If one falls into a black hole, what would one encounter? Well, from our recollection of the movie Interstellar—Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) ended up in a tesseract, a 4-dimensional object, via which he made it back to his own 3-D world—we would hope to plod out through a higher dimension, as if making a choice back into a familiar world. But there’s a catch—a lot of!
Tesseract is a 4-dimensional object (mathematical, so far! Helping us understand deep details in modern physics). The higher-dimension—via which Cooper connected to another Cooper (Murph, his daughter)—implies stacking of a zillion spacetime points on top of each other. Remember the bookshelf behind which Cooper stood? But accessing higher dimension also means that you be part of the higher-dimension; you be manifest as higher dimension.
The first catch. There would be as many Coopers, both Coopers (father and daughter), as many as the innumerable book-shelfs, the books in them, and the watch that is relaying the message to the daughter. Anything as a 3-dimensional embodiment would be presented as all spacetime points up until the current one. All past spacetime points stacked up until then; that’s how Cooper accessed the past. In that higher-dimension he had all information timeline, that’s every “time” point—more accurately as Einstein had shown “spacetime” point—arranged discretely, from his past to his current. That many “Coopers,” though accurately put, would have given a flustered set-up, demanding more questions, as well as the associated theoretical premise. All valid, that’s how science progresses. More answers we find, more questions become apparent. The movie, although fictional, relays various significant current theoretical understanding of how spacetime manifests and flows, and all the information inherently brings up new uncharted territory of questions.
All valid, that’s how science progresses. More answers we find, more questions become apparent.
We have come unimaginably far in scientific understanding of how the universe works, and operates. But never in the past had we as many conundrums rearing their heads as we have today. From black holes, dilemmas of event horizon, dark matter, dark energy to perpetually expanding universe, its origins and parallel forms, to the spacetime unifying principles, the picture that unifies gravity and quantum depiction, and what current theoretical understanding relay, especially the mathematical ones, like string theory and loop quantum gravity. All our findings to date must fall into a single unitary phenomenon. Our quest is how? Answers to our inquiries come with a package of additional set of questions, and off we march in all directions. Healthy feat!
We have come unimaginably far in scientific understanding of how the universe works, and operates. But never in the past we had as many conundrums rearing their heads as we have today.
Following a short stint at the Antibody Society, to scientific outreach their mission and goals, I landed myself in a specialized somewhat recently founded company Quantum-Si (Q-Si). My current interest in scientific communication and outreach is part of the reason how I got here. As Q-Si prepares to launch its first-of-a-kind protein sequencing instrument, a brief overview here would help us see how we navigate the current scientific quests and find answers to inquiries that would aid research and development. Q-Si technology stems from a multifaceted scientific endeavor that involves strategic developments of pixelated semi-conductor chip, which allows the parallel processing (thus the given name “Quantum;” although not a 100 % sure that’s where the name is coming from) of miniaturized wells to read individual peptides at an amino acid level resolution. Amino acid is a molecular building block of protein, and there are 20 different kinds of them. The technology combines customizations of chip, electrical circuitry, waveguide—as in fiber optics—laser pulsation, and fluorescent signals to read biophysical interaction. Multifaceted, because the single experiment subsumes fine fields of physics, engineering, biophysics, and if you want to see too far, mathematics, to follow a biological undertaking, or knowing something that could be of clinical relevance.
Multifaceted, because the single experiment subsumes fine fields of physics, engineering, biophysics, and if you want to see too far, mathematics, to follow a biological undertaking
Only a few decades earlier it wouldn’t have been possible to carry out something as complex that agglomerates and fine tunes discrete branches in science. But in the scientific landscape we have advanced to a level where the boundaries between specialized scientific fields are hazy. Soon after joining Q-Si, I have begun to realize how important it’s to have current awareness of all basic fields in order to not just carry out a given task, but also to appreciate the beauty that can be realized only when we see the integrated picture; not just a single aspect of it. To that end, I had reached out to a Physics magazine on my desire to shape a short note titled Teach Physics to Life Science Students. Will keep you posted on how that goes. But the point is in the current science landscape it’s imperative that we have a handle of basic understanding of all core areas in order to reach further, or even to appreciate the developments.
The detection of gravitational waves, the existence of which Einstein had predicted in 1916, in 2015 was the landmark of ultra-precision measurement in scientific experimentation. The measurement entailed detecting a sub-atomic level length change that occurred due to the collision of two black holes 1.3 billion light years away, meaning time it took for light to reach us to tell that happenstance. An arduous scientific feat was achieved. Incredible!
The measurement entailed detecting a sub-atomic level length change that occurred due to the collision of two black holes 1.3 billion light years away
Every scientific branch geometrically expands, collide and bump into each other, and eventually, if we continue to progress, inevitably unite into a solitary landscape or phenomenon.
See you soon again,
Neeti.