The Poetry of Physics

In my college days the calculus lecture was getting boring and somebody could not resist pointing out the boring aspect of the subject. Our Professor who rarely commented about anything other than his subject replied, “You don’t know; people who do mathematics enjoy it like poetry”. The Professor used to impress me with one of his occasional comments and I did think for a while about what he actually meant or can Mathematics be enjoyed like poetry?. At that time I also had some interest in poetry but very soon I got bored of it as most of it started to sound the same. I think I wasn’t imaginative enough or could not see the depths implied by words.

A few more years down the road and I developed an interest in Physics. It started from astronomical physics but gradually I started reading anything relating to physics. It was a time when I still had not felt what ‘poetry’ is. It was not until I got hold of Stephen Hawking’s book, A Brief History of Time. While going through the book I found myself going through some pages repeatedly and sometimes reading a few lines and brain storming over it for hours until it made sense. And when it finally made sense it left me with a feeling of pure admiration for the imagination of the physicists behind it. This is when I actually started to enjoy physics. Mostly it was theoretical physics and many times I felt myself drifting in space when it was related to astronomy. The Physicist’s predictions started sounding just like poetry as they had it all, imagination, thought and romanticism. Poetry that is generally expected to be true for everywhere. This is what theory is. They take a small subset, observe it and extend their thoughts to infinite boundaries of the universe.

Take for example the concept of gravity. It was put forward as the force responsible for planetary movements by Newton. The theory also predicted the orbits of solar planets and was very successful it its time. This concept is relatively easy to understand as it sees planets moving in circular orbits around the sun and staying in the orbit by the balancing effect of an outward force (caused by movement) and inward force (caused by gravity). Einstein on the other hand put forward the concept of gravity as another dimension. He predicted that space and time are ‘warped’ around heavenly bodies. This also holds for the solar system where the space and time should be warped around the sun. Initially this concept seems very difficult to digest as we mostly try to relate it to existing phenomena that we see in our daily lives. At the same time on having a closer look at Newton’s gravitational force concept you wonder that why the planets and heavenly bodies do not crash into each other due to this gravitational pull as they keep attracting each other with a force. There has to be a better explanation for such a well-balanced equilibrium. The general theory of relativity by Einstein offers a better explanation over here. Once read and understood, not only it gives the answers to many questions but also at the same time makes you marvel at the extraordinary imagination of the person behind it. To think of gravity as a new dimension is an idea that many would not have even thought about even in their wildest dreams. Einstein considered gravity as another dimension. He predicted that planets do not move in circular orbits by the force of gravity; instead they follow the nearest thing to a straight path in a curved space. It is like watching an object in a three dimensional space that is also changing its course due to a fourth dimension and all we get to see is an object moving in a circular orbit as the fourth dimension cannot be observed by us. If this sounds absurd then imagine things in two dimensions. If an object was allowed to move through a sheet of paper then it can move only in two directions (x and y). If the same paper was wrapped around a ‘very large sphere’, a sphere so large that the curvature of it almost becomes a flat surface then it can happen that the observers of the object that are within the sheet of paper keep viewing the object as moving in only two dimensions whereas the object in actual might also be covering a distance in the third dimension without actually knowing it. To the paper world the object will always be moving in two dimensions. The same concept holds in case of gravity, the three dimensional observers feel that the planets are moving in a circular orbit without even knowing that this circular orbit is in fact being caused by the fourth dimension (gravity). Not many people could understand the general theory of relativity by Einstein but very soon they started believing in it when it confirmed the slightest of the alterations in planetary orbits. It also predicted light to bend around the sun due to the warping effect and was proved experimentally much later.

Einstein put forward the general theory of relativity and in those times it was also thought that very few people understand it. However when one person who must have understood it, went on to predict a point of infinite density having zero size then this itself proved too much for Einstein and he himself wrote a paper against it, claiming stars cannot shrink to zero size. The person who gave the idea of infinite density was Chandrasekhar. He concluded through general relativity theory that if a star has a size bigger than one and a half times the size of sun then at the time of its death (runs out of fuel) it will proceed to contract to a point of infinite density due to its gravity. Everyone thought this was ‘too much’ at that time but 50 years later people were actively working on the existence of Black holes (point of infinite densities). Today science has reached a level where it can see some proofs of black holes within our space. The world did not understand Chandrasekhar but later he was given a Nobel prize in 1983 partially for his work on limiting masses of stars.

When I think about Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, I feel it started from a strange thought, something that was possible with a very powerful imagination and a large community of people would not have taken it seriously until it started getting verified through experiments and observations. On the other hand when Chandrasekhar reached an inconceivable thought, his peers and the originator of the theory themselves refuted it. I guess the conclusion sounded ‘too wild’ to them. But in the end both the concepts are beautiful and thought provoking. They make you wander in your brain and if it starts making sense then it is absolutely a fulfilling experience. Physics is full of such experiences.

Imagine a person sitting on earth(the existence of which is close to zero compared to the infinite universe) thinking about the origin of universe, galaxies, stars and planets. Each time he sets new limits to his thoughts, jumps to other galaxies in his mind and predicts about distant and unseen phenomena. And when he reasons after that, it all sounds so poetic.

There are also times when there is less romanticism and more mystery. Another world that was mind blowing for many was when physicists realized that they might never be able to say some things with ‘certainty’ and will have to always talk in terms of chance. I am referring to Quantum physics over here. Quantum physics deep down is based on some unanswered questions but it is now a reality that surrounds us more than any other form of Physics in our daily lives. Our digital world stands on it.

For some it is definitely poetry, intriguing and romantic with always a bit of mystery behind it. Imagine the nearest galaxy we have found is 25,000 light years away but we already know about galaxies to some extent as we have travelled through the minds of physicists. It takes you on a ride faster than anything.