I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale.
Marie Curie
Monthly Archives: July 2012
Scaling The Universe
Be it the vastness of the universe or the delicate smallness of the sub-atomic world, by choosing a suitable constant scaling ratio for both, we may obtain their representations. These representations following a certain constant scaling ratio, will be self-same. In previous papers on the subject, I have mentioned the chaotic behaviour in the quantum world. Choosing suitable scaling ratios, we may turn the universe itself into such a chaotic quantum system, having its own necessary quantum states and trajectory behaviour. In that case, the study of the universe reduces to the study of some sort of a quantum chaotic system. On the other hand, choosing some other necessary scaling ratios, the atomic and the sub-atomic realm may be extended to become the universe itself, complete with its own macroscopic trajectory behaviour. Instead of formulating different ways of looking at worlds of different sizes, if we adjust the way of viewing i.e., the scaling ratio in such a fashion that the representations of the world merge, we will be looking at representative worlds of study which are practically self-same.
The Laws of Physical Transactions formulated in previous papers of the subject may then be applied in order to study such self-same representations of the worlds of various scales. Unification of the ways of studying at different ranges of scaling may thus be achieved by suitable landscaping (adjusting different scales to a suitable scaling-ratio, in order to make all the scales of study similar in size). Further, a similar approach may be applied to study the Bose-Einstein Condensation. A certain critical packing density of the constituents of each world of a certain landscape must ensure a condensation of similar sort. The quantum states (or some similar states) of each such landscape will merge and give spikes for that critical scaling ratio in their respective representations.
The quantum chaotic behaviour may be of interest to study if we are to learn about the universe as a whole. The astronomically large distances separating clusters in the universe supports a study of such sorts. Quantum chaotic behaviour, on the other hand will give rise to something similar to the Bose- Einstein condensation at some critical packing density. The study of such condensation states too will be of interest here.
Looking at a large enough part of the universe, we may draw an analogy to a system of scattered particles in motion or rest relative to each other. These particles may or may not be similar to each other, if we look at a given locality. Our idea, however, is that we can always represent even the whole of the universe on a piece of paper of our desired size. We can very well do the same with localities of sub-atomic sizes.
We may represent both the worlds, viz. the microscopic and the macroscopic, within any desired standard size. Theoretically, we are only to diminish the snaps of the universe and magnify the snaps of the microscopic world in order to put both into representations of a definite scaling-size. Looking at such a representation of the macroscopic world (due to the large number of constituents and the large distances separating them involved) we will find it to be a complex mixture of various kinds of particles. On the other hand, looking at such a representation of the microscopic world, (due to the small distances separating the constituents) it will be like the actual universe itself, with various types of constituent parts involved. Such a representation of the microscopic and the macroscopic worlds will bring out hidden properties and behaviours of both worlds, as well as providing for a similar basis of studying them both.
Interacting Galaxies – Andromeda and Milky Way
The nearest big spiral galaxy to the Milky Way is the Andromeda galaxy. Appearing as a smudge of light to the naked eye in the constellation Andromeda, this galaxy is about twice as big as the Milky Way but very similar in many ways. At the moment, it is about 2.2 million light years away from us but the gap is closing at 500,000 km/hour. While most galaxies are rushing away as the universe expands, Andromeda is the only big spiral galaxy moving towards the Milky Way. The best explanation is that the two galaxies are in fact a bound pair in orbit around one another. Both galaxies formed close to each other shortly after the Big Bang initially moving apart with the overall expansion of the universe. But since they are bound to one another, they are now falling back together and one very plausible scenario puts them on a collision course in 3 billion years.
Galaxies collide and interact occasionally and there are several well-known examples in the vicinity of the Milky Way. We see interacting pairs as snapshots in time and the results are often very dramatic. Long streams of stars thrown off in beautiful open spiral patterns are characteristic of these collisions and are known as tidal tails and bridges because of their origin in the strong mutual gravitational tides of the two interacting galaxies. Colliding galaxies also tend to merge with one another and the final outcome after some violent convulsions lasting a few hundred million years is another kind of galaxy called an elliptical. During this period, the gas in these galaxies can be ignited violently in a starburst creating stars at rates hundreds of times greater than normal. Galaxy interactions are not that common an event in the local neighbourhood (maybe one in a hundred galaxies) but the rates of merging and interaction is much larger at early times in the universe. Galaxy merging is fundamental to building up structure in the universe and explains many of the peculiar features of young galaxies seen by the Hubble Space Telescope.
The visible fuzzy patch of stars stretches about as long as the width of the full moon, and half as wide; only with significant magnification can you tell it stretches six times that length in fullness.
A spiral galaxy like the Milky Way, Andromeda contains a concentrated bulge of matter in the middle, surrounded by a disk of gas, dust, and stars 260000 light-years long, more than 2.5 times as long as the Milky Way. Though Andromeda contains approximately a trillion stars to the quarter to half a billion in the Milky Way, our galaxy is actually more massive, because it is thought to contain more dark matter.
Amazingly, this stretch of stars, which in our sky appears about as long as the full moon and half as wide, lies 2.5 million light-years away, further than any star you can see with your eyes. Also known as M31, it is the closest galaxy to the Milky Way – and it’s moving closer every day.
Of all members of the Local Group M31 is considered to have the closest external resemblance to the Milky Way, thus it is often referred to as a ‘sibling galaxy’. M31 is an ‘island universe’ – a gigantic collection of billions of stars estimated to be 2.54 million light years distant. It has been observed since ancient times and was first catalogued as long ago as 905 AD. The common name of M31 derives from Charles Messier’s entry # 31 in his famous Messier catalogue in August 1764.
Science is the belief in …
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.
Richard Feynman at the fifteenth annual meeting of the National Science Teachers Association, in New York City (1966) published in The Physics Teacher Vol. 7, issue 6 (1969)
Reviewer’s Bookwatch Midwest Book Review
Reviewer’s Bookwatch Midwest Book Review
Reviewer’s Choice
Abstraction in Theory
Subhajit Ganguly
VMA Publications
9781475072495, $6.25, http://www.vmapublications.com
Dr. Allen Jepson
Reviewer
For many years now, scientists, particularly physicists have been attempting to reach to a “theory of everything’, a theory that would describe all known phenomena in the physical world. However, none of the attempts has yet been successful. The much publicized ‘string theories’ and other ToEs (Theories of Everything-s) have all but made our hopes rise, but unfortunately, they all have proved to be any satisfactory description of the known world.
Are we inching towards a new theory of everything in physics? Well the works of Subhajit Ganguly (theoretical physicist), now compiled in a book titled ‘Abstraction In Theory: Laws Of Physical Transaction’ points towards such a possibility. The theory most importantly does not assume anything at the beginning, but builds upon from ‘zero postulation’. Zero postulation is a new approach that takes into account all possibilities and does not favour any possibility over others. Thus the very likelihood of building upon incomplete notions into some incomplete theory is eliminated by this method.
‘This book is a way forward towards the ‘theory of everything’ in physics. True to this gigantic task, the author approaches the subject in a completely new way. The whole theory is based on the concept of ‘zero-postulation’, an area where others have been less than successful. The idea of ‘zero-postulation’ in itself is a tremendous leap in the methods applied in studying sciences. Based on no assumption, this approach is totally based on solid grounds, unlike the other theories in existence. It is a neat and satisfactory description of the world.’
The theory seems to have very strong foundations. It also seems to fit in as a successful description of the physical world. Definitely a way towards the much cited theory of everything in physics, the Holy Grail of physics. The author has done well in writing the book in a much lucid manner, taking into consideration the ‘heaviness’ of the subject it deals with. He has tried (and succeeded too) in making the book enjoyable for all readers: scholars and laymen alike. The only criterion for having takeaways from the book for any reader seems to be the possession of curiosity regarding the working of the world.
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National Book Swap, LLC (US)
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The Necklace Nebula
The small constellation Sagitta sports this large piece of cosmic jewelry, dubbed the Necklace Nebula. The newly discovered example of a ring-shaped planetary nebula is about 15,000 light-years distant. Its bright ring with pearls of glowing gas is half a light-year across. Planetary nebulae are created by sun-like stars in a final phase of stellar evolution. But the Necklace Nebula’s central star, near the center of a ring strongly tilted to our line of sight, has also been shown to be binary, a close system of two stars with an orbital period of just over a day. Astronomers estimating the apparent age of the ring to be around 5,000 years, also find more distant gas clouds perpendicular to the ring plane, seen here at the upper left and lower right. Those clouds were likely ejected about 5,000 years before the clouds forming the necklace. This false color image combines emission from ionized hydrogen in blue, oxygen in green, and nitrogen in red.
Abstraction Book 