A revolutionary idea in science

I was reading an interesting article in recent New Scientist magazine about evolution and suddenly one thought popped-in my mind, is it possible to come with a revolution idea in this internet age? Yes, I know that there are many mysteries in physics, chemistry and biology that are still need to be solved. But, is there anything left for me to find now that is so much intuitive that no one has ever thought about it before me? Is it possible for me to come with an idea like relativity by just thought experiments and not depending upon any pre-existed theories?

In Physics, we have yet to find answers for black holes and inflationary universe, Chemistry is asking for explanation on alpha affect and chemical origins of life and Biology is still seeking a total theory of evolution. Some of these problems are with us for a quite a long time and we are trying to solve those by finding small pieces of answers everyday. But, is there an idea still left to be discovered in the world that is so much revolutionary that no one has ever imagined it before and is about to emerge from the mind of a student who is sitting under an apple tree? The idea must be so much world-shattering that it should not only change the face of science but it should impact everyone’s life on the planet. Do you think we have any chance to come up with it? Or, everything astonishing has already been found by great people in the last few centuries?

It only can be possible for someone, considering there is still something left to be found, if that person does not have any bondage with our limited world and that he is not afraid of asking questions to himself or to others which no one has raised before. Most of us have made some presumptions about the things we see around us and our minds are confined within-in these walls of conjectures. Often, we do not have that much courage to push those walls further apart from us and hence our minds can not come with ground-breaking thoughts like gravity and relativity.

I am pretty sure that god (or nature) hasn’t revealed all its secrets to humankind, yet. And hence, in order to understand the nature of our universe, we will need minds which can go beyond the limits of current understanding and stand out from the crowd.

Economy and technology

Some scholars and economists are now suggesting that current global downturn is happening because there is no new technology around which can survive economy. Since the industrial revolution, mankind has depended upon machines and electronics and indirect way those inventions have helped global economy on move. But since the mobile and internet technologies, we haven’t seen any major invention and lack of new technology, there is no driving force for money to flow around.

In early 1900s, telephone and car industry made a huge impact and they were the first of few technologies that were involved and counted a big part in economy. After that, we have seen electronic chips, television, computers, etc becoming part of our daily life. It’s the new technological development that brings new projects from government, construction for new buildings and sites, skilled worker employments and prosperity in our lives. Currently, we are just seeing upgraded versions of computers, laptops, mobile phones, websites, mp3 players, etc and there is no great product on horizon that can start global economy moving again.

Important projects like robotics, nano-technology, fuel-cell powered vehicles, biotechnology, etc are still in development phase and scientists are not sure when these technology will be available to mass audiences. Until we will not able to see any of these technologies in production line, there are very less chances that global economy will recover.

Who are we to judge any person?

We often try to judge other people and make up our mind about them without knowing them personally. Most of the time, people are not bad only time upon them is bad. Therefore, their decisions taken during the bad time makes negative affects on observers or people who are closed to them. Hence, I think, we should not judge any person, and instead we should try to put ourselves at his or her position and see what choices they had when they decided to do something that we cannot justify as a positive decision.

For example, most of us think that Hitler was a bad person. I agree, that he killed so many people and he was one of a main causes to start WWII, but I don’t have any authority or I am not that much knowledgeable to make any judgement. I cannot rely upon the resources that are provided by those who have written history from one point of view and often did not depict that person’s angle. I know that there is no justification for massacre and whatever Hitler did at that time could have been avoided and he could have achieved his goals without being mass murderer but I cannot say that he was a bad person as a whole because I cannot make that decision without going through the same or similar pain he felt and the circumstances on which he chose to do such a big bloodbath. As all these things happened in the distant past, it doesn’t affect us that much in our daily life.

But, when a person close to us, like friend or relative, makes a certain decision because of which we get a lot of pain, we most often make assumptions about that person and his/her personality. We generally ignore to understand their perspectives and we do not put ourselves into their position to see why they have made such a nasty decisions. Even worst than that, if we receive some opinions from third-person on them, we generally believe third-party and we close our mind to think from our friend or relative’s point of view whose decision has caused such a great frustrations. We feel such emotions only when the person is very attached to us and hence we should try to understand him/her and should not make our judgement on what we have seen or what we have heard but on which conditions that person has made such a huge and controversial decision. If we are able to see that point of view, we generally find that he/she may be right and whatever he/she has thought is best for all the people who are involved in the situation.

We will be able to do this only when we put our ego aside and when our mind and character are strong enough to withstand whatever result may come in the future.

Change

We are used to certain things, timings, environment, arrangements, etc in our daily life. By knowingly or unknowingly, our certain acts on certain things depend upon particular sequence and if some part of that sequence changes, we get frustrated. On contrary, some people get bored of routine life at home or at work in few months or in few years.

Only one thing in our life is constant and that is change. Sometimes, these changes are very big and we are not able to take those easily and we take a while to adapt to those transforms. Personally, I like to vary few little things in my daily life on a regular basis. I generally take different route between office and home every few days, try to do experiments with my diet quite often and I am not afraid of trying new hairstyles regularly. But, I am also afraid of few hasty changes in my life and want few things to be the same as they are or at least I should have control over them. But that is not possible in real life. And when these changes happen, I struggle a bit to get used to those. I take these situations positively and try to learn from them.

Most often, the work pattern and work environment frustrates people. I know someone who gets bored and frustrated within few months in the same company. I have been with my current employer for last two and half years. I like the environment here, working style, working hours, etc but I know that if I want to work longer with this company, I have to make certain changes every often in my work style, lunch timings, things I do when I am not busy in work and I need to keep it up with technological updates so that when big change happens in the company I am prepared to adopt that easily.

Most of us like our home and love our life with family members. Hence, we try to avoid moving to new house until it becomes unavoidable, make any changes in living room or in bedroom, paint new colours in house, etc etc. We get attached to all these non-living objects so much and want them to be as they are forever.

Religion as a tool for socialisation

Recently, I had a good talk with a person who often comes to local temple, here in Southampton. He has already been retired from and spends almost every evening at temple. What I noticed about him was that, although he helps a priest a lot for arranging prayers and keeping temple clean and tidy, I never saw him praying to god and just sits around and chats with people.

I was enthusiastic about his opinions about god and wanted to know whether he believes in god or not. So, I asked him whether he believes in god or not. I was expecting negative answer. But, surprisingly, he told me that he does believe in god but doesn’t like to pray or bow his head to god that something typical devotees do. In order to explain this behaviour, he told me that he sees religion, at least Hinduism, as a tool for socialisation. We had a good talk and I grasped few of his views on religion believes.

At the time of when Hinduism was formed, according to him, people were depressed, only self oriented and society as a whole were near collapse. Clever people from that time met to discuss the situation and decided to act together by creating new thing, called a religion. They became Monks (Sadhus) and built temples all around the places. Their aim was to start people getting socialised again and in order to do that people have to travel around and meet new persons. Hence, those monks built temples at the top of mountains, in jungles, near rivers, etc so that when people visit those places for religion purpose they can also see the beauty of nature and learn new culture around those places.

If people understand this way of thinking and take this positively, it may help us again to build the society. Right now, societies, in India and in Britain and in some other parts of the world as well, are collapsing. I believe we are not spending enough time to get socialised anymore and seeing religion places as tools by monks for making money. But, a person doesn’t have to give any money to these places or he has to believe in god in order to go to church or temple. If a person doesn’t believe in god, even he should go to church or temple and try to interact with people, understand culture around religion places, take positive things from priests and give something back to the society either by some volunteering work or by sharing things with others in which he is good at.

Influence on us by people around us

As we grow old from child to an adult person, people around influence us. When a child is born, he/she doesn’t have any name, religion, identity, etc. That’s up to his/her parents to give all necessary identity and put him/her into the society. For a kid, most significant impact comes from parents. Kid learns good and bad things from parents very quickly. By knowing or unknowingly, parents influence enforce religion, believes, behaviours, habits, etc and as child doesn’t have enough power to understand or oppose, he/she will accept most of these things.

When we become old enough to understand, we generally learn new things from friends, teachers, relatives and brothers/sisters. If any of these persons have any bad habits like smoking, drugs, drinking, etc, there are chances of getting these into a person’s habits, too. Its only when we start getting understanding of life and start learning new things by ourselves we start influencing people around us.

It will depend on how strong that is. I have seen people who do not have any idea about real life situations and they have survived because of good friends and relatives around him/her. When this protection has been removed from the person, I have seen these people struggling a lot to cope up with everyday challenges.

I think person’s characteristic depends upon religion and/or philosophical believes. In Indian culture, generally, parents’ religion is imposed on child. Parents generally do not give any freedom to child to believe in different religion or follow his/her own philosophy based upon his/her own understanding. Most of the time, this believe pass-on goes undetected because by the time child has grown up, all those believes are also embedded into his/her mind. But when this doesn’t happen, family sees chaotic atmosphere in the relationships and even division in the family. Should we give more freedom to a child to choose his/her religion when he/she grew up and not that of what parents believes?

Curiosity

We, the people, had born with curiosity in our nature. Some of us have curiosity about technology, engineering, business, etc while others have more interests towards arts, history, life science etc with different level of it at each topic. Because of curiosity in our nature, we ask questions to ourselves and always try to find answers of those questions.

But what I have noticed in teenagers surrounding me that they are not that much inquisitive to normal day-to-day things. These youngsters are able to use mobile phones easily and spends hours on internet chatting with their friends, but they do not have any clue how normal things work. Or may be they do not have to worry about it?

Engineers and scientists of one generation ahead of us have created world around us in which we live today. This world is very simple to live in and hence sometimes people, including me, take most of things as granted. But, I still ask questions to people around me or to myself if I am not able to understand working pattern of simple things. This inquisitiveness is lacking in young generation. They haven’t got any clue how to replace a punctured tire in the bicycle, which bus to use in-order to go to town hall, how to replace a mains fuse, etc which are the things which I remember doing very easily even at my early teenage life.

I think its our partial fault that we not encouraging kids around us to learn new things. May be we do not want them to ask questions to us while we are relaxing in the weekend. But, in order to preserve our and next generations future, we have to do something right now.

The ultimate goal of biological science

One of the topics that is in discussion in general public is Stem Cell research. Recently, Glasgow, Scotland, based Institute has announced that they have received permission from Government to pursue their research into Stem Cell use them for stroke and blindness. This has caused some frustration among those who opposes this idea.

This is not a new research topic. Scientists are trying to find answers about complex human body structure and their ultimate aim is to create Cloned Human body which will have no genetics disorder. Are they trying to replace nature by technology?

Personally, I am a supporter of both the ideas when they are used separately. But, when we will combine those two to create a perfect body, which will have no diabetes, no cancer, no genetical irregularities, no complex physical problems, etc, we are going against the nature. With the help of Stem Cell research we will be able to help disabled people by giving them normal life. With the help of human cloning, we might be able to "generate" people in laboratories who can go to other planets in long space missions where normal human body may be subject to more difficulties than cloned body.

But, as this has happened before with other technologies, once we will achieve success in human cloning, we will lose control over who and when should use this technology. In my opinion, let general public decide whether they support these kinds of research and upto what level government should be involved over control of the technology.

There is no such thing like Present

I had discussion with one of my colleagues at work about how to define our time in present sense. In his opinion, no matter what we are doing, there is no such thing like Present. The moment I will finish typing this line or even this word will be counted as past because the work has already been done. My colleague argued that there is no such thing as a current time because the moment we define that time or we want to live up to that point, that second will be lost for ever. And, hence, there is only past and immediate past, next past, next past and so on.

In counter argument, I said, although this sounds right, it can't be. If there is a past and there will be a future then there has to be Present. Otherwise, none of those two things will happen. I had to do a bit search on this topic to understand what present time is and what it really means.

According to wikipedia, and according my understanding of it now, one can only see or work on his/her present time. It is not possible to observer other's present time. No matter how close you stand to the next person, time is always relative. As Einstein has already proven that space and time are relative, I can see only my present time and no one can because by the time observer gets that information and process it, it is already become a history.

Although time frames are almost same to people in one room or in one city due to small relative motion, reference to time is always different for each and every object. This is very hard to see in our everyday life and most of the time difference is very small that we don't need to worry about. Nevertheless, this time difference is significant for few technologies to work properly, for e.g. GPS.