The
daily life of almost any person is pretty packed with work, worries, anxieties,
etc. and almost every one of us is pre-occupied with myriads of thoughts. We
need to worry about our next project deadline, our next assignment, our health,
our family members’ health – kids, wife, parents, etc, our bank balance &
savings, the economy, the rising fuel price, our career concerns, the weekly
groceries - and the list never ends. In
present times, almost no individual has the luxury of sitting idly for hours and
pondering philosophically-incomprehensible and scientifically non-provable
questions such as ‘Why do we exist?’ or ‘What happens to us after death?’ or ‘What
happened before the universe was created?’ and so on. Oftentimes however, when
I’m traveling in a bus to a nearby lab within the university campus or just
walking to/from my department, I keep wondering some of these bizarre and seemingly
silly questions. It’s not a very fun idea because it tends to transport me to a
different world which threatens to affect my practical life, the life which I’m
living now. It’s a good idea to prevent these questions from loitering too
often inside my brain, but I guess I’d like to jot down a few of these for my
own pleasure.
If
there is a divine or a supreme power controlling our actions and pre-determining
the course of our lives, then what’s the
logic behind ‘we’ taking a decision? What about ‘free will’? When we decide for
ourselves, does it mean some superior power is enabling us to take that
decision? Religious answers to this question are so laughable! [This question has been asked by philosophers
for millennia, so nothing new!]
The
ratio of circumference of a circle to its diameter is π
(pi). Fine. Why the **** does π appear everywhere – in physics, chemistry, engineering –
even in contexts that have absolutely nothing to do with a circle or its diameter?
The energy levels in a quantum well (which is a physically realizable and
provable thing) of width ‘L’ are separated by integral multiples of 2π/L. I mean, how do the freaking electrons
‘know’ that they should only occupy energy levels which are some multiples of
that goddamn π?
Same applies to that quantity ‘e’ = 2.728….which is basically the sum of 1 + 1 +
½! + 1/3! + ¼! + …. till infinity. I mean, why does radioactivity decay follow
an exponential law, or how do photons know that they need to get absorbed in
any medium with an exponential decay with respect to depth? The mathematical
proofs for all these exist, but as an engineer, I want tSo understand the
physical meaning, the physical significance!
Almost every person on this planet
thinks and worries about the present, about today. Politicians worry about
staying in power for the next few years, entrepreneurs and businessmen worry
about how shares/stocks behave in the next few years, students worry about achieving
a career goal in the next few years, housewives worry about raising their kids
so that they go to good schools/colleges and get a decent education in the next
few (~10) years, scientists and professors in universities or research labs
worry about securing solid funding to support their research at least for the
next few years, movie stars worry about starring in some very successful and
block-bluster movies in the next few years before they fade away so that they
become even more famous and earn more wealth, sportspersons worry about
achieving a few more records and medals in the next few years before they
become physically weak to compete – every person (including I, you, we) think
about the next few years, may be 5 or maybe 10 years. Who will, for God’s sake,
think of mankind for the next 100 years or more? Who will think if mankind can survive for next 200 years
given the severe energy, climate, political, military and other resource
problems we are almost facing which will only worsen? It took the earth a
goddamn 4 billion years – yes, that’s a 4 followed by 9 zeros – for life to
germinate and reach today in 2012 where we annihilate ecology and nature with
our activities. Who will seriously think of preserving this rare form of life
so that it does not die out pathetically in a span of a few hundred years,
something which took 4 billion years to reach where it is today?
Can there be just one religion on this
planet, the religion of humanity? There’s too many murders and violence in the
name of religions, all throughout history and even today in 2012. Nobody knows
for sure what happens after we die – if we re-incarnate, or if we lie in our
graves, or if we transit to another dimension or universe, or if something
called ‘soul’ exists, or if we go to some place called ‘heaven’ or ‘hell’.
Everyone believes, or likes to
believe in some faith handed down over centuries or millennia. Nobody has come
back after death to tell us details, no experiments have proved anything about
it. There were some great religious leaders in the past, believed to be either
prophets or messiahs or even God himself, some of whom were Jesus, Prophet
Mohammed, Krishna, Rama, Guru Nanak, and so on. They all preached universal love,
compassion, helpfulness and purity. That’s all great. But, we, humans, kill and
torture in their name. Was that the motive of those messiahs/gods? Really, does
any one of us know for sure if God exists? There’s too much violence,
restlessness and homicide by invoking the name of ‘God’. If killings of
innocent and violence persist in the name of ‘God’, then that defeats the very
purpose of the existence of the belief in ‘God’. Then, ‘God’ should be replaced
by ‘love for humanity’, and everyone should embrace ‘humanity’ as religion, and
try to make this world a better place. But that’s just utopia. The minds of
common people were always messed up, are messed up, and will always be messed
up. The psychology of our brains will never allow us to embrace ‘humanity’ as
the only religion, and will never allow us to unanimously accept ‘working for a
better world’ to be our motto. Sigh!
How
will our planet look if I rise from my grave 500 years from now? I wish I can
get a glimpse 500 years from now to see how much mankind has progressed. Shall
we have discovered ways to stretch our lifespan to 150 or 200 years by then, or
shall we have paid a visit to nearby star systems which are a few light years
away? Shall we have found a highly efficient, safe, reliable,
environment-friendly and cheap way to generate energy without relying on fossil
fuels like petrol of coal? Shall we have found solid evidence of intelligent
life outside of earth? If so, how do those life-forms look?
Why
is the charge of an electron 1.6x10-19 Coulomb? Who determined this
charge and how and why? If an electron would not have carried this much of
charge, their atomic orbits would not have been stable and atoms/molecules
would have been unstable. Universe would not have existed the way it exists
now, and I, you, and we – no one would have existed.
When
we dream during sleep, we do not realize that that is a dream; we believe that
is reality until we wake up and discover that that was just a dream. What if our reality – which we are living
now – is just another complicated dream, and we believe it is real?
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The
best thing to do is, not to think or worry about such questions as above, but to
live life practically by working and doing one’s duties everyday and worrying
about usual routine life, and then embracing death when it comes, just like
what every person does on this planet. ‘Dust thou art, and to dust thou
returneth’, as Shakespeare wrote 500 years back!
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