Everyone Wants to Know

Author: Anvi Bhaduri

  • A Timeline of Innovation

    A trip through the wonders of technology

    My dad is a strange man. Normally, he is not superstitious and never crosses his fingers when he sees a black cat, or salutes to magpies, and tries to open umbrellas indoors! However, when we visited Santa Croce in Florence, at Galileo’s tomb, he suddenly broke character and asked Galileo to bless me with some of his intelligence.

    Galileo Galilei was an Italian physicist who is credited with the invention of some of the most remarkable scientific tools in history, pioneering the laws of motion and the concept of inertia which Isaac Newton later built on. He is also known for his laws on falling bodies which states that bodies, no matter their mass when dropped from the same height will fall at the same velocity in a vacuum. A physicist and astronomer, he is credited to have invented the most powerful telescope of his time. Fast forward today, telescopes are massive lenses in open fields and sometimes even in space, which can see objects thousands of light years away, but Galileo’s telescope was the first of its kind. With his small, yet vastly more powerful than earlier telescopes he could see the moon’s craters and the phases of Venus. This supported the heliocentric model of the solar system proposed by Nicholas Copernicus, where the Sun is at the centre of our solar system and planets revolve around it. This idea was not popular with the Pope and most Christians at the time, as the Bible states that the Earth is fixed and lies at the centre of all things. Which is why in 1610, when Galileo made his ideas public, the Pope’s men interviewed him and when Galileo would not back down from his truth, they put him under house arrest for the remaining 9 years of his life. It is only in 1979 when Pope John Paul II officially declared that Galileo was right.

    His invention of the modern telescope led to a lonely final decade of his life but was it worth it in the end?

    One of the largest ground telescopes is located in the Atacama Desert, Chile and is used for exploring hidden corners of galaxies. It has already captured images of new born stars. This telescope not only helps us detect the life span of neighbouring stars but also at what rate the universe is growing. Due to their large lens size, these telescopes can see objects millions of light years away. For example, the brightest star that we on Earth can see, is called Sirius and is located 8.6 light years away. This means that when we look at Sirius, we are looking at what the star looked like over 8.6 years ago because the light from the star takes time to travel to us.

    In January 2022, James-Webb, a space telescope with a 21-foot lens, was released into space. This telescope broke the record for the furthest celestial body detected; a galaxy 13.5 billion light years away. James Webb captured this image while the galaxy was still at a young age and astrophysicists believe that this galaxy was born only 280 million years after the Big Bang. The James Webb did not just take a photo of a galaxy, but it travelled 13.5 billion years back in time; to a time when Earth didn’t exist and hydrogen was still fusing into helium. It was a large step forward for the space industry, as it produces some of the most powerful and detailed images of faraway corners of our universe. Imagine witnessing stars being devoured by supermassive black holes and the collapse of giant stars into dense neutron stars. These findings have shaped our understanding of familiar concepts like gravitational attraction but also new ideas like spaghettification (what happens to an object when it enters a black hole).

    However, the most remarkable achievement of this particular telescope is the discovery of potential life. The James Webb telescope analysed the chemical composure of K2-18b, a planet 700 trillion miles away. Then scientists back on Earth inspected to find a large number of molecules in its atmosphere which on Earth can only be produced by living organisms. Due to the large proportion of these molecules, scientists believe that if this planet is home to organisms, it is teeming with life. K2-18b is two and a half times bigger than Earth but otherwise remarkably similar; it is a water world, thought to be covered entirely by oceans. The evidence collected by this one telescope is growing, making it more and more likely that there is life in those depths.

    So, we thank you Galileo for sacrificing your freedom. Without it, our knowledge of the entirety of the universe would be limited to still trying to prove the heliocentric model. Young curious minds like mine may never have been drawn to star-gazing. I wish you could see what your small, 51-millimetre telescope has inspired and what information has been found because of it.

    Maybe, my dad was right. A man who started the domino effect that led to these new findings deserves to be treated like a God. On behalf of all qualified and aspiring scientists out there, bless us with knowledge, integrity and innovation like yours.

  • The Illusions of the Brain

    Should you choose to believe everything?

    Humans have a natural tendency to assume and judge their surroundings based on past knowledge and experience. We want a solution that is quick and easy, that doesn’t require us to stress or push the mind. Humans in general are lazy beings, and we are comfortable living in this realm of illusions. The world provides us with twists and turns, colours and hues for us to enjoy but our perception is deterred by the rules that society creates.

     For example, in this drawing, what do you see, a duck or a rabbit? If you tilt your head to one angle you may see a duck’s beak on the left but if you look at it from a different angle you see the rabbit’s ears to the left. However, no one will ever be able to see both at the same time, some people even struggle to see both at different times. This reflects the openness of your mind. Humans often need additional context or information to be able to identify objects in our world. Now, if I told you that this was drawn near a pond, then you would think that it was safe to presume this was meant to be a duck. With just one sentence, I could change your viewpoints and therefore your understanding of the world around you. Your perception is built on information gathered from a young age and the rules of society. You (and majority of others) would expect a duck to be by a pond, rather than a rabbit, hence your brain believes that this drawing being a duck is a more likely option.

    At birth, there is a very limited number of things you can do without being taught. Firstly, when you are born, you only have two fears, loud noises and separation from your parents. More common fears like spiders, the dark, or the supernatural are influenced by the world around you. Society around you shapes your understanding of the world. For example, the concept of ghost being unhinged spirits with a thirst for blood was introduced through horror movies. Due to this many parents would not have allowed their children to watch such movies due to the fear factor. However, not watching horrors have left children in fear of “the monster” under their bed, a fear which is more comparable to the fear or the unknown.

    Secondly, as babies have not yet been taught how to walk, stand sit or run, most think there are very few movements that babies can do. Actually, you would be surprised. Form birth babies’ brain dictates thousands of commands per second. Involuntary movements like blinking, breathing and pain recognition are abilities that we are born with. Other movements are learnt from society, just like your fears, inhibitions and definition of success.

    We have gotten so used to these involuntary actions that sometimes we forget the importance and the hinderances of these movements. For example, blinking stops your eyes drying up, gives a constant flow of oxygen to the cornea and protects the eyes from dust and tiny debris. If you didn’t blink you would face eye strain and pain for the first few minutes and then this will eventually lead to blindness. It seems sane to give up 0.33 seconds to avoid potential blindness. However, this is actually a long time; in the time it takes for us to blink light can travel 90,000 kilometres. Blinking can hinder your ability to see the full picture. In the image below the circles look like they are pulsing because your brain cannot comprehend the variety of different shapes and colours while blinking.

    Which is why even if you can physically see, feel and sense the object in front of you, you might not want to trust everything that your brain perceives. The human brain’s complexity can be its downfall. Trusting the image that your brain creates can lead to your greatest mistakes. This doesn’t have to relate to just some optical illusions but to the bigger picture; how you perceive different people and therefore how you act around them. You will only truly experience the world if you keep an open mind, because even when you think you have learnt all the tricks to life, and the next one will surprise you.

  • Quest to a Perpetual Hourglass

    Secret to the universe’s greatest mystery

    It is the most common noun in the English language and used in a range of proverbs. It flies when we have fun and along with the tide it waits for no one. You try to race against it and often wish you had more of it. Time is one of our universe’s greatest mysteries and physicists spend their lives trying to understand even a fraction of it.

    Wouldn’t it be cool to go into the future, have a peek into your successes and failures, come back and fix it all? In theory, it is surprisingly simple; all you must do is travel at the speed of light. So, why hasn’t anyone taken a trip through time? Actually, everyone has. You, your neighbour, your local newsagent, astronauts and Usain Bolt. The only difference is how far ahead in time. This is all because of time dilation, the difference in elapsed time. Elapsed time simply means the amount of time that passes from the start to the end of an event. For example, if you had two identical clocks, one stationary and another one moving close to the speed of light, the moving clock seems like it is measuring a shorter time or moving more slowly relative to the stationary clock. This applies to other bodies as well. Humans have an internal clock and the faster they move, the slower their internal clock runs, allowing them to travel forwards in time.

    For instance, if you race against Usain Bolt in a 100m race, he will reach the finish line a couple of seconds before you do, well, assuming you are really fast! This means he has reached the future quicker than you have as he has travelled a fraction of the speed of light faster than you. The closer you go to the speed of light, the more apparent are the effects of time dilation. Astronauts aboard the ISS, which travels at 0.000002% the speed of light, experience time dilation on a measurable scale. Astronauts coming back from a 6-month mission are actually 0.007 seconds ahead of us. As the average human reflex speed is 0.21 seconds, this doesn’t make a massive difference. However, some cosmonauts like Oleg Kononenko, a Russian astronaut who has spent a whopping 1111 days in space might be a couple of seconds, ahead in time.

    If you (a person who hasn’t experienced time dilation on a measurable scale) and Kononenko were standing next to each other at a shooting range, Kononenko would see each shooter hit their target 2-3 seconds before you do. Depending on the distance between the shooter and the target, he may see the target being hit before the shooter has pulled the trigger!

    If a person is able to travel a couple of seconds into the future, then how hard could a couple of years be? Unfortunately, Einstein has made that quite difficult due to his special theory of relativity which states that the speed of light in a vacuum is the same for all observers. This is also where his very famous equation E = mc2  comes from. This can be rearranged to say

    m/s. Therefore, for a small mass, you will need infinitely more energy than is describable to travel at the speed of light. For many humans as well as their spacecrafts, the amount of energy required may be greater than the amount we have in this universe itself!

    Travelling at the speed of light is ruled out but what if I told you that there was another way to travel into the future. A way which allows our feet to be younger than our head. As your feet are deeper in the Earth’s gravitational field then your head, it reaches the future first. Similarly, if you spend an average lifespan of 72 years living in La Rinconda, the highest permanent human settlement, situated in the Andes at an elevation of 5,000 meters, then you would be 0.0025 seconds further ahead in time than someone who had been living their whole life at sea level. The person living at sea level is deeper in Earth’s gravitational field and therefore less time passes for them.

    Everything has a gravitational field strength, however, the heavier the body the stronger its gravitational field strength (g). As the earth’s gravitational attraction is not strong enough to experience time dilation on a measurable scale, one must turn to the heavier celestial bodies. Luckily, there are some bodies that are a trillion times heavier than the Earth. We call these black holes. They are dense and heavy with a gravitational strength so strong that not even light can escape once it has crossed the event horizon, a point of no return.

    A black hole’s gravitational attraction is so strong that if you sit just 10km away from the black hole’s event horizon for 7 years then 7,000 years would pass on Earth. This seems like a possible solution for travelling into the future but there is a catch, like with most laws of physics. Our nearest black hole is Gaia BH1 which lies in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus. To get near the black hole’s event horizon and back to Earth, one must travel for 3,000 years and that too at the speed of light. As the average lifespan of humans is currently 72 years that is not possible.

    So, if you’re hoping to pick up next week’s test paper or perform the latest trends with aliens from outer space, I’m afraid you have to wait, but it might be for the best. The future is unpredictable, and we do not know whether humans would even be alive in 1,000 years, therefore it is best to stick to dreaming about meeting moon colonies or watching the latest sci-fi movies.

  • Embracing Probability vs. Chasing Perfection

    Choices and decision-making shape our lives, influencing something as simple as appropriateness of language in an essay to whether one should recommend their client to take a million-dollar deal. In most situations we tend to weigh out the pros and cons of each scenario, often contemplating the worst- and best-case situations. For example, let us say your client stands to lose $1000 in a venture but could gain up to $800 million. It seems logical to take the chance as the distribution of outcome has a right skew (a greater gain than loss). However, emotions play an important role in decision making especially when the odds are not as highly skewed as in the above example. Doubt creeps in quite easily. Many tend to question their own judgement and often decide the risk is not worth taking. Think about it, how often have you removed a choice because you were too afraid of taking a risk. Think harder, it is probably more times than you think.

    I am an avid tennis player, and before every shot, any player would ask themselves a series of questions. Where do I actually want the ball to go? How hard should I hit it? Should I try and bring my opponent closer to the net, but what if they are strong at the net? Each player must analyse their next shot and execute it, making split-second decisions.

    Nevertheless, whenever a person mentions decision making, most think of probability. The most famous example? The extraordinary Monty Hall Problem. Accidently created by Monty Hall in his show Let Us Make A Deal, it is now one of the most popular mathematical paradoxes.

    In the Monty Hall problem there are 3 doors, behind one is a car and behind the other two are worthless goats. Monty asks you which door you would like to pick, and you say door 1. Very well knowing what is behind each door, Monty opens door 3, revealing a goat. Now, Monty asks you if you would like to stay with door 1 or switch to door 2. Is it in your favour to switch to door 2?

    Kevin Spacey, the Hollywood actor, brilliantly simplifies this in his movie 21.

    At the start, the probability of the car being behind door 1 is 1/3. However, when Monty opens door 3 this probability changes. And no, it does not reset to a 50-50 chance. When he opens the third door, he gives the contestant a hidden clue, an extra 33.3% chance of getting a car if you switch. He defines this as a problem of variable change – a complex mathematical concept involving probability distribution.

    However, most people would not switch due to apprehension and paranoia. They have the fear that Monty might be bluffing or trying to trick them. Confirmation biases hold them back from switching doors.

    One of the most popular examples of probability is gambling. Has anyone played Blackjack, which is also referred to as ’21’ in some regions? This is the ultimate game of rash decision making. For those of you who know how to play, skip over the next paragraph.

    When you sit down at the blackjack table, the dealer would hand you two cards. Each number card is worth their value and each face card is worth ten. An ace can be worth 1 or 11, it depends on what value you would prefer. You add up the numbers on your cards. Then the dealer would ask you whether you would like another card. If you take a card, you must add the full number to your total. If your sum is now over twenty-one, then you are bust and out of the game.  

    How is Blackjack a game of probability then? Well, if you are on seventeen, should you take another card? This is when you read the room, look at what cards were previously dealt and try and calculate the probability of your next card being higher than four.

    The choices one has to make in life are no less complex than the game itself.

    If you are asked to participate in a bet, you are less likely to participate if there is an equal probability of winning and losing, such as tossing a coin. However, if I skew the data and say that heads makes you win $100 but if it lands on tails then you only lose $50, then the higher incentive motivates you to participate in the bet.

    When making life’s decisions, be it getting a new job, buying a house or a car or taking up a course in university, most individuals need a clear upside to gravitate towards (more pros than cons). However, as Robert Frost adequately said …. “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference.” The merits of your choices are not always clear, and, in most cases, one would never know what the alternative had in store. Life is about accepting those choices and moving on no matter what you picked.

    So, when I have to hit that perfect return to a new opponent in a tournament, I should not only focus on my own strengths but continuously learn and adapt to my opponent’s game.