Playing with electrons

Robert J. Hastings had written an extra-ordinarily nice poetic piece titled ‘The Station’ which was a massive hit among readers years back. It can be read here: http://robertjhastings.net/ Hastings, in this crisp and touching piece, correctly points out that ‘the station constantly outdistances from us’. There is no ‘eventual’ station which when reached will make us happy, rather, it’s the journey to the ‘station’ which needs to be enjoyed and lived fully before the ‘station’ arrives. It is very true for each one of us for the simple reason that anxieties and uncertainties in our life never cease to end. We run out of time and embrace death soon enough in the hassles of our daily life which we cannot avoid, paradoxically. It is indeed the journey, seriously, which needs to be lived – to climb more mountains, to swim more rivers, to enjoy more morning sunshine, to listen to birds’ chirps, to take more evening walks, to hug our dear ones more – all these truly embellish our ...

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 t...

There’s always been comparison of research in India to those in China and in USA, and we always end up realizing how much we lag behind those two giants, be it research in basic sciences or in technology, be in the number of papers published (in journals of international repute), be it number of patents filed, be it number of PhDs awarded and so on. Some people blame it on lack of funding, some people blame it on poor resources (equipments for experiments, etc.) available and some people blame it on the inability of the government and research institutes on attracting the talent pool towards research in India. There’ve been lots of discussions, debates and proposals in this regard, both at the blog/media level as well as at the institutional/academic/governmental level. To my understanding, the amount of funds released for research in India (by the government) presently is not so less as it used to be; I heard somewhere that it’s 1% of GDP or something like that. So, funding may not...

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 ...

My writings are always from a technological/scientific perspective. So my understanding and comments on human lifestyle and civilization or on anything for that matter have NOTHING to do with philosophical, literary, societal, religious, poetic, political and economic changes that have happened to human civilization. It’s all about how science & technology changes our lives. As a matter of fact, science & technology bring change to societal, political, economic, literary, poetic, religious and philosophical ways of our lives, and not the other way round. Challenge me with data, statistics, logical analyses and concrete examples if I need to be proven wrong.  As I had written in my preceding blog, there’s only one human civilization on this planet (as far as history goes) and so there’s only a singular path of progress from its dawn till 2012 AD. Put it simply, human species have evolved in only one way, and there’s only one known planet which is earth where we kn...

[I do not own rights to any of the images below. They are obtained by randomly 'Google' searching.] One thousand years ago, a horse would eat grass, reproduce and sleep, and would be used for pulling carriages or for riding. Even today, a horse would eat grass, reproduce and sleep but probably would not be used so much for pulling carriages or for riding except for special occasions like horse races, etc. However, human beings a thousand years ago and human beings today are unbelievably different in what we do and how we do. It’s a simple conclusion: on this planet, only human beings have used intelligence to progress and develop. Only human beings are the problem solving animals, and hence every other creature has remained the same over thousands of years (except for some evolution-induced physical changes). Only we, humans have been able to master all other animals and harness many forces and energy of nature to our own use. All these are ubiquitously known and it d...

 [Disclaimer: I do not own the copyright of the images below. They are obtained by randomly 'google searching'.] It’s another Friday night of the month, late night actually. It’s almost 1:30 am (and so it’s actually Saturday). And I am sober. Friday night, to most people, is the most awaited moment of the week. Why? Of course man! It’s the threshold of the highly anticipated weekend of relaxation, of spending more time with friends and family and of course of not having to deal with words like ‘boss’ or managers! Besides, who loves Monday mornings? Monday mornings are the gateways to a long week of work! And that sucks, doesn’t it? Hence, Friday nights are the times when undergrads party hard with beer, girls (for straight guys) and loud music that will probably crack the sky! Friday nights are when typical grad students seep a beer or two at a bar complaining how frustrating PhD life can be.  And I am sitting in my apartment, having finished watching ‘Love Aaj ...