Silent Thunder

Stephen Hawking speaks.

We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing of the world. We give little thought to the machinery that generates the sunlight that makes life possible, to the gravity that glues us to earth, or to atoms of which we are made and on whose stability we fundamentally depend. Except for children few of us spend wondering why nature is the way it is; where the cosmos came from, or whether it was always here, if time will one day flow backwards; or whether there are ultimate limits to what humans can know, and last but not least why there is universe. These are some of the big questions answered by Professor Stephen Hawking, the scientific icon of the present and past centuries, the Cambridge genius who has earned an international reputation as the most brilliant theoretical physicist since Einstein, in his record breaking best seller, “A brief history of Time”. Stephen Hawking is a legend. He is now the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, a post once held by Isaac Newton. Without carefully studying and critically analyzing the views of Stephen Hawking, we will not be in a position to understand and answer the fundamental problem as “Who am I” in the background of modern science. (For the sake of clear understanding, I have practically airlifted most of the connected sentences. If the reader is interested in more details, he may refer “The brief history of time” by Stephen Hawking.)

If  one looks at the sky on a clear, moonless night, the brightest objects one sees are likely to be the planets Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. There will also be a very large number of stars, which are just like our own sun but much farther from us. Our sun is a mere eight light minutes away. (The light from it takes about eight minutes to reach earth.) The nearest star, called Proxima Centauri, is found to be about four light- years away. We know our galaxy contains some hundred thousand million stars, and our galaxy is only one of some hundred thousand million galaxies which can be seen using modern telescopes. About ten to twenty thousand million years back, the distance between neighboring galaxies must have been zero. At that time which has come to be called as “BIG BANG” the density of Universe and curvature of space –time would have been infinite. All our theories of science are formulated on the assumption that space-time is smooth and nearly flat, so they break down at the big bang singularity. This means that even if there were events before, one could not use them to determine what would happen afterward. Roger Penrose, in 1965, showed that a star collapsing under its own gravity is trapped in a region whose surface eventually shrinks to zero size. All the matter in the star will be compressed into a region of zero volume, so that the density of matter and curvature of space time become infinite. .In other words one has a singularity contained within a region of space-time known as a black hole. In less than half a century, man’s view of the universe, formed over millennia, has been transformed. Hubble’s discovery that the universe was expanding, and the realization of the insignificance of our own planet in the vastness of the universe, were just the starting point. (When our planet itself is insignificant, can you imagine how insignificant you, yourself are?)

Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle signaled an end to Lap lace’s dream of a theory of science, a model of the universe that would be completely deterministic. Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and Paul Dirac in the 1920s reformulated mechanics into a new theory called quantum mechanics, based on the uncertainty principle. In this theory particles no longer had separate, well defined positions and velocities that could not be observed. Up to about forty years ago, it was thought that protons, neutrons and electrons were “elementary” particles, but experiments in which protons were collided with other protons or electrons at high speeds indicated that they were in fact made up of smaller particles, called as quarks. A proton or neutron is made up of three quarks. All matter we normally think of it in the universe-people, air, ice, stars, galaxies, gases, microbes, this book, including this tiny little fellow, who thinks that he is writing this book, – is made up of tiny building blocks called atoms.(Atom in Greek means, that which can not be divided.) Atoms in turn are made up of smaller objects, called particles, and a lot of empty space. Some of the particles are made up of even smaller particles. The most familiar matter particles are protons and neutrons in the nuclei of atoms, and electrons that orbit the nuclei. Matter particles, which belong to a class of particles called fermions, have a system of messages that pass among them, causing them to act and change in certain ways, just as we have a message system consisting of four different services: telephone, fax, mail and carrier pigeon. Not all the humans would send and receive messages and influence one another by means of all four services. If you think of the message system among the fermions as four such services, which we call forces, you won’t be far wrong. There are other particles that carry these messages among fermions, and sometimes among themselves as well: “messenger” particles, more properly called bosons. Every particle in this universe is either a fermion or a boson. Force carrying particles can be grouped into four categories according to the strength of the force that they carry and the particles with which they interact. The first category isgravity, the gravitational force. You can think of the gravitational force holding you to the earth as “messages” carried out by bosons called as gravitons between the particles of the atoms in your body and the particles of atom in the earth telling these particles to draw closer to one another. This force is universal i.e. every particle feels the force of gravity, according to its mass or energy. Gravity is the weakest of the four forces by a long way; it can act over long distances, and it is always attractive. The very weak gravitational force between the individual particles in two large bodies, such as the earth and sun, can all add up to produce a significant force. The gravitational force between the sun and the earth is ascribed to the exchange of gravitons between the particles that make up these two bodies.

The next category is, the electromagnetic force, is “messages” carried by bosons called photons between the protons in the nucleus of an atom and the electrons nearby, and among electrons. It causes electrons to orbit the nucleus. On our level, much larger than atoms, photons show up as light. The electromagnetic force interacts with electrically charged particles like electrons and quarks, but not with uncharged particles such as gravitons. The electromagnetic force between two electrons is about a million million million million million million million times bigger than the gravitational force. The force between two positive and two negative particles is repulsive, while the force between positive and negative particles is attractive.

The third category is called weak nuclear force, which is responsible for radioactivity. The fourth category is strong nuclear force, which holds the quarks together in the proton and neutron, and holds the protons and neutrons together in the nucleus of an atom.  The activities of the four forces are responsible for all the messages among all fermions in the universe and for all interactions among them. Without these four forces, every fermion, (every particle of matter) would exist, if it existed at all, in isolation, with no means of contacting or influencing any other, oblivious to every other. Whatever does not happen by means of one of the four forces does not happen. A complete understanding of the forces would give us an understanding of the principles underlying every thing that happens in the universe. The success of the unification of the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces lead to a number of attempts to combine these two forces with strong nuclear force into what is called as a Grand unified theory. The basic idea of GUTs is as follows: the strong nuclear force gets weaker at high energies. On the other hand, the electromagnetic and weak forces get stronger at high energies. At some high energy, called the grand unification energy, these three forces would all have the same strength and so could just be different aspects of a single force. Scientists hope ultimately to find a theory which explains all four forces as one “Super force” showing up in different ways and also unites both fermions and bosons in a single family. This is exactly what our ancient seers, saints and scriptures propagated some thousands of years back as “Sanathana Dharma”.  “Sarvam heytat Brahma, Ayam Atma Brahma” All this is Brahman. This Atman is Brahman. All this is one, which is omniscient, omnipotent and infinite. You may call it by any name. “Wacharanbhanam Vikaro; Mrittikeva Satyam” All these different names and forms are due to difference in  the sounds produced by our vocal chords, and due to difference in language, space and time. The truth is one and only one. “Sri Swaprakasa Sarva Sampurnam Bhavathi.” He is everywhere. Every thing is just a modification of him/ Brahman, or Atman. He is every where. He is in everything. He is everything. Nay He alone is.

Stephen Hawking continues “At the big bang itself, the universe is thought to have had zero size, and so to have been infinitely hot. But as the universe expanded, the temperature of the radiation decreased. One second after the big bang it would have fallen to about ten thousand million degrees. This is about a thousand times the temperature at the centre of sun. At this time the universe would have contained mostly protons, electrons and neutrinos.(extremelylight particles that are affected only by the weak force and gravity) and their anti -particles, together with some protons and neutrons.                                     About one hundred seconds after the big bang, the temperatures would have fallen to one thousand million degrees, the temperature inside the hottest stars. At this temperature protons and neutrons would no longer have sufficient energy to escape the attraction of strong nuclear force, and would have started to combine together to produce the nuclei of atoms of deuterium (heavy hydrogen). The deuterium nuclei then would have combined with more protons and neutrons to make helium nuclei, which contain two protons, and two neutrons, and also small amounts of a couple of heavier elements, lithium and beryllium

Within only a few hours of the big bang, the production of helium and other elements would have stopped. And after that, for the next million years or so, the universe would have just continued expanding, without any thing much happening. Eventually, once the temperature had dropped to a few thousand degrees, and electrons and nuclei no longer had enough energy to overcome the electromagnetic attraction between them, they would have started combining to form atoms. The universe as a whole would have continued expanding and cooling, but in regions that were slightly denser than average, the expansion would have been slowed down by the extra gravitational attraction. This would eventually stop expansion in some regions and cause them to start to recollapse. As they recollapse, the gravitational pull of the matter outside these regions might start them rotating slightly. As the collapsing region got smaller, it would spin faster.

. As time went on, the hydrogen and helium gas in the galaxies would break up into smaller clouds that would collapse under their own gravity. As these contracted, and the atoms within them collided with one another, the temperature of the gas would increase, until eventually it became hot enough to start nuclear fusion reactions. These would convert the hydrogen into more helium, and the heat given off would raise the pressure, and so stop clouds from contracting any further. They would remain stable for long time as stars like our sun, burning hydrogen into helium and radiating the resulting energy heat and light (Both of which are responsible for our life on the earth). Some of the heavier elements produced near end of star’s life would be flung back into the gas in the galaxy, and would provide some of the raw material for the next generation of stars. Our own sun is a second or third generation star, formed some five thousand million years ago out of a cloud of rotating gas containing the debris of earlier supernovas. Most of the gas in that cloud went to form the sun or got blown away, but a small amount of the heavier elements collected together to form the bodies that now orbit the sun as planets like the earth.

The earth was initially very hot and without an atmosphere. In the course of time it cooled and acquired an atmosphere from the emission of gases from the rocks. This early atmosphere was not one in which we could have survived. However, it is thought, that primitive forms of life that can flourish under such conditions, developed in the oceans, possibly as a result of chance combinations of atoms into large structures, called macromolecules, which were capable of assembling their atoms in the ocean into similar structures. They would thus have reproduced themselves and multiplied. In this way a process of evolution was started that led to the development of more and more complicated, self-reproducing organisms. The first primitive forms of life consumed various materials, including hydrogen sulfide, and released oxygen. This gradually changed the atmosphere to the composition that it has today and allowed the development of higher forms of life such as fish, reptiles, mammals and ultimately the human race…….

In the year 1981, the Jesuits in the Vatican organized a conference on cosmology. The Catholic Church had made a  mistake with Galileo when it tried to lay down the law on a question of science, declaring that sun went round the earth. Now centuries later, it had decided to invite a number of experts to advise it on cosmology. At the end of the conference, the Pope told the scientists that it was alright to study the evolution of the universe after the big bang, but they should not enquire into the big bang itself, because that was “the moment of Creation and therefore the work of God.” In the same conference Stephen Hawking presented a talk about the possibility that space-time was finite, but had no boundary, which means that it had any beginning, no moment of Creation.  These are the exact words pronounced by the great Upanishad Seer; in Mandukya Upanishad which we studied in great detail in the previous chapter.

“There is neither dissolution, nor birth; neither any one in bondage, nor any aspirant for wisdom; neither can there be any seeker for liberation, nor any liberated as such. This alone is the supreme truth.” (Sloka 32 of 2nd chapter.)

Concluding his arguments, Stephen Hawking says “In an expanding universe in which the density of matter varied slightly from place to place, gravity would have caused the denser regions to slow down their expansion and start contracting. This would lead to the formation of galaxies, stars, and eventually even insignificant creatures like us. Thus all the complicated structures that we see in the universe might be explained by the no boundary condition for the universe together with the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics.  With the success of scientific theories in describing events, most people have come to believe that GOD allows the universe to evolve according to a set of laws and does not intervene in the universe to break these laws. (Our ancient scriptures also declare that Brahman, which in Christian sense, we may say God in English language, is only a witness, Sakshi.) However, the laws do not tell us what the universe should have looked like when it started-it would still be up to God to wind up the clock work and choose how to start it off. So long as the universe has a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place then for a creator?”(Please compare his statement with the statement of Mandukya Rishi.)

According to the general theory of relativity of Einstein, there must have been a state of infinite density in the past, the Big Bang, which would have been an effective beginning of time. Similarly if the whole universe recollapsed, there must be another state of infinite density in the future, the big crunch, which would be anend of time. Even if the whole universe did not recollapse, there would be singularities in any localized regions that collapsed to form Black holes

A star is formed when a large amount of gas, mostly hydrogen, starts to collapse on it self due to its gravitational attraction. As it contracts the atoms of the gas collide with each other more and more frequently and at greater and greater speeds-the gas heats up. Eventually the gas will be so hot that when the hydrogen atoms collide they no longer bounce of each other, but instead coalesce to form helium. The heat released in this reaction, which is like a controlled hydrogen bomb explosion, is what makes the star shine. This additional heat also increases the pressure of the gas until it is sufficient to balance the gravitational attraction, and gas stops contracting. Stars will remain stable like this for a long time, with the heat from nuclear reactions balancing the gravitational attraction. Eventually, however, the star will run out of hydrogen and other nuclear fuels. Our sun has probably got enough fuel for another five thousand million years or so, when a star runs out of fuel, it starts to cool of and so to contract. Subramanian  Chandrasekhar, (the Indian Physicist and noble laureate who was considered as one of the three people in the world who understood general theory of relativity of Einstein along with the British Astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington, an expert on general relativity, in 1920s)and JohnA.Wheeler,  claimed that even if the collapse is not perfectly smooth and symmetrical , the star will nevertheless be crushed to a tiny point of infinite density and infinite curvature of space- time, a singularity at the heart of a Black hole.

From the latest records of scientific data, (Source: Scientific American India, March 2008 issue.)Big bang, the single most important cosmic event, which even the Catholic Church accepted and all the scientists of the present millennium and present accept without any reservation, occurred about 13.7 billion years before the present day.  10-33  second after the big bang, cosmic inflation occurs. At the time of big bang the universe was fiery, optically dense and inflationary. 100 seconds later Deuterium and helium are created. 400,000 years back, microwave background is released. It took about a billion years for the matter/energy decoupling and Clusters of matter form proto- galaxies synthesizing heavier nuclei. 3 billion years later, Galaxies recorded by Hubble space telescope in its deep field exploration formed. About 8 billion years ago, expansion of the universe began to accelerate and new galaxies like our own galaxy, with heavier nuclei are formed. Between 10.3 to 11.5 billion years before the present, our solar system with orbiting planets formed. 3.5 billion years B.P. poly molecular aromatic hydrocarbons, the source of life-forms began to appear. About 2 to 3 million years back, early humans appear. The human race has been in existence for only a tiny fraction of the history of the universe.( Still we thing that we have created every thing and we can do any thing we like. How foolish are we! ) Peeping in to the future, the authors of the article “The Apocalypse of Knowledge” published in  Scientific American India, March 2008 issue, predict from the data available that after 20 billion years, from the present, Milky Way and Andromeda collide, and after 100 billion years all other galaxies are invisible. About one trillion years later Primordial isotopes are lost or diluted and 100 trillion years from the present, last star burns out. That is the big crunch.

Let us recall what we have learned so far. The knowledge of the object/subject indicated by the frequently used word ‘I’ can not be obtained by sense organs and it can not be inferred also. It is some thing like a substratum, or substance like earth, water, fire, air and space. ‘I’ remains in the body as long as body is alive and leaves the body when it is dead. This life spark, which is being called as  ‘I’; and ‘I’ is called as “Atman” in Sanskrit language, in the scriptural literature of  Sanathana Dharma, popularly known as “Hinduism”. Vedas, Upanishads, and Brahma sutras are called as “Prasthanathraya” and form the foundation for Hinduism. They are the data files of Knowledge. Science is an organized knowledge.

Mandukya Upanishad, the quintessence of all the Upanishad declares that “Every thing is Brahman; this ‘Atman’ is Brahman”. Brahman is omniscient, omnipotent, all pervading Reality, the ultimate truth, Truth beyond cast, creed, religion, time and space. We, in Christian sense, may call ‘Brahman’ as “God” in English language, the ultimate Truth, beyond time and space. The individual self, the so called ‘I’ is the life spark, passing through the equipment, manifests itself as the “Ego.” The life spark, technically called as “Atman” in Vedanta in Sanskrit language. The individual self, (called as ‘I’;’I’ and ‘I’) itself is the supreme, all pervading reality. The life force, theAtman, is also called as Brahman in Sanskrit language. We may, in Christian sense say, “God” in English language.

Let me recall the incident as narrated by Parama pujya Swami Ranganadhananda, the past president of Ramakrishna Mission, during his talks on Mandukya Upanishad. One day Narendra, (Swami Vivekananda was called as Narendra, while he was a student of Ramakrishna, before he was initiated in to Sanyasa ashram.) talking with Hazra, a great philosopher and a great disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, exclaimed as “What this master is telling? He says this table is Brahman!. This chair is Brahmanand this pot is Brahman!” while laughing. Then Ramakrishna   hearing his laughter came out and addressed Naren as “Naren, you still did not understand” and talking like that he just touched his head. Then the whole thing changed; change in his understanding. As Brahman it always exists and it never changes.

The awareness that makes it possible for individuals to perceive and know the outer world of objects and the inner world of ideas, is the Supreme reality, unborn, all pervading and ever the same Truth. The absolute knowledge, which is changeless and free from all imaginations, is the pure consciousness, which is the life centre in all the beings.

Nineteenth century Scientists thought of nature as an assemblage of objects located in space and continually changing with passage of time. 20thcentury theory of relativity and quanta, have changed this perspective completely.  It may be appropriate for me to close the chapter with the      words of the greatest scientist of the millennium, Einstein. “There are particles and field (Field of energy). Both can not be true. Field alone is true” Thus we conclude:

“I” or self = Atman or Pure consciousness = Brahman, or “God” (In Christian sense in English language) = Energy field (In scientific language in English according to Einstein) = Super force.(According to Prof. Stephen Hawking).The same is known as “Kshetrajna” in Bhagavad Gita. Kshetra means field and kshetrajna is the knower of the field. When you objectify the concept or the knowledge, a subject is created for the sake of clarity of language. In essence the subject, object and the knowledge triode, disappear when you view from the highest pinnacle of Absolute Truth

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He is everywhere. He is in every thing. He is everything.

Hari Aum Tatsat.