Thought experiments! Each for 60 seconds.

One of the most exciting stuff about science are the thought experiments. Sit on your armchair, smoke a cigar, stretch your legs, put your neurons in motion. And the fun starts.

Thought experiments are in the domain of science as well as philosophy. The most famous of them are from Galileo, Albert Einstein, Richard Dawkins, Schrodinger, etc. 

Open University has done a very good compilation of six best and famous thought experiment.  Each video is not more than 60 seconds, but it is a quick refresher if you want to put your mind on it.

A big thanks to Open University for this one!!

1. Achilles and the Tortoise

2. The Grandfather Paradox

3. The Chinese Room

4. Hilbert's Infinite Hotel

5. The Twin Paradox

6. Schrödinger's Cat

Immortality

"Nothing last forever, and we both know hearts can change, 

It's hard to hold a candle, in the cold November rain...."

November Rain - Guns N' Roses.

How perfectly poetic can life be. Nothing last forever, you may have heard this phrase many a time in your life. This is just a spread-out version of saying, things are mortal.

With all my senses, I somehow say this, Science is beautiful, as Carl Sagan says, a candle in dark. It can answer quite a lot of question. It maybe wrong in many places, but it is a self correcting enterprise. It is open to questions, and changes.

Genes are immortal. They have, metaphorically speaking, traversed the planet from the dawn of life, till the present moment. Four billion year of journey, fifty million times photocopy, and yet they are, intact in the most purest sense. 

Consider this, take a original copy of any document, take it to the photocopy machine(most people call it Xerox. This happens when a brand name becomes a parasite. It is called genericide). Start making a copy. From original make the first copy. Call it copy1. Now from copy1 make copy2 and so on. By the time you reach 120-130 copy, you will start feeling that the original is nowhere looking like the copy120. If you do it more, after certain number of copies, the page would be blank. But look at your genes 50 million times zerox, and yet as perfect as they are. They are marvelous. 

Isn't that amazing!!!

The Universe owes no apology to You

The terrible human journey

Reading  Genomes- The Autobiography of Species in 23 Chapters by Matt Ridley gives a clear insight into the depth of evolutionary biology.

The story told by our genes are one the best you can hear. It has been carried a long journey forward, with the past delicately inscribed on it.

For evolution to happen, we would need more than just natural selection. Here are five point listed which are important when it comes to evolution to function.

1. Population can shrink.
2. Constant mating to mix the genes.
3. Mutation- Changes should happen. It is necessary.
4. Gene flow- Movement of genes(in this case, the carrier) from one geographical location to another.

This video from TED Education gives a better description.

In his book Ridley states a very interesting fact about the history of our species on the planet. 

15 millions year ago, we as ape were almost struggling to survive with a better designed monkey.

45 millions year ago, we as primates were finding it difficult to co-exist with rodents.

200 millions year in past, we as tetra-pods were again almost extinct in comparison with highly evolved dinosaurs.

360 millions year ago, we as limbed fishes were again in competition with ray-finned fishes.

500 millions year in part, we as chordates survived the Cambrian era having competition with a better designed arthropods.

We are not special. We don't live a privileged frame of reference. We are not the center of the universe. We are just a species on the fragile little particle of dust in the vastness of the oceans. We are lost, never to be found again.

Here is the link to the book.

Some of the best I have

Here are some of the most thought provoking jpeg I have. I have seen a lot more than these, but I downloaded few of them. Here are all for you.!

Click here

Why am I an atheist?

Occam Razor. The simple, The Better.

"Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler" 

--- Albert Einstein.

Ever heard this quote anywhere? What does it means? It's been long I have written a stuff. This is a second start!

Let’s take an example. A situation is given. People are asked to analyse it, and publish their results. There are three people doing it, Aman, Babli, Chiku. The illustration is below.

Situation -- 

A cat is chasing a mouse. After a 50 meter run, the cat is successful to claw up that little mouse and starts eating it. 

What just happened?

Aman --  I think maybe yesterday or the day before yesterday, the mouse was roaming around, and saw a fat old cat. She maybe was in a mood for the gag, and hence, went up to the cat, started biting her skin and running away as soon as the cat reacted. This went on for an hour or so, the cat skin was so much chewed, it started concentrating germs, bacteria and was now septic. The poor cat, after 6 hours of agony, succumbed to her injuries. The cat was having a younger sister cat. When she saw this, she was furious and hence was in search of the mouse. Sighted her today, she was chasing the cat to take revenge. I think this is what is happening. Thank You!

Next was the turn of Babli. Lets see what she has one her plate.

Babli --  I think that the cat is hungry and hence he is chasing the mouse in order to eat it.

Now it is the turn of Chiku.

Chiku -- I think, nobody was in fact chasing nobody. The cat us still in its position, the mouse was still in its position. Their legs just performed simple oscillation. It was the earth that was moving in the opposite direction. Slowly, the distance between them starting decreasing. This was because, the space-time between them was getting dissolved into a micro black hole. This black hole was curving the space and time. Hence at the end, we see two of them met. Once in contact, the mouse was suddenly pulled into the cat mouse, in order to be saved from all the black hole effects.

Now which is the most appropriate of all the answers?

The easiest way to come up is to know Occam's razor.

" It states that among competing hypotheses, the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions should be selected."

Moving on, we now know which one of the above three hypotheses we should consider.

The one given by Aman is not logically impossible, but doesn't happen in daily life. There has been no scientist discoveries suggesting that cats do remember enemies (they do remember the house that feed them unlike the dog, which remembers the individual who feed him) or take revenge.  So the probability of this happening is although sparingly very less, this may be the case. But just because it is not what we observe on a daily basis, and in order to mark this hypothesis as correct, we land up creating more questions like how does cat remember, what are the associative, why did the mouse acted this way, etc. etc. We can ignore this answer.

The other answer by Chiku is again making lots of complexity and assumptions. Although micro black hole is possible, physicist claims that it is harmful and it is getting created in the LHC every second.  Again space-time warp is easily said than done. Also Chiku claims that nobody is walking and running, the planet is moving in the opposite direction. This is again possible but not probable. The observer should have also felt the same effect as the object of experiment(in this case, the cat and mouse) did. This hypothesis is again a very cumbersome one and requires more assumptions and new explanations. 

The answer given by Babli is considerably small, logical and observational. Cats, like humans, do get hungry. It is evident from the animal history that the prey run and the predator chases. This answer requires very less assumptions and new theory. Hence we can mark this as good to go.