How many times would we have thought about whats outside our world? I wonder if some of us would even realize that we are living in just a small speck of dust found in an infinitely large expanding universe. I always think that we have evolved to be entangled within a web of humanly complex activities unable to reach outside and foolishly limiting our envelope of knowledge by what we think as important to our daily needs. I dont want to mull over in detail, but the core idea is that we live our daily lives for things created by humans, i.e something very artificial and totally unrelated to nature like money, savings, jobs, cars everything.
I asked this question "How many times have you ever thought about the origin of universe" to my col friends Arun, Param and Kumar when on a trip back to NJ. I in fact was named "mokka" Manoj for asking this and lot of other questions :). I received mixed reactions but bottom line is not much at all. My point is we dont really understand whats happening! Do we understand big bang? Do we know that our universe according to recent theories can have more than 4 dimensions? Or do we know that its been stated around 100 years ago itself that our space-time is curved? Nopes.. sadly we dont.
So as we take away some part of our time for spirutuality, religion, meditation or worship, I would like to ask people to think about our cosmos. Probably, when you walk outside your house or look out through the window, try to observe how beautiful the stars are or why is that we see the same face of the moon or whats behind a supernova explosion or a asteroid shower n sooo on...
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Whats behind the name?
'Probability collapses' is a phrase often used in Quantum mechanics. Though I know nothing much about quantum mechanics, I have been trying for quite some time to understand it on my own (its a bit too much I know)...
In simple terms, it means that whenever an observation is made, from measuring the spin of an electron to see if the cat is dead or alive in Schroedingers thought experiment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger's_cat), there are underlying probabilities that govern the outcome of the experiment or an observation.
When we use the pendulum to measure 'g' (credit to Priya :)) or we try to prove that the angle of incidence is equal to angle of reflection in a simple light experiment, there are an infinite results possible. However, depending on the measuring parameters, certain answers take precedence and 'probability collapses' to the one we measure and is consistent through the number of experiments you conduct.
I was pretty much astonished by this fact and gave me a jolt when I was reading this book 'Quantum Electro Dynamics (QED)' by none other than Richard Feynman . It was an absorbing master piece and gave unleveled insights into understanding of the basic laws of nature..
So thats the reason behind the name
In simple terms, it means that whenever an observation is made, from measuring the spin of an electron to see if the cat is dead or alive in Schroedingers thought experiment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger's_cat), there are underlying probabilities that govern the outcome of the experiment or an observation.
When we use the pendulum to measure 'g' (credit to Priya :)) or we try to prove that the angle of incidence is equal to angle of reflection in a simple light experiment, there are an infinite results possible. However, depending on the measuring parameters, certain answers take precedence and 'probability collapses' to the one we measure and is consistent through the number of experiments you conduct.
I was pretty much astonished by this fact and gave me a jolt when I was reading this book 'Quantum Electro Dynamics (QED)' by none other than Richard Feynman . It was an absorbing master piece and gave unleveled insights into understanding of the basic laws of nature..
So thats the reason behind the name
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