Similarly, the magnetic north and south poles of the Earth are reversed periodically, while the exact reason remains unknown. Speculation and theories are rife, but the questions of why and how remain largely unanswered. (By the way, if this reversal had included a period of complete absence of the field, there would be no atmosphere on Earth)

Moving on, we come to the Universe. As I have just mentioned elsewhere, there is no tangible concept of the “birth” of the universe itself, but because the universe’s boundaries are being defined by the points where the farthest celestial objects exist, the big bang is taken as the origin.

The big bang was something which propelled matter outwards from a concentration which may be taken as a point.

This might even be periodical. Like the ice ages, perhaps the big bang has a reverse phenomena which occurs after a period of time, to be again followed by the bang itself.

What could possibly reverse the big bang? Something like an object achieving the speed of light. Infinite mass would have an omnipresent gravitational pull, with an infinite force that would immediately begin pulling every object composed of matter towards itself. This, or something like it, may cause the “death” of the universe, just as the big bang caused the “birth”.

And the bottom line is, there is nothing we could do to prevent it.

Something I will write in this post. It is not about putting Darwinism down, it is about looking at things differently and putting pieces of the jigsaw together. That is not all. It is also about stepping back and looking at the jigsaw as a whole. The pieces may fit, but not everytime do they form a meaningful picture. In this case, hopefully, they will.

Observing these channels, I have noted that something remarkable happened 75,000 years ago and that we, humans, are still evolving. Also, all human males alive today share a common mutation in their Y-chromosome. These are related events, let me explain. What happened 75,000 years ago was that a supervolcano erupted. This is the biggest eruption in recorded history. I believe you may have heard of the explosion of Krakatoa – ash in the air all over the world, moon turning green and blue. I had earlier assumed that most humans died due to the sun being obscured. I might have been wrong, and probably was. An explosion of said magnitude has grave environmental effects – temperatures shoot up around the explosion and plummet everywhere else. These changes, or others like them, may have been responsible.

It appears that the explosion left out some regions, and most organisms other than humans (reason: unknown). In one of these regions, a tribe of humans apparently survived. It did not have one male, it had many. In the course of time, they also had offspring. One man’s offspring had the mutation we all share today. The other ones had other mutations, or none at all, but it appears that these were futile mutations – because these strains, as in, the descendants of the descendants of all other men were wiped out over time by natural selection – as opposed to this one man’s descendants. This is why we share the mutation. Because this man is the supposed “Adam”, except that he is not the first man to live, but the ancestor of us all.

If you are having difficulty understanding this, think of human life as a tree. Also think of height as time – the higher we go, the farther in time we are. You can see that there are many roots or frayed ends (root hairs as biology calls them), and these may mark the beginning of human life in its different races or strains. As we go up, let us ignore the trunk at look at the branches. These branches may be taken as different mutations in the Y-chromosome, meaning each branch has the descendants of the same man. Keep going up. The branches will end individually at different heights, signifying the times each strain went kaput. Towards the top, let us take one branch that is the highest and reaches towards the sky. The tip of the tree is now. There is just one branch, and the height this branch begins at is 75,000 years ago. Therefore, we are the descendants of one person.

Now, we can see that this one mutation was an essential evolution for the better. But it does not end there. At that time, we were threatened with extinction, but we made it. Now, 75,000 years later, we are still evolving. This does not stem from the need for survival. The stimulus for this evolution is internal rather than external. We are evolving. Into what? It is impossible to say. When will this stop? Probably never. So, we will continue to evolve until we become extinct.

You see, it is not about survival anymore. Now, I am having to change this part because of unwanted associations the reader makes. What natural selection says is that organisms with favorable mutations have a higher chance of survival than those without. Note that these mutations are generally almost entirely by chance and depend very little on conscious adaptation, they are soon spread throughout the species due to selective survival and, therefore, breeding. What I meant to say by saying “fight or flight” is that we may either “fight”, i.e., attempt to pit chance mutation and psychological adaptation (which is not so much by chance) against adverse living conditions, OR, our bodies may choose “flight”, which implies that mutations become much more frequent – giving a higher number of favorable mutations than those that would happen by chance – and thus blindly groping towards survival without depending on our surroundings (for mutations/adaptation) at all.

What I mean to say is, it is as if an entire species was represented by one man, and that one man was threatened so strongly with extinction that his DNA now has an inherent urge to mutate, probably because of mutation itself – to improve chances of evolving and subsequently increase chances of survival – long after the threat is removed. The term “inherent urge” is misleading. It might make it appear that I am saying we evolve with every generation, every time. What I really mean is, read the paragraph before this one (that the frequency of mutation icreases, and that is all).

It is somewhat like if you scare an animal well enough, it will flee and continue to run even after you are out of sight.

Also, for some of the lesser minds out there, I said that the frequencies of mutation increase – not the magnitude. Humans don’t become gigantic over a generation, for example. These mutations still aim towards gradual change. This is because we would otherwise evolve into, say, 50 different beings over a generation and yet, not one of them may survive or breed. Mutations are, for the most part, accidental, and our bodies would be very faulty to change in such a way, so soon. The reason for our constant evolution is not known, and our future anatomy is deduced only by clever guesswork.

Because there is no external stimulus that immediately threatens our survival as a species, this evolution may be due to internal stimuli. There are two possibilities:- either we are evolving because of evolving into an organism that evolves continually, or we are fine tuning ourselves, slowly becoming the perfect being.

P.S.:-
The XX male disorder is extremely rare and it does not cause a flaw in this post or in research. We are tracking the Y chromosome’s mutations, so where the Y chromosome trail ends and it is because of a XX male, we may consider it to be a female (not biologically, but to make the research easier). Either way, if this male is his father’s only son, the Y-legacy of this strain (going back by one generation only) is lost.

For more info: Wikipedia ]]> http://www.argee.org/old-blog/much-debated-edited-and-hardly-understood/feed/ 18 http://www.argee.org/old-blog/why-light-has-mass-and-why-it-doesnt/ http://www.argee.org/old-blog/why-light-has-mass-and-why-it-doesnt/#comments Thu, 14 Sep 2006 14:37:00 +0000 RG http://www.argee.org/general/why-light-has-mass-and-why-it-doesnt/ Something we know for certain about light is that it is an electromagnetic wave. Another reasonable assumption, corroborated by experimental results, is that this wave has a dual nature – it behaves as a particle wave under some circumstances, and as an energy (or pure) wave under others. The adoption of the dual theory resulted in the need to define the particles a ray of light is made of – photons.

It would not be wrong to say that photons are one of the most disturbing may-or-may-not-exist phenomena in physics, and create more problems than they solve. However, high profile scientists tend to approximate and negligate, which is what they have apparently done with the mass of the photon.

The mass of light – An inconclusive approach
Those who believe that photons are not completely massless are not entirely wrong. For if protons were indeed massless, there would have been no way for a black-hole to prevent the emission of light. As we know that the gravitational field has some sort of effect on light, it can be concluded that light cannot be entirely without mass. In addition, I have come across some foolish declarations which proclaim that though light has both energy and momentum, it does not have any mass.

I call this proclamation foolish, because I am not amused at the absurdity of light having “zero rest mass” and a negligibly small mass when it is in motion. The many people who cling to this statement believe that light is never at rest, which, if it had been true, would have made this theory absolutely impossible to disprove.

To Disprove a Theory
I hope you know of the existence of a phenomenon called “reflection”, wherein a wave of light (or any other wave) upon reaching a boundary between to media is returned into the medium from whence it came. At the moment of reflection, then, there is an instant where the wave can be said to be at rest, because the particle forming the wave is at rest, as that point is actually a node. This, then means that photons are at rest at the boundary of all media into which light attempts to enter…

Okay, there is nothing revolutionary in the above paragraph. But now, consider the theory again. The theory tells me that a particle of mass “x” upon being reflected goes to having zero mass and then back to the mass “x”. I am befuddled as to how this is possible, especially in vaccuum where there is absolutely no atmospheric energy to absorb.

The Insanity of It All
Look at the formula on the left. If we apply this to a photon – which we cannot, but, if this formula is applied to the photon, we see that the rest mass theory becomes the absurdiest one ever proposed. This is because, according to this formula, the mass of a photon is infinite.

If you would consider reflection again, you will see that there are two theoretical possibilities:

1. The photon goes from infinite mass to zero, then back to infinite mass.
2. The photon hits the boundary with all its infinite mass and the speed of light, which might be enough to induce nuclear fissions and whatnot.

So, we see that light cannot have a rest mass of zero because in that case, light simply would cease to exist in all ways. It is much, much better to say that the rest mass of light is undefined. Just like division by zero.

I have thus proposed that photons have mass. However, this too, is not completely true. I will leave you with a final question – if light indeed does have mass, where has all the light which has entered your eyes in your entire life gone? It cannot simply vanish as it has mass, and it cannot be “converted into energy” because this is not a nuclear reaction, and even if it was, your eyeballs would blow up along with the neighbourhood.

It is relatively more difficult to prove that time travel is not possible than to prove that it is possible. Before I move on to the idea of How, I will try to prove the possibility of the radical concept of twisting our fourth dimension.

Consider Einstein’s theory of relativity. The main drawback of this excellent theory is that it does not apply to light. Not because the velocity of light makes all velocities negligible, but because the speed of light is a rigid constant – both actual as well as apparent velocity will remain the same, at the cost of either distance or time.

What I mean to say is, the relative movement between the source and the observer has no observed effect on the velocity of light, or the time it takes to reach a certain spot. Even if the relative velocity is comparable to the speed of light, it shall have no effect (this is a proven experimental fact, do not bug me with questions about this, I simply do not know).

(One thing you should know is that even though the velocity is unmodified, the wavelength and frequency of light are modified, hence giving birth to Red Shift [Blue Shift is very rare] – Read about this somewhere else, I haven’t got the time. Besides, Its unrelated.)

This means that the rigidity of the speed of light actually modifies the perception of time. Don’t get it? Let me explain. The speed of light turns out to be exactly the same for both the source and the observer moving relative to the source, because time, as measured by your watch, ticked along at a slower pace than time measured by the observer.

Thus, I have proved that time can slow down or speed up for someone in particular cases. Time travel, thus, is possible. Now for the question of how.

I will now make a point which might make me the enemy of all astronomers and physicits on Earth. It is possible to travel faster than light. Or at least make it appear so. Let me give you a silly and unrelated example to prove this beyond doubt:- In a race between two cyclists A and B, the objective is to complete a lap around a circular track. There is a path in the diameter of the track, not known to cyclist B but used by cyclist A. As A uses the path every time and B has to travel all the way around, it will appear to B that A is moving much faster, even when he isn’t. Similarly, the universe has many such “short-cut” paths known as wormholes. The use of these wormholes might just enable time travel, by changing how it is perceived by different people. If an hour to you is a second to me, I have succesfully travelled 3599 seconds forward in time.

Now, I cannot stress this enough – It is NOT possible to travel back in time. At the very max, as in the above example, a second for someone can be an hour to you, wherein you have slowed time down, BUT, you CANNOT REVERSE IT. A new born baby is not going to go back in the mother’s womb, so to say, because we are limited to modifying perceptions, not dimensions.

Also please note that actual movement at the speed of light will convert all the matter in your body into energy (according to one really bothersome formula, mass will become infinte. In order to accelerate infinite mass you need more than infinite force, hence travel @ the speed of light is impossible) , it is inadvisable to try to acheive such speed. Just “make it appear so” with the help of wormholes (see P.S.) or something.

The Lame Way
Another possible way (and it is the lame way) of travelling in time is to consider time as being defined alongwith light. The time on Earth, for example, is timed according to the rotation of the planet, as compared with light from the sun. (Otherwise we would not be able to see anything, so there wouldn’t be much to compare our own motion with, Earth would just be a something doing something in the dark). Then, we divide Earth into time zones, and travelling from one zone to another at a velocity faster than the Earth’s speed of rotation, we do time travel! And its not much use because one second is still one second and there’s no fun in that.

P.S.> On Wormholes
It is unknown whether (Lorentzian) wormholes are possible or not within the framework of general relativity. Most known solutions of general relativity which allow for wormholes require the existence of exotic matter, a theoretical substance which has negative energy density. However, it has not been mathematically proven that this is an absolute requirement for wormholes, nor has it been established that exotic matter cannot exist.

P.P.S>Utter Bullshit
Backward time travel through a wormhole could be accomplished by accelerating one end of the wormhole relative to the other, and then sometime later bringing it back; the modification of time perception would result in less time having passed for the accelerated wormhole mouth compared with the stationary one, meaning that anything which entered the stationary wormhole mouth would exit the accelerated one at a point in time prior to its entry. The path through such a wormhole is called a closed timelike curve, and a wormhole with this property is sometimes referred to as a “timehole.” ]]> http://www.argee.org/old-blog/time-travel-possible-but-how/feed/ 1 http://www.argee.org/old-blog/point-click-literally/ http://www.argee.org/old-blog/point-click-literally/#comments Thu, 07 Sep 2006 09:26:00 +0000 RG http://www.argee.org/general/point-click-literally/ How many times have you wished to turn on/off the lights without moving a muscle? Many, I’m sure. Of course, it is absolutely impossible to do it without moving at least one muscle somewhere in your body (besides, muscles like those in the heart are always moving), but it can be made far easier than it currently is with the help of technology.

The technology we’re talking here is bluetooth. Not because I’m in love with bluetooth or something, but because bluetooth is ruling the roost nowadays, and we want our methods to integrate with most appliances using bluetooth, used by most appliances (??).

Now, point at something. It would be foolish to think that you can initiate a response from a reasonably cheap bluetooth sensor with the feeble motion of “pointing”. Seriously, how much force did you put in that “point”? Not much, I hope. Nope, that kind of pointing won’t get us anywhere.

Point at something again, with more force this time (thrust your finger as if pushing a button). That much force might activate a sensitive plate within, say, a finger-glove (or cover) which will then send out a message to a wall panel representing the switch, to turn off/on the lights. Working great so far? Not if you have more than one light in the house, sadly.

The problem with bluetooth is that it reaches far. Your power-point (no pun intended) may switch off any lights in the house that are on, and vice-versa. To solve this problem, we can either decrease the range of bluetooth, or increase the range of infrared and use that instead.

The final problem we must address is, what if two panels are beside each other, and you wish to use only one? The answer lies in colour (and corresponding wavelength) coding. You can more than one finger glove, say one red and one green, to be used with red and green panels respectively. Of course, this technology is not expected to be seen in households within the next year, but something very similar might just come up.