An Indian Scientist Contributes

The July 2010 Issue of the Scientific American (India) has its first Indian contributor - at least to my knowledge.
The author of the article Following the Arrow of Time (an article on how String Theory might explain the assymetry of time) is Gautam Mandal. He is a theoretical scientist at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR). And though his post doctorate is from Princeton, he did his Phd from TIFR. In other words, a proper home grown Indian scientist.
Pity his article does not appear in the international edition of the Scientific American. Nevertheless, an occassion to celebrate.
Now I am sure, publishing an article in the Scientific American is not the pinnacle of scietific achievement. Nevertheless, it is important to communicate to the lay reader cutting edge science. The last Indian to do so effectively - to my knowledge - is Jayant Narlikar.

It Is Not Luck!

If you have spent a whole life time cursing your luck for all the bad things that happen to you or around you; or if you have lost faith in the system; or if you have no idea why your projects get delayed - you have come to the right place.

I will not be able to set things right, not give you a solution, but I can sure explain why things go wrong even when you are doing everything right.

But before that let us consider an entirely different scenario. Take a cup of water and drop a blob of ink (or any other dye). The ink disperses and soon the whole water is blue (or red or whatever). Of course you know why that happens. Diffusion. And that happens because of random motion of the molecules. So much is clear. But why diffuse? Randomness could also cause the ink to re-concentrate (imagine seeing the diffusion in a film that is run backwards - can you picture that?). But commonsense tells us that the ink will diffuse it will not come back together again. But that is not entirely correct. The probability of the ink 'un-diffusing' in not zero - except that it is so small that it never ever happens.

So it is with affairs around you. The probability of everything going smooth all the time and as you wish it to happen is not zero. It just so happens that the probability is so tiny that, left on its own, things will go wrong. But there is an essential difference between you and ink.


You can act. You can act to modify the probability in your favour.

Getting late to office because of the random occurrence of vehicles in your path and causing delay? Start earlier. You will still get delayed, but you will reach on time.

Projects get delayed no matter how well you plan? Some random occurrence of an event that you did not take into account manifested? Learn from this. Watch out for such random events. They will still happen. But if you are on a look out, you will be able to take appropriate action.

So it is not about luck. It is all about you trying to consciously modifying probability in your favour.

So next time you wish some one luck, try saying, "Wish you favourable probability." If nothing else I guarantee you raised eye brows.

Oh come on! What is life without such a bit of Idiosyncrasy?

Note: The picture used belongs to Steve Woods (See gallery)

Posthumous Nobel Prize For Einstein

This is a standard quiz question in schools and colleges ... For what was Einstein awarded the Nobel prize? The answer is surprisingly: "For Photoelectric Effect; not Theory of Relativity." Einstein is long dead and gone. And Nobel prize is not offered posthumously. A pity!

Turns out that Einstein is very much alive among scientists. Recently scientists have proved that the famous equation E = mc2 is correct after all. See this piece of news.

However, if you think there is a general agreement on Einstein's greatness. Think again. Visit here to see a scathing attack on Einstein (Albert Einstein, Plagiarist of the Century)

A more unbiased discussion on Albert Einstein's claim on E = mc2 is here

My views: Poincaré may have come very close to the theory of relativity but he did not have the leap of imagination that Einstein had. While all scientists of that era had taken "ether" into account to describe the phenomenon of light and relativity, it required a total genius to reject the idea of "ether" and assume that the velocity of light is constant is a given. That also requires guts.

Did you enjoy this post? Perhaps, you would like to read another one on Einstein!