Einstein wins again! Wednesday, Oct 17 2007

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Einstein wins again!

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The process of scientific findings Sunday, Jul 22 2007

Science

Science is an art of searching for the truth.

A truth that could be used for a better understanding of the functioning of this universe, documented in the form of scientific knowledge.

A truth that could be used to improve the quality of life on this planet, implemented in the form of technology.

The Process

So how does this art proceed?

Well, a scientist has two paths for a scientific nirvana.

The first path is that of theoretical science where the scientist thinks, thinks and thinks. More like a spiritual master who searches within himself for the truth. Then neurons and dendrites inside the scientist’s brain exchange millions of signals with a hope of finding an answer.

The second is that of experimental science where the scientist tests, tests and tests. The actual search takes place in the physical world, where all possible sensible combinations are tried out.

Now, to be honest, the above two paths are pretty idealistic. A Scientific fact finding process cannot be purely theoretical or purely experimental. It has to be a combination of the both.

So the actual two paths followed are as below.

The first path is the one which relies on the theoretical science, but at the same time makes use of available experimental evidence. All theoretical physics comes under this category.

The second path is the one which relies on the experimental science, but at the same time make use of available theoretical science. All experimental physics comes under this category.

It is very difficult to succeed in the first path. But if you succeed, it is almost sure that your scientific theory is unquestionable. The key to the success in the first path is how well you think, being out of any scientific prejudice.

Scientific Prejudice

What is scientific prejudice? Believing in a scientific fact without verifying its validity is what I call a scientific prejudice. People believed that if one second passes on earth and during that one second if we look at a neutron star, then the amount of time passed on that neutron star is also one second! Einstein came and proved otherwise! He proved that mass slows down time! To prove that he had to first come out of the prejudice of one second here is one second everywhere else in this universe!

The Cause of Scientific Prejudice

There is an interesting concept in the ancient Indian vedic culture called Shruthi and Smrithi. Shruthi is said to be the true knowledge, while Smrithi is what people CURRENTLY THINK to be the true knowledge! Vedas say that, when people who know Smrithi (or who know shruthi only partially) start asking more and more questions and try to find answers for the same, they will finally find the Shruthi !

Similarly, the science that we know today is what WE THINK is true today. In the west 500 years back people thought Earth was the center of the universe. That was the definition given by the then science. Aristotle thought new organisms were created out of nowhere! Some other scientist thought Sun to be a burning ball of fire and calculated that Sun would burn all its fuel and extinguish in another 5000 years! Somebody else said that if we travel in a vehicle faster than sound then we will die due to breathing problems. Other people then believed that Earth does not move!

That was science in those days. Today it is not. The science of today (Smruthi) is much more closer to the actual science (Shruthi) than it was 500 years back!

Another 100 years later some of today’s science might be proved wrong!

The Scientific fact finding path

The key to overcome scientific prejudice is to understand whether a fact that we know is scientific shruthi or smrithi ! It is easier said than done!

My suggestion for the easiest way to prove a smrithi, that is, to prove that a scientific theory is THE ULTIMATE TRUTH is to try to disprove it in every possible way. A true scientific theory will be proved right in all the efforts that are trying to disprove it. And if we find even one proof in the effort that disproves the theory, then, well, the theory then has to be thrown in the huge dustbin of abandoned theories.

More Experiments or More Theory?

Coming back to the two paths for a scientific nirvana,

Theoretical path is suitable if performing experiments is not possible. For instance one cannot do an experiment about how an actual blackhole forms, so we need to theorize the formation of a blackhole and at the most do a computer simulation of it..

Experimental path is suitable if very little data is available about the issue in question. For instance, about the evolution of life. A lot of scrambled data is available. The key is to try to find as many fossils as possible and then try to solve the jig saw puzzle as to who came first? an amoeba or an euglena or a virus? or if something new, if at all we happen to find it later some day..

So in theoretical science we first come out with a theory and then test it in the universal lab.. In an experimental science we first do experiments and then try to interpret the results to build a theory..

As I said earlier, theoretical science is very difficult as one needs to do a lot of thought experiments and has to be free of all scientific prejudices or the so called common sense to find out the truth that exists beyond our current perception.

The only two such great people I know in modern history, whose most theoretical findings have been undisputed till to date are, Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking

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The Evolution of God Wednesday, Jul 11 2007

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Quotes about India Thursday, May 31 2007

“We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.”- Albert Einstein

“India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend and the great grand mother of tradition.” – American Writer and Humorist Mark Twain

“If there is one place on the face of earth where all dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India.” – French scholar Romain Rolland

“India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across her border.” – Hu Shih (Former Chinese ambassador to USA, referring to the entry of Buddhism into China. Buddhism was born in ancient India).

So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone, either by man or nature, to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun visits on his rounds. Nothing seems to have been forgotten, nothing overlooked.”- Mark Twain

“In India I found a race of mortals living upon the Earth. but not adhering to it. Inhabiting cities, but not being fixed to them, possessing everything but possessed by nothing.”- Apollonius Tyanaeus, Greek Thinker and Traveller 1st Century AD

“Bear in mind that the commerce of India is the commerce of the world and … he who can exclusively command it is the dictator of Europe.”- Peter the Great of Russia

“Many of the advances in the sciences that we consider today to have been made in Europe were in fact made in India centuries ago.” – Grant Duff, British Historian

“India was the motherland of our race and Sanskrit the mother of Europe’s languages. India was the mother of our philosophy, of much of our mathematics, of the ideals embodied in Christianity… of self-government and democracy. In many ways, Mother India is the mother of us all” – Will Durant, American Historian

“If I am asked which nation had been advanced in the ancient world in respect of education and culture then I would say it was – India” – Max Muller, German Indologist

“In religion, India is the only millionaire …. The One land that all men desire to see and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for all the shows of all the rest of the globe combined” – Mark Twain

“Indian cities are prosperous and stretch far and wide. There are many guest houses for travellers. There are hospitals providing free medical service for the poor. The viharas and temples are majestic. People are free to choose their occupations. There are no restrictions on the movement of the people. Government officials and soldiers are paid their salaries regularly. People are not addicted to drinks. They shun violence. The administration provided by the Gupta rulers is fair and just” – Chinese traveller Fa-Hien during the reign of Chandragupta II

“Indians have in general superior endowments in reading, writing and arithmetic than the common people of any nation in Europe.” – Warren Hastings

“It is very important to note that some 2,500 years ago at the least Pythagoras went from Samos to the Ganges to learn geometry…But he would certainly not have undertaken such a strange journey had the reputation of the Brahmins’ science not been long established in Europe…” -Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire, French Philosopher/Writer

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Demystifying Einstein’s Field Equations Friday, May 18 2007

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Scientific Verification of Vedic Knowledge in Hinduism Monday, Apr 30 2007

The british who ruled India wanted Indians to feel that everything west, english and european to be superior, and anything that had to do with Indian culture and history as inferior, unscientific and stupid.

Macauley introduced the english education system in India which enforced these thoughts about western superiority and Indian inferiority in the minds of the Indian children.

Max muller propagated the myth of Aryan invasion theory in an aim to divide north and south India on the lines of Aryan – Dravidian basis saying Aryans invaded India from europe at around 1500 BC and pushed down the local draividians down south. Modern archaeology says nothing is more stupid, racist and biased than this nonsensical theory whose sole aim was a politically motivated intention. Max muller also wrote off vedas as ‘waste stuff’ only to be commented later by world’s reknown indologists as ‘this only shows the nursery school knowledge muller had about sanskrit’

The archelogical excavations of Harappa, Mohen Jo Daro, the discovery of the city of Dwaraka in the seas of Gujarat, the satellite imagery and geological evidences about tectonic plate shifting of the sub continent supporting the existence of Saraswati river mentioned in the vedas, the Kausambi and Hastinapur flooding excavations, all have proved beyond doubt that there has been no invasion from outside in 1500 BC by aryans.

Instead aryans were an indegenious race inherent to India for the very simple fact that all above mentioned evidences date back existence of aryans in India to even before 3500 BC AND not a single evidence of aryan existence or literature has been found outside the Indian subcontinent AND all locations, rivers, cities, kingdoms etc mentioned in the vedic scriptures have been mapped inside India – the India mentioned in vedas include current India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Burma.

So what’s more about the vedas?

Vedas are the greatest scientific text ever written.

Vedic mathematics is the best form of mathematics taught all over the world today to speed up calculations.
Einstein said, if not for Indians who invented ZERO and place value system, the science and technological achievements of the world would have been ZERO!
Infact, the other day when a friend commented on my wearing a tommy hilfiger jacket, saying the jacket’s creator had said that ‘It was meant only for the whites’, my reply was ‘Well, then what if I say that the Zero invented by ancient Indians was meant only to be used by Indians?’ Forget other implications of this, I dont think anybody in the west today can even use computers, which are binary in nature – based on Zero and One.

Sanskrit is the only language spoken by humans which can be easily used as a computer programming language.

Ayurveda is the world’s oldest medicinal system and has absolutely no side effects on the body, unlike western medicines AND unlike the western medicines like sedatives, pain killers and what not, Ayurveda doesn’t hide the pain or symptoms, it doesnt treat the outcome of an illness, but instead hits right at the source of the illness. It prepares your body to be strong enough to counter health issues than to make it dependendant for the rest of its life on external medicines.

Yoga are the exercises which unlike the western gyms, are not aimed at making only your biceps and other external organs strong, but instead concentrate on building a body inside out along with maintaining a mental fitness too. Sweating out is not physical fitness buddies, people in rural India sweat n number of times more than those who work out in the gyms, for gyms you need to have extra time for that, whereas in rural India sweating is a result of people’s normal day today activities !!

Bhagavadgeetha is the greatest ever work on human psychology. World’s greatest scientists, philosophers, writers, politicians, have been daily readers of this great work to keep them mentally fit and to face the world’s challenges.

Oppenheimer, father of modern atomic bomb suspected that Mahabharatha war was a nuclear war based on the accurate descriptions of nuclear weapons and its effects found in Bhagavadgeeta. I think that the other reason Mahabharatha war has to be considered a nuclear war is that, it is said in Mahabharatha that in a time span of less than a month 14 billion people were killed!! For those who are not aware how big a number this is, the current world population is just above 6 billion! I cant think of anything other than nuclear weapons that could kill so many people in so little time.

Below is a list of must-watch documentaries on the ‘Scientific Verification of Vedic Knowledge in Hinduism’

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Modern Science and Ancient India Sunday, Apr 15 2007

“We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.” – Albert Einstein

“The ingenious method of expressing every possible number using a set of ten symbols (each symbol having a place value and an absolute value) emerged in India. The idea seems so simple nowadays that its significance and profound importance is no longer appreciated. Its simplicity lies in the way it facilitated calculation and placed arithmetic foremost amongst useful inventions. The importance of this invention is more readily appreciated when one considers that it was beyond the two greatest men of antiquity, Archimedes and Apollonius.” – Laplace

Every person aware of modern science if also well aware that mathematics is the soul of modern science. Computers, Medical equipments, missiles, reactors, automobiles, electronic equipments, economics, finance, banks every where we need mathematics.

Romans used to represent every number using its own unique symbol or a unscientific combination of symbols. This was where west started its mathematics only to be discarded later due to its impractical nature to do bigger calculations.

I,V,X were used to represent numbers till 49 and when they run out of symbols then L was used to represent 50, similarly C for hundred, D for 500, M for thousand.. etc and etc

Any person who has worked using this roman number system knows very well that doing even a simple multiplication is a monumental task in this system. Higher mathematics like calculus, algebra, trigonometry are simply impossible here. I dont think a person has ever seen a simple linear equation in roman system!!!!

If the world had depended on western roman roots for modern science we would have been still in stone ages of science where the greatest achievement would have been counting the number of visible stars in the night sky !!!!!

Ancient Indians took a different approach and this was more than 3000-4000 years before romans invented roman numbers!!! While ancient Indians were working advanced mathematics (which finds its first reference in the ancient Vedas and is called as Vedic mathematics, this is part of the Atharva Veda which is all about engineering) the western world was still in stone age!! 

The roots of modern mathematics is based on the concept of place value system, which we take for granted, but accoding to me is the most ingenious invention in mathematics. This is what Indians invented to have a complete scientific system of working with numbers. (In my series Alien Twist to God I have argued that this mathematics which has its roots in the vedas and the sanskrit language in which vedas are written in, both are of an alien origin, which is why sanskrit is the only human language capable of becoming a computer programming language)

In the place value system a limited set of symbols is taken and used to represent any and every possible number upto infinity down to minus infinity!!!

The number of symbols we select indicates the base of the system. We normally use base 10 which has 9 symbols aka 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9

Once we have the set of symbols the value of a symbol depends on the position of the symbol in the number. First position has a unit value, second position has a base value, third position has a base X base value, then base X base X base value and so on,..

So in base 10, first position has a value of 1 times the value of symbol, second position has a value of 10 times the value of symbol, third position has a value of 100 times the value of the symbol.. and so on….

So when we say 42 it represents a number whose value is 4 times 10 + 2 times 1 !!
We who are used to this system find it so simple!! The simplicity of this invention is what makes it so great bcos remember this is the root of whole modern mathematics and if this itself is complicated then we would be back to square one as romans!!!

Once the place value system was invented Indian mathematicians had another difficulty. Suppose there was a place in the number which had no value at all!!!!

Consider the case of 100… here 1 should be used in third place which is base X base .. but then the two places down have no value!!!! This is why Indians invented ZERO!!!! In sanskrit Zero is called Shoonya, which means nothing.. presence of zero at a place means that place has no value in the number and should be ignored!!!

This in itself explains the great power of zero and its role in place value systems which makes it a key element of modern mathematics. Thats why once somebody said, I think it was Bernard Shaw, ‘The greatest contribution of Indians to the world is Nothing’

Ancient Indians bcos of their strong mathematical basis becames champions in astronomy and related calculations. More than a thousand years before Giordano was burnt alive in the west by the church for claiming Sun is the center of the solar system, More than a thousand years before Galileo had to apologize for proposing the motion of the earth, Aryabhata in India had written great works on helio centric systems, and more than 3000-4000 years before aryabhata vedas had all this in their roots..

Then in modern times Buddhist missionaries from India spread this knowledge of mathematics and easy counting to the eastern world of China, Thailand, Japan etc …

Arab merchants who came to India to trade spices to the west, saw this simple way of doing counting more easier than roman system and adopted the same and also spread it to the west, this is the reason them modern base 10 system symbols are called ‘Hindu Arabic Numerals’ meaning borrowed from the land of hindus and spread to the rest of the west by Arabs. After learning this  system of mathematics, arab mathematician wrote the book ‘Al Jabr’ which gave way to modern algebra.

Still there are gaps in this whole system. Arab merchants learnt only the basic counting required to do business and spread it to the western world. And from there west developed its own mathematics based on these Indian roots where Newton’s Calculus etc came into picture…

Unfortunately, west again had started looking at maths with a roman mindset for higher level of generalization and students today are taught partial differential equations which require pages together to solve. Indian approach of Vedic mathematics is purely mental mathematics and generally doesnt require pen and paper to solve problems. The approach is also completely different in Indian mathematics, there are more specific formulae than generic, while this means more to learn, but once a child is used to it, problems will be more easy to solve. For instance in multiplication using vedic mathematics, the formula to multiply a two numbers which end with 5 is different from an approach to solve two numbers which have even numbers in their units place!! MANY WESTERN SCHOOLS TODAY TEACH VEDIC MATHEMATICS IN THE NAME OF MENTAL MATHEMATICS WITHOUT GIVING THE ANCIENT INDIANS AND THE VEDAS THE DUE CREDIT THEY DESERVE, which I feel is a total hypocrisy on the teachers part.

However, every thing including modern calculus, pythagoras theorems etc were already developed and documented in ancient Indians mathematics with its roots in vedic mathematics and the Indian approach to calculus etc is quite different from that of western approach. Bhaskaracharya wrote Leelavati (a book named after his daughter) more than 1000 years before newton and has detailed explanations for problems of differential calculus and the theory of calculus itself !!!

The historian Florian Cajori, one of the most celebrated historians of mathematics in the early 20th century, said “Diophantus, the father of Greek algebra, got the first algebraic knowledge from India.”

Even Pythagoras was familiar with the ancient Indian text of Upanishads. It is also said that he had visited India from where he picked up the hypotenuse theorem and spread it in the west, which today is given his name inspite of the fact that he never gave a proof of this theorem!!! Pythagorean theorem finds its first reference in the sulva sutras of Vedic mathematics which is more than 4000 years before pythagoras! And if pythagoras was familiar with Upanishads, there is no doubt that he would have also studied the related Vedas and Sulva Sutras..

Herodotus (father of Greek history) wrote that the Indians were the greatest nation of the age. Megasthenes – who travelled extensively through India in the 4th C. B.C also left extensive accounts that paint India in highly favorable light (for that period).  

Panini who lived around 500 BC has mentioned in his works about boolean logic and the use of the operator null. Panini was an expert in language theory and has written extensively on describing Meta Syntax used to describe context free grammars which is used while defining modern computer programming languages. Hence the modern Backus Naur form BNF is also referred to as Panini Backus Form !

The ancient Chinese mathematics also has its roots in the Indian mathematics which was spread to China by Indians along side spreading Buddhism. There is an article in my site on the ancient Chinese proof of Pythagoras theorem

In an essence ancient India is both the spiritual and scientific mentor of modern world. Note that even the christian teachings by Jesus have its roots in Buddhism (Buddha lived in ancient India 400 years before Christ and any person who has studied the preachings of both Buddha and Christ will find obvious resemblance in both). It is also said that Jesus studied one of the ancient Indian univeristies Takshashila I think where he learnt the buddhist teachings. I had read some works which had done extensive research on this subject indicating Christ name in the list of students at one of the buddhist monestaries in Ladakh region of India.

Kerala in India is the root of modern martial arts. The Keralean Kalaripayat is the world’s oldest form of martial arts and is practiced in Kerala state of India. It was transmitted to China by a sage named Boddhidharma in the 5th century. The Chinese called him Po-ti-tama. He taught this art in a temple. This temple is today known as the Shaolin temple. Thus Judo, Karate, Kung Fu and other similar marshal arts which are today identified with the far-east actually originated from India !

It is known history that when Ottoman turks captured constantinople there by blocking the land based route to India from Europe, this disturbed the entire Europe which depended on India extensively for trade for all items ranging from spices to diamonds to garments to what not. Till 1896 India was the only source of diamonds to the entire world! Unable to trade with India due to locking of the land route by turks, european nations started a race to discover a sea route to India and great sailors like columbus, vasco da gama, amerigo vespucci all set out from spain, portuguese etc to discover a sea route to India and this is how Columbus ended up discovering modern american continent (named after Amerigo who landed up in main land of the continent). In other words the modern super power america was introduced to the rest of the world, courtesty India!!! Columbus thought he had landed in the east coast of India when he discovered America and thats why the native americans are called Red Indians !!!!

Severus Sebokt of Syria in 662 BC said “I shall not speak here of the science of the Hindus, who are not even Syrians, and not of their subtle discoveries in astronomy that are more inventive than those of the Greeks and of the Babylonians; not of their eloquent ways of counting nor of their art of calculation, which cannot be described in words – I only want to mention those calculations that are done with nine numerals. If those who believe, because they speak Greek, that they have arrived at the limits of science, would read the Indian texts, they would be convinced, even if a little late in the day, that there are others who know something of value“

“The Constructions and these tables imply a great knowledge of geometry, arithmetic and even of the theoretical part of astronomy. But what, without doubt is to be accounted, the greatest refinement in this system, is the hypothesis employed in calculating the equation of the centre for the Sun, Moon and the planets that of a circular orbit having a double eccentricity or having its centre in the middle between the earth and the point about which the angular motion is uniform. If to this we add the great extent of the geometrical knowledge required to combine this and the other principles of their astronomy together and to deduce from them the just conclusion;the possession of a calculus equivalent to trigonometry and lastly their approximation to the quadrature of the circle, we shall be astonished at the magnitude of that body of science which must have enlightened the inhabitants of India in some remote age and which whatever it may have communicated to the Western nations appears to have receied another from them….” – John Playfair

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_mathematics

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Definition of Life Monday, Apr 9 2007

Every time God wanted to do something good to this world, he did not come here to do it by himself, instead he created a Child.

Thats how Einstein was born, Buddha was born, Swami Vivekanada was born, Lincon was born, Ilayaraja was born, Basavanna was born, and so are we all…

So the idea of life is to identify that cause for which God created us and to accomplish the goal which has been assigned to us.

This is what the ancient Indian text Bhagavadgita tells us.. Do your duties towards the world

This is why I call Bhagavadgita the greatest psychological work ever written. I look at it more of as a personality development book than a spiritual guide. It encourages every single human to become a great personality.

‘Sambhavaami Yuge Yuge’ - The great cycle of big bang and big cruch is ever repeating…

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The PI Cake! Tuesday, Mar 13 2007

3.14?

Answer depends on what you are familiar with.

For a mathematician, this is the value of a wonderful constant called pi.

For a historian this is March 14 (today), well it’s einstein’s birthday too..  The great genius has a great birthdate too… A perfect combination of mathematics and physics.. After all what is physics, if there is no mathematics in it? Mathematics is the language of Physics..

So, Happy Bday Einstein, we hope to give you a wonderful gift for one of your coming bdays, same brain @ more work

btw, I find this number 14 very interesting in terms of dates.. in India Children’s day is celebrated on November 14 which is exactly 9 months after the Valetine’s day which is on Feb 14 , What a great country, I love India, and so does Einstein ;-)

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