Why I love both Science and Literature

Till now, I have faced this question a lot of times- “How can you love both science and literature?” Some science students used to ask me, “God knows how you can withstand literature. Such a boring subject!”

So here I want to state how I fell in love with both science and literature. Well, first of all, most of us possess a totally wrong concept of science and literature (or arts, as a whole). In our society, people think that these two are merely two subjects of education. The students who can do maths go in the science stream, and students who cannot do maths go in the arts stream. And this has created another misconception in the society that the science students are brilliant and the literature students are just capable of mugging up things and writing in the examination!

Well, science and literature are, for me, are not merely subjects. They are some sort of two “ways of life” for me! Two ways which are totally different from each other in many aspects, but complements each other perfectly. In other words, I think that science and literature must stay in some sort of an equilibrium in a society, otherwise God (!) knows what will happen to it!

Science, as we all know, is objective in nature. When we study a topic in science, for example, elementary particles, then we study it as an outsider. We observe the properties of the particles from outside and we are perfectly neutral when we explain these properties to people. This nature is called objectivity of science. Science also demands you to be totally skeptical about everything that you see in nature.

On the other hand, literature is subjective in nature. When we read a piece of literature, for example, a novel, then we must learn to be an insider of the story in order to understand the real emotions conveyed by it! We need to imagine ourselves as the characters of the novel to actually feel the sensatiom hidden inside it.

The problem with most “scientific” people is that, they do not even try to be a part of a piece of literature. For them, a novel or a story are just a collection of letters. I am not generalizing but I have actually heard this kind of things from some acquaintances of mine who are studying science.

But I have always been a fan of literature. I just love to imagine myself as a part of a story and also to savour the different yet beautiful writing styles of different authors. I love to appreciate the beauty of the language they are applying to it. It leaves me awestruck, the fact that how one language can take such different forms in the hands of different people, yet can be beautiful in its own aspects!

Language is a thing for which I have immense respect. I think that science and language came into existance simultaneously. Curiosity gave birth to science, and need for interaction gave birth to language. And it is through language that humans were able to spread their knowledge of science, as well as their thoughts and dreams, from generation to generation! So, no matter how much scientific research we do, they will hold no value without language! And taking a language and beautifying it in one’s will is a really tough skill indeed! This also takes years of research to experiment with and develop the ornaments of a language. One needs to study the evolution of a language and need to learn how different aspects of a language actually came into existance. Then only one can improvize and beautify the components of the language. Then comes the part when one applies this personally beautified language and uses it to describe an amazing story to the people. Thinking up the story and linking up the events with absolute fluency is really a Herculean task! Putting the lines into a rhyming scheme (in case of poems) is another Herculean task! And for each of these things, one needs to get inside the language and the story. This is arguably the hardest part!

That is why I love to explore the minds of the authors or poets by getting imside their beautiful “artworks”. I love to explore the different mindsets of the literary geniuses, influenced by the events of the time periods in which they lived. Literature gives me a vivid idea about how people’s thinking patterns evolve with time, and how people can have different opinions about the same topic. Literature also inspires me a great deal. I am always fascinated by the fact that some words can have such immense effect in one’s life!

So, for me, literature is never merely a subject, its a passion. I have chosen to study Physics because I love it and I have always dreams of researching about our origins. But I need literature to neutralize the skeptical objectivity of science and provide me with pleasure, inspiration and a balanced mental health!

Snehashis Parashar
Department of Physics
Tezpur University

Many-worlds theory and our end!

The other day, I was watching a movie named Coherence. A very good sci-fi movie, based on the many-world interpretation of quantum theory and quantum decoherence.

The many-world interpretation of quantum mechanics says that if for a particle there are two possible quantum states in which it can exist, then when we observe it, the universe SPLITS in two “multiverses” at that moment! For example, suppose you are giving me a chocolate to eat. So there are two possibilities- I will eat it and I will not eat it. So, if you observe me and see that I am eating the chocolate, then at that moment the universe splits, and in the other universe I am not eating the chocolate! But that universe exists in the same position in the dimension of time!

So just imagine how many “multiverses” we are having at this very moment, if this interpretation is true! Every pair of contrasting characters of ours results into two split multiverses. But we cannot fathom the dimension of time at our will, and maybe that is the reason why that multiverse is totally unaccessible for us! In my view, the dimension of time can accomodate trillions of multiverses at the same position, and to access those multiverses, we need a giant spacetime warp (like the wormhole in Interstellar, but that was only a space warp). This warp will not only bend space but also time, and through which we would be able to move between the multiverses. Through the dimension of time! We will be meeting with a “self” with at least one contrasting character!

Now just imagine the horror. You are in front of another “you” who likes to listen to Justin Bieber, whereas in this universe you listen to nothing but hard rock! What will be the consequence? CHAOS! It will be like fighting with yourself! I mean, seriously??

Now imagine what will happen if a GIANT spacetime warp happens in such a way that all the multiverses in existance comes together! All the “yous” with totally contrasting characters will get into extreme chaos! It will be like annihilation of particles and antiparticles! You will be having some severe identity crisis and end up killing some “yous” before getting killed yourself! Holy shit!

And thats how everything will end! Everyone against everyone, not only humans but animals, bacteria etc, everything will annihilate! And thats how EVERYTHING will be reduced into nothing!

This “annihilation theory of multiverses” is a work of science fiction by me (Snehashis Parashar) and my very good friend Priya Bucha Jain. There is no scientific proof to this theory. But again, what is science without imagination?!

Snehashis Parashar
Department of Physics
Tezpur University

Of God and Satan….

So I was pondering over the different theories about the creation of the universe. Basically I am a supporter of the String theory which says that every particle in the universe originated from vibrations of energy in ELEVEN dimensions, in the form of “STRINGS”. So this theory basically suggests that even the Higgs Boson i.e. the God Particle itself actually originated from these tiny vibrating strings.

Now, the Higgs Boson is the particle responsible for the existance of all the other particles in the universe. According to the Standard Model of Particle Physics, this particle is the carrier of the Unified force of the four fundamental forces and is the reason why all the other particles get some mass.

Now, my point is that, physics says that every particle in the universe has an antiparticle. Yes, I believe this, because equilibrium is a mandatory aspect of the universe. Antiparticles form antimatter- the opposite of matter. So, from String theory we see that vibrations of Strings of energy produced the particles AND antiparticles together (via the Higgs Boson or not is another topic). So we can say that, some part of the initial energy of the strings produced particles, whereas the other part produces antiparticles!

Now comes the concept of God. According to me, God is nothing but the energy from which all the universe was created. We just cannot explain how this energy itself came into existance. So we call it God (We can call it Chocolate also, it totally depends on us). The God energy ( wow, I just coined a new term!) got converted into mass ( e = mc^2) and created the universe.

But we have just seen that there were two types of initial energies in the form of vibrating strings- the one responsible for the particles and the other for the antiparticles. So, if the energy that created all the particles is God, then what do we call the one which created the antiparticles? Anti-God? Satan?!

That, folks, is my concept of Satan.