Autobiographical Essay:
My Experiments With Astronomy*
How it started...
It was messy all around. I was exited but exhausted. I decided to quit and get lost into the cozy comforts of the days achievements, lying flat on my back and recollecting the days events. The best place where I could do this was on the Terrace. Simply because our family had shifted to this new bungalow, a reason enough for excitement and exhaustion. Three things forced me on to the terrace: 1. The small newly built bungalow had no room to lie down that evening; 2. There was no electricity to organize the sundry late in the evening, and 3. I loved the first time experience of being on our terrace, our own terrace.
Well, there was no electricity for the next one and a half year. Our eagerly occupied new house was no where near an electric pole! Even my mother, eager to relax, joined me that evening. Unsolicited she looked up and un-enquired she identified, "look there! Saptarshi (Ursa Major constellation)." If only I knew where and what Saptarshi is! But because of the nature of Saptarshi's form and from my mother's tracing finger, I had no difficulty in identifying the Plough or the Question Mark or the Spoon or the Wheel-barrow.
Evening after evening, then, one would find a `walking ghost' on the empty terrace. It would be dry and blowing cold or moist and chilly, some climate that would force you under your blanket inside a warm room. It was the second week of November in Vadodara (in 1977). Unaware of the change taking place in me, occasionally my mother would call-high from down-stairs, "Its freezing out on the top. How may times do you have to count the `same' stars!"
But Hi! Who was counting the stars anymore? The patterns, the twinkling, the colors, the brightness of the stars; at times they would tumble and trail or at times they would cross from left to right or across the dome of the Nightsky. Then there was a cloud that refused to dissolve. It would be as bright as flowing milk at times and otherwise dubious like any cloud itself. All these absorbed the teenaged, pregnant mind teeming with ideas as to what would lie beyond the visible.
When you know the faces and you are told the names of each one of them, the excitement knows no bounds. I got hold of a book, from money saved by not eating Samosas (spicy stuffed triangle) in the school. This was an Astronomy book with Saptarshi, et al all correctly mapped with one another. I learnt that some `stars' cannot figure in the map as they keep on wandering, so they were not stars but planets. The passion grew more, the fascination snowballed and slowly the binoculars and telescopes got the far things near.
The story goes on!
Well the story goes on. I could not contain my excitement and so first involved my family members, then friends and all those who were ready to believe me and brave the freezing winter nights! Each night I had my pre-planned date with the stars in the Nightsky. Each morning a bunch of discoveries on their motion, orientation and rising and setting idiosyncrasies, brightness or change of place for the planets almost became like an exciting game to follow nights in and nights out.
This was scratching the surface alone. What is beyond? Light travels at the fastest known speed. My imagination dashed to the observable horizon and tried to skip beyond, to know what more would lie out there. Naturally all theories must find a test, up there. Galaxies hurtle away from each other like spots on an expanding balloon. Yet we can sleep and drink without a jolt. Between the period that we sleep, we complete several circles and twists and rosettes, stretching to several light-years......in the emptiness of Space. Still we have to worry for the next day, to commute to and from work!
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The more you think, the more you get lost. Bewildering it is to think, why you want to know, always, what's beyond there? Are the stars and galaxies aware that some fleshy beings are consciously thinking about them? What can be our purpose in the scheme of creation? Do thoughts have any material or electromagnetic form? Or like points, thoughts are dimension-less entities unto themselves? They exist all by themselves or are often spurred by the immediate surroundings or by abstract distances and objects contained in there.
So my Cosmic Odyssey** begins. Like a rubic's cube capable of simultaneous motion in all the three axises, Our Universe keeps turning in an ever complicated pattern that may never be accurately plotted on a two-dimensional paper!
So What?
Thus I cannot observe the Universe sufficiently accurately, not at least with the present Knowledge about it. Hence let me picturize the Universe this way: Imagine only Energy existed. By itself Energy cannot exist. So it manifest itself in two forms, namely Matter and Radiation. Now neither can hang around. So we define that the two exists in Space or X-Y-Z dimensions.
E=MC^2
This equation further states that Matter and Radiation are in dynamic equilibrium. This interaction from any one point to any other point, howsoever fast, cannot be instantaneous each and every time or even once. So we enroll a parameter called Time. Of all the things, only Energy has to exist, indeed! Or else how can I word-process my Thoughts?
Something else: Nature is known to satisfy Symmetry. It probably makes the Job of Creation easier. Photons define the speed-limit of the understood Universe of Today. At the Event Horizon of a Black-hole one can hypothesize to attend this speed. But Time stops flowing here. It means you are already metamorphosised into Photons and no further interaction takes place? Once into the Event Horizon, one cannot miss the Singularity of the Black-hole. So does this Singularity help you (your Photons now) in accelerating beyond the speed of, err Photons? If yes, Time would flow backwards, like a clock, turning hands back with a missing or extra gear-wheel.
Further, the speed of Photons or Photons acts like a Mirror with many uncommon properties. Being before any mirror satisfies a new form of symmetry. Thus I can now expect my Image to be formed by this Mirror. With me the Earth, the Sun and Moon and the Milky Way and yourself included are all there in that Image. Wait! Don't rush to pick up the phone and attempt to dial your "Anti". You may end up talking to yourself, with or without an echo!
Well it does not happen that way. Time flows backward for your Anti-being. So your past becomes his or her future and his or her past will become your future. Similarly, your future is his or her past and his or her future is your past!
Confusing I believe? May be! I intend to find this out! Let me retire for my date with....
Thoughts to Words by:
Makarand Bidwai
President
Cosmic Academy
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*Souvenir, the Second India Amateur Astronomer's Meet, Nagpur, Maharastra, India, January 1992.
** This is a promotional news-letter of the Cosmic Academy.
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