THE FRACTALISTIC UNIVERSE

Before i proceed writing this and before you proceed reading this i must take a moment to warn myself and you that what im about to write and what you are about to read is nothing more than a theory that was deduced during a series or realizations that occurred over the past six to seven months. It might make complete sense to some and seem like utter rubbish to others, which i must say falls in line with one of the implications of the theory of relativity, which as the name suggests, implies that reality is relative. so this is basically how i see it in terms of my reality and may not necessarily apply to anyone else. Here i will attempt to explain to the best of my abilities, my theories surrounding the all important, life changing, destiny shaping mystery of the question of the meaning of life. This explanation will touch upon various subjects and will focus on modern physics, including Quantum Physics and the theory of Relativity, and some of the more philosophical questions raised in light of these theories. also i will attempt to touch upon a bit of eastern philosophy. i must warn you though that all of these theories are based on the very limited knowledge that i have and may be half baked, but i have full belief that at the present moment these theories i believe may be true even though most of them are nothing but a mangled mess of confusions and uncertainties. i will first attempt to explain to you the history of quantum mechanics and the impact its had on the world.

The Quantum Era

- For those who want to skip the physics explanation, please feel free to skip to the next section.

For anyone who knows anything at all in the world of physics, surely has heard of a certain man called Sir Isaac Newton, who arrived at his most famous theory of gravity after an apple attempted, but failed, to damage his cranium. This man is responsible for formulating his famous theories of motion and gravity which have described the collective reality very effectively, He was also responsible for studying the nature of light and its properties. After much study on the spectra of light, he formulated a theory which he called the Corpuscular theory of light, where he described light to be travelling as tiny corpuscles. This formed a notion of light being comprised of tiny particles. This theory was accepted as the right explanation of light for most of the 18th century. But in the 1800's prominent physicists such as Thomas Young and Leonhard Euler proved through a number of experiments that light was in fact a wave(like waves of water in a pond, for example) and did not comprise of particles, as Newton has said. After this the accepted theory of light was that light was in fact a wave and not a particle. This view existed for about a hundred years till the coming of a man known as the Father of Quantum physics, Max Planck.

During the late 1800’s, physicists were studying a phenomenon which they called black body radiation. A Black body is a perfect emitter and absorber of light. It was observed that light emitted by different elements showed different spectral lines. Spectral lines are the different patterns of light you get when you refract light through a prism. Now what was interesting about a black body was that when it was heated, the spectral lines that were produced did not agree with the classical theory for the explanation of light. The curve for the light at high frequencies was very irregular with prediction that was made. It was at this time that Max Planck took up the black body problem and by working on it, included the laws of thermodynamic with the laws of electrodynamics to explain the phenomenon. At that time, there were significant breakthroughs in the field of thermodynamics. Physicists formulated laws to determine the behaviour of energy within a system, which were the three laws of thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics is especially important since it talks about Entropy. It says that entropy always increases. Entropy is the property of a substance to go from order to chaos. This explains why heat travels from a hot body to cold body since the hot body is high on entropy and the cold body isn’t, when they come in contact, they attempt to equalise the energy within the system and therefore the entropy of the cold body increases and it becomes hotter. A classic example of entropy is when a stone is dropped of the floor, the energy is given out in terms of heat and sound and in deforming the stone. But if the same energy is given to a stationary rock on the floor, it does not rise up, even though energy is conserved. This again is because of entropy. When the body is free falling, every molecule of the rock is in uniformly moving with relation to one another. And when they hit the ground, there is an increase in entropy, which means a relatively chaotic movement of the molecules. A stationary stone on the ground does not fly up when supplied with the same amount of energy because then the molecules would gain uniformity and that would mean a decrease in entropy. Ludwig Boltzmann, developed a statistical measure of entropy and said that a decrease in entropy was not impossible just unlikely, just as its unlikely that, given the random movement of air particles in a room, all the air particles would concentrate at only one corner of the room. And Planck, when working on this inconsistently applied boltzmann’s equation into his own and arrived at a formula to describe the energy of emitting radiation: E = hv. Which means that the energy of a particular ray of light was its frequency times h (Planck’s constant ~ 10^-35Js). This implied that the energy of the light was always a multiple of Planck’s constant. Which means that energy can exist only in integer multiples of Planck’s constant. This disagreed with the wave theory of light which suggested that in-between values can exist and it shouldn’t necessarily be integer multiples. Planck showed that light exists in packets of energy which he called Quanta. This paved way for the particle theory of light and it wasn’t fully accepted until 1905, when Einstein, recognising the genius of plancks work took up the case and proved beyond doubt that light travelled in packets of energy.

Einstein in 1905 published a series of three papers, through which he validated the existence of atoms, introduced his theory of relativity and proved beyond all doubt the quantum nature of light and the photoelectric effect. After Einstein’s papers, people did not doubt the genius of plancks work and acknowledged the revolution he had started in the field of physics. Over the next few years, Bohr and other physicists perfected the model of the atom and incorporated the particle theory of light into the particle theory of matter. But soon enough, experiments that were done on light, showed that light was also a wave. This caused quiet a bit of confusion since there were two opposing theories of light that were equally valid. Works by physicists such as Schrödinger showed that the wave theory of light could also be incorporated into the wave theory of light. At this point I need to ask you to abandon the image of the atom you have in your head since that is a very wrong image, the atom is a completely abstract object and the present models explaining it have not completely explained everything about an atom. Anyway at about the time that Bohr’s model of the atom was perfected, both matter and light were considered to have a wave/particle duality. This led to two completely different explanations of matter and light that were equally valid.

During the mid 1920’s, a young physicist named Werner Heisenberg, got interested in the atom. He took up Bohr’s theory of an atom and attempted to explain the movement of an electron within the atom in terms of its position and momentum. He tried to tabulate the values for the position and momentum and what he got was a table of values which made no sense to him. Another young mathematician named Paul Dirac, who got a glimpse of Heisenberg’s work immediately recognised that these tabular forms were very similar to a system of number that were used rarely: Matrices. With the introduction of matrix mathematics into Heisenberg’s theory, the full extent of his work was recognized.

The thing about matrix mathematics is that when you multiply two matrices in a particular order, the answer will not be same if the order was reversed, in other words AB ≠ BA. So also, PQ ≠ QP, where p is the position of the particle and q is the momentum of the particle. He also derived the equation ΔPΔQ > h/i, where h is plancks constant and i is the root of -1. this meant that the uncertainty in the position was inversely proportional to the uncertainty in the momentum.

Ground Breaking Implications

The uncertainty principle, by Werner Heisenberg, created a major change in the thinking of the people at the time it came out. It showed that you can never know the position and momentum of a particle at the same time. This was a break from classical thoughts since Newtonian physics suggested that if we knew the position and momentum of every particle in the universe, we could predict the future with absolute certainty. But Heisenberg showed that we can never know the position and momentum of even one particle at the same time. Since, this applies on an atom is scale its implications in the everyday world is minimal. But it is vital to understand that this uncertainty is not any experimental uncertainty due to the limitations of the technology. This uncertainty is in the very nature of the universe itself. If a particle knew what its momentum is it will never know where it is exactly and if it knows where it is, it wont know its momentum since there will be a large uncertainty to it. This can also be broadened to talk about time and energy as well. Where if you know the energy of a particle with absolute certainty the time at which it will exist will be unknown and if you know the time at which it will exist, the energy that it will posses will have a large uncertainty. The uncertainty principle talks about complete indeterminism where determining the future is impossible. It says that you can measure the two components separately at different times and work out what it was, but it is impossible to work out what it will be. This falls in with our everyday experience of why we can know the past but never know the future.

Niels Bohr took up the uncertainty principal and broadened it to what is now called the Copenhagen interpretation. Bohr introduced the concept of complementarity. This principal states that the two opposing variables in the uncertainty principal are complementary to each other. He said that it all depends on what you want to measure. If you want to measure the position, thts what you get and if you want to measure the momentum that’s what you get. Its all depends on the choice that you make. This could also be said about the particle and wave duality of matter and light, where certain experiments can be designed to explain the particle nature of light and certain experiments can be designed to measure the wave nature of light. But you can never have an experiment that measures both at the same time. Another major problem causing thing was Young’s double slit experiment. Thomas Young performed this famous experiment and discovered diffraction in the mid 1800’s. But this experiment also started a major debate of the nature of light.

Young’s Double Slit Experiment

The set of Young’s experiment is such that you have a point source of light (or electrons, it doesn’t matter, they both behave the same). In front of that you have a wall with two tiny slits (or holes) in it and beyond the wall is a screen (or a photographic plate) the basic thing is that when you turn the source on, you get a pattern of diffraction and interference across the screen. The diffraction is caused by the diverging of light at the slits and the interference is caused when the light from the two slits interfere with each other. If you close one slit, you get only a diffraction pattern. Now a variation of the experiment was done with electrons, since they are easier to record, and the same patterns existed. No worries there. Now another variation was added into the experiment. So far we had been measuring the wave nature of matter, now if we were to shoot the electrons one at a time, it should be like shooting bullets from a gun. Which means that no matter how many times you shoot it you will get only one point on the screen where the electron hits. Theoretically that should be the case. So if you cover one of the slits and fire the gun you should get a single point on the screen with no diffraction pattern. This is where it gets weird, no matter how many times they did the experiment and how many electrons the shot at it one by one, they still got a diffraction pattern! So this should mean that the wave nature of light was more prominent. In which case if you opened the second slit and shot the electrons one by one, there should be an interference pattern. But that was not observed. When they shot the electrons one at a time they noticed that only the diffraction patterns were formed at the two slits and there was no interference pattern. And this mystified the physicists who couldn’t understand why it happened like that. Now a add an other variation in this experiment and try to measure which hole the electron went through when without hindering its progress. This gave the weirdest result yet. When they tried to measure which hole it went through, the diffraction pattern stopped and only a point was shown on the screen. At this point I need to point out that all that anyone can observe is that the electron has left the gun and what has arrived on the screen, we don’t know anything about what happens in between. All we can deduce is that the electron probably went through one of those holes and arrived at the screen. Bohr on the basis of the Copenhagen interpretation gave an explanation that the diffraction and the interference patterns were nothing but the probabilities of finding an electron in a particular place. Since when we don’t measure which hole it went through, the result we get on the screen is nothing but the probability of finding the electron at the particular place. But when we measure which hole it went through, the probability doesn’t exist anymore since we are sure of which hole it went through hence we get a single point on the screen. The implications of this however are that when we observe a system, we interact with the system such that we alter its very nature. So by the very act of observing we change it. Again I need to stress that all that we ever know of the world around us is what we see. We have no idea what happens when we are not looking. The same applies to an atom. What little we know about an atom is only what we’ve observed and we have no clue about what it is doing when we are not looking at it. So quantum physics really points towards this idea of the mind shaping the universe that it is in. So does this mean that the universe wouldn’t exist if we as intelligent humans weren’t observing it?

Bohr’s explanation for this phenomenon was that when the electrons leave the source they split into “ghost” electrons (metaphorically speaking, of course) and these ghost electrons represent the probability of finding that particular electron. When we do not observe it the ghost electrons pass through and what we get on the screen is the probability of finding it. Now when we observe which hole it went through, we force that electron to choose one of those ghost electrons as its reality, that’s when the wave function collapses, and we get one answer. So by the very act of observing we force the electron to make a choice.

Everett Interpretation

Another interpretation of this was the Everett interpretation. Everett in the 50’s came up with an interpretation of the uncertainty principal (with full mathematical backing) where he generalised the whole concept of Bohr’s idea to humans at large. He said that in everyday life we make a lot of choices and each choice takes us into a different reality. So we are faced with a number of probable choices out of which we choose which one we want and this in turn determines the reality that we get into. It is something similar to a tree type arrangement where the path that you take while going from the root to the tip represents your reality with choices appearing as “branches”. He basically proved that he concept of free will was in fact inherent in the nature of the universe it self! Of course this is also a deterministic theory where once the choice is made it determines you reality and the only way to undo that choice is to go backwards in time and choose a different reality. Although it might seem like an idea out of a science fiction novel, it is theoretically possible to go backwards in time. It just isn’t practical enough to be attempted by anyone anywhere.

Beyond Abstractness

I’m sure most of you reading this would have heard about the Big Bang theory, where the universe just exploded into existence. And there is also a theory called the big crunch where the universe, under its own gravitational force will collapse into non-existence. Now, im sure most of you would have understood what symmetry is and have understood the symmetry that exists in the universe so ill go on to say that quantum physics explains the existence of the universe to be a breakdown of a Supersymmetry. Ideally if the super symmetry exists, then the universe shouldn’t exist since all the forces that led to the big bang would cancel each other out. But the universe exists because of the breakdown of this Supersymmetry. There was an imbalance in the forces and hence there was a large outburst of energy which ended up creating the universe. Before I go any further I am going to tell you a bit about the conflicts that exist.

Firstly just like there was a conflict about the wave and particle nature of light, there are similar conflicts about the “correct” explanation of the universe. The major conflicts right now are the attempts to unify all the existing theories into one super theory of the universe. Physicists are trying to unite the theory of general relativity with quantum physics to have one super theory of the universe. General relativity is the theory of the very big while quantum physics is the theory of the very small and the attempt right now is to unify these theories. Even within quantum physics, people are trying to unify the four fundamental forces (gravitational, electromagnetic, strong nuclear and weak nuclear) into one grand universal force. Another major proof of symmetry is matter and antimatter. Antimatter is literally the opposite of matter. Antimatter is matter’s counterpart and generally it has opposite change and goes backward in time. When matter and antimatter meet they annihilate in a great burst of energy and cease to exist. They annihilate into light. And for light, time has absolutely no meaning. Light is stationary through time.

Time is an illusion

According to the theory of relativity, time and space are in fact relativistic terms depending on the reference frames that you subscribe to. Special theory of relativity states that if an object travels at a great speed always accelerating closer and closer towards the speed of light, time slows down and the dimension of space reduces till at the speed of light both space and time are zero. For example, let us take the twin paradox. Let’s say you have two twins. At the age of twenty, you separate the twins. Once goes on a spaceship that travels at 99% the speed of light and the other stays on earth. Now after a 100 earth years, the spaceship returns. The twin on earth would probably be dead but the twin that went on the spaceship would come back only a year older and report with absolute certainty (because the clocks on the ships would prove it) that he had been gone for only a year. This is because according to the theory of relativity, time slows down (for non believers – theres a mathematical proof for it which I havnt included here) and therefore on the ship only one year has passed but on earth the time passed is a hundred years. Also lets say the ship was 1000 ft long and it zipped past you and you tried to measure its length, you would measure a far lesser length of the ship from your stationary reference point on earth than if you had been on the ship itself since the ship’s inhabitants would measure the correct length of the ship. So basically when you reach the speed of light, time no longer exists for you and space becomes zero. So for light, the big bang, everything in between and the big crunch happen at the same time. We say it takes 8 billion years for light to reach us from a distant star, but for the photon it takes absolutely no time and for the photon the distance between the earth and the star would be zero. so it makes sense that matter and antimatter should annihilate into light since one is going forward in time while the other is going backward in time and when they meet, time cancels itself out and ceases to exist. Photons do not understand the concept of time because it does not exist for them. So does this make time an illusion, the symmetry does not exist between matter and antimatter and therefore matter exists and we go forward in time whereas if all the matter annihilated with antimatter, the universe would not know the meaning of time at all.

Answers from the Past

At this point I will start making relations between quantum physics and eastern philosophies here. Hinduism talks a great many things about the universe and the sages of the past have contemplated the meaning of the universe and life and so on. One of the theories of the universe says that at the beginning of the day, Brahma(see end of document), the creator, created the universe and everything in it and at the end of the day, he destroys it only to create the universe all over again at the beginning of the next day. This agrees with the theory of the big bang and the big crunch where its possible that the newly formed Supersymmetry can break and a new universe might explode into existence again. This also agrees with the whole idea of life and death again when it comes to talking about humans. Also another thing is the idea of Tantra. Again in Hindu philosophy life exists because the god Shiva and goddess Parvati are separated and life ceases to exist when the two join again. This is similar to the idea of Supersymmetry where the breaking of the symmetry caused the existence of life. Shiva and Parvati are metaphorically the two halves of the symmetry and them joining again represents the end of the universe and the end of life. Even the five forces of nature are very similar to the five elements of nature.

• Earth is metaphorically similar to Gravitational force. This makes sense since in everyday life gravity attracts you to the ground which is the earth. But unfortunately people have taken the metaphors too literally to deduce its actual meaning. This represents perception in humans
• Water is Metaphorically similar to Electromagnetic force. Also very true since water is found to be especially vulnerable to electromagnetic energy. That’s why they’ve been able to levitate living things in strong magnetic fields with little effort, because of the water content. Represents strong emotions as well as calmness and serenity.
• Fire is metaphorically similar to strong nuclear force. This also represents the development of reason and logic in humans
• Air is metaphorically similar to weak nuclear force. Weak nuclear force is responsible for atom decay and ejecting nucleons from the atom, hence the liberating force. This represents the birth of wisdom and the fulfilment of aesthetic needs in humans
• Ether is similar to the grand unified force which has control over all other forces. This is similar to reaching the highest level of consciousness in humans.

Fractals & Chaos

Fractals are, in my opinion one of the most intriguing things on the planet. Fractals are objects who’s form is repeated within its self, in mathematics, its called a recursive function where the function calls on itself within itself. The simplest example for a fractal is a tree. First you have the trunk with branches, then you have each branch acting as a trunk for sub branches, and each sub- branch acting as a trunk for leaves and within each leaf you have the midrib that acts as a trunk for the veins and each vein acting as trunks for sub veins. In this way, the structure repeats itself within itself. A snowflake is also an example of a fractal. Fractals are very beautiful but at the same time have a complex mathematical function that goes behind creating it. Fractals are a unison of Beauty and Logic, of emotion and reason and of mathematics and art. Fratals are used in many fields, right from art to predicting weather. One of the major theories that is related to fractals is the Chaos theory, or as some of you know it as the butterfly effect.

Chaos theory is a completely deterministic theory that says that small initial conditions can alter and be responsible for a big completely outcome that may seem random. It says that the initial conditions determine the final outcome. And this too has a completely mathematical backing to it. From this arises one of my theories of reality where I try to incorporate the Everett interpretation with the Chaos theory. The Everett interpretation says that the choices that you make determine you reality and chaos theory says that the initial conditions determine the final outcome. So by incorporating them together you can say that the choices that you make serve as the initial conditions to where your life takes you in the future. You decide what you want your life to be by the choices that you make.

Closely linked to the chaos theory if the systems theory. The basic idea behind the systems theory is that the object/subject is seen not just merely as consisting of various parts, but of having an intricate web of complexity arising from its relationships. A systems theorist does not look upon an object as being comprised of only various part but looks upon the object as a single entity how it interacts with the environment. It sees the object as being part of a system. This theory pays a lot of emphasis on the interactions and the relations between the object and other objects within the system. It acknowledges the existence of its various parts but at the same time, the focus is on how there parts interact with themselves within the system.

This theory plays a major role in the understanding of various subjects such as sociology, cybernetics, etc. Quantum theory has also focused a lot on the relations of the system with the focus being on the interactions between particles and how that affects the system. This relation is taken at various levels even until the interactions between stars and galaxies hence giving the systems theory validity in both the theory of the very big (astrophysics, relativity) and the theory of the very small(Quantum Theory).

The Fractalistic Universe

The universe can also be considered to be a fractal both physically and metaphorically. Physically it’s a fractal because of its structure. First you have a central super hot place with the galaxies surrounding it. Within the galaxy you have stars revolving around the centre of the galaxy. Within the stars you have planets revolving around the star. And then you have moons revolving around the planets. And if you go to the atoms level you have the electrons orbiting the atoms. Metaphorically it can be considered a fractal for many reasons.

Firstly, the whole idea of symmetry existing in the universe. The universe is physically symmetrical at different levels (like matter-antimatter, quantum-relativity, Supersymmetry, etc) and is in this sense a fractal. But then again on a more human level you always see this split between two opposing things and a need to unify them (for example: good-evil, determinism-freewill, reason-emotion, art-math, day-night, life-death, beginning-end, etc) In this way nearly every major thing has a conflict and the solution is one trying to unify the two. Just like how you have the big bang and the big crunch you have the birth of life and the death of life. Just like for you have the reformation of the symmetry thus ending the universe, you have the rejoining of Parvati and Shiva thus ending the life force. Even the concept of karma is fractal like in the sense that you are reborn into the world over an over again until you gain that highest level of consciousness after going through all the obstacles and experiences life has to offer and your higher self chooses for you what experiences you want in your life. And reaching that highest level of consciousness is becoming one with your higher self, it’s the reformation of the Supersymmetry when you become one with your higher self. This could also be said about man and woman. Just like how Shiva and Parvati are two halves of the symmetry, man and woman are two halves of the symmetry as well. And unison of the sexes is also like a unison of the two parts of the symmetry. Hence the school of marriage representing that. The Supersymmetry is function that repeats continuously within itself. And hence gives the universe its fractalisticity and beauty. The quest is on today to discover a theory of everything that explains all the observed phenomenon’s in the universe and to reconcile opposing theories such as quantum physics and relativity. One of the major fields of research today is into loop theory which is a theory that tries to achieve this theory of everything by combining the Quantum theory with the Theory of General Relativity. Again the concept of duality is represented and a bridge is being made between the two to form the ultimate theory of everything.

The concept is basically revolves around the whole concept of duality where it seems that everything that is there in the world always exhibits duality in one from or the other, in other words there is always a conflict between two sides of the same object or entity. Duality exists everywhere, within our economy, within our society, in the natural world as well as in the human mind itself. Carl Jung, in his theory of collective consciousness talks about this duality being present in the human mind. It seems that in nearly every situation, you have conflicts arising and these conflicts have a certain duality to it where one part of it may lead to one outcome but the second part of it may lead to an opposite outcome where reconciliation of this conflict seems neigh impossible. Even the methods used to arrive at these outcomes and conclusions may be contradictory if applied together. This duality, it seems, is what shapes the universe and in this respect the universe can be considered a fractal since in every level of the universe you seem to have the concept of duality occurring consistently. Duality appearing o the smaller levels may shape the duality on the bigger levels. Also the initial conditions of the smaller levels may lead to the random bigger level arising with no obvious relations between the smaller and bigger levels. Of course, this could work the other way around as well where the higher levels shape the smaller levels. And all is well for now since it falls well in line with the chaos theory. Another way of looking at this could be from a systems point of view, where the dualities could be seen as not only entities but a part of the overall system. This view looks at the universe at not only possessing these dualities also their relation to each other and their relation o other aspects of the universe and the effect these relations may have on the nature of the universe it self. When combining the Chaos theory and the Systems theory, you get a complicated web of objects, events, relations ,ad choices all of which seem to work in perfect synchronicity with each other. This combination in a way explain the seemingly random sets of events that take place in our lives.

Although these theories are to a large extent deterministic, variations of them can be made to include the concept of free will in them and still retain its validity. For example, the initial conditions, as I’ve mentioned before may be thought of as the choices that are available to people. And these choices are what determines the final outcome (something similar to game theory, I guess). Coincidentally this conclusion has also been reached in the Everett interpretation of quantum theory. This said, this view of the universe may lead an existentialist conclusion (if it hasn’t already) and also one where you have determinism and free will existing within the same system having a delicate balance. And as I’ve mentioned before, all that I have said is just one way of looking at it and may not necessarily agree with anyone else’s point of view or make logical sense to everyone. The reality of the universe may be just a matter of perception on the part of the observer.

Bubbles and stars

Another theory that I have about life is something I call the bubbles theory. In this I imagine our overall reality to be a Bubble and our higher self sitting in the centre of it. The life and the collective reality that we are used to is because of a merging of the realities of all other people. The reality that we are used to is what we have put in place for us so that we can leave the bubble and explore life and go through various experiences before we come back into the bubble again and rejoin our higher selves. We go through life over and over again until we achieve our higher self. And within this life we choose what we want and its our choices that determine out lives. Another analogy for this is, when you look up at the sky on a clear night an see lots of stars in the sky and you focus your attention on one star, that star becomes your centre and all other stars seem to be around it. Now if you focus on another start, that becomes your centre and you see all other stars, including you previous star as being around it. And astrophysics has said similar things about galaxies as well. According to it, no matter what galaxy you are in, you will always see your galaxy as being the centre and all other galaxies as being around it. Same with planets as well, so its really no surprise that ancient people thought about the earth as being the centre of the universe. But the message here is that these stars can be considered as your bubble so whatever bubble you are in you will see yourself as the centre with everyone being around you. The “bubble” is just an analogy of course.

Life

After all of this, one may ask “what is the meaning of life then? What does this mean for us humans and our reason to live??” Well, there may not be a clear answer to that as yet, but in my opinion id say that each person’s own meaning of live may be what they want it to be. From the previous pages, I have stressed upon the importance of free will in one’s life and the delicate balance it shares with determinism. With regard to life itself, it may be well out of the reach of deterministic factors in terms of what one may choose to do with it, unless of course it means he deterministic part of the choices you make. But in terms of those choices you get to decide what you want your life to be like and what you want to do with it. Also it is again your choice whether you want other people making decisions and framing rules for you or whether you’d rather make the decisions for yourself. In the end I feel that the meaning of life is what you want it to be. You always have a choice in what you want to do and these choices determine the future….

Right I’ve probably given you people enough to monder about for days now so I’ll stop here.

Remember: Life’s a Song and You write the Lyrics! J

- Gyandas

Sources

In search of Schrödinger’s Cat by John Gribbin

Giancoli Physics Text book

People ive spoken to:

Mrs. Jayanthi Ramakrishana, Physics Teacher, CIS

Mrs Shanti Vedanayakam, Psychology Teacher, CIS

Karuna Jenkins, d/o Mrs Shanti

Ashwin Sheshadri my cousin for an email on time, although he probably doesn’t know about this.

Appendix

1 krathi = 34000th of a second (no equivalent name in English)

1 truti = 300th of a second (no equivalent name in English)

2 truti = 1 luv = 0.006666 [recuring] part of a second (no equivalent name in English)

2 luv = 1 kshaNa = = 0.01333 [recurring] part of a second (no equivalent name in English)

30 kshaNa = 1 vipal = 0.4 of a second (no equivalent name in English)

60 vipal = 1 pal = 24 seconds

60 pal = 1 ghadi (24 minutes)

24 ghadi = 1 horaa (1 hour)

24 horaa = 1 divasa (1 day)

7 divasa = 1 saptah (1 week)

4 sapthah = 1 maasa (1 month)

2 maasa = 1 RUthu (1 season)

6 RUthu = 1 varsha (1 year)

100 varsha = 1 shathaabda (1 Century)

10 shathaabdha = 1 sahasraabdha

432 sahasraabdhaa = 1 yuga

1 yuga = 1 kaliyuga

2 yuga = 1 dwaaparayuga

3 yuga = 1 trethayuga

4 yuga = 1 kruthayuga

10 yuga = 1 mahayuga = 4,320,000 years

1000 mahayuga = 1 kalpa = 4.32 billion years

14 manvantharas (read this as manu anthara or time between two manus) = 1 kalpa

1 kalpa = 1 day of Brahma!!