Einstein’s universe

While the world revels in the odyssey of discovery, Pakistan is busy unravelling the mystery of Khula

“Gravity is working against me…

And gravity wants to bring me down….”

“Gravity”, the hit bluesy song by the American singer, John Mayer, is about loving yourself and fighting against the forces bent on pulling you down. Gravity here metaphorically refers to opposition and adversity. The song was released as part of the album, Continuum, and articulates ambition, apprehension and resolve in a beautifully lilting manner. Gravity in nature does pull us down; it keeps us planted on the ground and makes the world go round. It is the most mysterious of the four fundamental forces of nature, yet little is understood of how it actually works. Permeating the entire weave of the space-time fabric, every nook and cranny of this universe, gravity engineers a breathtaking balance, a respectful distance between giant stars, black holes and spinning galaxies. It is the divine leash, restraining them all from smashing into each other. Newton had the epiphany when struck on his head by the falling apple. Some say Galileo dropped balls from a tower to unravel gravity. It was, however, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity that truly unveiled gravity, not as a force but as a consequence of the curvature of space-time.

That space-time is curved is a mind-bending idea in itself. Space-time is actually space and time combined into an interwoven continuum. Einstein’s Relativity theory postulates that the presence of a massive object curves the space-time. Think of space as a stretched rubber sheet and imagine a heavy metal ball placed in middle of that sheet. The weight of the ball causes the sheet to dip. The heavier the object, the deeper the resulting gravitational well. Anything placed on the sheet now will gravitate towards the ball moving in a curved path. The rubber sheet analogy is a fairly good depiction of curved space-time. Even light gets bent by this curvature, something predicted by Einstein long before it was experimentally verified. The recent discovery of gravitational waves has been hailed as the greatest find of the century. Relativity theory had already predicted their existence a hundred years ago. These waves are actually ripples in space-time caused by massive events like exploding stars, collapsing black holes and the Big Bang. The discovery will allow us a peek into the past and see how the universe was born. This seems all the more fascinating when we realise that Einstein conceived Relativity in the greatest of thought experiments, the most sublime of leaps of human imagination.

Earth is like a tiny speck in the grand tapestry we call the Universe. But the minnows inhabiting this universe have their eyes set on the heavens. Evolving, blossoming continuously, the last 200 years of progress arguably outweigh that of the entire human existence. In 1964, Kardashev, a Soviet Astronomer, created a fascinating, hypothetical scale to measure a civilisation’s level of technological advancement based on the amount of energy it can harness. The Kardashev Scale lists six levels of advancement. Type-0 civilisation will completely harness the energy of its home planet. We humans are not even Type-0. We may become Type-II in about 100 years to control the weather, earthquakes and even volcanic eruptions through the Dyson Sphere, a mega structure completely encompassing the entire planet to capture all of its power output and all the sunlight falling on it. Type-III will be capable of intergalactic travel, controlling the energy of an entire galaxy. Type-IV will use the entire universe as a wellspring of energy. It will travel throughout the universe, manipulate space-time and will be virtually immortal. Type-V would control parallel universes, being able to manipulate the very structure of reality. Type-VI will be able to create and destroy universes. Humans have a really long way to go.

We are living in the Einstein’s universe. He saw a century ago what we are discovering now with elaborate experiments and machines. Humanity continues to marvel at his genius, his uncanny grasp of the abstract reality and the mathematical universe. While the world dances on, revelling in the odyssey of discovery, Pakistan is busy unravelling the mystery of Khula (the right of women to seek divorce). While the world nails the criminal using DNA evidence, we shun irrefutable science as irreligious. While the world embraces gender diversity in every sphere, we relegate the women to the home, rendering half the population sterile. While the world taps into the power of doubt to uncover and unlearn, we remain inert, captives of our convictions. And this is a great disservice to Einstein’s universe.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 1^st, 2016.

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