The Triumph of Reason

We all go about our daily lives indifferent to the marvel that is life. Studies suggest that based on the initial and boundary conditions of our universe, the odds of intelligent life arising on planet Earth are lower than that of an enormous pile of waste in a junk yard arranging itself to assemble into a Boeing 747! Every once in a while though, some brilliant minds come along and change the way we look at the universe, forever.

Although science was progressing by leaps and bounds under the light of new theories (Quantum Mechanics) and discoveries (elementary particles) in the early part of the 20^th century, we had somehow grown too comfortable with- and hence ignorant of- the most pervasive of all natural forces- gravity. Perhaps it was because of the larger than life image of Isaac Newton, scientific community at large was of the opinion that gravity was understood in its entirety. Proposing that the force which makes an apple fall and the force which keeps planets in motion around the sun are essentially the same was unarguably his life’s work and one of the most elegant ideas of all time.

Albert Einstein was a little known clerk working in a Swiss patent office. Surfing through all the path breaking discoveries during his day job, he realized that although we could measure this force with great accuracy, it was quite embarrassing that we had no idea as to HOW it actually works. How is it that the sun grabs hold of the earth across vast empty space, eternally confining it in a periodic motion around itself?

In 1905, after publishing his work on Brownian motion, photoelectric effect and what we now recognize as the Special Theory of Relativity, Einstein decided to go after this missing piece of the puzzle, something which had apparently eluded even the father of gravity himself. It took him 10 years to perfect the math that would go into the most beautiful idea of all time- the theory of General Relativity.

Einstein blew everyone away by suggesting that gravity isn’t really a force and that time was the 4^th dimension of our universe. Put together with the known 3, it stitches the entire universe together in a 4 dimensional spacetime continuum. Everything exists and happens in the spacetime continuum. Anything that has mass curves spacetime causing objects in its vicinity to move in a predictable manner. Instead of being a property of a body, gravity is in fact a property of the universe itself. Any mass curves spacetime and curved spacetime tells mass how to move!

A 2D representation of spacetime continuum- the relativistic view of gravity.

From time travel to worm holes, this simple idea has had ground breaking implications. It completely changed our understanding of time and the universe at large. Since 1915/16, it has been verified by countless experiments and observations with far greater precision than that produced by Newton’s theory of gravity. One such implication was the existence of gravitational waves.

Much like electromagnetic waves which could transmit radiation (the only other force understood at that time), Einstein posited the existence of gravitational waves. He proposed that when two heavy objects (like super massive black holes or stars) interact, gravitational waves would be generated. These waves, not much unlike ripples in a pond, would travel unobstructed throughout spacetime at the speed of light. However, unlike visible part of the EM spectrum, they would not just be invisible but also too weak to be detected. This was until now.

On 11^th February 2016, a team of scientists working at LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Waves Observatory) in USA confirmed the existence of these waves nearly 100 years after Albert Einstein had first theorized about their existence. They did this by stationing two laser beam apparatuses 3000 miles apart. These 8 km long ‘L’ shaped apparatuses fired laser beams and recorded an interference pattern at the moment of impact. Under the influence of gravitational waves coming from a distant binary star system (two super massive stars slowly collapsing into each other and losing energy by the emission of gravitational waves), these 2 observatories recorded a characteristic shift in their patterns (much like ripples on water cause a cork to bob up and down, only here the disturbance is in fractions of atomic diameter) which was matched at the two laboratories and confirmed.

A schematic representation of the LIGO observatory.

LIGO scientists estimated that the black holes for this event were about 29 and 36 times the mass of the sun, and the event took place 1.3 billion years ago. About 3 times the mass of the sun was converted into gravitational waves in a fraction of a second—with a peak power output about 50 times that of the whole visible universe. The detector in Louisiana had recorded the event 7 milliseconds before the one in Washington. Scientists are now advancing on to Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA)- a space based gravitational wave detector to repeat the experiment far away from earthly disturbances.

There are infinite human endeavours but none other quite captures my imagination as the pursuit of truth, the undying efforts of a lone race trying to make sense of a world no less magical than any of our imaginations. It is an endless quest that often breaches the realms of science, venturing into the philosophical, fiddling with the theological and at times- evoking the metaphysical. Its enormous mysteries give purpose to our existence, for even in my thoughts; I dread the day we all come to know all that is worth knowing.

It is the purest and sincerest curiosity, unadulterated by arrogance or authority, for everyone at some time in our lives would have found ourselves gazing at the horizon, questioning how it all came to be. In case you haven’t, take an evening out of your hurried lives, lay back on your arm chair, look up at the night sky and wonder how, wonder why. If you are calm and it is quiet enough, you will be humbled by the sheer vastness of it. The insignificance of your troubles and worries, the utter foolishness of war and violence, everyone you've ever loved, everyone who has ever lived, everything that we have done to this world- all meager inconsequential happenings on a pale blue dot going around a little known star lying in a trivial corner of one among billions of galaxies...

We are all miracles in a wonderland walking through our lives searching for magic.