. Unification essentially means merging two physical theories into one. Scientists and thinkers of all times have wanted to do that, and many have achieved parts of it. When scientists unify two theories, they move a step closer to finding the underlying order of the Universe. I wholeheartedly agree with Albert Einstein’s statement:

“God does not play dice with the Universe ... "

Yes indeed. God does not play cards. The Universe is governed by a divine set of laws, which for the moment are beyond human comprehension. Understanding those laws means understanding the underlying principles on which this Universe was built. From the first second to its last. Getting even close to that is like a dream come true. It will provide mankind with the tools to the very fabric of space – time. What far-reaching consequences it will have, I do not know. For the purpose of this discussion, however, I am going to explain what is the current situation and future challenges in the field of Grand Unification of Physics, and then subsequently take up the concept of ten dimensions of the String Theory.

I spoke to God today ...

For ages and ages, I have harboured my undying passion for astrophysics and cosmology. It has been my dearest ambition to think like Buddha, to attain that Nirvana like he did. We all seek answers, scientists and philosophers alike. Deep down, we all have the same questions, and I believe that we will attain the same answers. It's just the way we search for them that is different.

To me, Nirvana is like a mental orgasm - a state of temporary blindness when you see God. Yesterday was one of those moments I truly felt that THAT is what I seek, for I believe that science will provide me with my answers.

I still remember the time I read about the superstring theory and how it promises to be the defining means of achieving the GUT (Grand Unification Theory) of Physics. There is, however, one critical assumption of the superstring theory - the Universe consists of not four, but ten dimensions. And I asked myself, how is the existence of ten dimensions so different from the existence of four. And how exactly does one think and visualize the ten dimensions when we cannot even comprehend fully the fourth dimension, which we know is definitely there.
I lived with this question for about five years - seeking a satisfying answer. The IIT-JEE preparations in the last two years played havoc on my mind and I totally lost focus of this uncompleted wish of mine. They say your past looks much better from your future, but I beg to differ. Even today, looking back at those days, I see myself fruitlessly chasing a goal which was never mine, never set by me. That was not something I was supposed to be doing, I feel. It would not be an understatement to say that I forgot myself. Dad, you will agree to that, I know.


Until yesterday ...

The 24th of February will remain etched in my memory forever. I feel like a burden has lightened from my back, and now I can raise my head to look at the path ahead of me. I have realized the true significance of the ten dimensions, and by God you need to be me to truly understand how significant this is in my life. At this point I truly agree with the views of the fictitious Prof. Leonardo Vetra of the famed 'Angels and Demons' by Dan Brown. Science is the only way to find God.

I dedicate myself to this quest.
May God (whatever that might mean!) be with me.

Hats off to Ankit Uppal to awaken me from my slumber by leading me to that website. Way to go, chum!



In the next post I will discuss about my perception of the ten dimensions, and their implications in science and technology. I however warn the reader that these are STRICTLY my views and represent what I feel and decide about this issue. I welcome suggestions and points of views from everyone.