Curiosity and 'Curiosity'

Human mind always seeks to know the unknown. That’s called ‘curiosity’, and that’s probably the most important characteristic of human which made not only made us different from all other creatures on this planet but also has enabled us to achieve the present status of science and technology. The immediate ‘profit’ or application or ‘curiosity’ may not be obvious, and so critics might argue about ‘waste’ of taxpayers’ money being pumped into sending a rover to Mars which isn’t going to solve the pressing needs of the society like unemployment, poor economy, poverty, energy problem, etc. But if you kill curiosity, you kill everything – you kill the progress of human civilization, you kill the very quality which has made us achieve all these. You simply make our society stagnate and saturate. Thus, if we completely stop pumping money into the effort towards knowing the unknown and instead divert all those money towards solving basic human problems like poverty, illiteracy, etc., then 100 years from now, human society might have a better standard of living overall in terms of reduced poverty and unemployment rate (assuming corruption does not absorb all those money before reaching the grass-root level which is a poor assumption!) but due to braking the research effort, it is highly possible that the technological status of the society would be similar to what it is now in 2012 and that would be such a mockery at our face that in 100 years, we stayed where we were!

Research, in general, is incremental in nature, for, every effort has a higher probability of failure than of success. And by ‘research’, I mean attempt to explore new stuffs, to understand new phenomena. If I do an experiment to find out something new or to make a new kind of electronic device work, the probability of failure outweighs that of success. All great inventors and scientists throughout history have testified to it including Edison who claimed with respect to the electric bulb that ‘No, I have not failed. I just found out 10,000 ways which don’t work’. So, the effort of a lot of dedicated researchers sweating it out for a long time, go into making one thing work. And then at certain special occasions, breakthroughs do happen based on the results and understanding gathered over so many years by so many researchers. And we celebrate the success. Or, put it more clearly, we celebrate the spirit of the human mind.

Curiosity is moving slowly on the surface of Mars as I’m writing this blog. This Curiosity of course, is the NASA-launched robotic space-craft which made headlines a few weeks ago as a triumph of the human mind while we were simultaneously celebrating the human spirit in London in the form of the greatest bloodless war on the planet. $2.5 billion USD is the price incurred to land that rover on the red planet, and although that $2.5 billion USD could have been spent in reducing unemployment rates in the USA or in pulling up the economy further, yet, it would not be an exaggeration to claim that this Curiosity might provide us with something in the near future which could have impacts on our civilization in ways we could never imagine! May be the findings of Curiosity would trigger something which lead to discoveries and inventions that radically change the landscape of human civilization! $2.5 billion USD would then pale in comparison to it! But we don’t know, and we are not sure until the time comes. If – again – if, Curiosity does stumble upon something that manages to affect the course of human civilization, then we would obviously cheer for the people in NASA who made it possible, but we should also thank the countless mathematicians, physicists and chemists of the middle ages to 19^th century whose contributions made it all possible apart from the 20^th century revolutions in electronics and computers.

In India, most of the common people - as far as my understanding goes & I may be wrong though – consider it a complete mockery of public money that India should plan to send an unmanned mission to Mars next year. In fact, the relatively small amount of money (approximately $80 million USD compared to $2.5 billion USD spent for Curiosity) announced by the PM for the Mars mission has been considered a total waste by many critics especially at a time when that money can be diverted towards solving crucial problems of the country at the grass-root level. Common minds cannot fathom the depths of the necessity of such a mission. In fact, history bears testimony that common minds can not foresee the future beyond what is required for surviving today. Imagine a world with no electric generators to convert magnetism into electricity at all the thermal power plants or hydro-electric plans. We would have no electricity – no laptops, no cell phones, no internet, no computers, no light bulbs at night, no fans & ACs. Modern life is literally impossible without electricity. Yet, when Faraday first demonstrated the generator converting magnetism into electricity, a lady asked him, “Mr. Faraday, would this generator have any useful application?’ to which Faraday replied, “Madam, one day, you may be taxed for its product.” True. We do pay electricity bills.

Curiosity created the generator. Common minds questioned its use/applicability. Time proved what needed to be proved.