My musings on physics and technologies

In the previous blogs, we spoke about various details and ideologies of the Special Theory of Relativity. In this blog, we'll discuss some very important and mind blowing concepts and implications of The Special Theory of Relativity that changed our perception of the universe and modern physics drastically. Time Dilation: In the year 1905, Einstein, while going home on a tram, devised a thought experiment, that changed modern physics forever. As he sped on in the tram, he saw a clock tower, and he thought to himself what would happen if the tram moved at the speed of light. He concluded that the clock's hands would completely freeze and would stop moving from his point of observation while he knew that it would keep ticking normally back at the tower. For him, time would have slowed down . The phenomenon due to which an object moving at very very high speeds (close to the speed of light), experiences the slowing down of time is called time dilation. Einstein's

In the first part of this series of blogs, we discussed the various mysteries of light such as, why doesn't it have relative motion, is it a wave or a particle and why can't one reach the speed of light. We also talked about reference frames which in simple terminology, is the place where one observes from. Today we will discuss the consequences or postulates of the special theory of relativity. The First Postulate of Special Relativity The first postulate of the theory of special relativity is: The laws of physics hold true for observers in all uniformly moving frames of reference . This is the simplest of all relativistic concepts to grasp. The physical laws help us understand how and why our environment reacts the way it does. They also allow us to predict events and their outcomes. Consider a wooden pencil. If you measure the length of the pencil, you will get the same result regardless of whether you are standing on the ground or riding a bus. Next, measure the tim

To understand the universe and the fundamentals of physics with greater depth, we'll have to discuss the ideologies that shaped the structure of modern physics. The Special Theory of Relativity, formulated by Albert Einstein, had a lasting impact on the subject of physics that influenced man's perception of the universe. I'll discuss this theory over the span of 4 blogs. To start off, let's understand the science behind  light. Light There are mysteries about the nature of light that have eluded all explanations of science. How does light originate? Is light a particle, vibration or pure energy? Scientists have only been able to find partial answers to these challenging questions but at the deepest level, they still remain unanswered and may not even be answerable. This quest to understand the nature of light has resulted in two great scientific revolutions of the twentieth century:  quantum theory and relativity. In the seventeenth century, a youthful Isa

The Big Bang All around, just blackness, and the out of nowhere, matter emerged. For starters, the big bang was not an explosion, it was just matter and space expanding rapidly. Within fractions of nano seconds, the universe expanded to the size of a football. In this hot and super dense environment, energy manifested itself into particles that existed for the tiniest glimpses of time. From gluons , that are basically particles that hold sub-atomic particles together, pairs of quarks were formed, which is like the building block of all matter, which broke down forming gluons again. It was so hot that matter and energy were literally the same thing and were equivalent.   A few nanoseconds have passed by now and the main force in the universe has broken up into 4 branches with each different consequences , properties and acting upon by different rules. These 4 forces are gravity, electromagnetism, the weak and the strong nuclear forces . I will discuss these in a later blog.