Space, Time, Einstein!

Let me try get into the (mis)adventure of writing about space-time and relativity theory. To me, the relativity theory of Einstein is like Zen. It is so simple that we fail to understand! We need to change our perspective towards reality to grasp the space-time model. Let us first take 'space' in literal sense. Everything around us is a space, a space between two cars, buildings, stars - between the objects in general. The space as such is 'nothing', but it exists. If some object moves, say a car, it moves through this space. If we walk, we walk through the space. You can't see it, but you see through it. I guess it must be clear and everyone perceives it in day-to-day life.

Let us now think about time, the time that we normally understand. The clock ticks, the time passes from one second to another, one hour to another and so on. Think it in another way. It may be only for the linguistic comfort we say time passes. In fact, we pass through the time. Just like we travel through the space, we travel through the time. If we understand this, it is easy to understand space-time model of the universe.

Let us now assume there is a car parked in front of us. There are buildings and trees around and no movement. Everything stands still (ignore the movement of earth, wind etc). Though the car parked in front of us stands still, the clock ticks. The car indeed travels through time. Let us assume now that the car is now ignited and starts moving. The movement is now through both time and space. When it moves through the space, the speed at which it moves through time slows down because some of its speed through time is diverted for moving through space.

At any given time, the sum of motion through time and the motion through space equals the speed of light (300,000 km/sec). Both the motions work in tandem so that the speed of light is maintained. Let me explain it little more. When a car stands still - i.e., when it moves only through time, not through space - the speed of its travel through time is 300,000 km/sec. When it starts moving through space, a little amount of above speed through time is diverted for its motion through space depending on how fast it moves. The time slows, when the speed through space increases. The sum of both these speeds always adds up to 300,000 km/sec.

Light travels at the speed of 300,000 km/sec. It means that light travels entirely through space, it does not travel through time. This explains why the speed of light is invariable throughout the universe and that is the speed limit of this universe for any moving object. When you attain the speed of light, the time becomes zero.

Therefore, we can't say anything is motionless. It either travels through time or space or mostly both. Think about it when you go for morning walk. You not only walk through space (three dimensional), but also through time, the fourth dimension. We live in a four dimensional universe (let us forget about string theory and M-theory that predict more than four dimensions!). I assume your perspective of reality might have now changed.

You may now ask whether the time actually slows down when we move? Is it only a theory proposed by Einstein? No, it is experimentally proven theory. At normal speeds through space, the impact on time is negligible because we never attain any substantial speed through space to see the impact. 300,000 km/sec is an unimaginable speed, a speed by which we have to reach moon in one and half seconds. Even if we fly in a jet plane, the speed is just 0.2 km/sec. Rockets may go up to 11 km/sec. All these achievable high speeds would decrease the speed of motion through time only by a billionth of seconds. In 1970s, scientists have carried out several experiments to notice even this minor impact. In one of the experiments, they set one precise atomic clock in US, took another clock on a jet plane and travelled around the earth twice. When they came back they noticed that the clock on the plane was slower by few billionths of seconds than the clock set on land. Einstein's theory of space-time model was proved!

Imagine now the four dimensional universe like a big cube-shaped balloon filled up with gas. Now put a heavy iron ball on to it. It pushes down the surface of the balloon and creates a bend (a warp). The bend makes a kind of damage on an otherwise even surface. That is what earths, suns and stars do to the time-space of the universe. What is the outcome of this damage? Gravity! When any object comes near to this ball, its time and space gets bent in the nearby region and the object falls on to the ball. Due to the bend in space, the space between the object and the ball gets decreased and both come closer and finally hit. The time, which is also already bent accordingly to accommodate the decrease in space. Thus, the apple fell on Newton's head!

The gravity according to Einstein may look crazy, but that is how universe works. If we think once again, his approach will turn out to be the practical approach. Let us take the apple that fell on Newton's head. For Newton, the apple was approaching him at a particular speed. For the apple, Newton's head was approaching it with a particular speed. It is all relative. Whose account to be taken as standard? Einstein takes the account of space-time, not the pulling object or pulled object, or any outside observer.

It is the extraordinary outlook of Einstein, which brought this understanding of the universe to humanity. Though the modern cosmology has gone several folds higher than the simple framework of relativity, Einstein made the giant leap possible.

Predictability

"I can tell you the exact year, month and date when I am going to die"
"How come it is possible? Did god come and say this to you?"
"No. The Judge said."

We are no astrologers, but we live the life assuming everything is predictable. We book tickets assuming that there is not going to be any flood on the day of traveling. We exhaust the fuel tank assuming that there is not going to be any tanker strike next day. We plan for the meetings of tomorrow assuming that we are not going to die tonight. Even the earth quakes and the accidents which appear on newspapers everyday do not alter our approach towards life. People are in a way optimistic. I haven't seen anyone who has been living in tents forever expecting an earth quake.

Even the pessimists are also as comfortable as optimists. Heard of the famous Miller's Great Disappointment? Based on the Bible quotes in the book of Daniel, William Miller, an American preacher, predicted the date of Jesus' second arrival and the end of the world as Mar 21, 1844. He got huge followers who believed his date and prepared themselves for the D-day. Jesus didn't come. Then he changed the date to Apr 21, 1844. Jesus didn't turn up this time too. Then he finalized the date as Oct 22, 1844. Sun rose as usual on Oct 23 and the history has recorded the whole episode as Miller's Great Disappointment. It is interesting that it is called 'disappointment'! You expect to die on a particular day, and you didn't die - it is a disappointment, huh! Despite the prank played by Miller, the followers of him wanted to continue with the belief that the world was going to end soon. The D-day was rescheduled from Oct 22, 1844 to 'any time soon'. Thus the Millerite movement paved way for the Adventist churches especially the 7th Day Adventists. They expect the worst and are comfortable with that.

Most of us either adopt an optimistic approach or be prepared for the doomsday with a pessimistic approach, but rarely dare to live by accepting the unpredictability as it is. Everyone knows the disappointing fact that the next moment is not in our hands. However, we comfortably keep this fact aside and move on. Sometimes we resort to prediction methods like astrology and try to be in a comfort zone. We think it is not possible to live peacefully expecting some unexpected event every moment. The anxiety will guarantee our admission at nearby asylum.

However, the key to live life fully lies in understanding the unpredictability. It gives us the greatest opportunity to live each moment to the fullest extent. The thrill of life will evaporate when we bring future into existence and predict it. The unpredictability eliminates the entire future and promises only the current moment at hand. The logic is - if we enjoy the current moment to the maximum extent, the next moment is also going to be enjoyed so. Even death will also be enjoyed. The momentariness is the only truth in life!

Knowledge

Once Einstein was asked how many feet are in a mile. He said, "I don't know. Why should I dump my brain with the facts I can find in two minutes in any standard reference book?" Was he an Einstein because he didn't know that, or despite not knowing that?

 

Surya asked a young girl at Vijay TV show, "What is the name of the lady who killed Rajiv Gandhi?" She answered, "Priyanka... Chopra".

 

Both Einstein and the young girl are entitled to have the legitimate excuse - why to store unnecessary facts in brain that are available in the books.

 

Knowledge helps, but knowledge alone does not help. Otherwise, G.S. Pradeep, the grandmaster, should have found his name in the list of Nobel laureates, not in the Limca book of records. 

No Rules

I think we don't have to understand chaos theory for we feel it every moment. Nothing in this universe exists on its own. Everything is connected with each other. It could be a physical connection or simply through gravity. However, the complexity of these connections is so high that we cannot predict the impact of these connections for sure. 

For example, I am sitting here. I am connected directly with the chair (which in turn is connected with the floor and the floor is connected.....), the air I inhale, the light I see, the object I touch and so on. The chair, the air and the object are composed the millions of particles and atoms which are interconnected. The light is composed of photons or EM waves - only god knows what exactly is. The chair in which I am sitting suddenly collapses - apparently because it is quite old. But why should it fall down exactly at this moment? Could I have predicted this by measuring its age, tensile strength, shear, my weight, etc? Impossible. Perhaps I could at the most have predicted that it is 'likely' to collapse any time from this day to another three years, but never the exact time. Why? Because it depends on many other 'connections' whose impact I will never be able to calculate. If I start measuring I will see only a chaos. May be finally just a simple jerk of an atom in the chair at the 'right' time has lead to the collapse. 

Poet Iqbal wrote, "Who knows? Plucking a flower in my garden may cause a star in the sky to burst". True. Each action in this universe will have some impact and initiate a chain of actions. That is how the whole universe functions. To say mathematically, try drawing two lines originating from a dot with the deviation of just 0.1 degree from each other. As the length of the lines increase you will see a wide gap between both the lines. Though the initial gap is just one or two millimetres, it may lead to kilometres distance between the lines if you keep extending the lines over a period of time. The impact of simple deviation at the staring point is multiplied drastically. Similarly a simple flapping of a butterfly's wing at this moment produces a small wave in the atmosphere. However, over a period of time it may diverge into a Tsunami. Or, it may not. But we cannot rule out the possibility. Heard the butterfly example in Kamal Hasan's Dasavatharam? It is actually an example said by a mathematician, Edward Lorenz. 

Adam used to sleep under a coconut tree in Eden garden keeping his head towards North direction. Since some ant tasted his scalp, he changed his position and kept his head towards the south direction. On that day, a giant coconut fell over his legs. Had the ant did not bite him on that day, I would not be writing about chaos theory today. Small bite, humanity was saved. Even god is not aware of this fact. (Do you know that coconut never falls on head?!)

I like this chaos theory. We live dangerously. No rules apply here.

The Lost Tamil Continent

Well. I read few interesting books on this topic at Anna Library. A book on Tamil social history by Dr. Aravanan, ex-vice chancellor of MS univeristy, is noteworthy. The book seems to be an evidence based research work on the origin of Tamils. Though he has not provided any conclusion about the origin, he has effectively compiled most of the evidences that we have and related theories. The author's area of research is about the similarities between ancient Tamil society and the African tribes.

 

The extensive references about 'kadal konda thamizhakam' (the Tamil land engulfed by ocean) come from the treatise by Irayanar and the explanatory notes by Nakkeerar in early mediaeval period. The literary works earlier than these poets such as silappathikaram or purananooru do mention about the lost continent here and there. For example, purananooru - poem no. 9 mentions kabadapuram. Silappathikaram, while introducing the pandiyan king, mentions about the lost kingdom and the big Tsunami. I checked these two myself. The references are also found in Kalithokai and the commentaries of Adiyarkkunallar.

 

However, it is mysterious how Irayanar, a romantic poet, could get such an extensive account on the lost continent. He lists the kings and poets who were involved with the first two Tamil conventions took place in the lost continent. He mentions several poetic works of those period, which are never discovered. More importantly he gives the names of various territories in the lost continent, the rivers and the mountains. We cannot simply ignore them as a white lie or mere imagination. More or less similar data are also mentioned by Adiyarkkunallar.

 

It is also strange that Valmiki's Ramayanam (not Kambar's) mentions the name Kabadapuram. Rama instructs Hanuman to search for Sita in Srilanka and if not found, to search in Kabadapuram. This verse contains a brief description about the palaces in the city as well. The treatise by Megesthenes also has a reference to Kabadapuram and a Pandya king.

 

The most mysterious reference is about the rivers in the lost continent. One is Paktruli river and the other is Kumari river. The name, kumari river, appears in many references - just like Saraswati river in Sanskrit literature. It is ironical that the governments and universities spend plenty of resources to locate the traces of Saraswati river while no one is serious about Kumari river. Kabadapuram was said to be on the banks of Kumari river. Some of the old poems mention about taking bath in 'Kumari'. Based on the contexts, it is plausible that the Kumari did not mean the ocean at Kanyakumari, but the lost Kumari river. Taking bath in ocean had not originally been the tradition of Tamils in older days, but river bathing had been.

 

The present day Kanyakumari has a shallow water and rocky base. It could have been a mountain extension engulfed by ocean. Kumari river might have passed through this mountain. Pazhayaru could be the vestige of Kumari river, as per one writer. According to the Irayanar and Nakkeerar legends, the Pandya capitals shifted from Then Madurai to Kabadapuram to Korkai to Koodal (current Madurai). We have a documented history of Pandiya kings only from Korkai period and the history of the previous rulers is lost with the continent.

Carbon, Silicon, Life

In terms of valency, silicon resembles carbon. Both have the valency of four. However, silicon cannot substitute carbon in most of the instances from chemical or biochemical perspective. The percentage of silicon in human body is only minuscule unless we consider someone like Pamela Anderson. Next to oxygen, carbon is the most abundant element by mass in human body. Outside body - if we consider earth's crust - silicon is the most abundant element by mass next to oxygen. Thus, if carbon represents the life forms, silicon represents the non-life forms (inanimate). 

Despite the abundance of silicon in the environment, the evolutionary process has chosen carbon to develop life forms. In other words, the 3 billion years old evolutionary process has essentially discarded silicon while developing life forms. Evolution is the most intelligent phenomenon happened on earth and it has chosen carbon. Strangely our mythologies say the opposite - from clay to man! Life form can change into clay - it is scientifically possible. Petrified trees are now part of every museum, tree turned into stone, not vice versa!

Carbon is a unique element and the proteins (enzymes, muscles, etc), DNAs, hormones, neurons and almost every vital thing in our body stand as an evidence for carbon's versatility. 

Silicon cannot compete with carbon in its versatility even though mimicking our neural network using silicon should be possible at least in future. For that matter, any element which has similar conductivity properties should be able to do. People have successfully replaced silicon at least in laboratory level, for example, with molybdenum or carbon nanotubes.  I would agree that silicon may create intelligence, may be by passing Turing test. However, silicon cannot form (or be a part of) life. 

Of course, it depends on how we define life! The scientistsmay define it as a form which is self sustainable, having organic unity, reproducible and responsive to stimuli. They keep adding many other features. However, it still remains impossible to fit all life forms into these definitions and one or two forms always remain as exceptions. I wonder how these scientists forget one important phenomenon, death. They all think about sustainability ignoring the fact that destructibility is also a part of life - it is at least a part of life of all the life forms we know.

To me life is defined by death. Something that cannot die cannot be a life form. You can break a robot, but you cannot kill a robot. This definition is applicable to any life form on the earth. 

No life form can survive death. If it is the case with earth, it should be the case with the universe too. No celestial body contains any element that cannot be found on earth. Helium was first discovered on the sun, not on the earth. The discovery was made from India (but not by Indians)! The scientists thought that they had found one extraterrestrial element that was not located on earth. Later helium was also found to be available in uranium ore on earth itself. It is an example to say that the earth is the face of the universe. What we have here could be the best that the universe has offered. It will keep offering more.

SHADOWS OF MIND TO reCAPTCHA

Knowledge is infectious. When I started reading ‘Shadows of Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness’ by Roger Penrose, the very reading took me through an interesting journey into various spheres of knowledge related to artificial intelligence.

Penrose is renowned for his work in mathematical physics. ‘Shadows of Mind’ is a sequel of his previous book, ‘The Emperor’s New Mind’. In both the books, Penrose explains inter alia the concept of ‘Turing test’. It is a test that can be used to find if a given machine thinks like a human. For example, assume that there is a machine and a human placed in front of a human judge. However, the machine, the human and the human judge are separated from each other by non-transparent sound-proof screens. The human judge knows that there is one human and one machine sitting in front of him, but he does not know which is what. The human judge has to engage in a natural language conversation with both the machine and the human and find out which is machine. The machine will try to imitate humans in its answers. The conversation is limited to text-only format (like chatting in a communicator). If the judge is not able to reliably distinguish the machine from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test. It has gained artificial intelligence!

I was curious about the Turing test and started reading other articles related to this matter. I was then introduced to another test called as ‘reverse Turing test’. It is a reverse version of Turing test in which the human judge is replaced with a machine judge. The machine judge has to find out which is machine and which is human. You may not believe that we undergo this reverse Turing test quite often when we spend our time in front of computers - especially in IP. Before we access the file wrapper from USPTOPAIR, it asks us to enter the words given in ‘reCAPTCHA’ to access the documents. I have pasted an example below:

 

The reCAPTCHA appears in many sites including social network sites. The back end machine recognizes through reCAPTCHA whether it is human or a software program (i.e. a machine) that attempts to access the web site and allows only humans because it is believed that only humans can interpret and type those distorted words correctly. The present day machines are not intelligent enough to interpret such distorted words. Thus, each time we access such web sites, we unknowingly go through a reverse Turing test!

There is an interesting story behind reCAPTCHA project. Apart from making us to undergo reverse Turing test, the reCAPTCHA indeed puts us on a job which we did not even know we had. A non-profit group called Open Content Alliance functioning from the University of Toronto is engaged in a massive project of scanning the out-of-copyright books in the world.

Once the text is scanned, the file is sent to a server in California, where it is run through optical
character recognition (OCR) software. We might have used the OCR option available in Adobe Acrobat for converting image into text. In the same way, it produces a digital full-text version of those out-ofcopyright books. However, the old text books often contain illegible words that are difficult for the software to recognize. These troublesome scans are sent on to the reCAPTCHA servers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

These are the words distributed to us when we enter the sites such as USPTO. As a control, the
reCAPTCHA program distorts a known word and pairs it up with the word the scanning software has
failed to decipher. That is why we find two words in reCAPTCHA. However, we do not know which the control word is and which the original word from text book is. If we decipher the control word correctly, the computer takes our deciphering of the original text book word also as correct. However, the reCAPTCHA reconfirms it by circulating the same word few more times. It is reported that the system is now correcting over 10 million words a day, with 99.1 percent accuracy. Thus, every time we enter the web site by passing through reCAPTCHA, we actually do a job for a not-for-profit cause!

It was a long interesting journey from Shadows of Mind to reCAPTCHA.