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Many of us are familiar with the images of Harry Potter and his friends running into a wall and disappearing into platform number 9 ¾. In our 4-dimensional world, this looks improbable. Ask a quantum physicist, and he will say that if you try enough times, probability exists that you will go through once!
The Extensity of man's knowledge knows no bounds. The rate of change of our knowledge is exponential. If we consider the amount of knowledge that was available with mankind in the first century AD as one unit, then it took almost 1500 years for this to get doubled.
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The next doubling happened in the next 250 years. It is now estimated that what we know is doubling almost every two years!
For many years, scientists struggled to find one unifying theory that could explain the behavior of the Cosmic and the Quantum world.
The atomic particles just did not behave according to the laws that governed the galaxies. At the sub atomic level, every thing was governed by probability, including the probability of finding an electron in a certain part of the shell around the nucleus. What was further perplexing was that the force of gravity played almost no role. Instead, two other forces were discovered - the Strong force and the Weak force.
The Strong force keeps the positively charged protons in closed packing in the nucleus (and results in the energy of the atomic bomb when separated!) and the Weak force binds the electrons to the atoms. So now, there were four forces that governed the world around us, the other two being the already known forces of Gravity and Electromagnetism. Einstein worked hard on this problem, but it eluded him, causing him to famously exclaim that God does not play dice with the world (supposedly in the face of no valid explanation!)
Theoretical physicists have succeeded in constructing a framework that offers the best hope of unifying gravity with the other fundamental forces. This is known as the String Theory and is also ambitiously called Theory for Everything! It postulates that the smallest building blocks of the universe are not point-like particles but infinitesimally small loops that resemble tiny vibrating strings. These strings can vibrate in many different ways and each vibration state appears to be a different particle! There are several superstring theories and these converge into an, hold your breath, 11-dimensional M theory. (It is joked that M stands for many things including matrix, magic and mystery but the true meaning would be chosen only when the theory is fully understood!)
The superstring theory has not yet been proven, or for that matter, proven false! In the quantum world, almost every thing has a probability value; this theory is based on approximations and has not made any predictions that can be experimentally tested. It will be a while before common man can come to grips with existence in 11 dimensions! Many of us are familiar with the images of Harry Potter and his friends running into a wall and disappearing into platform number 9 ¾. In our 4-dimensional world, this looks improbable. Ask a quantum physicist, and he will say that if you try enough times, probability exists that you will go through once!
Rahul Swarup
President
Sify Enterprise Solution
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