Destination Unknown

atif #31 We are indeed miniscule creatures, finding home on a tiny speck of dust in the vastness of the cosmos. But ``ashraf-ul-makhlookaat`` we remain - at least on earth, and indeed the entire solar system. We are after all the most advanced species, and species that are next in line (dophins, bonobos, chimpanzees) do not come even close with respect to the intellectual capacity of humans.

As for religion, you may recall the lines in the Quran where God tells the angels that the reason he is creating mankind is so the latter may learn the names of everything created by God. The incredible pace at which mankind is advancing its knowledge (``names of things created by God``) is in fact a testament to how well mankind is fulfilling the purpose it was created to begin with. And in fact this is a very distinctive aspect of the Quran: I read somewhere (the best-selling book by Huston Smith called ``The World`s Religions``) that the main difference between Islam and other religions is in fact this explicit statement of the purpose God created mankind. Otherwise, in essence, Islam is in fact very similar to all religions. It is thus no surprise that the early muslims (until the 15th century) were in fact the torch-bearers of human progress as they eagerly learnt from the greeks and the hindus and also made their own contributions. But regardless of how soon muslims are able to catch up and once again be at the forefront of human progress, the fact is that with the spread of education around the world, the speed of discovery is expanding. Every day we read about ground-breaking discoveries. This was not always so: just a hundred years ago human progress was much slower. Go back further in time - to the time of homo erectus for example - and one finds that for at least full one MILLION years, that species of the hominid continued to rely on the same types of stone-age tools!!

Where all this is leading to, of course, no one can say. That is why I chose the title ``Destination Unknown`` for this article.

tahmed 32 # 32 Very well-analysed. This is, i guess, precisely what Iqbal wanted to convey when he said

``Apnay ander Doob ke pa ja siragh-i-zindagi
Tu agar mera nahin banta na ben, apna tau ben``

atif2 #31 As a reply to your question, I`d quote Einstein`s words, which i did sometime in the past in response to an article by Dr Gill. He said “To the sphere of the religion belongs the faith that the regulations for the world of existence are rational; that it is comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine physicist without that profound faith. This situation can be expressed by an image; science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind!”

Thats something i myself have a strong faith in. As far as I have seen and learnt, scientists are extremists when it comes to religion, either staunch believers, or shear atheists. Their atheism, to me, is generated when they see only what they believe in. After all, believing in the unseen is not that easy, or half of the dwellers of this earth won`t be kaafirs!

shobig_sifar #30 Thanks for the appreciation. The force of the human mind when it makes logical deductions and stick to facts is indeed impressive. This has allowed us to grasp some of the incredible aspects of creation I refer to in the article. However, without the force of logic to support it, the human mind is I think not particularly imaginative - and that is why truth has always been stranger than fiction. Not even a Shakespeare or an Iqbal could ever have imagined anything as strange as Black Holes, or Neutron Stars, or even the complexity of the eye of any living creature. Even science fiction writers were never able to make much more than linear projections into the future - while a 19th century writer like Jules Verne (among the most imaginative of men) could conceive of submarines and flying machines, even he could not imagine the power locked inside an atom, or the blueprint of life contained inside a DNA (something that most high school graduates take for granted today).

It has been people who have had the courage to respect their own eyes and ears and ability to make logical deducations who have been the true torch bearers for mankind, and carried it from its humble beginnings to its current state.

tahmed32 - first of all, very well written article on a subject which could easily bore a layman if the writer gets into too nitty gritty.

``A string being so small that if an atom was the entire solar system, a string would be a tree on the planet earth.``

how miniscule is human life in the ``grand scheme`` of things!! i wonder, if we really are ``ashraf ul-makhlooqat``. And if we are, then it is a huge owner bestowed upon us mortal beings by that High Authority. And that makes you think, why we - the humans, be made the ``best of all creations``? There must be a purpose.

I sometimes wonder, how difficult it must be for scientists who study universe, to stay `scientific` and not slip into religion. How difficult it is to study universe, without being in awe of that Supreme Being who created it all!

ajeet #25 While I have not heard anything specific about India, but in all likelihood when ancient humans (that would be at least over 50,000 years ago) first stepped into India they found some other hominid species living there. (Hominids were species on the ``human`` side of the family after humans and apes first branched off millions of years ago). Whether the other hominid species in India died out through conflict (for space, hunting) with humans, or through interbreeding, is uncertain. But it is possible that the legend of hanuman is based on interaction with some non-human hominid species. Such a species would have been smarter than an ape, and may have looked up to humans (who would have had more modern equipment like bows and arrows instead of sticks and stones).

The above is my best guess, and it is based on what has been proven to be the case in many parts of the world where homo sapiens first migrated after leaving the common home of all humans, Africa. The best known case of other hominid species is of course the Neanderthals of europe, who have left behind ample traces of their existence and way of life (including huge caves that they inhabited for hundreds of thousands of years). It is known that they died out about 40,000 years ago (comparitively recent in the time scales I am dealing with in this article, e.g.). What is not known is whether they were wiped out by humans, or by changing climate, or through plain inter-marriage (or inter-mating, to be more accurate). Other parts of the world have similar evidence of pre-human species - the most recent being discovered only last month in Sulawesi island (I think) in Indonesia, a race of hominids that was 3 feet tall (and are considered a different species altogether, and are not considered merely short versions of the homo sapien species like the pygmies of Africa).

Urstruly #27 Glad you liked the article, and appreciate your letting me know as well.

It is true that we are dealing with some very contentious issues here. Thus, the concept of evolution caused a great deal of turmoil in the west, although passions have cooled over the decades in the face of overwhelming evidence from a variety of sources (biology, anthropology, genetics). Even today, though, there are faint signs of opposition in places like Kansas and South Carolina and among many people in Pakistan and other parts of the world as well. But this disbelief is nothing compared to the hue and cry that accompanied the famous Scopes Trial at the turn of the last century in the US for example. I think it is not so much religion that is in conflict with science (as the Creationists in the US make it appear, e.g.), but our human egos that prevent us from accepting the fact that we could have anything in common with the ``lower animals`` (despite the obvious ``family`` resemblances in terms of body architecture, construction, systems etc.)

The ``demotion`` of earth from being the ``center of the universe`` in the 15th century aroused similar passions back then, but they have virtually died out by now over the centuries. With the increasing pace of scientific discoveries that reveal the incredible vastness and grandeur of Creation around us, I think we are already building up a stock of knowledge that vastly exceeds our ``intuitive`` abilities which are built around things as seen in everyday scales of time and space dimensions.

Good food for thought tahmed ankil, well-written. Reminded me of the words uttered by the narrator of a National Geogrphic program on GALAXIES, which say, `` It still remains a mistery that how many forces actually exist in the universe, but over the last 50 thousand years or so, one force has outshined all the rest, `THE FORCE OF HUMAN MIND AND IMAGINATION!```

The scolarship in this comentary might be contentious, but it is written quite well.

Talking about hairy apes, I have sometime wondered, if the Hindu God Hanuman and his monkey sena, had some vistage of reality in it. Did another spieces like the neanderthals, but with a tail survive long enough to have come in contact with the humans?

Then again it could just be the active imagination of the writers of Ramayana.

amit #24 You may have a point there. Presumably, adjustments will have to be made - the wedding vows may look something like this in the future:

to love each other truly,
for better, for worse,
for richer, for poorer,
in sickness and in health,
till death do us part
OR till 100 years from now, whichever cometh earlier.

:-)

Re:tahmed#32

Good lord!! Imagine dealing with your wife and job for 5 billion years!! Also, imagine reading about India and Pakistan peace process on Kashmir for 5 billion years (because that is how long it will take for our cussed leaders)!!

I think our current lifespan is just fine.

NHK: Amen to that. (``live it up - and do whatever you can in this world.``). :-)

Huma #21 On inflation: I think recent discoveries (I think it was in 2002) have shown that this ``cosmic inflation`` is in fact accelerating!! In other words, enjoy the stars while you can, since a several billion years from now (and may you live a long and happy life to see that happen, Ameen) they would all have gone beyond the farthest reaches of our telescopes and we would be all alone under a dark sky. But, long before inflation can have that effect, there would be other things going on:

1. the sun is expected to die (like all stars), and that is scheduled around 5 billion years from now. Consistent with the life cycle of similar stars, the sun will then expand to a ``red giant`` which will envelope the earth, and finally blow itself apart in a supernova explosion (considered among the most violent events in the cosmos) and - become gas which will give birth to new solar systems, new planets, new Pakistan`s, new India`s, and new Chowk.... :-)

2. The sun is circling around the milky way, which has a huge ``black hole`` in the center that is sucking up matter around it. Perhaps the material that once was our earth and our solar system will then get sucked into the black hole - according to new findings by Hawking, we may very well re-emerge from the black hole as part of a new universe altogether.

3. The Milky Way is on a collision course with the ``nearby`` Andromeda Galaxy, and together these galaxies are hurtling towards the center of a vast Galactic Cluster named Virgo. God know what cataclysmic fun we will all have when all these galaxies meet.

4. And meantime the cosmic inflation is stretching the fabric of the universe like a balloon.

So: just look outside the window of the airplane named mother Earth and there is a lot going on out there!!

and btw, it seems only a question of time before humans are able to rejuvenate their cells indefinitely (a key element to cell mortality being telomeres - small molecules at the tips of the DNA - which medical researchers have now started trying to maintain intact since cells remain able to rejuvenate themselves as long as the telemeres are intact) - in other words, cure the ultimate disease - death itself. So, if not you or I, but there is a good chance that generations to come may find themselves losing sleep over at least the more immediate of these cosmic events (things like the aging of the sun). Or maybe not - 5 billion years is a long time no matter how long you live.

I knew Tauheed Ahamd sounded familiar. NOW i know its tahmed32!

very nicely written. however, i shudder at the the age old truth of things going through a cyclic motion. would a time come when we go back on all fours?

and i read in perhaps stephen hawking`s book that the universe is still in its `expansion phase` due to the big bang explosion. what will happen when this expansion stops, and the universe begins to contract? would the direction of time and other dimensions be reversed?

i know i know. i shouldn`t lose sleep over it since its a few billions years away :)

or is it?

Tehmed32

Long time. No see.

Destination Unknown ? We are all going to hit the bucket. No one is sure what is after that. So live it up - and do whatever you can in this world.


NHK

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