An Introductory Text on Physical Existence

          “An entity is said to exist if it is communicates with other existing entities.” Let it be explained. To be is to be perceived. Existence is actually a relative property of physical entities determined by the interactions of the entity with other standard entities relative to which it is measured, standard in the sense that it is the measuring frame of reference. Therefore it is meaningless to speak of entities possessing absolute existence by their own. An entity exists relative to another entity if and only if the former communicates with the latter. For example, let us consider two universes A and B, one being our own universe, the universe we live in, and the other, say, an alien universe of the megaverse. If there are no interactions between A and B, then the existence of B can be ignored by A and vice versa, because of the reason that in the explanation of any single phenomenon of one universe the theories require no use of the elements of the other for if it requires a use it would imply that a interaction did take place. Moreover the physical world does not characterize underlying realities beyond observation. Practically speaking, a neutrino would not have existed had it not made itself felt through the weak interactions it does. So basically interactions take place and this makes possible for entities to exist to entities that they interact with. This is what constitutes the physical reality of all the entities of the universe. Therefore we can define existence in the following words:

            “That which exists, can be perceived.”

            It is to be noted that existence is a physical quality, and I am not quite sure whether it is also a physical quantity that can be measured and mathematically analyzed. I leave this task to others to find the best mathematical expressions for this quantity, if possible, which is here qualitatively defined. I will be using this concept in further treatments to other quantities such as space and time.

Before proceeding ahead, I would like to discuss some important things the knowledge of which would be required as a prerequisite. In this paper, terms such as communication, interaction and observation are used synonymously. These terms represent the same thing – the defining aspect of existence. Interactions, however, take place in space and time (or spacetime) which literally means that if an object interacts with another in even a single point in space and at just one instant of time, then that would be enough to make the object to exist relative to the other. The concepts of space and time are very fundamental to Physics, which will be defined later in this paper. Following the lead of Albert Einstein, it is thought that space and time do not exist independently of each other, but are rather mingled into a single quantity called spacetime. Physics primarily consists of two concepts, the ‘object’ defined as the set of aspects of a physical system (a localized entity of investigation) that remains invariant during motion (the change of state of an object), and the ‘state’ of the object defined as the set of all the variable aspects of a system. Physics is thus defined as the study of motion. Therefore, spacetime is but one of the many aspects of the state of a system. So far the existence of physical entities has been discussed: what about the existence of the states of a system! The definition of existence is applicable to states as well. Clearly no such state can ‘exist’ of a system which cannot be perceived (or interacted with) by the system itself which is the observer, or an external observer who observes the system (as the law of conservation of information allows the external observer to access the information of the interaction that took place between the state and the system, thus making it possible, in a chain process, for the state to exist relative to the external observer). If such a state is hypothesized that cannot be observed, it would be more than clear a logical blunder. In the above sense, even states (such as spacetime) interact with an object as do other objects in the rest of the universe i.e. the surrounding, so that they might exist.

            Another important implication of this definition of existence is this: that which exists can be perceived, hence that which cannot be perceived, does not exist. It is an important conclusion of the definition, because it eliminates from a theory all the proposed attributes of a system that cannot be observed. For example, let us assume that a theory predicts the following sequence of changing states of a system: {a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o} where a, b, c … represent the states which change in the given sequence, and a and o represent the initial and final states of the system respectively. But when the system is allowed to ‘move’, the changing states are precisely observed as thus: {a, b, c, d, e, g, i, k, m, n, o}. Now it cannot be reasoned that the states f, h, j, and l does exist but they did not come into observation. If these states are unobservables after all, then they do not exist at all, for all that exists is observable. Hence we reduce the theory to predict the sequence of changing states to be {a, b, c, d, e, g, i, k, m, n, o} eliminating the unobserved. (This is exactly what has happened when the Quantum revolution came into the history of Physics).

 

 

 

[This text is an excerpt from a project I completed last year, March 14 , 2011]

THE EINSTEIN CONSPIRACY

Once upon a time (?), there lived two legendary friends in Mars, called Bob and Jack. Bob was born in poverty, while Jack in aristocracy. This is their story of birth and death, and the tale of how Nature played them false. I will tell you all for their angels reported me thus.

Mars is a different planet in a different universe. The numbers that Nature plays with are a bit different there. However, Nature is as cunning there as she is here. But since the numbers are not the same, it happens to be that the Martians are well aware of Nature’s deceitful nature. For instance, the speed of light – the universal constant of Nature – is approximately 11.547 ms^-1.  As perhaps can be sensed from what has been just said, Bob and Jack by mere chance happen to use units from the metric system. But that is not the point. The point is, Bob and Jack happen to see with their bare eyes the conspiracy that builds up from there.

The Martians live a long perspicuous life of exactly a period of five seconds. That’s the way things are in Mars. Wait! The statement is not complete yet. They live for five seconds if they do not move, but stay at rest for their entire lifetime. Why is that? Because motion increases their lifetime by several factors. And that is because the decree of Nature is, “Thy shalt find moving clocks run slow.” Now Nature does not care about the engineering abilities of the Martians, or what dials and gears and wheels, in what order and arrangement, they use to construct their clocks. What she knows is ‘time’ that they intend to measure using devices they call clocks. Therefore, the decree is that time must run slow in the first place. The Martians could use a bucket full of water (or whatever liquid they drink) with a tiny pore in it that lets drops of water fall periodically, as a way to measure time, as a clock. Or, they could use their own pulses in their wrists. Or, perhaps atomic clocks. But the thing is, whatever they look at as a clock, must run slow. Therefore, even biologically, their metabolism slows down, they grow slowly, they talk slowly, and everything is slow: even if a cup drops from their hands, it comes to the ground and breaks and pieces fly apart, it is as if in a slow motion movie. But there is a hitch, what does it mean to say that something slows down? Of course, the person that is slow finds everything running at normal pace because his world slows with him. Words like big, small, fast or slow have no meaning in the absolute sense, they are used in comparison of two things. To say that moving clocks run slow is to say that they run slow when compared with the clocks at rest. Therefore, moving aliens live longer (although they themselves perceive it not) according to those that remain motionless in the ground.

Having said that, there comes this BIG question that why Nature must lay forward such a decree. The answer lies in one of the cute natures of Nature that she is a cosmopolitan socialist. To Nature, all are equal, all people, microbes, even dust or the different ways they behave – equal as the tooth of a comb, irrespective of whether they are at rest, or moving uniformly with some speed in some direction. No one is preferred by Nature, in the sense that whether they are at rest, or moving uniformly with respect to someone else. Now there is this another aspect of Nature called electricity and magnetism that is a bit nasty. By the very nature of the laws of electricity and magnetism, there comes into being a phenomenon called light that travels at a certain tremendous amount of speed determined exclusively by the product of two fundamental constants – one from electricity, and the other from magnetism. Because Nature is one and the same for all (that move with respect to one another), one must not be able to differentiate between moving systems by an excuse in the name of the electric and magnetic phenomena observed in them. And therefore, electromagnetic constants ought to be constant. Therefore, the speed of light ought to be a natural constant irrespective of one’s state of motion. And lo! It is.

So in some sense, Nature is now squeezed a bit by the very things her own hands have put forth. So, she plays around with a few numbers to make both ends meet and keep the speed of light a constant, that is to say, make the person at rest and the one in relative motion measure the same speed of light. The first of her strategy is slowing down of time in the moving system with respect to the one who considers himself at rest. What is so clever in that? Nature knows that she need not worry about the thing called light, but about the speed of light that they measure. It does not matter who or what has this speed called the speed of light, but if she can arrange that everyone else (whether at rest or relatively moving) agree upon this that his speed is always the same independent of who measures it, her job is done. Take for instance, a bullet shot inside a ship, and the bullet travels with the speed of light as seen from the ship. Now as seen from the ground, if the ship catches a speed equal to the speed of light, time must appear to freeze inside the ship, for only when it is so, the ground observer claims that the bullet being frozen in air inside the ship, it travels with the same speed as the ship, the speed of light. So you get the rough idea of what really happens – time slows with motion, and at the extreme, freezes with the highest possible motion, the speed of light – all to keep Nature cosmopolitan. That’s not so hard to understand. The main fact is that moving aliens live longer.

Coming back to Bob and Jack, it is worth mentioning that Bob’s parents were so stricken by poverty that they decided they could not afford to have another child, so before he was even born, his parents planned to murder him. These idiots become Wordsworth in spring, and turn into Devil by winter. So they gave him birth in a railway track. You perhaps got their intention. And with time, the train arrived. The train came running with a crazy speed of almost the speed of light. Such technology they had. The train had a speed of 10 ms^-1. Crushed by such a train, there is no chance of survival. The train rushed towards Bob. Death awaited him as he was bound to the ground with indestructible chains.

But destiny was clever. When Bob was born, the train was very far away, 50 meters from him. Coincidentally, Jack the lucky rich was also born exactly the same time that Bob was born, but inside the train. Since the train moved with a tremendous speed as seen from the ground, time slowed inside the train, and Jack’s lifetime got doubled as compared to Bob’s. Take my word for it, the mathematics of Nature’s conspiracy resulted in this factor of 2. The train with the speed it had, took 5 seconds to cover the 50 meters and finally come to Bob. And by that time, Bob had already lived his full lifetime and died of old age. So the train only crushed Bob’s dead, and he was spared from the tragedy.

By the time that Bob’s body was crushed, Jack had lived only half his life, and there were 5 more seconds for him to live. This is the description of all that happened as seen by an angel standing on the ground.

But explanations are quite different as given by an angel who saw the same thing from the train. From the train, everything kept zooming past the ‘train at rest’ – the trees, the buildings, the ground, the railway track, with this ominous speed of 10 ms^-1. It is true that Jack had lived only half his life when Bob came running under the wheels of the train the time when he had just completed his natural lifespan and died of ripeness. This is Nature being same to all. What Nature really changed in this perspective are only a few numbers used to come to this conclusion. The main thing is, since Jack was at rest according to this angel, his lifetime was only 5 seconds now. However, since the planet moved past the train with a speed of 10 ms^-1, time slowed everywhere outside the train because moving clocks run slow, and therefore Bob’s lifetime doubled to 10 seconds.

So how did Nature direct numbers to change in the train for everything to make sense? First of all, simultaneity broke down. Bob and Jack were not born at the same time. Bob was elder than Jack by 7.5 seconds precisely (which was technically 0 seconds to those who found Bob at rest). Nature exclaims, “This, because ye art born at places that are not the same.” Secondly, the length scales changed. Looking back into the past, 7.5 seconds before the birth of Jack, as Bob came into being, he was 100 meters away from the train. So as the ground rolled below the train, it dragged Bob with it and brought him to the wheels at a rate of 10 ms^-1 which took exactly 10 seconds to cover the distance. This was the lifetime of Bob. And only his corpse got crushed. It made sense.

But the strange thing was, as seen from the train, out of these 100 meters of distance, Bob had traveled 75 meters without Jack. Only 2.5 seconds before the death of Bob, Jack was born. So for the common time that they spent their life together, Jack found Bob travel only 25 meters of the total journey. But recall, this common distance of 25 meters was 5o meters to Bob as he saw it from the ground. Therefore, the angels noticed that 50 meters of the stationary railway track had shrunk to just 25 meters when the perspective was changed where it was no longer stationary but moved with a speed of 10 ms^-1. They conclude, in harmony with Nature’s commandment, “Moving rods, ye shall contract.”

Now the happy ending! Jack could not live more than 5 seconds. He had lived 2.5 seconds when Bob died. Therefore he had yet to live half of his life. So everything’s perfect for this one moment.

Thus did the angels tell me, simultaneity breaks, lengths contract and time dilates to make things sensible. These are no fantasy but reality that has been observed in this world experimentally. Any question that can be raised experimentally has a physical reality behind it that cannot be denied as an answer. Nature wins this time and every time, for she is cunning but not malicious. If you do not believe in the numbers that I gave you, ask the angels – they are the Lorentz Transformations.

The Letter of Amnesty to Christians -- From Prophet Muhammad (our salutes to him)

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Although the following is only a historical record, it should be considered authentic since it agrees with most of the basic tenets of the Qur'an.   --   Dr. Shabbir Ahmed.

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Its contents might come as a surprise to many, since in this precious manuscript Muslims are exhorted to protect the Christians living in their midst.

The Greek Orthodox monks living in the St. Catherine's monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai have in their possession many precious documents going back many centuries.

Their library is one of the finest in the world for ancient manuscripts. One of the most precious documents of all is the copy of a letter narrated by Prophet Mohamed (S) to the monks in the year 628.

The letter is as follows addressed to the Christians.

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• This is a message from Mohamed ibn Abdullah, as a covenant to those who adopt Christianity, near and far, we are with them.

• Verily I, the servants, the helpers, and my followers defend them, because Christians are my citizens; and by Allah! I hold out against anything that displeases them.

• No compulsion is to be on them.

• Neither are their judges to be removed from their jobs nor their monks from their monasteries.

• No one is to destroy a house of their religion, to damage it, or to carry anything from it to the Muslims’ houses.

• Should anyone take any of these, he would spoil God’s covenant and disobey His Prophet. Verily, they are my allies and have my secure charter against all that they hate.

• No one is to force them to travel or to oblige them to fight.

• The Muslims are to fight for them. 

• If a female Christian is married to a Muslim, it is not to take place without her approval. She is not to be prevented from visiting her church to pray.

• Their churches are to be respected. They are neither to be prevented from repairing them nor the sacredness of their covenants.

• No one of the nation (Muslims) is to disobey the covenant till the Last Day (end of the world).

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I would like to add this quotation from my great spiritual teacher Dr. Shabbir Ahmed.

It should be quite clear from this that, far from being a threat, Islam is actually the guardian of the Christian presence in the Middle East. These words of Prophet Mohamed (S) should be made known to Muslims and non-Muslims throughout the world.

Thank you for being with us. God's peace and mercy be upon you.

An Experience with Public Violence in India -- A Diary Note

Everyone listen please, I have something to say, something very important to say. Today I encountered public violence for the first time. A drunk young man was beating a poor helpless weak boy an auto-rickshaw driver for a worthless piece of cigarette.

The drunk man first tried to mess with me while I was in the shop, but I was able to scare him off with expressions of superiority and polite objections. Then he went up to the driver boy and found a cigarette in his pocket and demanded it for himself. When he was denied, he started punching the poor fellow. The boy was thin and weak and could not defend himself. He started weeping like a kid and begged his audience for help. Even the sane friend of the drunk asshole preferred not to see and left the place. No one heard his cries. No one saw what pain he was suffering. No one preferred to hear or see. But I could not do the same. With every punch on his face, I felt the pain. Yes, I could feel his fear. I could feel his helplessness. I could feel his prayers. Tears rolled down my face with the sound of his cry for help.

I had decided then. I could bear this no more. One thing I have learnt very well from my childhood is not to keep silent when it is not to be kept silent. My heart was throbbing like mad, sending every last drop of my blood into my limbs, in order to fight against the injustice done in front of my eyes, my instinct pushing me into a fight to the defend the boy. But I was frightened too. I tried to resist myself because I tried to reason like everyone else, how can I protest when I am alone. Once I thought of calling the police. But there was not enough time. Then miraculously, at the very moment, an old song of my childhood I had almost forgotten resonated inside my head, Judi tor daak shune keu naai aashe, tobe ekla cholo re, meaning if no one listens to your call, then go alone with yourself. Immediately, I stopped being any more artificial, and dropped my bag into the ground, and gripped my fists tightly, and screamed, Enough! I had decided, I would rather get beaten instead by the mad beast than to stand there and see my brother being beaten.

That was just for one moment only. The drunk man released the boy in order to turn around and look towards me. I repeated, Enough! The boy took the chance, and escaped for his life. I was very pleased to see that the dog had lost his prey. Everyone dispersed. Even I returned home. Safe. I thanked God for his help.

This was a small incident. Yet I cannot forget it even now. I have many questions. Why were those men blind and deaf like cattle? Why do we resist the voice of our own conscience which is good? What has happened of our instinct to help? Why has man become so artificial? Why does man think only for himself when he knows that it is only through the collective that he lives? Why does man not protest against what is unjust? Why can man not hope the mercy and help from God the Lord of the Universe if he stands to protect His creations? Why is man so afraid of death when he knows that he has no control over life and death, and that if he stands for truth and justice, he would not die, but have eternal life in the hearts of men? Does not man know that it is only the body that dies, but not our soul, our thoughts, our ideals? What is the life of man compared to the gigantic expanse of time that the great old universe has lived? Why does then man think so much of himself?

My teacher told me once when I was a boy,

Protest against injustice. For, he who does not protest against injustice is doing injustice himself, and the unjust are the meanest of all creations. If you cannot protest by force, protest by your voice. If you have an excuse for that too, protest by hating the deed of injustice in your own heart. But do protest.

I want EVERYONE who has read to the end of this post to answer my questions. If you are human enough to breathe air and eat bread, then do comment and answer me what you're gonna do in such a situation. What is man if not a helper?