Steady State theory survives

This pic taken from net is a quote from the book : The Hitchhikers guide to galaxy, also a movie.

This is sort of a humorous novel about the universe, good to read in your leisure time.

       Stephen Hawking says that he gets so many mails every week from people telling their theory about the universe, this is the way it works. In physics world a theory is just a proposition, putting forward an idea for explaining something. The theory goes through experimental phase. When a observation or finding can be reproduced with consistent results in lab on the basis of give theory, a theory is proved & remains correct until someone disproves it experimentally. That thing which cannot be proven in lab or observed in case of astronomy in not a scientific theory but a hokum. In astronomy as there is no lab experimental results, there are mechanisms like observations which confirm the predictions of a certain theory.  

               There are two widely accepted theories of the universe in the entire history of physics, the big bang theory & the steady state theory, It was not long back I was discussing with Naveen, Vice president of BAS - Bangalore Astronomical Society about the survival of steady stare theory which is kind of popular only second to the widely accepted Big bang theory. 

         Big bang theory states universe was created in a gigantic very massive explosion called the big bang, all the matter, energy & the time was created at that moment. That very moment is so bizarre & difficult to explain that it is considered as a singularity, A singularity in physics is something which cannot be explained by the known laws of physics, or may be we need a different set of laws to explain the same. On the other hand steady state theory states the opposite, there is no beginning of space & time, universe has always been & will continue to be for ever. there is no specific point in history where the universe began. Matter & energy are created continuously in the fabric of space-time.       

     There was this article link which was sent in BAS mailing list by someone which provides a evidence for proving the correctness & hence survival of steady state theory. 

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/Scientists-gather-proof-against-Big-Bang-in-older-stars/756519/

        It’s the nature of human mind & consciousness to seek for answers, to explore the mysteries of universe. The changing perceptions in the mind are also part of the ever changing universe, the mystery of which we are trying to understand, hence the changing understandings of the universe also implies a changing universe with respect to time. 

For physicists may come and go,

but the mystery of universe rocks forever.

Astronomy vs Astrology

     During the Kalpaneya Yatre @ JNP, there was a lecture organized on Astrology mainly with the objective to debunk myths. the audience was professional astronomers from IIA, ISRO scientists, Astrophotography enthusiasts like MR Ajay Talwar, amateur astronomers like me Naveen, & lots of BAS members, educators film producers, art enthusiasts movie directors etc, Shrusti school of arts folks etc. After the session which was on the basics of astrology, the debate & questionnaire was really insightful. this was sensitive topic from ages. As someone rightly put out to debunk myths about astrology we must understand the basics of astrology & explain to people that whats wrong in it, even the astronomy part of the astrology is wrong. someone had a nice argument about eclipse, they consulted  several top gynecologists to know the reason behind the pregnant women advised not to go out during eclipse. The reply came that we don't know the reason, but we advise precaution better don't go out during eclipse. Exactly, fear of consequence is what prevents us from trying out a thing thinking why the risk simply. I & Kiran were discussing: Somethings are under our control, we go to astrology or prayer to make the things which are not under our control to make them turn in our favor. we can study very hard for the exam all night to get good marks but the paper should come reasonably easy to score good marks. So a simple technique of a pooja in morning may save us from getting low marks , then why not try it, simply why the risk ?  similarly we apply same logic for bigger things in life. we buy a house investing all our life's hard earned money on that & that should be essentially on Auspicious day & the house should strictly follow at least basic fundamentals of Vaastu. At least i should not have argument that      IIA conducted a breakfast session during eclipse to disprove any beliefs that eating during eclipse will be harmful.         

    

  ...to be continued. 

Strings are the new particles

.....A peak into the bizarre world of Theoretical Astrophysics 

.....A sip of reality at the Quant um Café..

                       

                           In physics the word 'theory' has a special meaning. Surprisingly, it has a life cycle. An idea or proposal submitted in scientific community based on findings mathematically proved or experimentally conformed in lab. In Astronomy its mainly observations. A theory is proved when scientific community accepts it officially. A theory survives until it is proven wrong by someone sometime. It essentially predicts the outcomes precisely. If a theory cannot be proved in lab & confirmed, it should not be called theory in first place itself, it falls under the realms of philosophy or metaphysics or whatever you may like to put it in. 

Our journey for the quest for understanding of the working of our universe has taken us from billiard balls to spaghetti. Read on to know what this implies.

          In 1665, not long back, once Isaac Newton was sitting under a tree and an apple fell on his head, this made him wonder about the gravity and lead to whole new understanding – this story is so wonderful that I choose to rejoice in the assumption of this being true, although this may be just a fancy story. Gravity was first force to be understood scientifically, He suggested the force making apple fall to ground & the force which keeps planets round the sun are the one and the same. The force of gravity is directly proportional to the product of the masses of two bodies & inversely proportional to the square of the distances between them, irregular bodies are reduced to point masses by the concept of center of gravity. His equations made pretty accurate predictions enough to drive spaceships to moon & put a man there. But, Newton never knew how gravity actually worked.  

Einstein was working as a patent office clerk, & working on light, Yes, he was not in the physics community at all. He discovered that the speed of light is like a cosmic speed limit. Light travelling at 3,00,000 km/sec is the maximum you can get in the universe. Exceeding this limit would mean theoretically you need infinite mass. This implies you need to build a spaceship so massive essentially containing all the mass of the universe to propel it greater than the speed of light, which is obviously impossible. 

The light rays from Sun take about 8 minutes to travel 93 million miles to reach us. This implies if someone switches off sun like an electric bulb, it would take 8 minutes before we can see darkness here on earth.

When light itself, travelling at such high velocity is not instantaneous, how can gravity act instantaneously on bodies?  It was later proved that gravity acts at speed of light.

Einstein continued his research & after 10 yrs came up with brilliant concept space time, i.e. three dimensions of space & one dimension of time constituted the space time fabric. This is like a stretched cloth, being warped, curved and twisted by the presence of heavy objects like planets and stars. This warping is what we feel as gravity. Gravity was a sort of unification of things happening on bodies like apples and bigger things like planets & galaxies.

This startling discovery not only gave an explanation how gravity actually worked but also came as a blow in the face to Newton’s gravitation concept that gravity is instantaneous independent of distances.

Gravity waves, waves if you would like to call them travel at speed of light. Gravity hence was a wave in the fabric of space time.

General relativity is the most beautiful theory

If Einstein would not have come up with general relativity, no one else would ever have. 

                             quote by Prof C Vishweshwara @ JNP Bangalore 

Disclaimer :  Well I have googled & found that the title "Strings are the new particles" is not used anywhere in internet ! Hence this makes me owner of the phrase.

to be continued...

The amazing carbon - 2010 Nobel prize in physics

Carbon has amazed us once again ! 

        These are notes taken down during Prof Sivram’s lecture @ IIA, on 2010 Nobel prize in physics 12^th Oct, Google for the more info, this may not be correct altogether, since I have a amateurish knowledge of physics, particle physics almost from a layman’s perspective.

Click-able links for the press release of 2010 Nobel prize & 2010 Nobel prize in Physics are below  : 

2010 Nobel Prizes

Nobel Prize in Physics for 2010

Congratulations to Andre Geim, Konstantin Novoselov  for winning the Nobel prize. The obtained or produced Graphene in lab. 

-          Suggested by Canadian theoretically 60 years back

-          Graphene – excellent conductor – can be used as substitution for silicon

-          Carbon based electronic circuits,  May be realized as a high performance transistor capable of operating more than 100 times the current ones.

-          Consists of single layer of carbon atoms, this was the most basic or simplest arrangement - form of carbon, but was discovered last. Since it is a layer of carbon items one slice think only, hence essentially 2 dimensional material

 -          Graphane is polymer of carbon & hydrogen i.e hydrogenation of Graphene produces Graphane

-          Graphane is stronger than steel , can be best described by phrase – exceptional combination of extreme properties

-          Finds applications in LCD’s, Solar cells.

The wiki links are  Graphane & Graphene

These laboratory experiments of obtaining or producing Graphene etc help in analyzing the aspects related to concepts such as Zitterbewegung, Klein paradox, Quantum Hall effect,  Anyon   etc  

PS : I will enrich the post when time permits 

-astrosunilnomy 

Amateur Astronomy Workshop July,2010

BAS  conducted yet another successful workshop on July 24th & 25th. Below is the report written by me.
The same report can be found here.



       Bangalore Astronomical Society organised amateur astronomy workshop and about 55 participants were registered. A program which run for two day, covering various aspects of amateur astronomy. This workshop was mainly organised to share the learning BAS members had over the period of years. Workshop was organised in short notice but the participants made it a huge success and with all the positive feedback we have received about the workshop, we will come back soon with many more such events.


Thanks for our guests and Amateur Astronomers Prakash (ABAA) and Subramani (ABAA) for their kind support and participating in the workshop. I would like to thank, National college Jayanagar management for renting us the seminar hall, all BAS volunteers ( Vivek, Achyut, Gautham, Ravi, Viswa, Amar, Udayan, Pavan K) for their hard work in organizing and support.

Thanks for Sunil G for writing a good report about the workshop.

Looking forward for many more such workshops and participation.

Naveen Nanjundappa



Reports follows here..

In the movie ‘A walk to remember’, Jamie's ambition in her life was to ‘witness a miracle’

Well, to say this workshop was a miracle I witnessed. Other miracles being with BAS more than 2 yrs now included watching TSE with Akarsh, Pavan etc & ASE with Naveen, Sharanu etc & so many star parties with Amar, Vivek & Akarsh & so many wonderful astronomy enthusiastic friends.

First of all Congrats BAS for conducting the workshop successfully & wonderfully with so much knowledge shared among us. I had forgotten that this workshop was my idea until Akarsh told me about this! I joined BAS couple of years back, when I had completed reading 4/5 popular books like - A Brief history of time, Universe in a Nutshell etc & was wondering what’s next? From that point of time I am able to explore various aspects in astronomy being with BAS, learnt so many things from everyone...to mention a few Naveen, Amar, Akarsh, Vivek, Parag, Pavan, Rakesh, Keerthi Kiran, Achyut, Ravi babu, Goutham, Viswakeerthi, Kiran Tikare etc.

Here is a summary of what we learnt @ workshop:

> There are many aspects of Amateur astronomy, you can observe planets, deep sky objects, astrophotography, astrosketching, radio astronomy(electronics expts specially for electronics engineers), learn theoretical astrophysics, Astrometry, do experiments, build telescopes, optics, instrumentation & the list goes on. Last but not the least, hunt for meteorites, comets, supernova etc.

> Ancient astronomy, Astronomers & their contributions. Galileo Newton etc. How our concepts changed with time. Lucky people as they were blessed with good skies then!

> Various Coordinate systems, Equatorial coordinate system - Right Accession & Declination. Difficulties with coming up with the coordinate system to locate a particular point for an observer on any part of earth for apparent view of obervable sky, directions, terms like hoizon & zenith.

> Stars patterns are called Constellations - how mythology has inspired to accept amazing patterns. Identifying tips, star hopping techniques, averted vision, - present day -88 Constellations as per IAU.

How star atlas is different from a catalog ? Messier marathon - Annual event where all 110 objects can be observed in one night .

Collins Gem Night sky pocket size beginner‘s guide to identifying constellations.

Various Star charts & catalogs exist.

Messier catalog – 110 comets like objects – the most beautiful things in night sky!

> Sun, study of surface features of Sun like sunspots, prominences . Life cycle of star moon & phase lock, eclipses, TSE, ASE retrograde motion.

TSE, ASE -how lucky we are to witness such amazing phenomena. The distances between Sun & Moon & the apparent sizes of moon & sun for an observer on earth are such that they give rise to such beautiful phenomena! not only beautiful view , but during eclipses lot of experiments can be done.

Binoculars, what best you can do with binocs, care while choosing one, what 10X50 means ?

Asteroids are minor planets, orbiting between Mars & Jupiter. Vishnu Reddy, the most famous amateur astronomer from India discovered asteroids http://blog.vishnureddy.net/

Asteroids, nomenclature. Meteor craters. Lonar crater in Maharashtra is the nearest & one of the significant in the world.

> Role of atmosphere & sky conditions, Bortle scale of sky darkness.

How light pollution, clouds, city lights, water vapor or haze can play spoils sport in observations & photography. On the other hand Auroras, rings around moon sun are awesome atmospheric phenomena

DSO comprising identifying constellations, open clusters, globular clusters, asterisms, nebulae, galaxies, cluster of galaxies etc.

Difference between magnitude & surface brightness. Catalogs of DSO.

How advanced DSO involves observing & recording features like spiral arms, nebulae in other galaxies,

Averted vision, star hopping techniques.

Importance of maintaining logs of your observations

Optics concepts like magnification focal length, resolution

Instrumentation aspects , choosing binocs, telescopes, focal length, magnification, eyepieces etc

Various filters which allow certain range of frequencies of light to pass & give amazing images.

Comets are most wonderful & beautiful visitors ,

Comets, core, coma, tail, composition & Oort cloud, types of comets with some breadth taking snaps of some of the comets. Indian Comet discoverer :

http://www.bas.org.in/Home/blog/amaruniverse/2009/23/03/treatise-vainu-bappus-comet

Step by step guide to challenges involved in Astrophotography, techniques like SLR, Star trails, Tripod, Prime focus, manual tracking, piggy backing, Automatic mounts,

Suresh Mohan’s photographs: http://picasaweb.google.com/drsureshmohan/

http://www.astrosurf.com/legault/iss_atlantis_transit_2010.html

Amazing phenomena which you should not miss to watch & photograph like Eclipses, Occultation, Auroras, halos around sun moon etc meteor showers.

My favourite part was :

Galaxy, classification – Elliptical, Spiral, Barred spiral, Irregular, Some irregular galaxies, Peculiar galaxies, Seyfert, Active galactic nuclei (AGN )

Our home- milky way, spiral arms etc. an observer on earth is seeing the galaxy edge on from inside! Advanced DSO includes seeing features in galaxy.

http://www.petesastrophotography.com/gallery/M31/m31globs.jpg

Last but not the least, how amateurs can contribute in the field of astronomy.

Share the fun & excitement of astronomy!

Thanks for the wonderful feedback, it will hep us create more enthusiasm in making Astronomy more amazing to learn.

Welcome to be a member of BAS, & share the excitement called ‘Astronomy ‘

Regards,

-astrosunilnomy

Sometimes I wonder there just aren’t enough stars!

Whacky quotes !

These are random thoughts ran across my mind & told & retold among friends mostly in sky watching trips in coorg, siddarabetta etc...

> My aspiration of my life "to witness a miracle, to see supernova & a black hole eating it simultaneously"

> "I want to see Milky Way horizon to horizon with mountains & oceans everywhere"

> "I increased my extent of averted vision to such an extent that i looked out of the eyepiece"

> "Damn Akarsh for creating enthusiasm to such an extent, i could see horse head nebulae with naked eye, in whatever white patch of light i saw, missing on the actual one really" 

> Akarsh: What is IIA's telescope, Is it a Maksutov or RCX or Schmidt Cassegrain? 

Sunil:  Oh No No, its dark blue one

> Akarsh: IIA scope is coma free

Sunil: so can we put that in front of yours 17.5 in series so that we can see coma free view...

> Overdose of observing galaxies on lack of bed sheets: 

Some guy to some guy: you can share my bed sheet

Sunil:  well, you can sleep on him, face on or edge, or just irregularly since bed sheet was really small one.

> Akarsh: these wires are all tangled, 

> Sunil: well, let’s see if your string theory helps to unwind that, if it does not for such a     simple thing, how the hell it will explain universe? 

  

> Akarsh: can u see a triangle?

Me: even if I am not applying permutations & combinations, i can see at least 20    triangles!

> Couldn’t find better time & place to test law of inertia? 

Keethi's scope : all carried & threw it on ground on siddarbetta obs site in night....all      carried & put it back into van morning, 

Scope was there only without getting assembled. Proved!  

>   Ravi did a sleeping marathon in siddarbetta observation session; he was awake like      for 15 mins, rest 18 hrs slept in van. He definitely needed a bed for Messier Marathom!! 

regards,

-astrosunilnomy

Sometimes i wonder there just aren't enough stars ! 

On dimensions…

                     As promised in the overview of what my blog was all about, about everything in life being mystery etc, really try to look at things differently around you & you will discover wonderful aspects & gain amazing understanding about the unexplored nature of normal mundane things which we are unaware of almost all the times

       We are living in 3 dimensions of space & one dimension of time. The 3 dimensions are length, breadth & height. The time has forward & backward direction. The forward is marked by the increase in entropy, yes this is the important criteria which distinguishes forward passage of time. Whatever you do, contributes to increase in entropy, the rate of incease ion entropy may vary but entroy or disorder in universe increases always. Or more generally in this direction of time, the causes precede the effects in any event. Coming to spatial dimension, starting with a point, has no dimensions at all, no length breadth etc. A string has one dimension. It has length only, an ant can move forward backward, of course ant is 3 dimensional organisms, but just ignoring this fact for simplicity in understanding. What do we mean by one dimension is we need one parameter to locate a point i.e the length parameter, considering some point as fixed or popularly called origin. A 2 dimensional space is popularly called in Flatland. You can be a line square or rectangle or any favorite geometrical 2 dimensional shape you may like. Why organisms really cannot exist in flatland is described by Stephen hawking in his book Brief history of time as the food canal & the excretory system which should be essentially present in a living organism will divide the body into two. Hence the existence of two dimensional organisms is ruled out. We need two parameters length & breadth to specify a point’s location in such a space. The Cartesian coordinate system or polar coordinate systems are just different ways to identify the location of point.  

               Coming to the most familiar one, the 3 dimensional space which we live our lives & see the universe is most essential one for sustaining life as organisms cant obviously exist in one dimension or flatland. Now, the easiest way to imagine 4^th dimension of space is imagine I lock you in a room & come outside. & you happen to find way to come outside & surprise me outside the room. Assuming the exaggeration that there may be many ways you can come out, one possibility is through 4^th dimension. The room is a cube taking 3 parameters length, breadth & height essentially to define the position of a point. A 4 dimensional cube is called a tesseract or hypercube. It becomes more & more difficult for human mind to comprehend dimensions with the increase in dimensions as we have not seen or experienced them. This would essentially have a extra direction perpendicular to all three axis length, breadth & height axis. As a 3D object like cube casts a 2d shadow on a plane, we can expect the hypercube to cast a 3D shadow, with its 3 D structure visible in 3D completely, but one part extending out in 4^th dimension which we cannot see or touch or feel but easily mathematically comprehensible.

         The most popular theory Big Bang theory states that our universe sub-plank length smaller than about 10 to the power (-35) m. So, Can I say that universe started as zero dimension, an infinitesimally small point. The space itself came into existence after big bang. So universe evolved into 3 dimensional spaces as we see it today & perhaps more dimensions which we don’t see.  Scientists explain this observation in a weirs way. If you see a water pipe from a distance it appears as a line segment, but actually if you go near & observe it’s a 3 dimensional object with water flowing inside it. So here in this example the 3^rd dimension is curved & on itself & cannot be inferred when seen form a distance. Similarly 4^th & higher dimensions may exhibit similar characteristics. Imagine the universe existed as a flatland & it’s curved say in form a sphere etc, then a flatland creature would travel from a point & reach same point if he kept traveling. So space is finite & unbounded. Similarly extending this same idea to 3 dimensional space, it can be curved in on itself i.e if you stary traveling in space marking the initial point & travel faster as we know the universe is quite big, after infinite time you may reach the same point where you just started the quest. Then the universe is finite & bounded. Now, the interesting part is what makes universe bend onto itself, matter as we know is ion large quantities to bend space time continuum onto itself. If quantity of matter is not more than some threshold value, then space is open & non bounded & infinite.        

Various paradoxes emerge when we are conceptualizing such things. In fact there was an interesting article in ‘New Scientist’ which said that instead of sphere, universe could be shape of funnel. If you are at the extreme tip of the funnel you could see back of your own head. If you throw a catapult fast enough, assuming universe is finite & bounded then instead of returning to you it may come & hit you at back of your head. 

     This wrapped onto itself universe actually coincides with the observable universe. All galaxies are moving from each other, the farther they are apart they seem to be moving at faster rate from each other. Just like dots when you are blowing up a balloon. 

to be continued...

-astrosunilnomy

Sometimes i wonder there just aren't enough stars. . . 

Million sparkles! Beyond your thoughts series – Part 1

/ under construction /

I was writing a book sort of on just thoughts on astronomy, but seem no one may publish it or no one may read it, so thought of posting it on blog. This is first part & much more to come. 

One fine evening, on the sea shore, witnessing the beautiful setting sun leave behind a million sparkles on the water, I was left with a million weird questions about mysteries of the universe. With my limited knowledge of physics & astronomy, these questions baffled me & somehow seem that the answers are out of the realms of these subjects. A series of deep thoughts about the mysteries of universe swept across my mind, here is a recollection of the same.

What is the destiny of universe?  What is the universe after all?  Does it merely exist as a collection of concepts we call reality, which also changes with time as our interpretation, hence understanding progresses. In coming years, we can expect mankind would have done many experiments on large scale as spacecrafts would be sent to various planets etc collecting data & many experiments like LHC, subatomic particle research which would lead to new scientific discoveries. The reality which we know of today would have become a past. So it’s merely the evolution of our understanding about the reality which influences our assumptions on actual nature of the universe. Ultimate truth as we call is it in the realms of science? Can we ever arrive at it by the scientific approach we pay so much emphasis on?  Would religion philosophy metaphysics be able to discover it faster? Did God create universe or universe created god?  Why is our universe in ever increasing state of entropy when energy remains a constant always? The space as we know it contains only matter & energy & dark matter & dark energy are still under lot of research. Whatever we knew can be considered as “one physics”. The singularity as we call it like black hole & complex topics like galactic centers are so complex that probably we need another set of physical laws to explain them. Are we missing out on “second physics”. Why do we live in 3 dimensions of space & one dimension of time? Why is our universe filled with so many constant & variable parameters? The c file I write has hundreds of constants & variables applied for particular system like automotive. 

So long & thanks for all the mystery !!

This post is under construction

God is like a magician. In a magic trick say for e.g. named something pretty as ‘The vanishing elephant’, the magician shows an elephant on stage. The audience is wondering how could possibly the elephant disappear when their sense of sight is confirming fully on the presence of elephant. The magician covers a black cloth or something which possibly & intently diverts the attention, not letting go of the attention of the presence of elephant though & removes the black cloth & the elephant is disappeared. Though quite amazed in a refusal to believe their senses the audience wouldn’t clap because it’s not enough to make the elephant disappear. He has to bring it back. He covers the cloth & elephant reappears & the audience is truly amazed seeing the elephant back same time wondering how can he possibly do that? God is just like this magician or bigger magician than him & knows all the tricks & never ever reveals his tricks because if he does, his importance would vanish away in the story of universe. Our universe is just like this elephant except for the fact that we & our consciousness are an integral part of this universe. The god makes the disappearing & reappearance of the elephant can be compared to the non existence & existence of the universe. The eyes see it the ears hear it & the mind believes it. God uses this covering of a black cloth as a means of misdirection to just bring about a change in the scenario i.e. the presence of the elephant. Our consciousness is the audience which believes whatever is the conclusion of the processing of the information by sense organs. The universe merely exists as a collection of concepts as understood by our brain. A set of theories put forth by physicians which mind accepts & believes in it without a choice. A collection of facts & figures which the human mind tends to believe. Just like the black cloth we are blindfolded from the truth by engaging us in exploring the things which are too complex for human intelligence. Cataloging the stars, galaxies etc would never come to an end as there is simply infinite number of them. Solving the equations with assumptions made for them experimenting the conclusions putting forth high fundamental theories would never come to an end. Exploring the micro world of atoms & molecules will never lead us to the absolute truth. This is a world pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth. A truth so vague like this the elephant is truly present or truly absent in the first place itself. What importance the first place has when the magician performs this trick multiple times. And the audience stress their mind to explore the trick & probably some of them may ask the magician in person. But the magician would not simply tell the truth because his purpose & ofcourse his business is gone if he reveals the trick. Instead he successfully misdirects them think about the covering black cloth & this is the exact situation the mankind is today struggling hard to find the way universe works.

It has been said that something as small the flutter of a butterfly’s wing can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world ….Chaos theory

Universe can be considered as a chaos, where things happen in random probably not following any laws or almost all following physical laws except with exceptions like black hole etc where the known laws of physics break down.

Indeed true…everything in the universe happens as per the physical laws the laws that were formed in beginning of time. Even the entropy increases at increasing rate this also follows all the laws. They may be complex enough because human mind may not be capable of accounting for all the parameters involved in it, same may be the case with super computers. Probably our brain may evolve to the extent of processing speed of supercomputer but that’s not gonna happen now as we already have super computers, so there is no need for the brain to run anyways !

Our universe is 13.7 billon years old…what do I make of the universe ? A great sense of mystery…a truth so magnificent & so profound yet so obscure. I still make the same sense of mystery which the stone age man could have made. With all this intelligence understanding gathered over ages contributions from intellectual minds in science & philosophy..still I don’t understand the universe. I am driven by the void desperate feeling seeking answers to the mysteries of universe but cannot help in anyway coz I am lost completely in the fabric of consciousness which is supposedly made up not to discover the ultimate truth.

Or perhaps not so easily & soon. . We have come a long way ahead in scientific & technological terms but yet so little we know how universe operates?

The vastness of the space itself behaves like a time machine which allows us to see the past. Our sun we look at is 8 minutes older as light from sun takes that time to reach uslight rays from distant galaxies etc are in their path reaching our telescopes still. When they reach a new object is discovered which you can probably name after your sweet heart. That object may be there or may have vanished in the cosmic evolution by now.