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. . . 

The ecstasies of a last-bencher !

               How do you expect a guy to be whose dad is a physics professor?  Studious, pretty serious, ambitious, first bencher, taking notes seriously & excelling in all things with a great academic record? Well, I was hardly like the description above & never liked the first bench. Owing to height, I was made to sit last bench in school days, this trend continued in high school & college etc. You know what? Sitting in last bench has its own advantages & I enjoyed it a lot. First of all the probability of making line of sight eye contact is less, you get saved if you haven’t done the home work or assignments. Basically the essence of being a last bencher is you can have your own space, create friends circle there & have your opinion on all things taught in the front. You get to explore the lighter side of fundamentals taught there & enjoy in a cool way as we will learn the actual concepts before exam anyway. First benches are for intelligent guys who mug up things & wish to get higher grades whose sole purpose is to outperform others without having choice of their own. I have friends who were first benchers & had ambitions like marine engineering, advertising, singer, actors, army etc, there were a dozen who told that they would become scientists or astronomers, at least I managed to become an amateur astronomer, but that’s a different topic anyway. But now all are in IT companies just like everybody else. Last benches are for intellectual ones whose level is one higher than intelligent ones & have a cool & unusual opinion about the concepts. For e.g. in engineering I never understood the subject Information theory & coding. I was always wondering if the life on earth would end, we should have backup of all the information, the knowledge gained over ages archived, so that life could continue even if handful of humans left on planet or by having a server on mars or suitable planet & migrating there in case of any catastrophes on earth. With the advent on internet, the amount of information has increased so much that there is so much repetition of information if at all we decide to archive it. That database would be huge even with today’s terra bytes hard disks. No doubt I managed to pass the exam with difficulty.    

                In engineering, suddenly the number of intellectual guys tends to increase & last benches are more in demand. Last ones get filled & then the first ones. Infact at many occasions at my college SDM Dharwad, which rhymes with Harvard & we have a popular saying “Rejected Harvard to study in Dharwad” few first benches would mostly remain empty & professor would have to shamelessly ask students to come in front. Unless the teacher is pretty looking lady it’s pretty hard to motivate the students to come & occupy the front benches. Other advantages of last bench include you can sleep so that you can find time off-class hours for more important things like eating, roaming, chatting on various flowers in the world. You can keep staring at girl whom you like & just enjoy the time passing by watching her because you are damn serious about your one sided relationship with her. Parents often insist their kids to sit near to board because they believe this will impact their performance. Well, I seriously doubt that as I have friends who are first & last benchers who are software engineers in Infosys, TCS, and Wipro just like everybody else. I recently had to sit in first row as apparently all the seats were taken at a lecture at IIA - India Institute of Astrophysics. The lecture was on Bose Einstein condensate which was cool of course as name suggests. This made me nostalgic & recall the long forgotten sweet memories of being last bencher all through my life. Hence this reminisce post.

  

I miss you last bench wherever you were!!

God bless the last benchers with more fun ;-)  

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.