What's The Matter With Antimatter?
Can you imagine antiworlds and antipeople out there?
By:
Santhosh Mathew
Modern science has shown that matter and the material world is just one side of a coin. If our world is made of normal matter, it is equally logical to think of a world composed of antimatter.
Matter and energy are manifestation of the same underlying entity. In particle physics, every particle has a corresponding antiparticle. Particles — like electrons, protons and neutrons — make up ordinary matter, while their antiparticles — such as positrons (anti electrons), antiprotons and antineutrons — make up antimatter. Sequential logic allows us to imagine the existence of anti-entities, such as antiplanets or antihumans. However, the existence of antimatter is ruled out at least in this universe, because matter won over antimatter in the battle of existence that occurred 13.7 billion years ago in the Big Bang. The after-effect of that battle is the Cosmic Microwave Background (CBM) radiation, which is the first energy (light) formed in the universe as a result of the mutual annihilation of matter and antimatter.
Giant Twisters in the Lagoon Nebula
The physicist Stephen W Hawking noted in A Brief History of Time: “We now know that every particle has an antiparticle, with which it can annihilate. There could be whole antiworlds and antipeople made out of antiparticles. However, if you meet your antiself, don’t shake hands! You would both vanish in a great flash of light.”
This physical reality has expressions in mythology, religion and folklore as the epic battle between good and evil. In Hindu literature, the Devas govern the regions of heaven and are opposed by the demonic Asuras. In the cosmic struggle between the forces of order and chaos, Devas support humans who inhabit the earth. The conflict between Devas and Asuras is described in the myth of the churning of the “ocean of milk” (Palazhi) for treasures, including Amritha, which provides strength (energy) and immortality. This battle between matter and antimatter is an ongoing event, although science has not yet confirmed the subsistence of such conflicts beyond the early universe.
Standard cosmological theory suggests that the universe began with equal amounts of matter and antimatter, like the twins of Big Bang. However, in the early universe this super symmetry was broken for unknown reasons, leading to the dominance of matter in this universe. It is one of the unsolved mysteries in science, known as the Baryon asymmetry problem in physics. Assuming that there were equal amounts of matter and antimatter in the early universe, their mutual destruction would have caused the complete absence of any matter. The whole universe would have been filled with energy (light) created in that process.
BESS-Polar designed to search for antimatter shortly before
its launch on Dec 13, 2004 from Antarctica
One possible solution to this puzzle is that there are two universes, one with matter dominance (our universe), and the other with antimatter dominance, without any interaction between them. This explanation remains highly implausible in the scientific research of the last decades and none of the existing theories are capable of providing an explanation of the matter supremacy in our universe. The Large Hadron Collider at European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), could possibly shed some light into the broken symmetry in the early universe. CERN is striving to create antimatter in its Antiproton Decelerator, popularly known as antimatter factory, which plays a crucial role in the production and analysis of antiparticles and thus antimatter.
The Rig Veda, the ancient Hindu text, dwells on fundamental particles and forces of nature as it describes the creation of the universe from the remains of a gigantic primeval Cosmic Man. Creation happened gradually; the universe in its primitive form primarily spread homogeneously throughout the universe. The complete equilibrium and homogeneity, when broken, arose an inhomogeneous state of the primordial fluid.
“Which of these two came earlier, which came later?
How did they come to birth? Who, O Seers, can discern it?
They contain within them all that has a name,
while days and nights revolve as on a wheel.”
The Bullet Cluster has been used to search for the presence of antimatter leftover from the very early Universe.
The power of matter-energy transition was vividly on display in the detonation of the nuclear bomb in the New Mexico desert in 1945. On seeing the fireball and mushroom cloud, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan project, who had a deep interest in religion, Hinduism in particular, recalled a passage from the Bhagavad-Gita: “I am become death the destroyer of worlds. If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one.”
The matter-antimatter annihilation produces pure energy even more efficiently than nuclear fission or fusion. According to Einstein’s equation, E=mc2, the mutual annihilation of 1 kg each of matter and antimatter could produce energy equivalent to that of the most powerful nuclear bomb ever tested, which in turn uses hundreds of kilograms of nuclear material. This remarkable energy formation from nearly negligible amounts of matter is appealing to scientists and fiction writers alike, such in the 2009 movie Angels & Demons based on Dan Brown’s novel by the same name. “The fact that Angels & Demons is a best-selling novel and now a Hollywood movie gives us the opportunity to show how exciting the reality of antimatter research is,” says CERN Research Director Sergio Bertolucci.
Even though the existence of antimatter is well established, the biggest particle accelerators in the world have been able to create only a handful of anti particles. CERN and the U.S. government’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located in Batavia near Chicago, Illinois, have produced anti particles, including antihydrogen atoms, but not in any measurable quantities. The first antihydrogen atom was created at CERN in 1995. As of now, antimatter particles are considered to be the most expensive particles to produce, at an estimated cost of $62.5 trillion a gram. Given the cost of production and lack of storing techniques, these particles remain illusive, at least in the near future. But scientists are hopeful that in the coming years they will find ways to generate antimatter in larger quantities and develop advanced techniques to store this mysterious matter.
An artist’s concept of an antimatter engine.
Elusive as it remains, antimatter animates immense excitement in the scientific community. NASA is actively pursuing it as a possible source of future rocket fuel. Scientists envision an unlimited supply of energy from a small amount of material to propel rockets to planets and stars. The brain scanning procedure known as PET (Positron Emission Tomography) exploits the electron-positron annihilation to reveal the workings of the brain. The positron created by the radioactive decay process is used to annihilate an electron in the atom of the brain, rendering an image of the brain on the screen. Researchers are optimistic about the use of antiproton in tumor irradiation in the future.
Hydrogen atoms, being the most simple in structure (one proton and one electron), its antimatter antihydrogen (one anti proton and a positron) is the easiest antimatter to synthesize. The ATHENA (AnTiHydrogEN Apparatus) at CERN was an international collaboration to produce antihydrogen atoms at low temperature for experimental purposes. ATHENA has produced tens of thousands of anti hydrogen atoms. However, it was practically impossible to capture the antihydrogen atoms because of the high temperatures associated with them. The high energy antihydrogen atoms hit the wall of the experimental apparatus and annihilated with atoms of normal matter. The analysis of antihydrogen atoms would reveal the difference between matter and antimatter beyond theoretical assumptions and possibly validate the theories of the absence of antimatter in our universe. Though the ATHENA experiment came to an end in 2004, another ATRAP (Anti Hydrogen Trap) collaboration is still in operation. Its goal is to create antihydrogen at a lower temperature that can be trapped long enough to compare with ordinary hydrogen.
Cygnus Loop Supernova Blast Wave
If and when they succeed, it will be a tribute to the invocation by Paul Dirac, a pioneering quantum physicists, who predicted the possibility of anti particles for the first time in 1928: “Pick a flower on Earth and you move the farthest star.”
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Cosmic Parallels
Radical, new cosmological theories of multiverses, oscillating universe and the Big Bang have eerie parallels in Vedic cosmology.
(Article published in Little India Magazine-http://www.littleindia.com/news/135/ARTICLE/5474/2009-10-10.html)
“The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavors in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind.” — Albert Einstein
Perhaps one of the most exciting — and unsettling — concepts in modern cosmology is the theory that we inhabit a parallel universe. “There are vibrations of different universes right here, right now. We’re just not in tune with them. There are probably other parallel universes in our living room — this is modern physics. This is the modern interpretation of quantum theory, that many worlds represent reality,” says Michio Kaku, professor of theoretical physics at New York University and author of Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos.
Computer illustration of parallel universes.
Illustration: Cliff Pickover, www.pickover.com
Physicists hypothesize several levels of parallel universes. Max Tegmark, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, even envisions an infinite number of parallel universes: “In Infinite space, the most unlikely events must take place somewhere. People with the same appearance, name and memories as you, who play out every possible permutations of your life choices.”
The concept of parallel universes may be novel and disconcerting to scientists, but it rests very comfortably in ancient Hindu cosmology. The Puranas, Hindu religious texts thought to date back to between 500 B.C. to 1500 B.C., are replete with descriptions of many worlds whose inhabitants are ruled by kings in the human plane and gods in a higher plane. The many gods, in turn, belong to many different worlds and planes of existence. At the highest level of the hierarchy are the trinity, namely, Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesha, ruling the divine kingdoms. Brahma is the creator, who dreams the universe into being, which is maintained by Vishnu. What humans perceive as reality is in fact the dream of Brahma, misled by matter. Brahman (not to be confused with Brahma) is the ground of all reality and existence. Brahman is uncreated, external, infinite and all-embracing. It is the ultimate cause and goal of all that exists. All beings emanate from Brahman; all beings return back to the same source. Brahman is in all things and it is the true Self (atman) of all beings.
The Paingala Upanishad, another religious text, describes the many worlds created by Brahman: “With those quintuplicated elements he created endless cores of macrocosms and for each of these fourteen appropriate worlds and globular gross bodies fit for each planes of them all.”
Giant galaxy string. Image: NASA
In his best-selling series Cosmos, renowned astronomer Carl Sagan reflected on the parallels between modern cosmology and Hindu philosophy, noting: “Hindu religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond, no doubt, by accident, to those of modern scientific cosmology .… There is the deep and the appealing notion that the universe is but the dream of the god who after a 100 Brahma years dissolves himself into a dreamless sleep and the universe dissolves with him until after another Brahma century he starts recomposes himself and begins again the dream, the great cosmic lotus dream. Meanwhile, elsewhere there are an infinite number of other universes each with its own god dreaming the cosmic dream.”
Among the many universes envisioned by physicists, one exists in extra dimensions and might be physically very close to us. As creatures of a three-dimensional world, we may not perceive it. But scientists hope that these universes might drop some clues to help us identify them, like ripples in a pond help us locate the actual disturbance. Modern scientific theories of creation and the world of particle physics help us develop a picture of our cosmos, which might be just one of many possible universes.
Milky Way bar. Image: NASA
Observational evidence in support of parallel universes has come from NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). While analyzing the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation data, scientists discovered evidence of a huge void spanning almost one billion light years (1 light year is approximately 9.5 trillion kms). The void in the infant universe represents the absence of any material, which otherwise should have become stars and planets. None of the current cosmological theories can explain such huge voids in the data. Some physicists interpret this as the unmistakable imprint of another universe beyond the edge of our own. Physicist Mersini-Houghton and her colleagues have proposed a theory of entangled universes, under which they predict two huge voids, not just one. One of them has been found by WMAP data and they expect new data will reveal a second similar void. The recently launched Planck satellite by the European Space Agency, whose exceedingly sensitive detectors measure CMB radiation and which captured its first image in early September, may be able to ascertain this second void.
Vedic cosmology has scores of other eerie parallels with some of the most cutting edge recent cosmological theories of multiverse, oscillating universe, and the Big Bang, so it should come as no surprise that some of the greatest minds in science have turned to these 3,500-year-old cosmological ideas for inspiration and questions about our enigmatic universe. The Danish nuclear physicist and Nobel Prize winner Niels Bohr once wrote, “I go into the Upanishads to ask questions.”
Image of the dwarf galaxy NGC 1569 and IC 2163
Image: European Space Agency
Striking as these similarities are, it does not mean that modern science has vindicated Vedic cosmology. For one, these modern cosmological theories may themselves be disproved and besides, many physicists remain skeptical of these theories. Some cosmologists, for instance, question the whole notion of multiverse. According to them, if the universe encompasses everything we know or ever want to know, it rules out any room for parallel universes. Some other models suggest that universes are finite in number and restricted by mathematical formulations.
The idea that all structures that exist mathematically also exist physically is the foundation of the parallel universe concept. This hypothesis, known as the “ultimate ensemble,” predicts the existence of all universes that can be defined by mathematical equations. But many physicists disagree on the ground that all mathematical structures are not well defined.
Nevertheless, the concept of many worlds or parallel universes, which would have invited the ridicule of mainstream physicists, as it did when it was first proposed more than a half a century ago by U.S. physicist Hugh Everett, is currently one of the hottest trends in theoretical physics. The multiverse theory is the inevitable result of quantum mechanics, which represents a set of multiple “probable” states for a particle. When an observation is made, the particle chooses one of the multiple states measured by the observer and the other states collapse. This is the most basic principle behind the existence of many universes or multiverses.
Interacting Spiral Galaxies nGC 2207 and IC 2163
Image: NASA, ESA, STSCI.
Quantum physics, the study of the minutest particles that make up matter, has been remarkably successful, but it reveals a picture of a quantum reality so strange that our minds are unable to grasp it. For instance, quantum mechanical experiments have proved that objective reality is unlikely to have a separate existence. The nature of the ultimate reality is intertwined with our actions and uncertainty rules when we observe it. This is contrary to our common sense view that reality has an existence independent of the observer. In the realm of the smallest particles, however, objective reality is not an absolute entity that can be measured definitely as is true in classical physics.
Erwin Schrodinger, a leading theorist in quantum mechanics, who had a life-long interest in Vedanta philosophy, wrote: “What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space. Particles are just appearances. The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist.”
Pinwheel galaxy M10. Image: NASA
This is not very far removed from the concept of Brahman — the self-existent, immanent and transcendent supreme and ultimate reality. Brahman is the fundamental divine cause of everything in and beyond the universe. The nature of Brahman is explained as personal and impersonal and it is the source of creation of the universe and Gods. The universe and all the objects in it are the manifestation of a fundamental reality, which science doesn’t know yet. We understand the universe as an exchange of matter and energy and scientists often disagree about the fundamental building blocks of these phenomena.
The absence of objective reality implies that the material world could be an illusion — or, what Hindu sages call Maya. In Hinduism, Maya is the natural illusion that the material world is the only reality. It is a skewed perception, albeit commonly held, to believe that the material world is the fundamental reality. Maya, which has its roots in the Upanishads, denotes the power of God to make human beings believe in an illusion. The material world is the manifestation of Brahman, the infinite and immortal reality that is responsible for matter, energy, space, time and every being. The scriptures and philosophies seek to unveil the illusion to learn the ultimate truth.
Science employs its own methods and procedures toward that goal. Our universe and its subjects are creatures of spirit coated with matter that conceals the spirit from the light. Science can demonstrate its processes, is based on rationality and logic, and can be comprehended, but we are somewhat lost in the scheme of the ancient wisdom. Consider for example, this Upanishad expression, “That which permeates all, which nothing transcends and which, like the universal space around us, fills everything completely from within and without, that Supreme non-dual Brahman — That Thou Art.”
Whirlpool galaxy M51 Image: NASA, ESA
Our interpretations of the evolution of the cosmos, once based on myths and legends, have advanced markedly in the last century. We live in a universe that is beaming with billions of galaxies that are continuously expanding. We now know that this expansion is accelerating and we will never know what is beyond our cosmic horizon as no light will ever reach us from the expanding universe. It is ironic that we need many universes for the existence of our own universe.
The scientific approach always assumes that fundamental reality is different from us and we are independent observers seeking truth. But many researchers now believe that we must rethink this assumption. Our observation impacts the observed reality, because we are part of it. This essentially is the Adwaitha philosophy, a cornerstone of Hinduism, which asserts that Brahman (ultimate reality) and Atman (self) are the same. Such a non-dualistic approach is advocated by many modern researchers, who argue that the effect of observation either changes reality or creates new realities.
The Nataraja statute casts a shadow over the CERN, the European Organizationfor Nuclear Research, which has built the world’s largest particle collider. Photo: CERN
If a physical reality exists independent of human experience and that reality can only be expressed with our most logical language, mathematics, then observational science is not the only way to comprehend the ultimate mystery. This formulates the possible intersection of science, philosophy and ancient wisdom. Unlike the West, religion and science are not opposed fundamentally in Hindu traditions. Freeman Dyson, a theoretical physicist famous for his work in Quantum Field theory, says “Science and religion are two windows that people look through, trying to understand the big universe outside, trying to understand why we are here. The two windows give different views, but both look out at the same universe. Both views are one-sided, neither is complete. Both leave out essential features of the real world. And both are worthy of respect.”
Human eyes operate on the visible light of the electromagnetic spectrum, allowing us to view only objects that emit light, which comprise only a small fraction of the universe. In modern times, telescopes replaced the unaided eye in the hunt for the unknown. Operating from ground and space, these telescopes scan the cosmos to draw pictures of material objects. Even with telescopes, we exploit the electromagnetic radiation to weave images of the cosmos. Whether it is gamma rays, x-rays, microwaves or visible light, throughout human history we have been dependent upon different forms of light to learn of cosmic events, which document our own history. The early universe was not transparent to light, which implies that we can write the history of our cosmos only up to the point when the first light began its journey, long after the creation of the universe. Additionally, the interaction of light with matter distorts the details of the information it carries. However, unlike light, gravitational waves propagate through cosmos without reflection or refraction. That could potentially allow us to create a pure picture of the cosmos beyond the levels light allows us.
M101 Galaxy composite image. Image: NASA, ESA
The gravity wave detection is the objectives of LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory). Two of the biggest such interferometers in the United States — one in Hanford, Wash., and the other in Livingston, La. —are collectively called LIGO. These systems are sensitive enough to detect the ripples in the space-time fabric caused by cosmic events, such as supernova explosions, and transmitted by gravity waves. These waves carry the information of events, such as the explosion and collision of stars. It is estimated that by 2010, direct detection of gravity waves will be possible. Gravity is the weakest of all known forces in the nature and has confounded physicists for decades. Now string theorists believe that gravity may be leaking into parallel universes or other dimensions.
The Big Bang
The Big Bang, symbolizing the finite beginning of the infinite universe from a primordial hot and dense condition nearly 13.7 billion years ago, is presently the leading theory of the origin of the Cosmos, displacing another popular “steady state” model. The big bang theory is rooted in astronomer Edwin Hubble’s observations that the galaxies are expanding and moving away from each other. Evidence of the expansion was also found in the cosmic microwave background radiation captured by the Hubble Telescope in 2003. The big bang theory, formulated by George Gamow, still faces formidable challenges to meet the standards of science, but it is the best prevailing model for the universe’s origins.
Stars of the Galactic Center.
Image: Susan Stolovy SSC/Caltech
The Hymn of Creation (Nasadiya Sukta) in the Rig Veda, written around 1500 B.C., describes similar big bang origins of the universe:
“Then was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it.
What covered in, and where? And what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water?
Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal: no sign was there, the day’s and night’s divider.
That One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever.
Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness this all was indiscriminated chaos.
All that existed then was void and formless: by the great power of Warmth was born that Unit.”
(Translation by Ralph T.H. Griffith)
Grand Spiral Galaxy NGC 1232 Image: NSO
The discovery of the accelerating nature of universe’s expansion demands a force surpassing gravity and stretching the fabric of the cosmos. Physicists call it dark energy, and the big bang model predicts that the universe consists of 73% dark energy and 23% dark matter. Normal matter, which constitutes just four percent of the universe, makes up all the stars, planets and living and non-living things that are known to us. The Big Bang model needs dark energy to account for the current state of the universe, although scientists have no lucid explanation for it. In fact, scientists believe dark energy is the same as the cosmological constant originally introduced by Albert Einstein to counterbalance the gravitational attraction of matter in the universe. He later discarded the cosmological constant when Hubble’s observations proved the expansion of the universe. Now, modern cosmologists think Einstein’s cosmological constant holds the key to the accelerated expansion of the universe.
The cosmological constant is one of the biggest enigmas of modern cosmology. The comprehension of the cosmological constant might successfully explain repulsive dark energy. Two scenarios have been predicted for the distant future of the universe — the Big Rip or the Big Crunch. Depending on the critical density of the universe, these are the probable future of our cosmos. Either way, the current universe will end in trillions of years to come. That inevitable fate of the universe has led cosmologists to speculate on what follows the demise of our universe.
Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University and Neil Turok of Cambridge University recently proposed that the cosmological constant was once much larger, but that its value decayed with each manifestation of the universe. Their theory argues that the universe came into existence not just once, but in endless cycles of death and birth. Known as the “Cyclic Universe Theory,” it could explain the dark energy and its role in the acceleration of the universe. Because of endless cycles, the universe would be far older than the 13.7 billion years that scientists currently estimate. Steinhardt and Turok estimate that each cosmic cycle lasts about a trillion years. During this time, the universe runs its natural course, but all the while matter and energy fan out through space until they are extremely diluted. Once that happens, a cosmic collision follows, and each collision is essentially a new Big Bang that infuses the aging Universe with new matter and energy. In scientific terms, energy cannot be created or destroyed, but it can change forms and also matter-energy exchange is possible. When the current form of matter is destroyed, it can pave the way for a new form of matter or energy.
Some scientists speculate that the huge void in the WmaP satellite data (Infant Universe) is an indication of parallel universes. Image: NASA/WMAP
The metaphorical similarities between the newly proposed cyclic universe theory and Hindu cosmology are astounding. Hindus cosmology speaks about the universe being created, destroyed, and recreated in an eternally repetitive series of cycles. Brahma creates a new universe that would eventually be destroyed to begin another universe. According to Hindu cosmology, Brahma himself undergoes destruction after 100 Brahma years, 311 trillion years in the human scale, to pave the way for a new Brahma and thus a new universe. Gods are also subjected to the laws of nature and their lives occupy the cosmos in time scales that are comparable to the astronomical scales in such an oscillating universe.
For instance, Kalpa, which is a day in the life of Brahma, is 4.32 billion years, the estimated age of Earth. By contrast, the common time scales of the universe in both Western science and religion until just a century ago, were just a few thousand years, not the billions and trillions of years envisaged by Vedic cosmology. As another example, the Surya Siddhanta, an astronomy textbook from ancient India, computed the earth’s diameter as 7,840 miles, against the modern measurement of 7,909 miles. Similar calculations of the earth-moon distance of 253,000 miles is reasonably close to the current measured distance of 238,857 miles. Surya Siddhanta also provides close estimates of the diameters of five planets — Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. What makes these measurements especially striking is that they are believed to have been written between 600 B.C. to 1500 B.C. That is almost 3,000 years before Nicolaus Copernicus and Johannes Kepler revolutionized Western astronomy, just by shifting from an earth-centered universe to a sun centric one.
However, remarkable as these similarities are, there are also significant departures between Vedic and modern cosmology. The Sun’s diameter (32,500 miles, according to Surya Siddhanta) is far from the modern day value of 870,000 miles. Modern science postulates that organic molecules (matter) evolved to become life and consciousness, which is fundamentally different from Hindu philosophy’s approach that they cannot evolve from matter unless matter has the inherent potential to provide life and consciousness. Furthermore, the Big Bang model proposes that the mass-energy before the universe came into being was concentrated at a single point. The Vedas, by contrast, assert that in the beginning there was no mass-energy and it was a complete void. Even the cyclic model of the universe, while bearing some similarity to Hindu cosmology, is different. The ancient model says the cycles are independent, but modern cyclic theory assumes dependence.
Nevertheless, many modern cosmologists, awakened to the limits of observational sciences, are intrigued by the cosmological visions of the Vedas and the Upanishads, even though we don’t understand the processes that yielded their cosmic insights. Perhaps the strongest symbolic acknowledgment of the parallels between modern and Vedic cosmology is reflected in the Natraja statue outside CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which has built the world largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), 17 miles in circumference, capable of shooting particles at 99.9999% the speed of light, on the France Switzerland border. When the collider becomes fully operational in 2010, it will look for the Higgs Boson, often referred to as “God’s particle,” which is suspected to be responsible for determining the mass of a material object.The fundamental particles are mainly classified into two Fermions ( a reference to Enrico Fermi,who conducted the first nuclear chain reaction that led to the development of first nuclear bomb) and Bosons (a reference to S.N Bose, the Indian physicist who published his findings with Einstein in 1924, now known as Bose-Einstein statistics). Bosons play a crucial role of interaction between different fermions to create normal matter.
The 6 feet Natraja statue gifted to CERN in 2004 by the Indian government depicts Shiva’s dance of creation and destruction, not unlike the dance of fundamental particles that generate and destruct, manifesting the interchangeable nature of matter and energy in the universe.
A plaque next to the Shiva statue captures the modern significance of the metaphor of Shiva’s cosmic dance from Fritjof Capra’s best-seller The Tao of Physics: “Modern physics has shown that the rhythm of creation and destruction is not only manifest in the turn of the seasons and in the birth and death of all living creatures, but is also the very essence of inorganic matter and for the modern physicists, then, Shiva’s dance is the dance of subatomic matter. Hundreds of years ago, Indian artists created different forms of visual images of dancing Shiva in a beautiful series of bronzes. In our time, physicists have used the most advanced technology to portray the patterns of the cosmic dance. The metaphor of the cosmic dance thus unifies ancient mythology, religious art and modern physics.”
Dreams of Forever
Whatever awe one experiences at the vast expanse of the night sky, it is difficult for the human mind to comprehend the scale of the universe.
The sun, the star at the center of our solar system, is almost 93 million miles away. It takes light from the sun 8 minutes to reach us, so the sun we see is actually the way it was 8 minutes earlier. The sun dominates our solar system, accounting for 99.86 percent of its mass. 1.3 million earth’s could fit inside the sun, whose diameter of 870,000 miles is 110 times that of earth.
But even the sun and our solar system are a faint dust in the vastness of the universe, which is infinite in volume, populated with 100 billion galaxies, each with trillions of stars in the observable universe alone.
The distances are so vast that astronomers represent them in light years, equivalent to 5.9 trillion miles, the distance covered by light, the fastest permissible speed, in one year. A typical galaxy is 30,000 light years in diameter and is separated from its nearest neighbor by 3 million light years. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is 100,000 light years in diameter and the closest galaxy to us is 2.5 million light years away. It would take us 100,000 years traveling at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second to traverse our galaxy edge to edge.
Cosmologists believe our universe originated 13.73 billion years ago with a Big Bang, although newer oscillating theories of the universe postulate that the Big Bang was only the most recent recreation of the universe, which has been through countless cycles of births and destruction over trillions of years.
(Article published in Little India Magazine-http://www.littleindia.com/news/135/ARTICLE/5474/2009-10-10.html)
“The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavors in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind.” — Albert Einstein
Perhaps one of the most exciting — and unsettling — concepts in modern cosmology is the theory that we inhabit a parallel universe. “There are vibrations of different universes right here, right now. We’re just not in tune with them. There are probably other parallel universes in our living room — this is modern physics. This is the modern interpretation of quantum theory, that many worlds represent reality,” says Michio Kaku, professor of theoretical physics at New York University and author of Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos.
Computer illustration of parallel universes.
Illustration: Cliff Pickover, www.pickover.com
Physicists hypothesize several levels of parallel universes. Max Tegmark, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, even envisions an infinite number of parallel universes: “In Infinite space, the most unlikely events must take place somewhere. People with the same appearance, name and memories as you, who play out every possible permutations of your life choices.”
The concept of parallel universes may be novel and disconcerting to scientists, but it rests very comfortably in ancient Hindu cosmology. The Puranas, Hindu religious texts thought to date back to between 500 B.C. to 1500 B.C., are replete with descriptions of many worlds whose inhabitants are ruled by kings in the human plane and gods in a higher plane. The many gods, in turn, belong to many different worlds and planes of existence. At the highest level of the hierarchy are the trinity, namely, Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesha, ruling the divine kingdoms. Brahma is the creator, who dreams the universe into being, which is maintained by Vishnu. What humans perceive as reality is in fact the dream of Brahma, misled by matter. Brahman (not to be confused with Brahma) is the ground of all reality and existence. Brahman is uncreated, external, infinite and all-embracing. It is the ultimate cause and goal of all that exists. All beings emanate from Brahman; all beings return back to the same source. Brahman is in all things and it is the true Self (atman) of all beings.
The Paingala Upanishad, another religious text, describes the many worlds created by Brahman: “With those quintuplicated elements he created endless cores of macrocosms and for each of these fourteen appropriate worlds and globular gross bodies fit for each planes of them all.”
Giant galaxy string. Image: NASA
In his best-selling series Cosmos, renowned astronomer Carl Sagan reflected on the parallels between modern cosmology and Hindu philosophy, noting: “Hindu religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond, no doubt, by accident, to those of modern scientific cosmology .… There is the deep and the appealing notion that the universe is but the dream of the god who after a 100 Brahma years dissolves himself into a dreamless sleep and the universe dissolves with him until after another Brahma century he starts recomposes himself and begins again the dream, the great cosmic lotus dream. Meanwhile, elsewhere there are an infinite number of other universes each with its own god dreaming the cosmic dream.”
Among the many universes envisioned by physicists, one exists in extra dimensions and might be physically very close to us. As creatures of a three-dimensional world, we may not perceive it. But scientists hope that these universes might drop some clues to help us identify them, like ripples in a pond help us locate the actual disturbance. Modern scientific theories of creation and the world of particle physics help us develop a picture of our cosmos, which might be just one of many possible universes.
Milky Way bar. Image: NASA
Observational evidence in support of parallel universes has come from NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). While analyzing the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation data, scientists discovered evidence of a huge void spanning almost one billion light years (1 light year is approximately 9.5 trillion kms). The void in the infant universe represents the absence of any material, which otherwise should have become stars and planets. None of the current cosmological theories can explain such huge voids in the data. Some physicists interpret this as the unmistakable imprint of another universe beyond the edge of our own. Physicist Mersini-Houghton and her colleagues have proposed a theory of entangled universes, under which they predict two huge voids, not just one. One of them has been found by WMAP data and they expect new data will reveal a second similar void. The recently launched Planck satellite by the European Space Agency, whose exceedingly sensitive detectors measure CMB radiation and which captured its first image in early September, may be able to ascertain this second void.
Vedic cosmology has scores of other eerie parallels with some of the most cutting edge recent cosmological theories of multiverse, oscillating universe, and the Big Bang, so it should come as no surprise that some of the greatest minds in science have turned to these 3,500-year-old cosmological ideas for inspiration and questions about our enigmatic universe. The Danish nuclear physicist and Nobel Prize winner Niels Bohr once wrote, “I go into the Upanishads to ask questions.”
Image of the dwarf galaxy NGC 1569 and IC 2163
Image: European Space Agency
Striking as these similarities are, it does not mean that modern science has vindicated Vedic cosmology. For one, these modern cosmological theories may themselves be disproved and besides, many physicists remain skeptical of these theories. Some cosmologists, for instance, question the whole notion of multiverse. According to them, if the universe encompasses everything we know or ever want to know, it rules out any room for parallel universes. Some other models suggest that universes are finite in number and restricted by mathematical formulations.
The idea that all structures that exist mathematically also exist physically is the foundation of the parallel universe concept. This hypothesis, known as the “ultimate ensemble,” predicts the existence of all universes that can be defined by mathematical equations. But many physicists disagree on the ground that all mathematical structures are not well defined.
Nevertheless, the concept of many worlds or parallel universes, which would have invited the ridicule of mainstream physicists, as it did when it was first proposed more than a half a century ago by U.S. physicist Hugh Everett, is currently one of the hottest trends in theoretical physics. The multiverse theory is the inevitable result of quantum mechanics, which represents a set of multiple “probable” states for a particle. When an observation is made, the particle chooses one of the multiple states measured by the observer and the other states collapse. This is the most basic principle behind the existence of many universes or multiverses.
Interacting Spiral Galaxies nGC 2207 and IC 2163
Image: NASA, ESA, STSCI.
Quantum physics, the study of the minutest particles that make up matter, has been remarkably successful, but it reveals a picture of a quantum reality so strange that our minds are unable to grasp it. For instance, quantum mechanical experiments have proved that objective reality is unlikely to have a separate existence. The nature of the ultimate reality is intertwined with our actions and uncertainty rules when we observe it. This is contrary to our common sense view that reality has an existence independent of the observer. In the realm of the smallest particles, however, objective reality is not an absolute entity that can be measured definitely as is true in classical physics.
Erwin Schrodinger, a leading theorist in quantum mechanics, who had a life-long interest in Vedanta philosophy, wrote: “What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space. Particles are just appearances. The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist.”
Pinwheel galaxy M10. Image: NASA
This is not very far removed from the concept of Brahman — the self-existent, immanent and transcendent supreme and ultimate reality. Brahman is the fundamental divine cause of everything in and beyond the universe. The nature of Brahman is explained as personal and impersonal and it is the source of creation of the universe and Gods. The universe and all the objects in it are the manifestation of a fundamental reality, which science doesn’t know yet. We understand the universe as an exchange of matter and energy and scientists often disagree about the fundamental building blocks of these phenomena.
The absence of objective reality implies that the material world could be an illusion — or, what Hindu sages call Maya. In Hinduism, Maya is the natural illusion that the material world is the only reality. It is a skewed perception, albeit commonly held, to believe that the material world is the fundamental reality. Maya, which has its roots in the Upanishads, denotes the power of God to make human beings believe in an illusion. The material world is the manifestation of Brahman, the infinite and immortal reality that is responsible for matter, energy, space, time and every being. The scriptures and philosophies seek to unveil the illusion to learn the ultimate truth.
Science employs its own methods and procedures toward that goal. Our universe and its subjects are creatures of spirit coated with matter that conceals the spirit from the light. Science can demonstrate its processes, is based on rationality and logic, and can be comprehended, but we are somewhat lost in the scheme of the ancient wisdom. Consider for example, this Upanishad expression, “That which permeates all, which nothing transcends and which, like the universal space around us, fills everything completely from within and without, that Supreme non-dual Brahman — That Thou Art.”
Whirlpool galaxy M51 Image: NASA, ESA
Our interpretations of the evolution of the cosmos, once based on myths and legends, have advanced markedly in the last century. We live in a universe that is beaming with billions of galaxies that are continuously expanding. We now know that this expansion is accelerating and we will never know what is beyond our cosmic horizon as no light will ever reach us from the expanding universe. It is ironic that we need many universes for the existence of our own universe.
The scientific approach always assumes that fundamental reality is different from us and we are independent observers seeking truth. But many researchers now believe that we must rethink this assumption. Our observation impacts the observed reality, because we are part of it. This essentially is the Adwaitha philosophy, a cornerstone of Hinduism, which asserts that Brahman (ultimate reality) and Atman (self) are the same. Such a non-dualistic approach is advocated by many modern researchers, who argue that the effect of observation either changes reality or creates new realities.
The Nataraja statute casts a shadow over the CERN, the European Organizationfor Nuclear Research, which has built the world’s largest particle collider. Photo: CERN
If a physical reality exists independent of human experience and that reality can only be expressed with our most logical language, mathematics, then observational science is not the only way to comprehend the ultimate mystery. This formulates the possible intersection of science, philosophy and ancient wisdom. Unlike the West, religion and science are not opposed fundamentally in Hindu traditions. Freeman Dyson, a theoretical physicist famous for his work in Quantum Field theory, says “Science and religion are two windows that people look through, trying to understand the big universe outside, trying to understand why we are here. The two windows give different views, but both look out at the same universe. Both views are one-sided, neither is complete. Both leave out essential features of the real world. And both are worthy of respect.”
Human eyes operate on the visible light of the electromagnetic spectrum, allowing us to view only objects that emit light, which comprise only a small fraction of the universe. In modern times, telescopes replaced the unaided eye in the hunt for the unknown. Operating from ground and space, these telescopes scan the cosmos to draw pictures of material objects. Even with telescopes, we exploit the electromagnetic radiation to weave images of the cosmos. Whether it is gamma rays, x-rays, microwaves or visible light, throughout human history we have been dependent upon different forms of light to learn of cosmic events, which document our own history. The early universe was not transparent to light, which implies that we can write the history of our cosmos only up to the point when the first light began its journey, long after the creation of the universe. Additionally, the interaction of light with matter distorts the details of the information it carries. However, unlike light, gravitational waves propagate through cosmos without reflection or refraction. That could potentially allow us to create a pure picture of the cosmos beyond the levels light allows us.
M101 Galaxy composite image. Image: NASA, ESA
The gravity wave detection is the objectives of LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory). Two of the biggest such interferometers in the United States — one in Hanford, Wash., and the other in Livingston, La. —are collectively called LIGO. These systems are sensitive enough to detect the ripples in the space-time fabric caused by cosmic events, such as supernova explosions, and transmitted by gravity waves. These waves carry the information of events, such as the explosion and collision of stars. It is estimated that by 2010, direct detection of gravity waves will be possible. Gravity is the weakest of all known forces in the nature and has confounded physicists for decades. Now string theorists believe that gravity may be leaking into parallel universes or other dimensions.
The Big Bang
The Big Bang, symbolizing the finite beginning of the infinite universe from a primordial hot and dense condition nearly 13.7 billion years ago, is presently the leading theory of the origin of the Cosmos, displacing another popular “steady state” model. The big bang theory is rooted in astronomer Edwin Hubble’s observations that the galaxies are expanding and moving away from each other. Evidence of the expansion was also found in the cosmic microwave background radiation captured by the Hubble Telescope in 2003. The big bang theory, formulated by George Gamow, still faces formidable challenges to meet the standards of science, but it is the best prevailing model for the universe’s origins.
Stars of the Galactic Center.
Image: Susan Stolovy SSC/Caltech
The Hymn of Creation (Nasadiya Sukta) in the Rig Veda, written around 1500 B.C., describes similar big bang origins of the universe:
“Then was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it.
What covered in, and where? And what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water?
Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal: no sign was there, the day’s and night’s divider.
That One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever.
Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness this all was indiscriminated chaos.
All that existed then was void and formless: by the great power of Warmth was born that Unit.”
(Translation by Ralph T.H. Griffith)
Grand Spiral Galaxy NGC 1232 Image: NSO
The discovery of the accelerating nature of universe’s expansion demands a force surpassing gravity and stretching the fabric of the cosmos. Physicists call it dark energy, and the big bang model predicts that the universe consists of 73% dark energy and 23% dark matter. Normal matter, which constitutes just four percent of the universe, makes up all the stars, planets and living and non-living things that are known to us. The Big Bang model needs dark energy to account for the current state of the universe, although scientists have no lucid explanation for it. In fact, scientists believe dark energy is the same as the cosmological constant originally introduced by Albert Einstein to counterbalance the gravitational attraction of matter in the universe. He later discarded the cosmological constant when Hubble’s observations proved the expansion of the universe. Now, modern cosmologists think Einstein’s cosmological constant holds the key to the accelerated expansion of the universe.
The cosmological constant is one of the biggest enigmas of modern cosmology. The comprehension of the cosmological constant might successfully explain repulsive dark energy. Two scenarios have been predicted for the distant future of the universe — the Big Rip or the Big Crunch. Depending on the critical density of the universe, these are the probable future of our cosmos. Either way, the current universe will end in trillions of years to come. That inevitable fate of the universe has led cosmologists to speculate on what follows the demise of our universe.
Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University and Neil Turok of Cambridge University recently proposed that the cosmological constant was once much larger, but that its value decayed with each manifestation of the universe. Their theory argues that the universe came into existence not just once, but in endless cycles of death and birth. Known as the “Cyclic Universe Theory,” it could explain the dark energy and its role in the acceleration of the universe. Because of endless cycles, the universe would be far older than the 13.7 billion years that scientists currently estimate. Steinhardt and Turok estimate that each cosmic cycle lasts about a trillion years. During this time, the universe runs its natural course, but all the while matter and energy fan out through space until they are extremely diluted. Once that happens, a cosmic collision follows, and each collision is essentially a new Big Bang that infuses the aging Universe with new matter and energy. In scientific terms, energy cannot be created or destroyed, but it can change forms and also matter-energy exchange is possible. When the current form of matter is destroyed, it can pave the way for a new form of matter or energy.
Some scientists speculate that the huge void in the WmaP satellite data (Infant Universe) is an indication of parallel universes. Image: NASA/WMAP
The metaphorical similarities between the newly proposed cyclic universe theory and Hindu cosmology are astounding. Hindus cosmology speaks about the universe being created, destroyed, and recreated in an eternally repetitive series of cycles. Brahma creates a new universe that would eventually be destroyed to begin another universe. According to Hindu cosmology, Brahma himself undergoes destruction after 100 Brahma years, 311 trillion years in the human scale, to pave the way for a new Brahma and thus a new universe. Gods are also subjected to the laws of nature and their lives occupy the cosmos in time scales that are comparable to the astronomical scales in such an oscillating universe.
For instance, Kalpa, which is a day in the life of Brahma, is 4.32 billion years, the estimated age of Earth. By contrast, the common time scales of the universe in both Western science and religion until just a century ago, were just a few thousand years, not the billions and trillions of years envisaged by Vedic cosmology. As another example, the Surya Siddhanta, an astronomy textbook from ancient India, computed the earth’s diameter as 7,840 miles, against the modern measurement of 7,909 miles. Similar calculations of the earth-moon distance of 253,000 miles is reasonably close to the current measured distance of 238,857 miles. Surya Siddhanta also provides close estimates of the diameters of five planets — Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. What makes these measurements especially striking is that they are believed to have been written between 600 B.C. to 1500 B.C. That is almost 3,000 years before Nicolaus Copernicus and Johannes Kepler revolutionized Western astronomy, just by shifting from an earth-centered universe to a sun centric one.
However, remarkable as these similarities are, there are also significant departures between Vedic and modern cosmology. The Sun’s diameter (32,500 miles, according to Surya Siddhanta) is far from the modern day value of 870,000 miles. Modern science postulates that organic molecules (matter) evolved to become life and consciousness, which is fundamentally different from Hindu philosophy’s approach that they cannot evolve from matter unless matter has the inherent potential to provide life and consciousness. Furthermore, the Big Bang model proposes that the mass-energy before the universe came into being was concentrated at a single point. The Vedas, by contrast, assert that in the beginning there was no mass-energy and it was a complete void. Even the cyclic model of the universe, while bearing some similarity to Hindu cosmology, is different. The ancient model says the cycles are independent, but modern cyclic theory assumes dependence.
Nevertheless, many modern cosmologists, awakened to the limits of observational sciences, are intrigued by the cosmological visions of the Vedas and the Upanishads, even though we don’t understand the processes that yielded their cosmic insights. Perhaps the strongest symbolic acknowledgment of the parallels between modern and Vedic cosmology is reflected in the Natraja statue outside CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which has built the world largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), 17 miles in circumference, capable of shooting particles at 99.9999% the speed of light, on the France Switzerland border. When the collider becomes fully operational in 2010, it will look for the Higgs Boson, often referred to as “God’s particle,” which is suspected to be responsible for determining the mass of a material object.The fundamental particles are mainly classified into two Fermions ( a reference to Enrico Fermi,who conducted the first nuclear chain reaction that led to the development of first nuclear bomb) and Bosons (a reference to S.N Bose, the Indian physicist who published his findings with Einstein in 1924, now known as Bose-Einstein statistics). Bosons play a crucial role of interaction between different fermions to create normal matter.
The 6 feet Natraja statue gifted to CERN in 2004 by the Indian government depicts Shiva’s dance of creation and destruction, not unlike the dance of fundamental particles that generate and destruct, manifesting the interchangeable nature of matter and energy in the universe.
A plaque next to the Shiva statue captures the modern significance of the metaphor of Shiva’s cosmic dance from Fritjof Capra’s best-seller The Tao of Physics: “Modern physics has shown that the rhythm of creation and destruction is not only manifest in the turn of the seasons and in the birth and death of all living creatures, but is also the very essence of inorganic matter and for the modern physicists, then, Shiva’s dance is the dance of subatomic matter. Hundreds of years ago, Indian artists created different forms of visual images of dancing Shiva in a beautiful series of bronzes. In our time, physicists have used the most advanced technology to portray the patterns of the cosmic dance. The metaphor of the cosmic dance thus unifies ancient mythology, religious art and modern physics.”
Dreams of Forever
Whatever awe one experiences at the vast expanse of the night sky, it is difficult for the human mind to comprehend the scale of the universe.
The sun, the star at the center of our solar system, is almost 93 million miles away. It takes light from the sun 8 minutes to reach us, so the sun we see is actually the way it was 8 minutes earlier. The sun dominates our solar system, accounting for 99.86 percent of its mass. 1.3 million earth’s could fit inside the sun, whose diameter of 870,000 miles is 110 times that of earth.
But even the sun and our solar system are a faint dust in the vastness of the universe, which is infinite in volume, populated with 100 billion galaxies, each with trillions of stars in the observable universe alone.
The distances are so vast that astronomers represent them in light years, equivalent to 5.9 trillion miles, the distance covered by light, the fastest permissible speed, in one year. A typical galaxy is 30,000 light years in diameter and is separated from its nearest neighbor by 3 million light years. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is 100,000 light years in diameter and the closest galaxy to us is 2.5 million light years away. It would take us 100,000 years traveling at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second to traverse our galaxy edge to edge.
Cosmologists believe our universe originated 13.73 billion years ago with a Big Bang, although newer oscillating theories of the universe postulate that the Big Bang was only the most recent recreation of the universe, which has been through countless cycles of births and destruction over trillions of years.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Dark Forces
Hubble Space Telescope image of the galaxy cluster Cl 0024+17 superimposed with a blue map showing the cluster's dark matter distribution.Image Credits: NASA, ESA, M.J. Jee and H. Ford (Johns Hopkins University).
The puzzles of the universe seem to be never ending. The universe is sprinting and the dark energy is forcing the galaxies apart to accelerate the expansion. The dark matter outweighs the ordinary matter. To make matters worse, scientists have no idea about the origins of the dark energy or dark matter.HST, with its determined eyes scanning space had some clues, if not a complete answer. Dark energy was discovered a decade ago by two independent studies on the expansion of the universe. One study was led by Adam Riess of The Space Telescope Institute and John Hopkins University. It is mathematically equivalent to cosmological constant, introduced by Albert Einstein to balance the universe from collapsing under the pull of gravity (However, Einstein removed the constant once the expansion of the universe was discovered by Edwin Hubble). Riess used the HST data to improve the value of the expansion rate of the universe (Hubble constant) to an accuracy of three percent. Ironically, this implies that the dark energy, as Einstein assumed is steadily pushing the fabric of the universe. Riess and other researchers would eventually like to see the Hubble constant refined to a value with an error of no more than one percent, to put even tighter constraints on solutions to dark energy. Science is closing in to comprehend one of the most baffling concepts of modern day Astronomy.
Scientists estimate that 74% of the universe is dark energy, 22% is dark matter leaving the remaining 4% to account for all the galaxies and the intergalactic medium, known as normal matter. In the absence of the dark matter, this ordinary matter would fly apart, because the gravity of the normal matter cannot withstand the never ending assault of the dark energy. The search for the dark matter is a “ghost hunt’ as it is not detectable directly. However, the effect of dark matter is measurable through something called gravitational lensing. This is a technique that utilizes the fact that the light bends in the presence of a strong gravitational field. The HST has observed strong gravitational lensing in different galaxy clusters, which underlines the presence of dark matter as predicted theoretically by the Astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky in 1933. While studying the dwarf galaxies, HST provided strong evidences for the presence of dark matter. Hubble’s sharp view penetrated the cosmos to see that large number of small galaxies remain intact, even as the bigger galaxies around them are being ripped apart by the gravitational force of other galaxies in the cluster. The halo of the dark matter protect them like an invisible shield from the assault of gravitational tug of war going on inside the clusters for several billions of years.
“We were surprised to find so many dwarf galaxies in the core of this cluster that were so smooth and round and had no evidence at all of any kind of disturbance. They must be very, very dark-matter-dominated galaxies.” says Astronomer Christopher Conselice, currently the principal investigator of the HST survey. The halo of the dark matter protects the dwarf galaxies like a shield, from the sword of gravitational forces that emerge from the big galaxies.
Kingdoms of Heaven
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field showing thousands of Galaxies in a small region of our Cosmos.
Credit: S. Beckwith & the HUDF Working Group (STScI), HST, ESA, NASA
While answering a question in the backdrop of his conflict with the Catholic Church, Galileo once declared, “Bible teaches how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.”
The heavens narrate their stories in a distinct manner and allow humans to discern the mystery of its creation and evolution. Up to now, humans can accomplish this only through the decoding of light. This is because light is a messenger that can convey the untold chronicles of the cosmos, which has been a great source of myths and legends ever since the beginning of humankind. For the ancients, the heavens were the citadel of gods who visited them for various reasons and often punished them with fiery objects. The naked eyes had been the only means to investigate the elements of the Cosmos, and it has changed forever in 1609 AD. Galileo, the father of modern astronomy, developed a new scientific world when he used the power of the telescope to know the heavens. He narrated the accounts of his observation in “the starry messenger” published in 1610 AD.
Telescopes are often referred to as time machines as they escort us back in time. When we peep at a star or any other object a few million light years away, we are in fact seeing that object as it existed a few million years ago. Since Galileo’s first use of the telescope, scientists have been improving the power of telescopes to gaze the unfathomable universe and see how the heavens go. Now, 400 years after the Galilean adventure, the modern astronomers are on the verge of investigating the frontiers of the known universe. A variety of telescopes, operating from ground and space, aid them in this process. If the Galilean ‘spy glasses’ were able to reach just the backyard of our galactic neighborhood, the modern era telescopes take us to closer to the moments of creation known as the Big Bang.
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is the most advanced and sensitive telescope ever deployed in space to accelerate the pursuit of the unknown regions of the cosmos. Named after the American Astronomer Edwin Hubble, whose observations in the 1920’s supported the theory of the expanding universe, HST has been in action for the last nineteen years. Since the launch in 1990, most of its original instruments have been upgraded or replaced. The latest and last repair mission was conducted in May, 2009, extending the life span of the telescope for another five years. The instruments on the telescope can observe the edges of the universe in visible light, ultraviolet and infrared ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum. HST, located at about 565km above the earth’s surface with an approximate size of a school bus, completes one full orbit around the earth in 97 minutes. The website devoted to HST (http://hubblesite.org) provides every detail and discoveries of the telescope, and enable the public to track every moment of its voyage.
In addition to the many startling discoveries, HST images became the art work of the cosmos. Furthermore, some existing theories of the universe are overwhelmed by the HST data and they need to be rewritten in the light of the new information. The Hubble Ultra Deep Field or HUDF, completed in 2004, is an image of a small region of space created using HST data accumulated over a period of four months. During this period, Hubble’s 2.4 diameter mirror is turned on to the same spot of the sky to accumulate enough light from the faint galaxies fading away from us. This is the deepest image of the cosmos ever taken by mankind and the most distant objects that could be seen so far. In fact, some of these objects date back to the baby universe, approximately 13 billion years ago, when the galaxies are just forming from the seeds of Big Bang. The image contains an estimated 10,000 galaxies in different shapes and sizes. Each of these galaxies may contain billions of stars and many possible planetary systems. This image will be used to analyze the galaxies that existed between 400 and 800 million years after the creation of the Universe, much before our milky way was even formed. Scientists looking at that image were perplexed at the mere existence of such large number galaxies, and some called it “Kingdoms of Heaven.”
The astounding display of matter and energy is the manifestation of the universe as it evolves. The mysteries of its creation and existence are reaching out to us in the form of light energy. The HST has done more than any other modern telescope to garner that energy, so that scientists could carve the history of the universe for generations to come. Edwin Hubble observed and measured the departure of galaxies using a technique known as the red shift in physics. Now we know that the galaxies not only depart from each other but their exodus is accelerated by the inexplicable dark energy. If our current conception of the universe is correct, in the far future, our own Milky Way galaxy will be left alone in the galactic playground with other galaxies that have receded to the unknown corners of the cosmos. The finite speed of light cannot overcome the infinite space that would be created among the galaxies due to the accelerating nature of their retreat. This scenario would lead future generations to assume that their galaxy and universe are the same. If preserved, the Hubble images might help them during that time of ultimate isolation!
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
MOTHER OF ALL BATTLES
Figure-(http://livefromcern.web.cern.ch/livefromcern/antimatter/)
The battle between good and evil is the theme of every mythology, religion and folklore. Even the modern human history is interpreted in a similar way, though it is often hard to recognize who is who. Probably, it is an inherent human engineering aspect that we wish to see everything in pairs with contrast. We have plenty of such pairs as in ‘Good and Evil’, ‘God and Satan’-the list continues. Not only have we graciously accepted the existence of these pairs in contrast, we also would like to see the ‘good’ to win over the ‘evil’. It seems like the most logical thought of humankind, Science, is also not an exception. In particle physics, “every particle has a corresponding antiparticle”. While the particles like electrons, protons and neutrons make the ordinary matter, their antiparticles such as positrons, antiproton and antineutron make antimatter. So it is logically sequential to imagine about the existence of any anti- entity such as antiplanet or antihuman. However, the existence of any such anti matter is ruled out at least in this Universe, because expectedly, yet surprisingly the matter won over the antimatter in the battle of existence that occurred 13.7 billion years ago. The after of effect of that battle is what we call CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background radiation) , which established ‘Big Bang’ as the most acceptable theory for the origin of the Universe.
‘Angels and Demons’ is a movie released in 2009, based on Dan Brown’s novel by the same name. The mystery novel depicts the life of a secret group called Illuminati. Portrayed in the background of the historic conflict between Science and Religion, the novel describes the efforts of Illuminati to destroy Vatican City using antimatter, for revenging the atrocities carried out on them by the Catholic Church. Even though the existence of antimatter is true, the biggest particle accelerators in the world have been able to create only handful of anti particles. In fact, CERN and Femi Lab have produced anti particles including the anti-hydrogen atoms, but that is not even close to any measurable amount. As of now, the antimatter particles are considered to be the most expensive particles to produce, with the cost estimated to be $62.5 trillion a gram. Given the cost of production and the non-existent storing techniques, these particles would linger as almost illusive, at least for the near future. Yet, the word antimatter provokes excitement in both science and fiction.
The matter-antimatter annihilation produces pure energy in the most efficient way known to us. This remarkable energy formation from a nearly negligible amount of matter is the main cause of its appeal to the real world and also to the fiction writers. According to Einstein’s equation, E=mc^2, the mutual annihilation of 1 kg of each matter and antimatter can produce the energy which is equivalent to that of the most powerful nuclear bomb ever tested, that in turn uses hundreds of kilograms of nuclear material. This claim is based on the experimental evidence that the electron and its antiparticle positron annihilate each other resulting in the production of energy, mainly in the form of gamma rays. However, the mutual annihilation of heavier particles like protons and its anti particle (anti proton) is more complicated as it produces exotic particles like neutrinos along with energy production. Contrary to popular belief, the energy production of matter-antimatter annihilation is a more complex phenomenon than the relatively straight forward annihilation of electron-positron pair.
The practical complications involved in harnessing the energy from the matter-antimatter annihilation have never dispirited the scientists in their hunt for this rather magical energy. In fact, NASA has been actively pursuing this technique of energy production as a possible future rocket fuel. They envision an unlimited supply of energy from such a small amount of material that could propel the rockets to planets and stars, much beyond our destinations of the past. The future mars mission plan of NASA would depend on this, though currently it is a hypothetical situation. Please see the link:
http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/home/antimatter_spaceship.html
The brain scanning procedure known as PET (Positron Emission Tomography) employs the electron-positron annihilation to reveal the workings of the brain. This illustrates that the existence of antiparticles is not only just true, but we can even control and direct this energy for our advantage. The positron created by radioactive decay process is used to annihilate an electron in the atom of the brain and thus rendering an image of the brain on the screen.
Though everyone agrees the existence of the antiparticles now, this was not the case 80 years back, when it was predicted for the first time. Paul Dirac, one of the pioneers of Quantum Physics, had conducted extensive study on the mathematical equations associated with the existence of fundamental particles, came upon a rather strange situation. In 1928 Dirac predicted the possibility of an antiworld similar to that of our world but made up of antiparticles, a new radical idea in particle Physics. Two years later, Carl Anderson at the California Institute of Technology while examining the tracks created by cosmic rays confirmed the existence of positrons-the anti particle of electrons. However, it took 22 years of investigation to discover the antiproton and four years later antineutrons were found. It was in 1995, that the first antihydrogen atom was created at the CERN, executing the knowledge already gained through earlier experiments conducted at the Fermi lab. It is assumed that the coming years will see the production of antimatter in larger quantities along with the complicated storing technique of this mysterious matter. This century might witness a spaceship propelling to distant planets using the energy created by the matter-antimatter annihilation something similar to that of star ship Enterprise.
The Standard cosmology theory suggests that the Universe began with equal amount of matter and antimatter, like the twins of Big Bang. However, in the early universe this super symmetry was broken, for unknown reasons, which led to the dominance of matter in this Universe. This is one of the unsolved mysteries in Science, and is known as the Baryon asymmetry problem in Physics. Assuming that there was equal amount of matter and antimatter in the early Universe, their mutual destruction would have caused the complete absence of any matter in the Universe. The whole Universe would have been filled with energy (light) created in that process. The fact is that matter dominates in our Universe, and there is hardly any evidence of antimatter present except for they are created by Cosmic rays or in particle accelerators. One possible solution to this puzzle is that there exists a Universe with matter dominance (we call our Universe), and the other with antimatter dominance, without any interaction between them. This explanation is unlikely as the scientific research of the last decades offers no solutions in that direction. None of the existing theories are capable of providing an explanation of the matter supremacy in our Universe. The only optimism at this time is the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, which will shed some light into the broken symmetry that happened in the early Universe, when it will operate again in coming months.
As the infant Universe began its existence 13.7 billion years ago, the four fundamental forces separated from the super forces existed prior to that event. The hot and dense Universe inflated and cooled for a fraction of a second .This was followed by the radiation era ,when particles and anti particles annihilated each other to create radiation (photons).These photons ,the ‘relic of the Big Bang’ coupled with matter, were unable to escape since they were trapped in the Universe. The battle of existence continued between matter and antimatter and that created more photons. At some point, the matter particles exceeded the antimatter particles about one part per billion. As the dominant matter particles became stable, they lost interest in the ongoing coupling with the photons, which were born out of the battle waged between matter and antimatter. Now, these photons could travel through the expanding Universe bearing the mark of the violent history of the early Universe. These photons, currently existing in the microwave region of electromagnetic spectrum known as CMB, were finally detected by Penzias and Wilson in 1964.
This was the battle won by the matter that caused the creation of stars and planets; needless to say the cause of our own creation. As in the recorded human history the battle waged between two rivals give rise to the creation of a new realm, the first ever battle between matter and antimatter gave way to the Universe as we know it, so we call it ‘Mother of All Battles’.
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Monday, July 6, 2009
BIRTH OF A GIANT
Every birth is recorded and that must be true for death as well. The birth and death of stars are imprinted in the fabric of the cosmos. For modern humans, digital records serve the purpose.Fossils bear the indisputable evidence of the foregone era of plants and animals. How about the Universe? In fact, the evidence of the ‘oldest birth’ is everywhere. The exploration and eventual mapping of that proof turned Cosmology from a purely theoretical science to most exciting scientific quest of our generation.
The standard Cosmology theory suggests that the Universe began its birth with a bang –Big Bang-so we call it .This is a misnomer as there was not any bang in the first place .As we know, the bang (sound) needs to have a vibrating particle to generate it and then it requires a medium for the vibration to propagate. Since 'Big Bang' is the beginning of anything we can imagine, it is logical to assume that this moment of creation was in perfect silence. The creation of space and time were followed by matter and energy and that led to the manifestation of every thing we know today, including the life.
The Big Bang Theory was one of the contenders for the origin of the Universe, among many such theories existed during the 1930’s. The other prominent theory was the ‘Steady State Universe’ advocated by Fred Hoyle, a British scientist. Georges Lemaitre ,a Belgian Catholic priest, Astronomer and Physics professor, applying Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, proposed the ‘Big Bang’ as the possible origin of the Universe. Initially, it was known as ‘Hypothesis of the Primeval Atom’ as Lemaitre called it, though it would be known as Big Bang’ theory later. This theory essentially suggested that the Universe is expanding and in the past Universe must have been small, smaller than an atom where all the forces co-existed. The ‘explosion of this cosmic egg’ created the Universe which has been expanding since its birth and continues even today, 13.7 billion years after the cosmic origin.
Though Lemaitre derived his conclusion based on ‘Theory of Relativity’, the father of relativity was skeptical about this finding. Einstein reportedly remarked "Your math is correct, but your Physics is abominable”. However, he appreciated Lemaitre’s argument that a static-Einstein model of the universe could not be sustained indefinitely into the past. Few years before this, Alexander Friedman had reached a similar conclusion but he died in 1925.As a Physicist, living and working in USSR did not offer him much attention among his peers in those days.
In 1929, American Astronomer Edwin Hubble made a startling discovery based on the observation of galaxies spanning few yeas. Hubble along with an assistant worked at the Mount Wilson observatory in California, using the world’s larges telescope of those days. Ignoring the cold nights of California Mountains, Hubble spent a few years in photographing different galaxies and discovered the relation between the redshift and distance of the galaxies. Milky Way was considered to be the only galaxy in the Universes but Hubble’s observations revealed that the Universe contains many such galaxies. Hubble reported that aside from a few neighboring galaxies all the galaxies are receding from each other into the galactic wilderness .Although the significance of redshift was known before Hubble’s findings, he was credited with establishing a relation that indirectly measured the galaxy distances.
The red shift is the Doppler Effect of light in which an object moving away from an observer emits a wavelength that will shift toward a lower frequency or higher wavelength which is red. As a source sound passes an observer, depending the speed of the source, the observer perceives a lower frequency or pitch. The apparent change in frequency is known as the Doppler Effect, which is employed in Doppler radar, and its counter part for the light is referred as Redshift.
Hubble’s discovery provided a major support to the Big Bang theory of Lemaitre, who argued that if we go back in time from the current expansion of the Universe, there must exist a state of the Universe with infinite density and temperature referred to as singularity. This dense and hot phase of the Universe existed 13.7 billion years ago gave way to the birth of the expanding Universe, in a process called Big Bang. This idea was radical in nature as it contradicted the widely supported ‘Steady State Theory’ of Fred Hoyle, which claimed that though the expanding Universe creates new matter, and it has no beginning and no end.Hoyle never accepted Lemaitre’s theory of finite beginning, and the term ‘Big Bang”was Hoyle’s sarcastic remark about that in one of his BBC radio broadcast in 1949.Although Hoyle coined the term ‘Big Bang’ , in an apparent rejection of that idea, the name stuck and Limiter's theory is now known as Big Bang Theory. After the second world war, the support for these theories were split , eventually the steady state theory of Hoyle faded from the scientific community like the receding galaxies.However,Hoyle remained resistant to the Big Bang theory until his death in 1984.
The discovery of CMB in 1964, secured the position of the Big Bang as the most acceptable Cosmological theory.
The standard Cosmology theory suggests that the Universe began its birth with a bang –Big Bang-so we call it .This is a misnomer as there was not any bang in the first place .As we know, the bang (sound) needs to have a vibrating particle to generate it and then it requires a medium for the vibration to propagate. Since 'Big Bang' is the beginning of anything we can imagine, it is logical to assume that this moment of creation was in perfect silence. The creation of space and time were followed by matter and energy and that led to the manifestation of every thing we know today, including the life.
The Big Bang Theory was one of the contenders for the origin of the Universe, among many such theories existed during the 1930’s. The other prominent theory was the ‘Steady State Universe’ advocated by Fred Hoyle, a British scientist. Georges Lemaitre ,a Belgian Catholic priest, Astronomer and Physics professor, applying Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, proposed the ‘Big Bang’ as the possible origin of the Universe. Initially, it was known as ‘Hypothesis of the Primeval Atom’ as Lemaitre called it, though it would be known as Big Bang’ theory later. This theory essentially suggested that the Universe is expanding and in the past Universe must have been small, smaller than an atom where all the forces co-existed. The ‘explosion of this cosmic egg’ created the Universe which has been expanding since its birth and continues even today, 13.7 billion years after the cosmic origin.
Though Lemaitre derived his conclusion based on ‘Theory of Relativity’, the father of relativity was skeptical about this finding. Einstein reportedly remarked "Your math is correct, but your Physics is abominable”. However, he appreciated Lemaitre’s argument that a static-Einstein model of the universe could not be sustained indefinitely into the past. Few years before this, Alexander Friedman had reached a similar conclusion but he died in 1925.As a Physicist, living and working in USSR did not offer him much attention among his peers in those days.
In 1929, American Astronomer Edwin Hubble made a startling discovery based on the observation of galaxies spanning few yeas. Hubble along with an assistant worked at the Mount Wilson observatory in California, using the world’s larges telescope of those days. Ignoring the cold nights of California Mountains, Hubble spent a few years in photographing different galaxies and discovered the relation between the redshift and distance of the galaxies. Milky Way was considered to be the only galaxy in the Universes but Hubble’s observations revealed that the Universe contains many such galaxies. Hubble reported that aside from a few neighboring galaxies all the galaxies are receding from each other into the galactic wilderness .Although the significance of redshift was known before Hubble’s findings, he was credited with establishing a relation that indirectly measured the galaxy distances.
The red shift is the Doppler Effect of light in which an object moving away from an observer emits a wavelength that will shift toward a lower frequency or higher wavelength which is red. As a source sound passes an observer, depending the speed of the source, the observer perceives a lower frequency or pitch. The apparent change in frequency is known as the Doppler Effect, which is employed in Doppler radar, and its counter part for the light is referred as Redshift.
Hubble’s discovery provided a major support to the Big Bang theory of Lemaitre, who argued that if we go back in time from the current expansion of the Universe, there must exist a state of the Universe with infinite density and temperature referred to as singularity. This dense and hot phase of the Universe existed 13.7 billion years ago gave way to the birth of the expanding Universe, in a process called Big Bang. This idea was radical in nature as it contradicted the widely supported ‘Steady State Theory’ of Fred Hoyle, which claimed that though the expanding Universe creates new matter, and it has no beginning and no end.Hoyle never accepted Lemaitre’s theory of finite beginning, and the term ‘Big Bang”was Hoyle’s sarcastic remark about that in one of his BBC radio broadcast in 1949.Although Hoyle coined the term ‘Big Bang’ , in an apparent rejection of that idea, the name stuck and Limiter's theory is now known as Big Bang Theory. After the second world war, the support for these theories were split , eventually the steady state theory of Hoyle faded from the scientific community like the receding galaxies.However,Hoyle remained resistant to the Big Bang theory until his death in 1984.
The discovery of CMB in 1964, secured the position of the Big Bang as the most acceptable Cosmological theory.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Death Of Time
The surreal painting
“The Persistence of Memory” by the renowned artist Salvador Dali is a splendid illustration of a deep mystery -the concept we call time. This marvelous painting exhibits ants devouring a clock and time melting into oblivion. Philosophers like Plato who contemplated time as immortal and Newton who elevated time to an eternal level might not accept the death of time. However, the last century witnessed the descent of time from immortal to mortal level. Now, the descendants of Einstein trying to annihilate time which had been wounded in the revolution unleashed by theory of relativity.
In classical Physics, time is a river flowing simply in the forward direction. The observer or external forces like gravity have no impact on the flow of time.
Julian Barbour’s “The end of time” is an enormous attempt to understand the time -for few people have authentically thought about the real nature of time and what it truly is. Time has no role in his picture of the cosmos. Recently, physicists like Carlo Rovelli working on quantum gravity could describe the dynamics of events without reference to time? An intriguing achievement! They believe time doesn't exist at all and this illusion is formed due to the motion of the objects. As a matter of fact, all the Laws of Physics are time symmetric which means the concept of time does not distinguish the events in the past present or future.
Is time an illusion? It’s inconceivable to envision that idea as time is trailing us like a shadow with its invisible presence. Time is the most familiar experience we deal with yet we don’t know much about that. In fact, mythology sought the answer for such a subject much before the advent of science. For instance, in “Vishnu Purana” Narada asks Vishnu about the meaning of time for which Vishnu replies that it is a delusion generated as a consequence of our interaction with the physical world.
In Astrophysics, theoretical computations show that the expansion of the universe at an accelerated rate is also the result of our false notion of time. Some physicists argue the veil of illusion attributable to time must be removed to know the absolute truth. They anticipate the subsequent revolution in Physics would be a cosmos depicted without the constraint of time. But, what if the universe itself an illusion followed by life? This is nothing new in philosophy or religion; however, science has a unique process to seek the truth founded on reason and evidences. Maybe the scientific revolutions will linger until reality and illusion are indistinguishable.
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