We poor primates are incredibly curious peeping toms. Our inquisitiveness knows no bounds, this curiosity takes us to the frontiers of all creation and into the hearts of fundamental particles. Nothing, from biggest to the smallest get away our curiosity. Freedom of minds and skill of intellect to ‘think the unthinkable’ is how humanity has progressed; when minds are incarcerated nothing endures.
Hubble’s Space Telescope’s and Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are helping us to leap forward the understanding of our universe; Hubble’s first photographs of dark matter deep in space and Large Hadron Collider (LHC) the first collisions between protons will lead us to discover what formed the universe and galaxies beyond. Hubble’s Space Telescope’s and Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are leading us to comprehend from small to big; the symmetries of Universe are beyond belief. Our Brain’s Neurons Look Exactly Like The Structure Of The Universe. One is only micrometers wide. The other is billions of light-years across. One shows neurons in a mouse brain. The other is a simulated image of the universe. Together they suggest the surprisingly similar patterns found in vastly different natural phenomena. “As is the microcosm, so is the microcosm.”
We are trying to look beyond the murkiness of ‘after 300 million years of The Big Bang’ and on the other hand this ‘primate’ wants to discover What is mass? What is 96% of the universe made of? Secrets of the Big Bang; What was matter like within the first second of the Universe’s life? Do extra dimensions of space really exist? Nature’s favouritism. Why is there no more antimatter? The primate wants to answer Newton’s unfinished business. In a direct contrast majority of resident primates of this planet ‘the faithful’ continue to look towards the providence of heavens for answers through scriptures like Genesis. This dichotomy is finally leading towards a showdown where the ushering information age on our planet is speeding up and heading toward an astounding convergence of minds. The last sighs and lamentations of the devoted can be heard, a dagger planted in the heart of the ignorant by the toys created by smarter ‘primates’ is leading mankind towards the climax of a 13.75 billion year evolutionary journey of our birth from nothingness. Realisation that ‘No belief is big enough or creative enough to encompass the demands of 7 billion diverse people’ is gaining currency.
As Hubble pierces into the deeps of the universe unravelling mysteries of our birth, it was the observations made by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope of a special type of supernovae that contributed to research on the expansion of the universe. It was honoured with the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics. The academy recognized the leadership of Adam Riess, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in the High-z Team’s 1998 discovery that the expansion rate of the universe is accelerating, a phenomenon widely attributed to a mysterious, unexplained “dark energy” filling the universe. The discovery of dark energy was termed by the Science Magazine as “The Breakthrough Discovery of the Year” in 1998. Critical parts of the work were done with NASA’s Toy ‘Hubble Space Telescope.’
We primate who make our own Gods are notorious to destroy the idea with our own toys. Those who made ‘Hubble’ and ‘Hadron’ were great church going people too. Dialectical materialism works unsympathetically in all walks of life. The effective functioning of dictum in our code ‘that which can be destroyed with truth should be.’
Our unified consciousness is underpinning of mankind’s future roadmap, the connectivity through internet is helping create a milieu where compression and availability of information on our finger tips is preparing us for the climax of a 14 billion old journey. Look at what this exciting primate has achieved within 10,000 years of coming out of cave. He has not only been able to pierce at the borders of ‘event horizon’ through eyes of Hubble but through the Large Hadron Collider LHC is trying to find answer to key unresolved questions in theoretical particle physics; for that this primate created the emptiest space in the Solar System on this earth; a space more than 100 000 times hotter than the heart of the Sun, and an ultra-high vacuum, a cavity as empty as interplanetary space.
When this primate wanted to know his age? What was thought to be in between 10-20 billon years old or 6,000 years old! He made Hubble. That is how he discovered that we are only 13.7 billion , it was our Hubble that helped us fine tune our date of birth. It was not what his Gods told him in Genesis i.e. 6,000 years old. It was 13.7 billion years. Gods were off by a very long margin. In a book ‘Window on the Universe,’ Giles Sparrow explains: “Part of the reason Hubble has such popular appeal is the Cinderella story. Hubble is the little telescope that could.”
The Hubble telescope’s “Key Project” was to further Dr Hubble’s discovery and measure the rate of this expansion, thereby enabling scientists to put an accurate age on the date of the Big Bang and the Universe. Thanks to the telescope we now know that the Universe is expanding at a rate of 70 kilometres per second per megaparsec (a unit of astronomical distance equivalent to 3.26 million light years) and that space began to expand from a single point around 13.7 billion years ago. Previously, the figure had been vaguely put at somewhere between 10 and 20 billion years ago. Sparrow says: “Establishing accurately the rate of universal expansion for the first time is what Hubble will be remembered for 1,000 years from now.
When it was first launched into orbit 353 miles above the planet by space shuttle Discovery in 1990, Hubble was the little telescope that couldn’t work. Eventually when started working it soon became apparent that it was faulty. “It was short-sighted,” Sparrow says of the affair. The 2.5m mirror mounted on the telescope that collects light from distant corners of the Universe to process into pictures was out of shape by one-fiftieth of a human hair and the initial images it sent back to Earth were blurred. It took another three years before the fault was rectified in one of the most complex space missions ever attempted (Hubble travels at five miles a second and takes just 97 minutes to circle the planet).
Another toy another story; LHC on the other extreme is trying to find answers of What is mass? What is 96% of the universe made of? Secrets of the Big Bang; What was matter like within the first second of the Universe’s life? Do extra dimensions of space really exist? Nature’s favouritism. Why is there no more antimatter? With a precise circumference of the LHC accelerator 26 659 m, and a total of 9300 magnets inside is trying to answer . LHC the world’s largest particle accelerator magnets are pre‑cooled to -193.2°C (80 K) using 10 080 tonnes of liquid nitrogen, before they are filled with nearly 120 tonnes of liquid helium to bring them down to -271.3°C (1.9 K). It is the fastest racetrack on the planet… trillions of protons race around the LHC accelerator ring 11 245 times a second, travelling at 99.9999991% the speed of light. Two beams of protons travelled at a maximum energy of 7 TeV (tera-electronvolt), corresponding to head-to-head collisions of 14 TeV. Altogether some 600 million collisions took place every second. When two beams of lead ions collide, they generate temperatures more than 100 000 times hotter than the heart of the Sun, concentrated within a minuscule space.
The ‘cryogenic distribution system’, which circulates super fluid helium around the accelerator ring, keeps the LHC at a super cool temperature of -271.3°C (1.9 K) – even colder than outer space! Through the understanding encapsulated Standard Model of particle physics physicists have been able to describe with increasing detail the fundamental particles that make up the Universe and the interactions between them., LHC shall help cover the gaps some have left for manmade God to describe.
All toys end and new toys take their place. The space Hubble’s days are numbered it will now continue its observations until it is decommissioned, probably around 2014. A new infrared space telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, is due for launch as Sparrow explains: “Because James Webb is infrared, the images it will produce will not have the same resonance. They will be scientifically interesting but will not deliver that visual ‘wow factor’ that Hubble does. That is why people relate to Hubble so much. It is like a giant eye. It is focused on real light, like our eyes [are]. It has done a fantastic job enthusing the public; its images have been seen by billions of people.” One of the last adjustments made on the Hubble telescope was to fit it with a docking point which will be used by an unmanned craft to drag it into a controlled fall back to Earth when its declining orbit reaches a certain point. It will burn up on re-entry.
I believe I have transcended into a new creed. I think we all should follow one thought: that of unique ‘humankind’, we need to evolve beyond the human expression and live as conscious creative beings. We got to go beyond parochial ideological fixations and reach a universal solution where we identify ourselves as citizens of this big blue planet that we should all call “Mother Earth.” Plain and simple, it helps me eradicate the ‘middleman’ (Prophet) who tells me through his “agents provocateurs’ (clergy) who to love and how to love others. Love is born within us; we don’t need an agent provocateur to tell me.
Everyone’s way is so different and complex. But we humans can have only one way “the human way” and love should be our main objective. We need to go beyond our self-made delusions and avatars. Mankind is a great big orchestra where each man is a conductor playing the symphony of love. It is scripted within all of us. With greater indulgent universality emerges positive reception of the nodes of live and unity. Continued pandering to the antiquities of dogma and legends is the worst self imposed nuisance of our age. It is a curse that ‘faithful’ are born with, it is a cross that we primates carry, until we shed it we do not deserve to be called as humankind.
