Touching the Frontiers of Physics

When Albert Einstein postulated his revolutionary Special Theory of Relativity, much of the world could make sense out of it, for it was only a revolutionary step forward. The scientific community in particular and the educated world in general did not find it too hard to comprehend the theories of Einstein. Remember that the French Mathematician Henri Poincare also arrived at the same formulations almost simultaneously. Only his understanding of the new formulations were more mathematical, while those of Einstein belonged more to Physics. His concept of space time but still remained abstruse

However, despite that fact that Riemann, Gauss and Lobachevsky made pioneering contribution to non-Euclidean geometry of curved space, calculus of tensors etc; being a classical physicist, Ernst Mach also contributed to this nascent understanding of space with that of gravitation; this branch of knowledge and utility of mathematical tool remained in the realm of obscurity and limited only to the use of cartography.

Einstein made the sweeping and revolutionanry utilization of this obscure branch of mathematics when he almost single-handedly made the giant leap forward from the Special theory to the all encompassing General theory of Relativity.

However, except for the British seafaring confirmation of bending of a distant star’s light rays by the gravity of the sun and explanation for the wobbling orbit of the Mercury, no easily confirmable event/ experiment was possible to generate interest in this theory; so mathematically complex, difficult to comprehend and far from commonplace to generate an interest among the general public. Its concepts were so outworldly, that it was nearly impossible to explain it in non-technical manner to a common man. It was remarked by Sir Arthur Eddington, the renowned British Astro-Physicist that apart from Einstein, only he understood it. It was another issue that Sir Eddington, like the worst colonial Master, suppressed the pioneering contribution to gravitational collapse; which comes by overpowering of the relative velocities between particles as caused by the working of the Pauli’s Exclusion Principle; as propounded by Subrahmanyam Chandrasekhar, which ultimately led to the understanding of the phenomenon of Black holes.

Subsequent to that and especially from the 1960s when Prof. Stephen Hawking formulated his famous Singularity Theorems, taking cue from the discovery of the well-known astronomer Sir Edwin Hubble, the word Big Bang generated lots of interest in the implications of the General Theory of Relativity among the Scientific community and then among the general public as well, on account of the philosophical & religious connotations - creation and destruction of the universe.

This led to many of the universities getting students and researchers on the difficult topic of general theory of relativity. Parallelly, there were the leaping growth in the understanding in and technological developments through Quantum Mechanics. Also there was the Nobel winning discovery of Prof. Salam and Steven Weinberg – of Unification of Weak Interaction with Electro - Magnetism. Meanwhile, remarkable improvements both in the capacity and versatility of Particle Accelerators and telescopes supplied lots of scientific data, confirmation of theories through experiment and knowledge of unusual objects and events in the depths of space or more precisely in space-time were available. This led to a sizable population of researchers, students, experimental scientists, science journalists and their readers as well as some superficial appreciation cum familiarity among the general public all over the world, even those who never have had a formal science education.

Therefore, all the scientific theories, most important and abstruse of them being the General Theory of Relativity, which were obscure and out of the reach of imagination of the layman, have started to melt now. Easier explanations, popular scientific essays, lectures, discourses, scientific documentaries of Discovery, National Geographic and BBC have brought such outworldly concepts to the drawing room and even to the roadside discussion corners in poor 3rd world countries.

Frontiers of Physics and frontiers of popular understanding of the remarkable recent developments of Physics are therefore in an interesting cat and mouse game now. Whereas physicists like Stephen Hawking and many others who have made similar path breaking contribution e.g. N=8 super gravity, heterotic superstrings, M-theory, p-branes some of them have also written best-sellers like “A Brief History of Time”, “Black holes & Baby universes” and “Quest for a Theory of Everything”. These helped popular understanding of such exotic ideas and whetted interests into the depths of such abstract concepts about the unperceivable world. This interaction sustains and strengthens the claims to the rightful existence of the profession called “Theoretical Physicist”.

The point of interest for this blogger is however, whether the layperson may contribute anything at all to this great mental expedition and adventure into the ultimate understanding of the deepest of the mysteries of existence, of being, of the universe. This expedition is perhaps no less challenging than those into the new worlds of America and unknown Africa by Columbus and Vasco-da-Gama.

The fruit of this mental venture as expected by the theoretical physicist of the day is the coveted “Theory of Everything”. This is supposed to explain and account for all that is meant by existence, of nature of being. It should answer the meaning and reasons of existence and coming into being of all forms of matter and energy, explain why it is as it is, as well as interactions between them and the mediums, of such interactions, what are all these made of etc.

It may not be very impractical to imagine that in such a grand cerebral venture, it is only the professional theoretical physicist who should be able to contribute just because of his training in mathematical tools of analysis and development of mathematical models for observed problems and phenomena whose quantitative relationships and dynamics have to be logically and precisely described.

The layman reader of modern developments in Physics may very well be able to think in a completely non-conventional way. It is because many of the path breaking concepts in unifying the too great but opposite theories in modern physics i.e. the General Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics depended more on the intuitive and imaginationary competence of the theoretical physicist. Just consider the concepts of imaginary time and the theory of p-branes. The importance of mathematical model building comes only next. It is here that perhaps the lay reader of popular physics literature may help - by suggesting intuitive new ideas and radically, in a maverick way going beyond the mind sets formed by hitherto achieved consistent mathematical tools and models. Surely most of the concepts or ideas forwarded by laymen would come unstuck. But even if one in a hundred opens a new vista, it would be a great tribute to the strenuous efforts made by the theoretical physicist in popularizing science.

If nothing, an explanation of how time spaces out or space times in (as proposed by this blogger in another piece on this topic) may contribute to making such difficult concepts, dwelling outside the realm of sense perception, more perceptible to lay reader of popular physics literature . It is another matter if such understanding and visualisation of extra-sense perception based concepts and explanations catalyse and finally culminate into new and novel concepts. This would help sustain interest in the developments of novel concepts in Physics. It brings ivory towers down to the level of understanding and appreciation. That generates popular support as now available to the kind of costly experimental projects in Physics like those of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This means prestige and social acceptability of research career in Theoretical Physics.

Prof Hawking is on record confirming that the received elaborate queries, comments and suggestions from his readers - for his books like the “Brief History of Time”, “Black Holes & Baby Universes” – about some of the most hard to digest concepts like “ imaginary time “ and “Hawking Radiation”. Emission from Black Holes - or in other words evaporation of Black Holes – is another case in point where he put accepted and well – ensconced theories on their heads. Queries from his readers must have helped him to be conceptually more clear and daring about these outworldly concepts. For ultimately every scientific theory has to be brought to the common people to sustain its further development by research.

“Imaginary time” was initially billed by Prof. Hawking as a mere mathematical trick (based on the well defined mathematical concept of imaginary numbers)

It was later on advertised by him as a great intellectual discovery of the order of that of Earth rotating around the sun. Here he cast doubts on the concepts of real time - time as we see in ordinary life – by exposing its limitations in executing the task of summing over histories. Clarity of concepts and liquefying complex ideas, which is therefore a two way process now must have become an important but rather unappreciated catalyst in developing new and path-breaking ideas in theoretical physics towards its quest for a “Theory of Everything”

Lastly but not the least, is the contribution that may possibly have come from science fiction writing and firing of imagination of its readers. Conceded, any novel imaginary idea of the Science fiction writer and its reader has to reach the professional scientist to give such a conception a proper theoretical shape and support of a mathematical model. It may not be out of place to recall that some very useful innovations of the modern space travel - fasteners of belts etc., came from Hollywood filming of science fictions.

To conclude, it appears that successful progress towards a “Theory of Everything” depends on an ever widening base of students and researchers where even the most abstruse and complex mathematical equations and formulations come intelligible with improved and easy to handle mathematical tools and techniques. Where an increasing population of laymen come to appreciate the most abstract and impercievable ideas as scientists and science journalists also work to bring such ideas to the common people. As common people understand the importance and support more and more of costly experiment machines like LHCs. Success of theoretical physics thus depends not just on scientific heroes like Prof Hawking but also their even - increasing no. of admirers.

[Softcopy generation by Ms. Dimple Tyagi; responsibility of all errors is however mine]