Those were the days when anything and everything on the universe and the mysteries that surround it impressed me and I began questioning things at face. I started questioning everything from something as small as ‘why would the earth go around the sun’ to as big as ‘what is the significance of my existence in this universe’. I know everybody cannot think about these things, but they broke my peace some years back.

I began reading and trying to understand physics and more particularly astrophysics. Stephen Hawkings, Roger Penrose, Lawrence Krauss… The more I read, the more questions seemed unanswered to me. Not that these questions seemed unanswered, they in fact seemed unanswerable. It was then that I decided to start writing something about the mysteries which I could not understand. I would approach my parents an teachers, but they could not help find an answer for me. I was stuck…

Today the same questions are popping up in my head. With the Big Bang experiment being carried out by CERN, I see a brand new interest being generated in astrophysics and physics of the unseen, unknown powers of the universe. There would be a whole new generation that took birth in the last decade or so that has not been exposed to these terms, this excitement and this mystery.

The questions I had are still unanswered and I really dont think it is in the scope of mankind to find answers to these questions…

You can check out the following link to go through my unanswered questions and my beliefs in those tracks… I think it was pretty childish.

http://www.geocities.com/adityadx1985

and

Click here to follow news about the Big Bang Experiment at CERN

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This time I happened to meet Lawrence Krauss. A professor at Case Western Reserve University who teaches physics and astronomy. Or better, Astrophysics. His books talk about the strange dark matter than exists around us, in between the planets, stars and galaxies. He says it is the most important thing that makes up most of the universe. Something that we cant see, is all that matters for the universe…

I was fortunate to meet him up for an interview for the campus newspaper. Though, politics, press politics as you might want to call it, this article did not see the light of the printing press!

AM : Me Me
LK: Professor Lawrence Krauss

AM: The Scientific American has quoted you as one amongst the only few living ‘Public Intellectuals’. What do you feel about it?

LK: The key is to reach out to the public. I try to connect science broadly to culture and politics. It’s truly a great honour for me. It’s a nice feeling.

AM: What is you latest book ‘Hiding in the Mirror’ all about?

LK: It’s about the fascinations that humans have towards the concept of extra-dimensions. It is not just about that, but about the ways in which the idea has evolved historically in literature, art and science.

AM: As a kid, what was your greatest motivation that helped you dedicate yourself to astrophysics?

LK: As a kid, I used to read a lot. Books were the greatest motivation for me. I was particularly inspired by the writings of Arthur Clarke and Isaac Asimov and scientists like Gamow, Einstein and the rest.

AM: When you talk about the Powers of Ten show that zooms in from the very big to the very small, you say that it misses the most exotic black matter that is out there, what are you talking about?

LK: My lecture for you guys is all about that ‘most exotic black matter’. If you remove the planets, the suns, the galaxies and everything that is visible to you and me, including humans, the universe wouldn’t be affected at all. It would be largely the same. All this is just ‘cosmic pollution’. All the matter is completely irrelevant. Dark energy is all that is important in the entire universe.

AM: In the most recent developments, you have said and written that the President of the US should be an “educator-in-chief” along with being the “commander-in-chief”, and that science and technology should be an integral part of the presidential debate. How do you look at it?

LK: I believe that science is and would play a major role in public policy making. In the future, science is going to be the basis of the same. Security, economy, health, environment are all linked to science.

AM: India has had a rocket scientist as the President; does it really help in changing the world order?

LK: I’ve had the opportunity to meet him recently. Well, I don’t really know how much it would help in changing the world order, but all I want to say is that the leaders should be educated! They should be literate and effective, and should have an understanding of science.

AM: Do you believe that the Asian countries would race ahead in science and technology soon owing to their human resources, who “score much better in math and science tests” than the Westerns?

LK: Laughs at the poor condition of American school students and his own quote picked up from an article. Oh it’s highly possible! Right now the US is still the most attractive place for graduate study, but that could change. As far as Asian students are concerned though, they have too much respect for authority… the key thing is to question everything, including your advisors!

AM: What is your view on the relation between science and religion?

LK: They are complimentary to each other. I would like to quote a friend of mine, Steven Weinberg here: “One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious”.

AM: Today, top universities like IIT are losing young brains to high paying jobs in the banking and finance sector, consultancies, software and the like. How can things be changed to get more youngsters to do research in Astrophysics or say any field in general?

LK: Well that is a problem in the US as well. We are losing most students to lucrative jobs in almost the same sectors. We need to focus on science. We need to convey the sheer excitement of discovery to the youth and convince them that knowledge is as satisfying as money!

AM: Who for you is or was the one greatest scientist ever?

LK: It is difficult to talk about one, but I would call it a tie between two: Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin.

AM: Your homepage on the Case Western website calls you ‘moderately photogenic’ but the sheer number of ‘really cool pics’ points that you are ‘highly photogenic’! What do you say?

LK: Has a hearty laugh at this one. The website administrators just love to have some fun with my photographs. It seems you have done a good research on me!

:)

The interview was followed by a walk of almost a kilometre. That was a wonderful moment.

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The sky is important. It covers us. It speaks to us. Before the time we found the flame, we would lie back in the dark and look up at all the points of light. Some points would come together to make a picture in the sky. One of us could see the pictures better than the rest. She taught us the star pictures and what names to call them. We would sit around late at night and make up stories about the pictures in the sky: lions, dogs, bears, hunterfolk. Other, stranger things. Could they be the pictures of the powerful beings in the sky, the ones who make the storms when angry?Mostly, the sky does not change. The same star pictures are there year after year. The Moon grows from nothing to a thin sliver to a round ball, and then back again to nothing. When the Moon changes, the women bleed. Some tribes have rules against sex at certain times in the growing and shrinking of the Moon. Some tribes scratch the days of the Moon or the days that the women bleed on antler bones. They can plan ahead and obey their rules. Rules are sacred.The stars are very far away. When we climb a hill or a tree they are no closer. And clouds come between us and the stars: the stars must be behind the clouds. The Moon, as it slowly moves, passes in front of stars. Later you can see that the stars are not harmed. The Moon does not eat stars. The stars must be behind the Moon. They flicker. A strange, cold, white, faraway light. Many of them. All over the sky. But only at night. I wonder what they are.

After we found the flame, I was sitting near the campfire wondering about the stars. Slowly a thought came: The stars are flame, I thought. Then I had another thought: The stars are campfires that other hunterfolk light at night. The stars give a smaller light than campfires. So the stars must be campfires very far away. ‘But,’ they ask me, ‘how can there be campfires in the sky? Why do the campfires and the hunter people around those flames not fall down at our feet? Why don’t strange tribes drop from the sky?’Those are good questions. They trouble me. Sometimes I think the sky is half of a big eggshell or a big nutshell. I think the people around those faraway campfires look down at us – except for them it seems up – and say that we are in their sky, and wonder why we do not fall up to them, if you see what I mean. But hunterfolk say, ‘Down is down and up is up.’ That is a good answer, too.

There is another thought that one of us had. His thought is that night is a great black animal skin, thrown up over the sky. There are holes in the skin. We look through the holes. And we see flame. His thought is not just that there is flame in a few places where we see stars. He thinks there is flame everywhere. He thinks flame covers the whole sky. But the skin hides the flame. Except where there are holes.

Some stars wander. Like the animals we hunt. Like us. If you watch with care over many months, you find they move. There are only five of them, like the fingers on a hand. They wander slowly among the stars. If the campfire thought is true, those stars must be tribes of wandering hunterfolk, carrying big fires. But I don’t see how wandering stars can be holes in a skin. When you make a hole, there it is. A hole is a hole. Holes do not wander. Also, I don’t want to be surrounded by a sky of flame. If the skin fell, the night sky would be bright – too bright – like seeing flame everywhere. I think a sky of flame would eat us all.

Maybe there are two kinds of powerful beings in the sky. Bad ones, who wish the flame to eat us. And good ones who put up the skin to keep the flame away. We must find some way to thank the good ones.

I don’t know if the stars are campfires in the sky. Or holes in a skin through which the flame of power looks down on us. Sometimes I think one way. Sometimes thinks a different way. Once I thought there are no campfires and no holes but something else, too hard for me to understand.

Rest your neck on a log. Your head goes back. Then you can see only the sky. No hills, no trees, no hunterfolk, no campfire. Just sky. Sometimes I feel I may fall up into the sky. If the stars are campfires, I would like to visit those other hunterfolk – the ones who wander. Then I feel good about falling up. But if the stars are holes in a skin, I become afraid. I don’t want to fall up through a hole and into the flame of power. I wish I knew which was true. I don’t like not knowing.

- Carl Sagan, Cosmos

Many people find it very surprising to learn that I hardly read. I dont enjoy reading long things. I can atmost manage small books, or short stories, articles and information. The few books that I have read till the last period have been mostly on astrophysics. Infact there have been just two of them.

The best that I have ever read, is Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. The above is an excerpt from that book.

Cosmos is a book wonderfully written and that too in a very lucid language. It is the perfect book for the layman.

Stephen Hawking’s books are actually good only for people who have atleast little knowledge about science or specifically Astrophysics. Cosmos does not need you to be intelligent. It just needs that you have the ability to understand and appreciate the beautiful language and the beautiful Cosmos described in it.

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