When your work does not feel like work, you even don’t remember the holidays or weekends. Recently, while waiting for my ride, I asked myself: do you remember your last long break, I extended that question by referencing my college days, where I used to take semester breaks, weekend breaks, holiday breaks etc. But in the past few years, I could not remember taking a break of more than one day, and here I include weekends as well. But frankly, I never felt the need to take a break for more than one day.
Unaware of the long weekend, I got to know about the Labour Day holiday on the same day. And in the past, I have used most of my long weekends to read or write. Following the same pattern, I read this brilliant book by Prof Richard Fenneman - The six not so essay pieces. I can’t tell you the impact of that book on me - each page gave me the answers to every individual natural phenomenon happening in our world, and I was getting massive goosebumps during the reading. I was laughing just for the fact that I never raised questions about all the daily natural phenomena of our world.
While reading this book, I realised, and hence I can write this with almost certainty that our world's futures are decided by only a fraction of humans (100 million) even though the collective human size is 8 billion. I know what you are thinking, hey you are kidding, this can’t be possible. But unfortunately, this is the reality of our world. There are data points to prove this,
Number of Millionaires in the world = 48.4 billion in 2021
We both can agree on this point that most of these millionaires would be world leaders. And I took the grace of another 52 million who might be the media persons, politicians, scientists, researchers etc. And every single time I think about 100 million humans driving 8 billion humans, I feel a sense of responsibility. Now it is not the case that the rest of humans are unhappy because they are not part of this driving the world category. A significant percentage of them are happy at their respective places. And hence we see all the progress
The massive increase in the human lifespan
The decrease in infant mortality
Study growth in the global GDP per capita
Access to Clean Water, Electricity, internet etc
All these data points are real. And believe me or not these non-100 million humans are the only real deal because Capitalism is just the by-product of the improvement of these non-power-maker humans. Even though the 2nd category takes care of most of the heavy loads and still suffers the most.
In fact, I will not even hesitate to write that not many humans from the 2nd category would be willing to be part of the top 100 million. Because leadership is not everyone’s cup of tea. And someone becoming a part of the 100 million is based on multiple butterfly effects, luck, and own hard work. This also means the same percentage or even less percentage of humans even understand our world on the fundamental level. For example, how many humans would care about knowing the theory of relativity or the fundamental principle behind electricity, wireless communication, the internet, money, banking etc?
Of course, we as a society strive to produce more leaders but the contribution of followers who keep intact the fabric of our world is not only important - it becomes our moral responsibility to keep the pace of progress intact and improve the lives of these non-power-maker humans. And when I think about all these, I find myself in amusement because not just a few months back, I had no idea about the world, and here I am having a sense of responsibility to improve the lives of 1.2 billion Bhartiya.
And in the past few months, my belief has been going from strengths to strengths, and it has a lot to do with Science and Engineering - especially Science. The purpose of writing this essay is a self-reminder of the very fact of our complicated world - every problem is solvable! This might seem counterintuitive from multiple perspectives especially when we have a visible massive Climate problem opening its mouth to eat all of us. I still believe we can solve any problem theoretically and practically based on Science and using Engineering.
I think I have set the context of this essay, let’s get started:
The real question is what is the source of my unlimited and unending optimism? To know that, you must read this essay till the end.
To start with, when I was reading this brilliant book, for the first time, I realised why I trust in the Physical laws of our world more than GOD. And I got this realization in the first chapter of the book.
Starting with I am a spiritual person, so it is not a question of whether I believe in God or not - I sure do. However, I have to be honey at this point: I trust in the laws of Physics more than GOD. (lol)
There are multiple reasons behind this, and Symmetry of Laws of Physics is one of them. The Physics of laws is valid across four dimensions in the known universe across planets - seen and unseen. And hence I trust more in the Laws of Physics than GOD (lol). Now to explain why I believe in Physical laws more than God, I need to explain the Symmetry of Laws of Physics. When I read it the first time, I thought of the usual meaning of symmetry that we all have been taught in our schools and colleges - the shadow of one half should cover the other half. But this is not the actual meaning of symmetry of laws of physics. Initially, it was difficult to explain by the scientists. Then Weyl came and gave a good definition of Symmetry in physical laws. It says, the substance of which is that a thing is symmetrical if there is something we can do to it so that after we have done it, it looks the same as it did before. Now there is a list of operation that has been proven by scientist, even though I am listing all of them here we are going to use just one as an example to explain the context of this essay.
Translation in Space
Translation in Time
Rotation through a fixed angle
Uniform velocity in a straight line
Reversal of time
Reflection of space
Interchange of identical atoms or identical particles
Quantum-mechanical phase
Matter-antimatter
In super brief: our physical world’s laws are the same in Space, at different times, in different motions or rotations, in a uniform velocity, even in case of reversal of time etc. For example, the Laws of Physics are true on the Earth's surface and on any other planets, stars, galaxies etc.
However, when we extend the operation - Interchange of identical atoms of identical particles - you will get a sense that there is not even one problem that is not solvable theoretically (How?) We shall have the answer to this question, and if you keep reading this essay, you will also understand
How is time travel theoretically possible?
And our world can only make sense based on Relativity (Also called the Theory of Relativity)
To understand fundamentals, we must start with the theory of relativity. I know you have read this in your Physics book. But I have explained this by combining both the worlds - Physical and Digital.
In day-to-day activities, we see our world in two-dimensional or max three-dimensional. But to make sense of this world we must consider time as another dimension. And hence we will try to understand the theory of relativity of our world considering the four dimensions - x, y, z, and t.
When I say, I don’t feel like taking a break, this is what I mean - this idea to make sense of our world struck me at the time watching an IPL match at around 10:20 PM (Night). And the force was so strong that it forced me to open my laptop on my bed. I completed the rest of the part the next day. And hence you will read I have used an IPL match, Digital World, Physical World, and Relativity to explain our beautiful world!
When I was watching an IPL match on my tab, I realised there was a lag between the live-match and the digital renders of the same match on my tab. Of course, we all know this digital broadcast of a physical world activity on my tab has reached me by travelling a distance of around 3000 km (The distance between a live match and the place where I am watching it on my tab).
Well, if I will start explaining directly with a live match example, you will get confused completely. And hence we will start with a diagram to make sense of time (t) as a dimension, and once you will understand this - we will use the same diagram as a reference to explain the above match example.
The space-time region surrounding a point at the origin
Now to make sense of our world we have to consider a point of origin, and we already have the symmetry of physical laws that proves that the point of origin is not dependent, and hence we have chosen O as the point of origin. We have used two light cones, but for our example of the live match and watching that on my tab is independent because of the conversion of continuous signals into discrete signals.
Let’s understand our world from the space-time point of view using the above diagram.
Let’s start with Region 2:
A physical object or a signal can get from a point in Region 2 to Event O by moving along at a speed less than the speed of light. And hence events in reason 2 can affect point O. This means an object P on the negative t-axis is precisely in the past with respect to O. In fact, it is the same space-time as O, only earlier. In terms of the Past and Now, all our actions in the Past can influence our present NOW.
The above is true for an object Q as well, in fact, it is true for any object and activities - physical and digital - in the region 2. This means all points of Region 2 are in the past of O, and anything that happens in this region can affect O. And hence sometimes we called Region 2 affective/affecting past.
Let’s move to Region 3:
Region 3 on the other hand can be affected from O. For example, we can hit things by shooting bullets (Of course, the speed of the bullet should be less than the speed of light).
This means region 3 is part of the space-time whose future can be affected by us, and we may also call that the affective future. This means any object on the positive t-axis is the same space-time as O only before.
Let’s talk about Region 1:
The Interesting thing about the rest of the space-time, i.e. Region 1 is that we can neither affect it now from O nor can it affect us now at O, because nothing can go faster than the speed of light.
However, if we imagine an event in Region 1 let’s call that R that can affect us later for example, if the sun explodes “right now”, it takes eight minutes before we know about it, and it cannot possibly affect us before then. The same for the explosion of a supernova - if we are seeing the signs of an explosion of a supernova in the sky, this means the explosion of the supernova must have been before this means in our past, and we see the signs because of the light that has come from our past long time ago. However, for someone near the explosion, the NOW would be at a different time - Right Now
Hence “right now” is a mysterious thing which we cannot define and can’t affect, but it can affect us later, or we could have affected if we had done something far enough in the past. Also, “right now” is super relative. A point can be “Right Now” for one observer and “Now” can be for another observer. This means no one can tell us the present and forget about the future.
Now if we summarize the phenomenon of space and time, no one can tell us what is really happening “right now”, at any reasonable distance, because that is unobservable. However, everything looks different as soon as we start thinking about this from the relativity point of view. I think this is a good time - we should continue our match example.
Let’s take an example of a live match that forced me to write this 4000+ word essay:
The space-time region surrounding a point at the origin with Live Match represented as LM in Region 1 around R.
The decoding of space and time will also give you the root cause of the progress of human civilization. However, if we simply define this in a few lines, it would be something like this:
Imagine the first 100 human’s ability to understand or define the number of “Right now” or “Now” events. At the beginning of civilization, It was only continuous signals without any amplifiers. This means at any point in time only a few humans could have defined the event “Now” from their respect which means their relative form. Let’s say a game had been played in 100 BC that specific event could have only been termed as Now by the humans present at that point watching in the direct observable arena. But today, a physical world event such as Match, let's say Cricket Match, will not only be termed Right Now by the audience watching live on the ground, rather it shall be by all these following the same match:
Humans watching on the TV
Humans listening on the Radio
Humans reading scorecards on the webpages using the internet
In fact, that NOW event could be confirmed by every single human who would be using some channel to observe this physical world event in some form. Brilliant no?
And if we pause for a while, we can understand the massive multifold increase in the proliferation of the “Now” event. In fact, we arrange our past to achieve a desired Now. Even though in almost all cases it would be a fool's mindset to expect the exact NOW every single time.
And I also wondered what would have Einstein thought of seeing all the new development that has massively improved relativity and hence the understanding of a predictable NOW for humankind.
Okay, now I must stop dragging this and take the example I mentioned in the middle.
Live Match in Mumbai:
To understand the space and time phenomenon using a cricket match we need to plot this physical world event on our earlier diagram to define the Present, Past, and Future. And I have marked this physical world event as LM (Live Match), as you can see in the diagram. This means this event is the phenomenon of Region 1. :)
Now we all understand that we can only make sense of our world from a relativity point of view (Hence the respect for Einsteins is so high for identifying this invisible aspect of our world). And in this case, we can create three different observers to understand the nature of space and time.
Humans watching this match inside the stadium
Me watching on my tab
Someone in my village is reading live scores on a smartphone
Let’s decode events for each observer:
Observers watching from the stadium: for them, this event is in the continuous signals also in the observational limit and hence for them the point Live Match (LM) = O. And hence for them the “Right Now” would be “Now”.
Me Watching the same match on my tab: For me, this event is not in a continuous signal. I would agree the event is within my observational limit, but that is only because of the conversion of physical world events into discrete signals (This is one of many of humanity’s achievements). But things get interesting when you will realise that for me “Right Now” and “Now” are not the same (why?). Because we have converted a physical world event into discrete signals, also this discrete signal has travelled 3000 km, and hence there will be a lag. The LM (Live Match) event that I am watching on my tab is not the “Right Now” it is just “Now” - the Live Match “Right Now” is actually the same space-time of Now (O), just the Only Earlier. Brilliant!
I am sure you have heard the story of how fixers leverage this lag (The difference between Right Now and Now for audiences except watching inside the stadium). This is one of the reasons you hear news about the involvement of insiders in the batting. Because someone being inside means they can almost eliminate that lag. (Brillant) But they are not aware of the fact that this is the basic function of our space-time. 🙂
Someone in my village reading scores on a smartphone: Someone sitting in my village and reading scores on a smartphone is a similar phenomenon to me watching on my tab from a space and time point of view. However, among me and my villagers who will have a greater lag that we can understand again by breaking the entire process.
The process of my villager reading scores on his smartphone process:
Someone sitting inside the stadium and entering zero lag scores data into the backend systems and updating and making it live for my villagers. The lag would be higher than me if the humans who are entering scores data were not from inside the stadium rather than sitting very far from the stadium and watching on a TV or tab like me. In this case, the LM2 point would be LM1 only earlier, and the LM1 point would be O only earlier. WoW! Can you believe it?
And this is how the function of space and time operates in our world. You see, our world can’t be defined from an individual point of view. At this point, Einstein's relativity is the only way to define our world. The same object in the space and time dimensions would be different for different observers. And understanding of this fundamental approximation of our world can eliminate all the biases, what are your thoughts?
Now if you stop and think for a second, you will realise the progress of our world is based on the conversion of “Right Now” events into Now for a large number of humans. Most of the world's valued products are doing nothing but reduce the lag between Right Now and Now. Now imagine for a while if there would have no internet, no TV, no smartphone, no telecoms network. For me, the difference between “Right Now” and Now in the context of this game would have much larger, maybe days or weeks, no? In fact, this phenomenon was true for many thousands of years in the history of humanity - but today, we have reduced that to under a minute (Brillant) (Clap) (clap).
And this is a brilliant example of how and why we all should be optimistic about our world. Today we have reduced the lag of distance between 10,000KM to 100,000KM. and in the coming time, we shall be able to reduce the same lag for more than a million KM. And that would be just another progress for humanity.
I promise after writing this, there is a different sensation in my body, and this is good because I can see there is not even a single problem that we can’t solve. Let’s complete this essay with an example that can give us a sense of why it is theoretically possible to solve every single problem in our world. And this example will also give you signals why time travel is possible.
We are taking two Symmetry of Physical laws operations that we have already discussed above.
The interchange of identical atoms and particles would perform the same physics laws
Laws of physics are unchanged under a change of scale
Let’s say me and Roshan (my brother) are playing a game - Egg Breaker. And the rule of the same is simple. Stand at a fixed distance - 1 meter - from the egg and throw stones to break eggs. My brother started first, being at O in the space-time region and throws his first stone (speed less than the speed of light) and break the egg in Region 3 (Future). At this point, you already know that any object in Region 3 is the same space-time as O only before. (lol) And hence we can travel back in time theoretically.
You also know from the Symmetry of physical laws Interchange of identical atoms and particles would perform the same physics laws and if we can travel back to point O, we can use the same atoms and convert broken eggs into unbroken ones. This means theoretically we can even fix the broken eggs. And hence there is not even a single problem in our world that is not solvable. Forget about the easy and visible problems the rules would apply the same to invisible and complex problems. And this is the beauty of our world that we all love!
Even with all these fundamental understandings - we must be aware of our limitations. Not a single human can solve all problems even Elon probably the world’s most intelligent human on the planet can solve three or four complex and difficult problems.
And hence in my case as well, I am well aware of my limitations. I can’t solve all problems, and hence I am solving one of the complex problems that most people would avoid touching - Making Healthcare affordable for 1.2 billion Bhartiya...
This is the wrap-up of this essay, but before you close this window please remember - every problem is solvable. if you find my essay informative please share this with your network. I will see you all the next week :)
PS: There are so many if and but in Einstein’s theory of General relativity, and frankly, I have doubts about the constant speed of light. However, there are just a few scenarios which violate Einstein’s theory and hence we all are using this known science as a tool to understand our world. But at any point, there is no point in trusting this 100% or not having a mindset that new science might not come up with new theories and discoveries. We should always doubt, why? - read my essay. :)
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