On Science

That mad drive, that mad mad drive, that obsessive compulsive drive , and that surge in accompaniment. Oh, holy angel of adrenaline..

That mad, mad mad world...

An ode to Nature

Ah! She rests, on a mountain so high

save but a trifle wind nigh

the scorn of the sun, holy fire

the perputal bliss, a dire desire

Save but a tifle of wind nigh

an eerie frost, a troubled sigh

a crystal drop, a flash of floods

Ah! She is free! Wrath of bloods

Red in flood, green in leaf

'ere doth she breed, her very own fief

A Life of mind, body and soul

ere doth she breed, a million fold

A pop-science treatment of Bose-Einstein condensation for my fellow noobs.

Fig 1

I just figured something out, wiki is not written for the layman. It precludes that we have a theoretical minimum in Physics . So all we get when we wiki "Bose Einstein Condensates" is a whole lot of jargon that u dont really need to know unless ur an actual working physicist. So this is urm, well, Bose Einstein condensation for the Ignorami.

The working physicist will probably hunt me down and kick me arse, if he smells even a whiff of this stuff, so please.." KEEP IT SECRET, KEEP IT SAFE" - Gandalf, circa 3001-Third Age of Middle Earth.

Lets start at the very end then, a very good place to start indeed!!

Carl Weiman, Eric Cornell (U.C Boulder) and Wolfgang Ketterle (M.I.T) won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics for The experimental demonstration of Bose Einstein Condensation (" for the Bose Einstein Condensation in dilute gases of Alkali atoms , and for early fundamental studies into the properties of the condensates") which in itself is ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLY INSANELY DIFFICULT.

But this story is not about the men or the methods, this story is, but a noob's (impossible) attempt at explaining the modus operandi of Bose Einstein Condensation (BEC-s).

For a brief review of its history, I refer you again to the infernal wiki.

Bose had therefore made a prophetic, unique, brilliant, mind blowing proposition, which required Einstein's genious, to interpret and fully comprehend the consequences of such a proposition, in its entirety. BECS are THE MAJOR consequence.

So, my dear fellow noob, I can hear you askin me,what these darn BECs actually are?

Wiki says its a state of gas.... Hogwash, Nonsense and Idiocy....

BECS are actually a totally new state of matter altogether. People call them Matter-Waves, and to a certain extent, they are right.

All self satisfied pop-science/pseudo philosophy enthusiasts must surely be aware of the quantum mechanical wave-particle duality paradox, which essentially says that , when u look at extremeley small objects like atoms, electrons and protons, they behave exactly like you would expect particles to, but when u dont, they spread out in space and time like waves!!

One may ask then, "Since ur not lookin at it anyway, how sure can u be that they behave like waves?" Until now, all I cud tell u was, "The quantum theory is self consistent and makes predictions ,these predictions, thus far have always been right, so my dear fellow, SHUT UP."

Basically, what quantum mechanics does is this, it assigns a state vector that uniquely describes, as its name suggests, the State of a particle. This state vector (which lives in an awesome space called Hilbert Space with a lot of wierd but beautiful peroperties such as self duality etc..), is essentially a wave spread out in both space (x) and time (t). Physically, the absolute value squared of the state vector, { [mod(state vector)] the whole squared } would give us the probabibility of finding the particle at that position x and that time t. Since every particle has its own unique state (recall Paulis' Exclusion principle of 11th standard fame), it also has its own unique state vector describing the same.

We also happen to know that waves interfere with each other, constructively and destructively at appropriate wavelength conditions. It should not be of any surprise to you then, that these state vectors also interfere with each other, following the same interference patterns as described for waves. The rest of this section on interference is left to you as a sort of thought experiment.

We also know (again from our sour experiences with Thermodynamics during our 11th standard ) that atoms/ molecules have a mean velocity directly proportional to the square root of the ambient temperature. We therfore visualise these things as 'vague fuzzy point' (NOW IS WHEN THE PHYSICIST BEGINS HIS ANAL ARGUMENTS) objects aimlessly (randomly) jiggling around with a mean velocity. This velocity is associated with a 'thermal energy' present at all temperatures except at absolute zero (zero kelvin).

Note: This can be thought of as kinetic energy due to non zero velocities, which again is due to non zero ambient temperatures.

At all temperatures except absolute zero, such energies ensure that there are all sorts of unwanted interference patterns, when ensembles (collections) of atoms are observed for any quantum mechanical effects. The technique therefore to produce macro scale (atomic-molecular scale) observation of quantum mechanical properties would be reduce these energies to such an extent, that the interference patterns because of the thermal agitations are smoothed out and all that is left are the interference patterns of the constituent atoms, implies DIRECT OBSERVATION OF QUANTUM EFFECTS, implies I can ask you to shut up even more vigourously!!

All atoms have the property that, when subjected to near-asolute-zero temperatures, the state vectors describing each of the constituent particles in the system under consideration, jump to the lowest possible energy level allowed by the system. Surely, you can appreciate the fact that this is something TOTALLY NEW!!

Every single state vector is therefore in the same state, which in turn means that all of them constructively interfere, which inturn means that the entire system becomes ONE HUGE STATE VECTOR!! (SEE FIGURE 1).

All though some atoms do this at insanely low temperatures, Weiman-Cornell and Ketterle have demonstrated (independently) that for some special atoms, this critical temperature is much higher (of the order of freakin nano kelvins above abs zero = whoa!!) and reachable, using a previously demonstrated method. This method is called Laser Cooling - Trapping and Evaporative cooling, which again in itself is a nobel-winning venture (Nobel Price in Physics- 1997-"for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light"- Steven Chu, Claude- Cohen Tannaudji and William D. Phillips ).

Let me try to describe Laser cooling for you (evaporative cooling is slightly more technical and therefore will not be dealt with presently, I like jokin around :D). Imagine a classical (following newtons laws) point object jiggling around with a certain momentum. This momentum is inherently assumed to be due to the thermal energy imparted by the ambient temperatures. Now when I bombard these atoms with a steady stream of photons ( Coherent Laser), which is set almost-exactly to have equal and opposite momenta, to that of the jiggling atoms, we can (theoretically) slow it down to a complete stop, which in turn means that we reach a mean thermal energy of naught, which in turn means that we reach absolute zero.

However, this is quite a bit more complicated.... so complicated that it can never be done perfectly. I will not go into the nitty gritties, but it suffices to tell u that the details lead you to the edge of awesomeness, madness and beyond!!

Anyways, under such circumstances the state vectors collapse to the lowest possible energy level, constructiveley interfering to become one HUGE BOWL OF STATE VECTOR. In such afore mentioned conditions, the usual properties/classifications of matter do not hold good. The substance becomes superfluid, zero gravity (proposed) and does all such sexy stuff. This state of matter is called the Bose-Einstein Condensate.

I hope Ive done justice to the noob version of BEC. As always, I try to follow Lev Davidovich Landau's universally accepted approach towards anything that is much more complicated than a simple single contour integral.............SIMPLIFY!!!

I warn you comrade noob, that Ive filled in one page, what ought to be explained thru an entire text book, so its likely that I screwed up somewhere.... I am sorry

I just hope that this gives u a unique insight into the world of Modern Physics.

Comments, suggestions and corrections are welcome.

Learning to think

The Character of Physical Law-Richard.P.Feynman should be made a compulsory read for every single freshman. I ought to set the records straight, I claim no expertise in any of the principles of the physical philosophies-ad infinitum. However, I feel that there is an absolute lacking of what one could call 'scientific temper', in and around the world that I live in. A pity, in that they will never know how it feels to 'know' something deeply in more than mere words.

The natural language of any of the physical sciences is Mathematics. But it goes beyond that. I quote Feynman in this regard, "Mathematics is not just a language, it is a language plus logic, a sort of tool for intuitive reasoning." Those lucky few of us who have had the privilige to learn such a tool, must at somepoint have wondered at the bizzare-yet- unequivocal effectiveness of Mathematics when applied to the Physical Sciences. To this end I refer the interested reader to another classic in the subject of Natural Philosophy , Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science- Hermann Weyl. It is no small matter that these two books are life changing.

In my quest to become an investigator into the natural sciences, these books have helped me, not only in inculcating this perpetual curiosity that haunts me, but also in encouraging me to think, independently at that too.

I feel we, once a great civilisation have become so self loathing that it has become OK not to EXCEL. We have stopped asking the right questions.

We have forgotten that our Great Epic, The Gita, is nothing more than a quest by the eternal infinite himself to satisfy Arjuna's curiosity. So great was Arjuna's thirst to know that his questions required an extraordinary teacher. I wish you the same.

Me on the 27th of July 2009, Circa 18:00 P.M

Its been a year since I first laid the foundations for this blog, one year hence,a perfect time to begin then eh?

I ought to emphasize that my inability to build a proper website of my own was/is the motivation behind me, kick starting this blog again. Also, I'm taking a sabbatical ( from nothing) of sorts to get to the roots of some of the basic questions that have been plaguing my head, constantly nudging me into the edges of despair and back, for a long long time now. I want to KNOW, thus was born "The En Route". I should therefore lay out some statutaries before I move on.

My strong beliefs regarding the intents of a personal blog, that it is what it should be, an Expression of Individuality more than anything else, that it should please YOURSELF more than anyone/anything else is the underlying principle (too formal, eh flugg it).. erm the main reason (how INDIAN is my englifiss now??), that starting anew, is a constant choice , a choice that I presently undertake. Those who know me from before might find this venture (notice how I'm becoming more mature with the words I use) a bit too....erm... well, "not me". I assure you, It IS me, the same guy who during me undergrad swore at everyone/everything possible under the face of the fusing sun (also notice how I have become more scientifically astute by referring to the fusion reaction in the sun).

When the worlds oldest democracy wants change, you bloody well give it to her, C.H.A.N.G.E, I guess I have, changed.

test

testing testing...
no swear words here (awwwww)