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Kashmir conflict-revisited

In early1980s, walking through the lush green fields, on crisp spring and summer mornings, on my way from the student hostel to the chemis...

Friday, March 23, 2018

Votaire


Secularism embodies separation of the state and church and mutual non-interference. The concept developed in reaction to the excesses of the Catholic Church in middle ages. One of the main proponents of secularism was the enlightenment philosopher, Voltaire who spent last decade of his life crusading against the church. When Voltaire died in Paris on May 30, 1778, he was refused a Christian burial. It was after the revolution that triumphant French National Assembly in 1791 forced Louis XVI to recall his remains to the Pantheon. The dead ashes were escorted through Paris by a procession of 100,000 men and women and the funeral car had the words: "He gave the human a great impetus; he prepared us for freedom." Voltaire did not give democracy and he rather gave a cry to challenge the ideas that were forced down on people. But it was the Church against whom he reserved his ultimate wrath.

Sunday, March 11, 2018

Quantum Weirdness

Quantum world is weird and that's an understatement. One of the theories explaining that weird world, called Copenhagen interpretation, shuns realism. Niels Bohr was the main proponent of that interpretation that made Einstein uncomfortable and spats between the two on the subject are legendary. As it turned it is clear until now that Einstein was incorrect. Another explanation for quantum mechanics was proposed by Hugh Everett in his PhD thesis, called Many-Worlds interpretation and was based on concept that myriad possibilities inherent in a quantum system each manifest in their own universe. That interpretation, summarily rejected by Niels Bohr, later made  comeback but not soon enough for Everett, who gave up the field and went on to work for Pentagon for the rest of his life.

Ironically, Einstein's discovery of photoelectric effect saved scientific world from ultraviolet catastrophe and laid foundation of quantum field. But it was Niels Bohr and others' interpretation that turned Einstein against the uncertainty of quantum mechanics and until the very end he never reconciled with it. In between he unsuccessfully tried to poke many holes into quantum interpretation, with one of the most famous being EPR thought experiment. EPR stands for Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen. Einstein remained convinced that quantum uncertainty indicates incomplete understanding of reality. Nevertheless, the field thrived with contributions from likes of Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, Paul Dirac and later John Wheeler, Richard Feynman, John Stewart. It has been long since that experiments have proven quantum entanglement, what Einstein used to call 'spooky action at distance' and is explained without violating the speed of light paradigm.

It maybe pointed out we live in a quantum world, without fully knowing how it works.