Just an hour ago my wife and I had an argument over our neighbor and I cut her short telling her I wasn’t interested in these types of inanities (I know, I know, telling this to your wife can be disastrous).  We’re still not talking but I found this engaging essay on "Why we exist" and I couldn’t help wondering, "Exactly what happened during the Big Bang that led us to this argument?"

Whenever life throws at me existential perplexities I usually think about my place in the universe and why things happen the way they do.  I am not referring to cause and effect.  As the essay says billions of things exactly had to be the way they were in order to enable us to exist.

Even setting aside the issue of being here and now, the probability of random physical laws and events leading to this point is less than 1 out of 100,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, equivalent to winning every lottery there ever was.

Personally I believe our perception of the universe and the life as it exists is based on our current knowledge.  There was a time when people thought the earth is flat and the sun goes around the earth. This perception existed for thousands of years until scientists discovered, over a period of some centuries, that the earth is not flat and the sun does not go around the earth.  The essay says if the chain reaction that happened during the Big Bang had even slightly altered life wouldn’t have existed.

I think we very easily believe that there is just one big bang in the history of the known universe and there were no other big bangs.  For all you know big bangs are happening all the time in the universe.

And life must also be different in different cases and we may not be even able to define or recognize different definitions of life.  It is all about perception.  Right now we believe life is all about thinking, feeling and understanding things around us or beyond our consciousness. Life may hold altogether a different meaning in another part of the universe.  Maybe intelligence doesn’t even need a body to exist or to feel.  Maybe there are big globules of intelligence floating around the sizes of suns and stars in various parts of the universe.

Coming back to why we exist and why things happen the way they do.  It will certainly take us a while to understand this if at all we understand one day.  I don’t believe that the history of our perception begins with the Big Bang because lots of stuff must have happened in order to trigger the mother of all the bangs (according to history of the bangs we know). It may not usually be a scientific question.  Intelligence and human emotions are beyond science.

There is another realm we are unaware of.

Recently I stumbled upon a scientific link (unfortunately I lost it) that talked about certain regions in the universe where time travels backwards and even both ways sometimes.  Can it really happen?

I personally feel time is a human concept.  It goes in one direction because we age more and not less and therefore we see everything else around us with that perception.  Of course we come from matter and then go back to matter and this can be something like going back in time but it’s not like you can go back 2 weeks and take care of chores you missed. My limited knowledge of science doesn’t let me see time as a physical entity.  It is there, we are all aware of it, we have clocks to track it but we cannot actually see it or feel it.  So it is hypothetical and it is primarily used to organize and synchronize our activities.

Why scientists think that time can travel backwards is because right now our universe is expanding.  From a center it is going away so time is moving in a particular direction. Once our universe has expended enough it will start contracting (something like yo-yo) and this will how the time will start moving backward.  It doesn’t make sense.  Whether our earth moves from left to right or from right to left (in relation to the sun) and provided no disaster occurs how is it going to affect the way we grow old or build bridges or destroy forests?  If the earth changes direction the bridges are not going to disappear all of a sudden and children are not going to enter the wombs.

Or maybe I don’t understand the concept of time properly and somewhere I’m confusing it with present, past and future.  Maybe present, past and future have got nothing to do with time.  Any ideas?

Stephen Hawking thinks according to laws of physics the universe could have happened on its own and we don’t need a god to create it. According to him and many other scientists there is a theory that can explain every existing law of physics and if we are able to understand that theory we have understood the mind of God.

I think all the scientists jump the gun when they denounce the existence of some unknown power that we often prefer to term as “God” at the drop of a hat. You cannot say things just happened. I know, I may have a limited knowledge of time and I may not be aware of the true concept of what is beginning and what is end and in what direction moves what, the commonsense says there has to be something or someone eventually. You may not like to call it God but whatever triggered the current universe must have some kind of origin. It’s like, although you can say that a marble will roll down a slope automatically, someone puts that marble at that place from where it can roll down. So there is some force that somewhere initiated something that resulted in the kind of universe that we currently have.

Scientists perhaps get mixed up with that original “God” with mythical and prophetic worldly gods. For instance, Christians say that God created this world in “n” days, Muslims say something else and Hindus have their own idea of creation and destruction. These gods may be just works of fiction or delusion but it doesn’t mean that there is no ultimate power. It may not be human or something we can relate to. It can be a complex blob of intelligence that just floats around creating universes, or anything.

With our limited understanding it won’t be humanly possible to go to the beginning of things because if you actually think there can be no beginning because there is always something before the beginning. Something like, before you were born there were your parents and before they were born there were their parents and before our ancestors were born there were apes and monkeys and before apes and monkeys were born there were other forms of lives and before those other forms of lives came into existence there were some chemical reactions and before those chemical reactions there were some chemicals that caused some other reactions, so on and so forth. It doesn’t seem to end and I don’t think it can ever end because before everything there is something else. This seems so bizarre that even before God there has to be some super God that gave rise to the god that created the universe.

Maybe that’s why we come up with simple explanations and routine denials because once you start thinking about that literally, there is no end to it. That’s why we talk of the origin of the universe or the big bang theory and were normally don’t talk about what was there before that.

Here’s an interesting take on how the earth will look after 5000 years, but the article actually talks about what will we become after 5000 year if we don’t destroy ourselves by then.

In 5000 years we won’t require our bodies to live. If mortality and immortality are biological concepts, does this mean we’ll become an immortal race? But why no body?

With advances in technology we’ll be using our bodies less and less. See this video for example:

And this is a very small example of how very rapidly we’re reducing the amount of work our bodies have to do. If we can do this in say, 100 years, imagine what we can do in another 300 years. Although evolution takes its own time, in 500-600 years, and even earlier, we’ll figure out how to live without depending upon body, and even without depending upon machines. The above article says that there will come a stage when we’ll derive energy from the nearby galaxies and control the surrounding solar systems. I don’t think by that time we’ll need to get energy. Our consciousness will produce (I know it defies the first law of thermodynamics but I’m not talking in that sense) on its own.

So what about sensory experiences? Two partners can already enjoy sex with each other (remember that Arnold Schwarzenegger movie?) by simply wiring their brains together even while sitting (or lying, or standing, on in the padmasan position) half way across the globe. So if sex can be enjoyed this way, I’m sure other sensations can be experienced too.

I wonder why some people feel it hard to believe Prahlad Jani’s claim that he hasn’t eaten or drunk for more than 80 years. It’s not like he’s saying he has flown to the moon and back a couple of times. We sometimes develop biological peculiarities that science cannot explain with current level of understanding. When we think about extra-terrestrial life scientists already believe there can be life forms beyond our understanding. Why, even on earth we keep finding life forms living in the extreme temperatures of volcanoes and miles beneath the arctic ice – would you call that supernatural?

This is not to say that we should believe in superstition. For me superstition means when you promote a belief and earn money with it or harm people. Even people like Deepak Chopra come under that category, for that matter. He sells a way of life and earns lots of money with it. We should all fight superstitions that are used to keep people suppressed and backward.

If you simply say that you haven’t eaten for 80 years, then what’s the harm? Instead of moronically rejecting him outright, we should unravel the mystery, if there is one. This is how humanity has evolved.

In terms of being supernatural, life in itself is supernatural. Whenever I look at my daughter jumping around, running around in the house and spreading light around her, I feel, yes, she’s a miracle. She was not there a few years ago. And then she’s here, out of nothingness. I’m not talking about her physical existence, I’m talking about her soul, her thoughts, her attitude, her outlook. If you can see beyond biology, physics and chemistry, what can be more supernatural than life itself?

While reading this Stephen Hawkins article on time travel I came across a term called the “grandfather paradox” that’s quite interesting.

Suppose a time traveler goes in the past and murders his grandfather before the grandfather can meet his future wife and give birth to one of the traveler’s parents, and this means the traveler cannot be born, and this further means that since he cannot be born he cannot go back in the past to kill his grandfather and this means the grandfather doesn’t die so the traveler gets to be born and then he can go back in the past to murder his grandfather…and so on. The opponents of the time travel theory often use such paradoxes to refute the concept of time travel.

Coming to the concept of time travel…do I believe in it? I think time travel is possible if we don’t take it as a singular occurrence. In the above-mentioned article Hawkins talks about a wormhole, miniscule crevices in time that in future will be enlarged so that bigger objects, and if possible, even humans will be able to enter one entrance and exit from another. But due to the laws of physics these wormholes will collapse upon enlargement. Then he talks about traveling in great speed. Einstein’s theory of relativity says the faster you travel, the slower time gets. This has been proven by the facts that time on earth travels faster than on satellites and everyday the clocks need to be adjusted, and this happens because due to earth’s gravity and mass time travels slow. Read the article to properly understand the concept, but the whole idea again stands on the concept that the timeline is singular.

I believe, since we have an infinite universes around us, there are infinite instances of us happening everywhere, triggering different timelines. Being infinite is a big advantage, because it means every object, living or dead, can have its own timeline and every object in these infinite timelines can have their own timeslines and this goes on indefinitely. So the paradox doesn’t have to take place. Even if the traveler kills his own grandfather, he won’t be eliminating himself, but his replica existing in that timeline. And since there can be infinite timelines associated with this particular traveler there can be countless instances of his circumstances.

So in order to travel in time without causing chaos, we have to find a way to hop around different timelines. We don’t need a linear concept. We need bridges. We need tunnels that connect different timelines.

But then you may say, what happens to your own history? This is no timetravel. Timetravel would really mean an ability to go to ones own past, not the replica’s past. So if you go to your past, you’ll be experiencing it as a spectator, and not as the timetraveler. Valid question.

I’m not an expert on timetravel – neither scientifically nor philosophically – so it’s just a vocal thinking. What happens if you hop through various timelines? I mean, what if you become a serial timeline hopper, disturbing multiple timelines? According to the infinite concept it doesn’t really matter if a few timeslines, even if a few hundred timelines, get disturbed, because for infinite timelines there are infinite realities. We are only conscious of this timeline. I’m writing this blog post, then I’ll publish it, and at this moment you are reading it (oh, so you have read till now! Great :-) ) … we all belong to a particular timeline. If I go to another timeline I may disturb that timeline and the world existing in that timeline, and I may even alter this particular timeline with my absence, and then after a while, come back and resume my normal activities. People do disappear and then come back, without causing much havoc in the current timeline.

You might have done things in your life – whether good or bad – that you normally wouldn’t do. All of a sudden people turn into saints and normal citizens turn into mass murders and psychopaths. People fall sick without reason and the sick get better with no medical explanation. Why does the behavior of some people get altered without warning? Maybe someone crosses over from another timeline and completely changes the character of his or her replica in our world. Sometimes people come back to their normal selves and sometimes they don’t. Maybe that’s how we see ghosts too. Suppose a man dies and then his existence from another timeline comes over and now is totally clueless because in this timelines he’s dead and now the neighbor from another timeline simply is unable to go back.

This all seems hypothetical but if we want timetravel without murdering grandfathers and consequently, ourselves, we’ll need to think beyond linear timelines.

Chandrayaan-I, India’s first ever lunar mission, and it has found water on the moon. The reports are, allegedly, ‘unambiguous’, but NASA’s remote sensing instruments installed on Chandrayaan-I have clearly indicated that there might be as much as a liter of water in every ton of lunar soil, and that’s lots of water.

The Indian media is in a frenzy of course. I remember the launch of Chandrayaan-I didn’t create much buzz in the mainstream media, in fact Rahul G and Sonia G travelling in 3rd class and Shashi Tharoor tweeting on cattle class got much more coverage.

When Chandrayaan-I was launched on October 22, 2008 from Sriharikota’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre there were some who even protested that why India is sending a mission to the moon and wasting money, after all, what purpose can be solved by sending probes and people to the moon? Today’s media hubbub may be because of the NASA conference together with scientists from ISRO where they declared that Chandrayaan-I, along with Deep Impact and Cassini probes, have given evidence of the lunar soil containing traces of water.

Why is Chandrayaan-I finding water on the moon a big discovery?

No doubt it is a proud moment for India and re-establishes its scientific prowess. The brilliant Indian scientists who willingly choose to work in India don’t have enough resources to do their work. Hopefully more attention will be paid to them. India is now definitely on the world map of space science.

Why presence on the moon is important?

Space science is not just about releasing satellites into the orbits, sending deep space probes to find new planets and hopefully life or collecting lunar soil and rocks. Lots of scientific discoveries and inventions take place while scientists are working on space shuttles because of the extreme conditions.

In a few years many countries will be setting up lunar bases to conduct scientific experiments. Highly powerful telescopes will be constructed there so that distant stars, constellations, black holes, comets and planets can be seen more clearly. Countries having easy access to the moon may even set up colonies or generate power there to be beamed back to the earth.

Water on the moon also means there can be life there. This is like jumping the gun, but at least, water being there means that water can be extracted for consumption and irrigation once humans start farming in their lunar enclosures.

Of course the Indian media must acknowledge the contribution of the Moon Mineralogy Mapper – M3 – specifically designed by the United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to search for water on the lunar surface. This means it’s not an accidental discovery, and scientists were already expecting such a find. To be precise Chandrayaan-I carried 11 scientific instruments built in India, the US, Britain, Germany, Sweden and Bulgaria.

This is certainly going to be a big boost for Chandrayaan-II, slated for 2012/2013. It will also give it a precise location to land.

There is this video on YouTube that shows an obscure blob of slime heaving up and down in a North Carolina sewer. The footage, allegedly, has been shot by inserting a snake camera into the sewer.

Some websites dedicated to extraterrestrial life and UFO have started urging people to brace up for an alien invasion. Of course, scientists and sewage experts say they are nothing but a colony of Tubifex worms. They often get together and form this blob and then display slimy movements when exposed to light and heat.

I wonder why people have such a bad notion of aliens. Why does a life form that can travel across galaxies have to end up in sewers and manifest such a repulsive biological existence? How did they travel? Did they use spaceships or simply hopped across dimensions and time coordinates? If this is the future of an intelligent existence — you gotta be highly evolved, spiritually, biologically and scientifically, to be able to travel and reach other living worlds — then this gives me shudders. Will we all turn into sewage-haunting blobs say, after a million years, if by any chance we don’t kill ourselves and the planet by that time?

Or may be the ability to travel in space is overrated simply because we cannot grasp it. May be it is so simple that even goo can travel through space.

If life can exist in the most extreme conditions on earth, why not on other planets? As this article says:

After 3 billion years of evolution, life has flowed into every last nook and cranny, from the bottom of the sea to the upper edge of the stratosphere. From blazing heat and freezing cold to pure acidity and atomic bomb-caliber radiation, there’s seemingly no stress so great that some bug can’t handle it.

It certainly can, and I wonder why some scientists reject the possibility outright.

This can be a plot for the next horror flick. After lying dormant under 2 miles of ice in Greenland, for nearly 1,20,000 years, by gradually increasing its body temperature, scientists have reawakened a bug in their laboratory, and it took them 11 months to do so. What if it is a dangerous bug and it was buried so deep by some ancient civilization to keep future generations safe? What if now they cannot control it in the lab and it starts spreading and then eventually colonizes the planet, annihilating other life forms?

After this experiment scientists think many other life forms that remain buried can be brought back to life, even on Mars.