Boltzmann brain - A fascinating concept !!!

Well, for quite some months I deluded myself happily thinking that it was me who first thought of our existence as being only a quantum fluctuation in space.


Well. I was wrong. As always, it seems that all the decent ideas these days are already "taken".



Having said that..and a tad disappointed ...I come to the current literature about a related fascinating concept called as the Boltzmann brain


What is it ? (chapoed from wikipedia..what else ?)

A Boltzmann brain is a hypothesized self-aware entity which arises due to random fluctuations out of some future state of chaos. The idea is named for Ludwig Boltzmann, whose ideas led to the proposal of such entities. It is often referred to in the context of the "Boltzmann brain paradox" or "problem".

The concept arises from the need to explain why we observe such a large degree of organization in the universe.

The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy in the universe will always increase. We may think of the most likely state of the universe as one of high entropy, closer to uniform and without order.

So why is the observed entropy so low?

Boltzmann proposed that we and our observed low-entropy world are a random fluctuation in a higher-entropy universe.

Even in a near-equilibrium state, there will be stochastic fluctuations in the level of entropy. The most common fluctuations will be relatively small, resulting in only small amounts of organization, while larger fluctuations and their resulting greater levels of organization will be comparatively more rare. Large fluctuations would be almost inconceivably rare, but this can be explained by the enormous size of the universe and by the idea that if we are the results of a fluctuation, there is a "selection bias": We observe this very unlikely universe because the unlikely conditions are necessary for us to be here.

This leads to the Boltzmann brain concept:

If our current level of organization, having many self-aware entities, is a result of a random fluctuation, it is much less likely than a level of organization which is only just able to create a single self-aware entity.

For every universe with the level of organization we see, there should be an enormous number of lone Boltzmann brains floating around in unorganized environments. This refutes the observer argument above: the organization I see is vastly more than what is required to explain my consciousness, and therefore it is highly unlikely that I am the result of a stochastic fluctuation.

The Boltzmann brains paradox is that it is more likely that a brain randomly forms out of the chaos with false memories of its life than that the universe around us would have billions of self-aware brains.

(Now I have added some content below from one of my favorite websites that I am currently subscribed to : www.newscientist.com : Bless ya ! and many thanks....)


The idea sounds absurd, but it is helping cosmologists grapple with models of the universe, and our place in it. Cosmology, indeed most of science, assumes that we humans are typical observers in the grand scheme of things. Ever since the 16th century, when Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus argued that the Earth is just a rock orbiting the sun, we have been dethroned from a unique position in the cosmos. The laws of physics seem to be the same in our neighbourhood as in the rest of the visible universe. So the idea has been enshrined that unless we have reason to think otherwise, we should assume that we are typical. "This assumption is very essential to everything that we do," says Alex Vilenkin of Tufts University in Massachusetts. "If we don't assume that our observations are typical of observers, we wouldn't be able to conclude anything."

That's because if we aren't typical, then whatever we see is not representative of the universe at large.

So here's the problem: some well-established cosmological models predict that, trillions of years in the future, Boltzmann brains could vastly outnumber "ordinary observers" like us, who depend on aeons of evolution and life support. If that is true, then over the lifetime of the universe, they - not we - might be the typical ones. That's scary, because models suggest that their view of the cosmos would be strikingly different from ours.

Now researchers are trying to figure out just how common Boltzmann brains could be and whether there is a way to banish them, or at least stop them from outnumbering us. Indeed, the Boltzmann brains problem is forcing cosmologists to revisit their most crucial assumptions about the structure of the universe. Either they must explain how the cosmos can produce enough ordinary observers to stay ahead of the "pop-up" brains, or we may have to accept that our ideas are wrong and that the ultimate fate of the universe is coming sooner than we thought.

All in their heads

Boltzmann brains reared their ugly heads in the late 1990s, when astrophysicists discovered that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, rather than slowing down as most had expected. One possible explanation for this "dark energy" has been known for decades: empty space could hold inherent energy that has a repulsive effect, driving space to expand and forcing matter apart. This effect goes by different names - the cosmological constant, or vacuum energy. Why it exists is one of the biggest mysteries in physics.

Regardless of its origins, vacuum energy is active and always subtly fluctuating - occasionally enough to transform into particles and matter. A photon might pop up here, an atom over there. The bigger and more complex the object, the less likely it is to appear.

Wait long enough and a Boltzmann brain could pop up (What little brains are made of: As empty space contains a repulsive force known as vacuum energy, it can eventually spawn particles, atoms and even, in theory, conscious entities. These hypothetical "Boltzmann brains" - spontaneous observers of the space around them - challenge our place in the universe.

What exactly might these things be? In theory, they could take on almost any form, but the larger and more complex they are, the less likely it is that they will appear, according to the laws of probability and quantum mechanics. They could be disembodied brains with eyeballs, floating in outer space. They could consist of a whole body, encased in a space suit and equipped with an oxygen tank. They could be human brains, animal brains or an intelligent alien species made of gas. What matters is that they qualify as conscious - by whatever definition researchers agree on.
They need not even be actual brains. If computers could become complex enough to be considered conscious, for instance, they would qualify too. Since computer chips pack large amounts of processing power into a tiny space, silicon-based Boltzmann brains could be much smaller than biological brains. If so, that might make conscious computers more likely to pop out of the vacuum than biological entities, meaning they could be the ones to dominate the universe)

"It looks like a miracle," says theorist Andrei Linde of Stanford University in California. "Not entirely impossible, but just extremely improbable."

A Boltzmann brain is so improbable, in fact, that there is essentially no chance that even a single one has appeared in the 13.7-billion-year history of our universe. But factor in the accelerating expansion of the universe, and the picture changes: it points to an infinitely large space that will last an infinitely long time, with ongoing fluctuations in the vacuum. This will be a cold, dark and inhospitable place for conventional creatures, but a perfect breeding ground for Boltzmann brains, which would see only empty space around them. "Brains and what-not will be popping out of this vacuum at some very low rate, but for a very long time," says Vilenkin.

So if the universe can produce two kinds of observers - ordinary ones like us, and freakish Boltzmann brains - cosmologists have a problem. To preserve the assumption that we are typical, they need to show that their models of the universe do not allow Boltzmann brains to outnumber us.

How do we figure out which kind of observer is more common?


Consider the theory of inflation, which most cosmologists regard as the best explanation of our universe. Developed in part by Linde and Vilenkin in the 1980s, inflation says that just after the big bang, our universe expanded enormously and rapidly, making it extremely "smooth" and homogeneous, but with just enough bumpiness early on to allow matter to clump together to form stars and galaxies.

Many cosmologists buy into the idea that inflation is continuing at various points in the universe - a theory known as eternal inflation. In this picture there is a vast backdrop of expanding space, out of which new "pocket universes" are continually budding off (see Diagram above). Some of these universes are like our own - going through a short period of explosive growth and then settling down - while others could have wildly different laws of physics. In this "multiverse" scenario, pocket universes can grow infinitely large and contain an infinite number of stars and planets - and Boltzmann brains, which could outnumber ordinary observers.

To tame these infinities, researchers have been trying to figure out each type of observer's likelihood of existing. "What we're struggling with is the question of computing probabilities in such scenarios," says Raphael Bousso of the University of California, Berkeley. "You produce an infinite number of bubbles, and each of them is infinitely large, so you have to find a way of comparing infinities. Boltzmann brains are one of the constraints that help us figure out how to think about this kind of cosmology correctly."

The most radical solution comes from Don Page of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.

He argues that our universe must have a built-in self-destruct mechanism that will kill it off before Boltzmann brains can dominate.

How so?

Just as the vacuum energy has quantum fluctuations that can generate Boltzmann brains, the energy itself can jiggle and "decay" to a higher or lower level. In eternal inflation, this is how a pocket universe begins. The decay starts at a tiny point and releases an enormous amount of energy, creating a bubble that expands outward at nearly the speed of light. This bubble of fire would eradicate us, along with all structure in the cosmos. "It would be destroying the universe as we know it," Page says.

Such a decay would act like a cosmic reset button, preventing the universe from getting old enough to let Boltzmann brains take over. For this to work in our universe, says Page, it needs to happen within about 20 billion years from now. Wait any longer, he says, and our universe will be expanding so rapidly that such decay bubbles could never catch up: patches of the original universe would remain, forever spawning Boltzmann brains. Although it is nothing our grandchildren will need to worry about, this time frame is much shorter than most had expected.

Other researchers argue that taking a broader view can banish Boltzmann brains without requiring our universe to self-destruct at such a tender age. The multiverse, they claim, is evolving an infinite number of regular observers like us. The only problem is that an infinite number of Boltzmann brains are popping up too. However, not all infinities are equal. To see who is winning the race, physicists have begun counting up the observers. "This is where people start fighting," says Linde.

Picking pockets

Linde's approach looks across multiple pocket universes and counts the number of observers in a certain volume of space at any given moment.

In this picture, many universes can support creatures like us for a short period of time, but in the long run give rise to Boltzmann brains.

However, since new universes are always being created by eternal inflation, Linde says, when you add up all the observers at any given time, ordinary ones always outnumber Boltzmann brains because there is a continual supply of them. "If you use this measure," he says, "then this paradox with Boltzmann brains does not appear."

Vilenkin has his own solution, also based on eternal inflation, but using a different method of counting up the observers. He instead compares the likelihood of new pocket universes forming with the likelihood of Boltzmann brains popping up. According to his calculations, too, regular observers are always appearing faster than Boltzmann brains.

Other physicists are not convinced that anyone can yet justify the assumptions behind eternal inflation models clearly enough to make tallies across multiple universes, so they are wary of using these models to resolve the Boltzmann brain problem. Page, for one, argues that these solutions suffer from "the ambiguity of taking ratios of infinite numbers".

Bousso goes further. He says it is not possible, even in principle, to take an overview of the multiverse. In a universe like ours, there is only so much that any one observer can see. That's because observers can't travel any faster than the speed of light, and neither can any signals. Bousso recommends sticking with a local view rather than trying to calculate across multiple universes. "Let's make our theories describe any possible history, but not pretend that they all have to fit together into some God's-eye view," he says. Taking Bousso's approach seems to solve the Boltzmann brain problem but, like Page's proposal, only if the universe as we know it self-destructs .

In contrast to Page's work, Bousso looks at a much smaller area of space: the volume inside a given observer's horizon. Since this allows much less space for Boltzmann brains to pop up in, the universe could last much longer before self-destructing, though still decaying soon enough that Boltzmann brains won't dominate. "The only way that Boltzmann brains could win is if the vacuum lasts longer than it takes for a Boltzmann brain to appear," Bousso says. The time it would take to happen even once is "insanely long", he says. Even if the universe self-destructed after an incredibly long time - 10 to the power of 10²⁰ years - that would still be soon enough to prevent Boltzmann brains from taking over.

So which approach is correct? And what does banishing Boltzmann brains ultimately tell us about the universe? There is no consensus yet, and experiments cannot test these proposals. Page says we're still "babes in the woods" when it comes to grappling with the multiverse. So far he has been content just to point out the potential problem.

However, Boltzmann brains could indicate which ways of calculating probabilities in the multiverse are right or wrong. Vilenkin says that any decent method should give the answer "that the regular observers win over freak observers". Linde has a similar outlook. "If we suggest some probability measure in inflationary cosmology and it leads to this Boltzmann brain problem," he says, "then this is another way to learn that we are doing something wrong."

Conversely, if a method for counting Boltzmann brains also provides insight into a different problem, that could be a sign that it's on the right track. Bousso and his colleagues have recently extended their approach of working within a given horizon to calculate the strength of vacuum energy a typical observer would measure. Previous methods for predicting this energy density gave results larger than the observed value by factors of 10, 1000 or even many billions. Bousso's result gets much closer to the measured value. "We didn't know what the answer would be," he says, "but it just led to an enormous improvement."

So cracking the conundrum of Boltzmann brains may do more than simply remove their threat, allowing cosmologists to continue assuming we are typical: it may also help us weed out models of the universe that fall short of explaining its strangeness. Then again, despite astronomical odds, there remains the unsettling possibility that we are all, in fact, Boltzmann brains... POP.

And then God created Life !

I am so much in awe of life (albeit with its million little idiosyncrasies) that I keep asking myself almost every other day:

Who and why would someone create life in the first place ?

The "who" part of that question can be easily answered by me at the moment - It can be only the supreme creator aka GOD aka "IT" or whatever you may like to call it!!!

So why blame/praise god (blame or praise depending on whether you have had a good day till now) and not believe that all the life that we can see around us can be explained completely on the basis of scientific explanation ?

Well...the surprising answer is that some of the most interesting questions I have on life as such, have still not been answered !

for e.g.:

• Why is death so crucial in the continuity of a species ?

• Why can't my genes go on mutating in a way that it adapts itself to the changing environment with a lag time measured in a handful of years ?

• Why does darwinian processes related to "selection" have to come into importance only over hundred and thousands of years ?
  

and no. It CANNOT be explained on the basis of the immensely stupid chemical and physics lab experiments that we used to do in our school days. Please.

Well, I have discussed on this in one of my earlier posts. In short, the day some of the biggest mysteries (e.g. what is dark energy and dark matter ???) in the world can be easily explained by science, is the day that I will stop believing in God !...

Goes without saying - that fortunate time isn't going to come in a dozen of my after-lives as well !

WHY would God take the trouble of creating life in the first place ???

This, personally speaking, is a beautiful question (patting myself on my back now) as well as a philosophical one !

I have an explanation to this - albeit probably too simplistic for God's liking (God!! forgive me for I don't know what I say !)

I believe God or the supreme creator (or with whatever name you call this entity) created life when "it" got bored with either himself or with "nothing'ness" around !

Probably bored wouldn't be the exact word that I had in mind. Well, I wouldn't have the exact word for it but probably it sums up best when we say "Why not ?"

And thus, at a point in the very distant past "it" said "why not" ???


I have a part cosmological and a part oh-so-typical-sudip's explanation to this. Something that cannot be explained or neither is taken out of the pages of the Ramayans, the Gitas, the upanishad's for that matter. I haven't done any research on this topic and neither am I inclined to do it.

Now comes the explanation. This is how I think of it:

The universe began somewhere close to 13.7 billion years back. The Hot Big Bang theory of course is just one of the several theories (but the most dominant one) on how universe began.

I personally feel that going by the most dominant theory that the universe "began" at a specific point of time is a self-comforting explanation by scientists. As if, even in this modern age scientists would want to avoid heresy and are still playing to the gallery where Pope sits merrily.

Yeah, I know, that probably 99.99 % of all galaxies out there (leaving apart "our" local group of galaxies) are red-shifted. True, it logically leads to the conclusion that at a "certain" distant past all things should have been together at a point of infinite density.

BUT, there is something about the big bang theory that just doesn't feel right !!!!

• Why does things have to begin and have to end ?

• Why should time have a beginning ?

• Why should visible matter and universe treated as one and the same ? (By that I mean, that universe in only meant to inlcude the regions of space that includes galaxies, stars and planets . It could very well be that the universe , that is the space within which all visible matter resides can be much much older than the age of visible matter as we know it. In sum, when we say that universe began 13.7 billion years back, we should rather be saying that it was the birth/origin/ emergence of matter as we know it).
  

• What could have lead a point of infinite density to explode all-of-a-sudden ? Going by that logic, the other points of infinite density in the observable universe - Black Holes (though we can't look at it directly) ,in short, don't theoretically explode but instead (and gracefully, if I may add) are supposed to "loose mass" through Hawking Radiation ! Why this partiality in the first place ? How ridiculous this partiality is !!!
  

Something tells me (and has been always telling me since I started reading on this "Space" the last frontier" a decade or so back ..no not watching Star Trek episodes but getting my firm grips of Theoretical astronomy) that this universe makes more sense to be in a steady-state rather than the one-mother of all-explosion" that explains it all ! Of course, the steady-state theory doesn't explain the red-shifted nature of 99.99?% of all galaxies very convincingly but then its a separate topic altogether and needs another post from me, lest I go off on another tangent here again.

• I believe that for the infinite time that has come before us and the infinite time that lays in front of us, we exist only as a probability.
  

Please don't consider this problem of probability in the same level as similar to the probability of getting a six in a roll of dice.

I am talking of an infinite set of possibile variables, in an infinite time line, within an area which is infinite. I am not a mathematician, but a reasonable guess of mine tells me that that we possibly can't explain such phenomena where all the variables we talk about in an "grand" equation has an infinite number of values.

We are thus only a probability at the moment. For all we know, there may have been several mother-of-all explosions before us and would be after us.

I believe that the day that Quantum mechanics, electromagnetism and Newtonian gravity comes together in a "unified-and-can-describe-all" theory will be the dawn of a new phase of science that we haven't possibly imagined it to be till now. If that blessed soul happens to solves one of the biggest puzzle till now within my life time, forget mauritius/maldives/or whatever tourist destination is out there, my only pilgrimage worth dying for is going to be meeting up with him or her.

but then I am, as usual, off in a tangent here....

So, in sum - I believe that time, dimensions and space never began BUT has always been there from eternity. Atleast my intuition (or whatever you may call it) says so ..

And within this equation, I add the one and only variable - the supreme being. The "It". It has been there for eternity too.... So let's just add "it" in and forget the why's and the why nots..

My thinking goes that "emptiness" and "nothing'ness" is a fact. And when we call it a fact, we are actually saying that it "exists" ! and "emptiness" and "nothing'ness" also have properties of their own !

Nothing'ness/ empty space has properties of its own ????????

What the hell are you talking about !!!!

It just doesn't make any sense.

Well..surprise...surprise..and more surprise.....Many of the profound concepts in the field of theoretical astronomy actually doesn't make any sense for the ordinary human out there....

for e.g. :
For a fact, Quantum Field Theory allows "virtual particles" to appear and disappear violating the rules of energy and momentum conservation as long as the uncertainty principle is satisfied. They are said to be "off mass-shell", because they do not satisfy the relationship:
E² = p²c² + m²c⁴.

So, now that we know that even empty space or "nothing'ness" have properties of their own...I come up with a ridiculous sounding derivation out of all this.

I think the supreme being is nothing but the collective intelligence of the entire space we are living in.

The "fact" IS the explanation. We don't know how much empty space is exactly out there going by which cosmology theory you are aligned to that explains the present universe

But my intuition says that "nothing'ness" or "empty space" is actually not what it is....(virtual particles is still only a theoretical concept. BUT the attempt has been made !!!)

We may be, after all, be living in a world of 11 or twelve or maybe even infinite dimensions ... While we humans can only look and interpret 3 dimensions and 3 dimensional objects at the moment with considerable ease, physicists and mathematicians have already theorized and researched on looking at the world with 10-11 dimensions or more. To put it simply, what we cannot see can never be explained with total certainty. Black Holes is another example, if you know what I mean. This universe, after all, maybe full of strange objects that we can't see .....because maybe we have always been having the wrong tools in detecting its presence.

So, let's just suppose that the supreme being is the "fact" and the "fact" has been around for all the time. Time being relative it is. No beginning of time and surely no end to it.

Just imagine that you were the supreme being vs. you being a human being now.

How long can you stay alone on your own with nothing else around you ?

I shudder to imagine how the "it" would laugh at me when I get bored sitting alone in a place for more than a few minutes ?

Compare this with all the eternity "it" has spent alone !!!!!!!!!!!!

So I was just thinking - that MAYBE - that maybe - that at some point in the distant past...distant distant distant past.....that "it" felt an urge.

Why did it feel the urge ?

I don't know but I would love to know it . I would love to know what prompted "it" to think of a change.

If god gave me three wishes - My first wish, even without thinking for a moment - is to ask "it" - Why ???????? Why so elaborate ? (the other two wishes eh ? Sudip ? The hell I am going to tell you !!!)

Just imagine for a moment - We are talking of an time that goes back till god-forsaken infinite eons back.

and suddenly the "it" feels that it should make something out of nothing.

Was it sudden ? I don't know and that probably wouldn't be an intelligent question to ponder much about.

More importantly I am amazed at the intelligence of the "It" who could even think of it. If ever there was an universal competition on creativity, initiative, foresight then the "it" would win all of them - hands down !

Of course, it walked the talk eventually and WHAT A WALK it was !!!

I now have come to believe that this life of ours and all life that we see around us is connected to each other and to everything else in ways that humans have not been able to fathom with their limited intellectual capabilities.

Some of the most humbling experiences in my life has been to get quality self-education (not the pathetic C.B.S.E exams kinds) that was intended for no specific purpose. I studied for myself. Just for myself. Astronomy was definitely one of the subjects that made me very humble as a human. Made me realize how small we are and how insignificant we are and will probably remain that way for quite a long time until we get some of our act together (won't go off on a tangent here again. This topic , in itself has ten thousand discussion points as well)

The other subject I was fortunate to get to read on know of is called was System Dynamics:
definition" "System dynamics is a methodology for studying and managing complex feedback systems"
and it makes so much sense.

Everything is connected with each other eventually.

Of course, everything doesn't effect everything else in the same instant.

What the heck is the usefulness of TIME then ?
If you have heard the phrase " Time is the greatest leveller" , this phrase has significance in the whole cosmos as well !!!

Now comes my second thought on this:

Just imagine you were given a zillion years to live !
(I am calling it a zillion and ending it right there cause the word "infinite" and "time" taken together and in the same sentence is not a concept that we can even begin to grasp if we put our heart to it as well as our mind PLUS the fact that I do enough of Control+C and C ontrol+V in office everyday)

Now, add to it that you are omni-present in this infinite space !!! That probably means that you are aware of the entire spread of the universe and is at any given point (this is meaningless actually given the fact that the universe looks the same anywhere and everywhere you look)

Also there are two characteristic of yours that are given:

• You have COMPLETE POWER (in short - you can do whatever you like to) and

• You have COMPLETE INTELLIGENCE (I can't define this exactly - but, in short, there is NO "Want" of everything. What you want is completely in your power to fulfill)

So, what do you do next?

Imagine !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If I was "it", I think creating this universe would have been the best entertainment that I could possible think of for me !

Was this the optimum choice for "it" ?
and why did it choose to create a universe exactly the way we see it now and not any other way possible ?

I don't have an answer to that, as of now ! But there is a theory in theoretical astronomy that basically says that - If the universe was not the way we see it now, then we wouldn't have been existing now to see it any other way (or something like that)

and creating life and watching it unfold as perfectly as I have coded it - would have been the entertainment-par-excellence for me! (The excitement would be similar to the domino toppling exhibition that is held in Netherlands each year. The only difference being would be that this would be the mother-of-all records that "it" has started playing 13.7 billion years back. The dominoes are still toppling and that would possibly continue, from what some scientists have calculated recently - atleast a tri

I somehow, get the feeling that God coded each one of us, our actions, our make-up - Everything !!!

And if you blurt out - what the hell !!! Did "it" have the time for it ?

I then have to show to you the three "resources" that he had always had for eternity:

• Infinite time,
  
• Complete power,
• Complete Intelligence !!!!

He has kept himself busy coding each one of us through the infinite time that has come before us !!!!

and after the universe started off with the mother-of-all-explosion 13.7 billion years back, it was party time for him.

He kicks back and relaxes, has both foot on the table and smiles while watches his creation unfold !

Does he have a sense of humour ?

• Maybe "it" has the best sense of humour one can possibly have !!! after all, an alien watching down at us would probably find humans extremely funny (assuming it has a sense of humour too)

• Maybe "it" doesn't have a sense of humour at all ! If "it" had a face, probably you would get to see a straight face all the time.

Maybe it has no sense of humour, no tension, no anger, no compassion ....a plain master mathematician, programmer & modeller.

No compassion ? Then why do we pray to him in the first place ?

A good question. BUT an IMPORTANT ONE !

To answer that probably one needs to look at the bigger picture here.
We need to ask ourselves: Are we important to "it" in the first place ?
You would want to answer "Probably yes" ?

I am quite sure the answer would be no ! The reason for coming to that conclusion is because I assumed for a fact that "it" is a COMPLETELY INTELLIGENT entity !


Suppose I was face-to-face with it and a hypothetical face of his, what would I see ??????????

I would see him staring at me.
He would be the epitome of serenity one can ever see on the face of someone (that's more a wishful thinking at the moment)
No expressions, no emotions on his face.
He would simply be staring at me.

So I say to him "Hi God !" to break the silence between us(knowing fully well that if I don't break the silence between us, he could continue staring at me for an infinite number of my after-lives as well)

Does it reply back ?

Either it does or it doesn't !

Why should it not reply back with a "Hi !!!"

I guess it would. He would have a hint of smile on its face when it says hi to me !

Why a smile ?

Cause it know EXACTLY where the question and the conversation is heading to !

It knows exactly what I would say next ! and what it would have to reply back !

It has COMPLETE INTELLIGENCE ! and has been around and has spent some god-forsaken-time just to code me thouroughly !

It knows exactly what am I thinking and the emotions and trepidations I am going through.

"It" is quite a sport. It never interrupts me and my stupid questions. Why would it ?
"It" has (always had) the option of not just answering my current question to my complete satisfaction but infact also answers to the question that was just waiting to come out from my mouth a few seconds from now. It reads my mind and answers my questions at exactly the rate at which I comprehend.

Complete intelligence probably means you are aware of everything in this universe. And everything means exactly what it is: EVERYTHING

Just think about it for a minute:
"It" would be aware of each change taking place at every moment (the time is infinitesmally small). Every hydrogen atom undergoing fusion at the core of each star, each baby born on this planet, each photon starting from the sun towards the earth.

Hey wait ! - So does that also mean that its awareness implies that it has a zillion "eyes" and watches every change occuring in this universe through a microscope.

I wouldn't think it would have to. The reason probably is very simple. (God forgive me for what I don't know why I think the way I think and what I say !!!!)

"It" being the completely Intelligent "entity" that it is has been intelligent enough to draw up the master equations at the very start of the universe. Much like a Software project, the architecture has been drawn up and all possible matter-matter interactions have been drawn up too.

So "it" would very well know what are the definite possibilities that can occure when matter interact with each other, either at the quantum level or even with large scale structures.

The next question for me then is: Are these "laws" governing these master equations have a definite value or do they have a possible set of values?

Well, my guess is that the latter is true going by the current state of research findings within the scientific community. There are a possible range of values and that each value that shows up as a result is because of the specific "nature" of interactions that happened in the past.

In short, I tend to believe that there is nothing called as a close system in past of this universe.

So coming back to another important question that comes as a result of our past discussion:

If we exist as a real probability among the infinite set of possible values within the infinite timeline within this universe:


Can we directly (or more interestingly, indirectly) affect the probabilities affecting us on a daily basis ???



For e.g.: the probability that I set foot on mars in my lifetime, lets say, is 1 in a trillion. How did I come up with such an arbitrary figure as that ? It truly is arbit number and by the current technology and by our own level-of-intelligence (human), it is beyond us to calculate the precise probability of me setting foot on mars. Because, it would depend of a million (if not billion) sets of probabilities in turn such as:

• the probability that the current-state-of-space technology that we have at the moment would "allow"me to set foot on mars
• The probability that when we do have the technology, I will still be living at that point of time
• The probability that I will be physically active to be able to qualify for the ardous journey to mars and back .
  

We can extend the above list upto a hundred times if not more.

But wait !!!....each of those bulletted points are also based, in turn, on a combination of probabilities that they are the master of.

For e.g. The probability that I will physically active to take the journey would depend on how the current cigarette in my hand would affect my health at the very moment. If a single tar molecule gets into my lungs and allows one cell to mutate maynot be a problem. But if the cell mutates but doesn't kill itself by going through the usual programmed cell death route the probably I am done for !!!

So you can begin to imagine why I have that dazed look on my face wherever I look ?

Can we affect the probability that affects us in a way that it is favourable to me ?

Yes, of course. A simple example: Cracking the test for admission to All-India Institute of Medical Sciences. One of the toughest test of its kind.

• Your probability of cracking it when you are born: One in a trillion (say)
• Your probability of cracking it when you take up Biology as a subject in class 11th and 12: one in a million
• Your probability of cracking it if you took up coaching from Sahil Study circle (say): one in 1,00,000 (assuming their success rate)
• Your probability of cracking it if you have gone through all the content that is needed throughly with a memory that captures 85-90% of all content studied: One in 5000
• Your probability of cracking it given that you are physically and mentally fit and fine at the day of the exam: one in 1 in 200 (the previous conditions are all assumed to be satisfied for achieving success in the exam)
  
• Your probability of cracking it given you didn't make a stupid calculation mistake when you goofed up the answer to question 10 (the word Eukaryotic cells reminded you of professor calculus from the Tintin series of comics running around naked shouting "Eureka !!! Eureka !!!")

The above list can also be further extended in a way that captures our daily, if not, our second-second change that occurs around us. You get the point.


So, the fact is that, if you are intelligent in a way that you can manipulate probabilities, the you can allow "fate" to favour you.

So now you can imagine what's its like to be god then ?????

A completely intelligent and powerful creature knows the exact probabilities of the changes that are occuring at "every moment" in this universe.

By the way - the word "every moment" is also an interesting subject for me. The questions that I have is:
Is time the result of change ?
If there was no "change" occuring in this universe, then time loses its relevance right ?
Could you distuinguish between two snaps of the complete universe one taken after another in , say, 10 to the negative power of say a zillion'th of a second later (infinitesimally small, in other words) ????
You couldn't find the difference and thus time looses its relevance at such small measures (and I guess even at extremely large levels)

Also being completely powerful, does it need to interfere in changing the probabilities once the universe had started 13.7 billion years back ?

Though this question would be of particular interest to the god fearing human, I would rather disappoint them by saying "No, It wouldn't".

Once the coding was done by "it" and the master equations cast in stone, why should it tinker and favour us anyways ? Somehow I have always felt it logical to conclude that life on earth would be considered inconsequential at the very least.

• "Jo hoga woh dekha Jayega"
• "Bacchey, thoda mahenat kar lo, mahenat sey bada aadmi banogey"
  

In fact, both are right and wrong at the same time.

You CAN affect the probabilities affecting you and the ones that you affect in return,

while at the same time,

Nothing that you do can be of any significance in your life-time

The dual principle:
The secret of living a contended life !

I sit and ponder

Can't help myself sitting and thinking all the time.

Can someone please tell me what's the bloody point of this whole life ?


We humans are so insignificant in the whole scheme of things that nothing that we do now can ever channge anything on a grand scale. Our only possible significant contribution is towards the humanity itself. and how puny we are can be judged by the fact that we don't even have a freaking clue as how to control the elements of nature. We are so susceptible as a race that it amazes me sometimes !!! Suppose a 20 square Kms meteorite come rushing at us, what the hell can we do ? Blasting it with Nuclear bomb maf friends ? Only in movies my friend ...only in movies...

And when it comes to each of our contribution to humantity, a logical question to ask would be:

" why the hell should I care to contribute?"

Of course, that is an intelligent question to ask for certain !!!

When I know for a fact that I was born alone and would die alone, with an average human life expectancy of roughly 80 years ...Mortality and thus our frailty was imprinted on us the day we were born..

Nothing I can possibly do should be of much significance ..right ?

Wrong !!!!!!

We are the way we are - Families, friends, culture, sub-races for a definite reason. The reason is simple - To make life more predictable and thus it follows - more secure.



We humans love predictability !!!!!!!!!! I can't stress this fact enough:

• Whether we "do" a job to earn a monthly income that pays our bills on time or

• Whether we "indulge"(I love this word when it is in the same sentence as the word marriage) in marriage to satisfy our emotional and physical "needs"
  
• We have babies so that we it helps continue our genes going into the future (everyone loves his/her own genes for sure...No one would want his/her wife to copulate with Richard Gere or Shah Rukh Khan for that matter !!!..even if they have the looks as well as the brains ..am I correct ???)
  

On a lighter note - If suppose married couple had a reminder set in the body clock to have sex everyday at 7:00 AM in the morning . How much fun it would be ...right !

Predictability in having sex too- I am sure humans would love that !!!

If we hadn't shared our loved for predictability - we wouldn't have survived till now.

To explain that point a bit more: probably 40 - 50 thousand years back or maybe even earlier, we humans were surely able to classify animals, birds , insects according to their threat perception to us. or else we wouldn't have survived till now right ?

Pig ? Good to eat !!! A nice meal for sure....
Tiger ? Good to run ! or a nice meal we would become....
Chicken ? Great to eat and easy to catch !!! Win-win for a meal....
Snake ? slithery, poisonous, a painful death, the creature even looks as if its intentions were harmful from the day it was born.......you either stand frozen or you run for ur life !!!

Of course, I am not sure whether humans had a good sense of humour back then but u get the picture.

So after asking myself, I come to the conclusion that:

• I dislike predictability but wouldn't want to live the life of a nomad and hunter;
  

• I always end up taking a middle path to two extreme view points. I, predictably, have the very bad habit of not antagonizing anyone even to the point of getting hurt in the process..
  

• Think that the only reason I am wanting myself to live till this moment was to see each member of my family smile ...

then am i being really stupid ???

• Running after material wealth makes no sense for me - I know now for certain that it's an race with no end. I am earning 6 times more than when I started out in life 7 years back and yet I hardly have any money in the bank to talk about. I am covered by insurance to the hilt and yet think that there is no point at all if I am not going to be around (insurance is quite a farce actually. I think it makes more sense if Insurance cover is carried forward from one life to the after life and there on ....till I get the chance to live in heaven's as a permanent resident)

• Wanting to fall in love makes no sense to me. Being emotionally dependent on someone is a bone-chilling thought, to put it mildly. Expectations from others has always left me disappointed in one way or the other. Over and above that, I hate myself when I am depressed. And I know (now) that blaming others is taking the easy way out which 99% of the people out there do. It no wonder that we humans are the biggest underachievers this universe has ever seen. Several thousand years have passed since the Egyptian built the Great Pyramids and yet we haven't set foot on Mars - Forget Pluto, Titan or Venus for that matter. Thinking about reaching to our nearest star - Proxima Centauri would, by current space technology - should take ten thousand years, if not more..
  

So, I reason out with myself that the only possible reason that I continue to live till now are:

To watch my family happy to see me grow ?

Its strange no ! While 99% of all guys and gals in and around my age-group are so eager to have their own "independence",

To have their "own way of life" ,

to earn their "own living" and spending it on "themselves"

To come home as they god-damn "wish"....

and here I am loving it in our home and still feel that I couldn't be more happier than staying with my parents . I wouldn't be happier even with some of the restrictions that comes when one stays with parents of a conservative family.

Bloody Independence (and I am being very honest about it) !!!

Its such a farce actually !

there is nothing like complete independence !

I think the only complete independence one could possibly get would be to get thrown off to the cold outer space ......and, not surprisingly, we wouldn't even survive out there for a couple of seconds at the maximum !

This whole "civilization/living" jing-bang is actually a convolution of interdependencies and "living-off-each-other" at the end of the day ! Without our symbiotic dependencies, we could hardly survive for more than a few days on this earth alone.

Just think about it: We go to potty in the morning and some germs are dependent on that too for survival in the potty pan ! Germs and bacteria in our stomachs survive on the food we eat everyday.

So at the very end of it - other than watching my parents see me grow and having a grandson or daughter that would bring a smile to their faces ..is there are other reason I should survive ?

Oh well..u say ....Now that you would want your daughter / son to entertain your parents, and who would pray, in turn, be taking care of my little ones ? ME , OF COURSE !

Oh bloody !!!!

This interdependency is not of my choice, in the first place !!!!!!!

I would rather think that killing oneself is the most intelligent thing to do (also a view that Osho shared as well).

Thank god that babies are born into this world with a fresh and re-formatted memory ...If they retained their memory from their last life..I am sure that the first thing that it would surely do is to take a blade and slit its throats and wrists ! and smile its way to death !!!

of God, the Atheist, blind faith and people like me...

People ask me - So you believe in God eh ?

Even though it may sound to you as a pretty straight forward question with either of the two choices that confronts the poor soul- Either affirming it or disclaiming it.

Shut it Sudip....come out with it now...Yes or No ?....I think momentarily and I know.. (each and everytime!) I say loud "Yes. I do believe in God"

The answer doesn't come from Blind faith entirely.

The answer comes to me from a mix of knowledge, watching with a keen eye on things and events happening around you everyday ! and ........and.....well...maybe you want to believe that there is something, probably in the heavens (could be anywhere in fact, but looking up towards the sky is supposed to be more acceptable in society and fellow brethren than looking at the ground) that is protecting you and your near and dear.

Some of the people closest to me are literally proud to wear the Atheist tag on them. I don't blame them.

Why shouldn't I believe in god I ask you ?

And the "proud-to-be-Atheist" ask me in return "well (with a smirk, if I may add) PROVE IT TO ME HE/SHE/IT EXISTS !!!!

A suggestion here for my readers- Don't you try EVER putting this same question on me !

I have two options here depending on whether I am in a good mood or not ...

Option one - I reply back with an exaggerated smirk "well, can you explain why only 5% of the observable universe is made of of matter? and what is this dark energy and dark matter all about ?"

Option two - I ignore you and try changing the topic.....but not after warning you that the conversation that will ensue maynot be very entertaining to you, at the very least...

I am actually amazed at the confidence of the Atheist. They can be so blatantly assertive at times that it actually is quite amusing to me.

"A little knowledge is dangerous" they say. So very right !

When you don't have an answer to the biggest mysteries of the world, what gives you the right to disclaim that there maybe a force that is all pervasive ? I actually have a delightful word to name this "sub-species": "The Hypocritical I-think-I-know-it-all sapiens"

I am not discrediting scientists for even a bit cause I am one of their biggest fans !

BUT, rather than have either Blind Faith or total denial, there is a middle path that we should and must take - so you end up saying "well...ummmmm...hmmmmm...no comments"

There is something about those two words when used in combination...

"No" is not a positive word at the very least. People hate or despise those who say "no".....and people, on the other hand, love to express their comments on anything under the sun... they wish "bitching" was as habitual to them as brushing your teeth everyday or going to the potty.

Coming back to the topic - One of the toughest problems to crack in the field of science these days is the concept of Dark Matter and Dark Energy.

Now the time is ripe to explain (or even more accurate is the fact of "our" inability to explain it) the concepts of Dark matter and Dark Energy a bit further:

Dark matter and dark energy are two of the most vexing problems in science today. Together they dominate the universe, comprising some 96 percent of all mass and energy.

But nobody knows what either is !!!

Dark matter was invoked decades ago to explain why galaxies hold together. Given regular matter alone, galaxies might never have formed, and today they would fly apart. So there must be some unknown stuff that forms invisible clumps to act as gravitational glue.

Dark energy hit the scene in the late 1990s when astronomers discovered the universe is not just expanding, but racing out at an ever-faster pace. Some hidden force, a sort of anti-gravity, must be pushing galaxies apart from one another in this accelerated expansion.

Separate theories have been devised to try and solve each mystery.

To explain dark energy, for example, theorists have re-employed a "cosmological constant" that Einstein first introduced as a fudge factor to balance the force of gravity. Einstein called the cosmological constant a great blunder and retracted it. Yet many theorists now are comfortable re-employing it to account for the effects of dark energy. But it does not reveal what the force is.

Scientists agrees that these two explanations might be necessary, but they are also bothered by that complexity.

I, thus, always take (quite habituated now) the easy way out.

Till the biggest mysteries of this world have a definite explanation - I will stick on to my belief that there is a force which controls us all. This force maynot be biased towards humanity per se but the Force DOES EXIST !!!

A fascinating discovery to report !!!

The most massive star known in the universe has been discovered and "weighed," astronomers have announced !!!

The star, part of a binary system, topped the scales at 114 times the mass of the sun !!!

Though astronomers suspected that stars with masses up to 150 times the mass of the sun must exist, this discovery marks the first time a star has broken the 100-solar-mass barrier. The previous record holder was only a measly 83 solar masses.

The newly weighed star, known simply as A1, is the brightest hot star at the heart of a giant, but dense, young star cluster called NGC 3603, which lies 20,000 light-years from Earth. The star's companion has a mass 84 times that of the sun.

Now to add in my own comments here:

Stars of high mass die young. In case of massive stars such as this, its life would only be, and my best guess is, around 200-300 million years only.

That's because the fuel needed to overcome the tremendous gravitation keeping it from collapsing on itself is considerably higher than medium weight stars such as our Sun. These massive stars die very young (200-300 Million years is like comparing around 300 minutes out of a total earth day of 1440 minutes - if my calculation are right !) - That's quite puny by comparison..isn't it ?

To also put that into perspective: Medium weight stars such as our SUN have a life-span of around 10 billion years.

To put that even further into perspective - The oldest star found till date is 13.2 billion years old !!. This is not very far from the 13.7 billion years age of the Universe. The star, HE 1523-0901, was clearly born at the dawn of time.

And when massive stars such as these die, they die in a spectacular...mind-boggling explosion !!!!!! These explosion are called Supernovas.

This star wouldn't explode though ! There is a more sinister future in store for it ! The explanation is give later.

Supernovas (the definition from wikipedia)- A supernova (plural: supernovae or supernovas) is a stellar explosion that creates an extremely luminous object that is initially made of plasma—an ionized form of matter. A supernova may briefly out-shine its entire host galaxy before fading from view over several weeks or months. During this brief period of time, the supernova radiates as much energy as the Sun would emit over about 10 billion years.

(Can you even begin to even grasp the energy output that we are talking about here !!!!)

The explosion expels much or all of a star's material at a velocity of up to a tenth the speed of light, driving a shock wave into the surrounding interstellar gas. This shock wave sweeps up an expanding shell of gas and dust called a supernova remnant.

The photo on the side is a Multiwavelength X-ray image of the remnant of Kepler's Supernova, SN 1604. (Chandra X-ray Observatory)

I sure do hope that my future generations would be lucky enough to witness this explosion in the near future. In Astronomical time scales, it should be happening tomorrow :)

By the way - What will remain out of a stellar explosion would depend on the mass of the star we talk of (the mass of stars is not measures in Kilos or tonnes but in our own Sun weight multiples. The star reported, if you had noticed, has a mass of 114 times the mass of our Sun. Difficult to imagine right ???)

My guess is that star this massive would collapse directly into a blackhole rather than go through the tedious and complex process of a Supernova explosion.

Why do I say this ? Well, I don't have the balls to make a prediction but here's what scientists say:

When the progenitor star is below about 20 solar masses (depending on the strength of the explosion and the amount of material that falls back), the degenerate remnant of a core collapse is a neutron star.

Above this mass the remnant collapses to form a black hole. (This type of collapse is one of many candidate explanations for gamma ray bursts—producing a large burst of gamma rayshypernova explosion.) The theoretical limiting mass for this type of core collapse scenario is about 40–50 solar masses.
through a still theoretical

Above 50 solar masses (such as this star), most stars are believed to collapse directly into a black hole without forming a supernova explosion, although uncertainties in models of supernova collapse make calculation of these limits uncertain.

In the range of about 140–250 solar masses , it is hypothesized that low-metallicity stars may explode in pair-instability supernovae without leaving behind a black hole remnant. This rare type of supernova is formed by an alternate mechanism that does not require an iron core.