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Articles: My Thoughts | In quest of Infinity-06
- Prof. venkata ramanamurty mallajosyula
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So much for the new excitement; let me now go back to the main trend of my earlier instalments. You will recall that thus far we have had 1) a look at what makes up the Universe, 2) the birth and death of different types of stars and the types of corpses they lead to. There are many more details I could give about the Universe and its makeup but right now, that would take us too far off our main course.
So, at this point I would like to pause and pose the question that many have asked themselves before, which is: “Where did it all begin and what was the baby Universe like? How did it grow thereafter to its present vast size?” Since the Universe is a physical entity, it is obvious that a large part of the answer to the question just posed would have to come from Physics. So let us take a small detour and delve a bit into Physics.
Physics to Understand Physical Universe
Right from the time he appeared on Earth, man has been busy gathering bits and pieces of information about the world around him and putting it all together to make some sense. This has been a long and arduous process, and not always easy. Take for example, the famous discovery of Archimedes. Today even a school kid knows what this principle is. Compared to the highly complicated things relating to the Universe that we now know about, Archimedes Principle certainly might not appear to be any big deal.
But it certainly was, at least at the time it was discovered. Same is the case with Newton’s famous three laws of mechanics which once again are very familiar to high school kids. That does not mean that Newton’s discovery is trivial; on the contrary, Chandra rates Newton even higher compared to Einstein, in terms of achievement! Which is saying something!
So what is the point I am really trying to make? Simply this; over the last few centuries, we have been gradually getting a better and clearer picture of the structure of matter; by structure, I mean, how matter is built up. During Newton’s time, the generally accepted view was that matter is continuous and homogenous, that is to say it is not made up of discrete building blocks. The theories of physics developed at that time reflect this view.
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