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Mahisapat, Dhenkanal, Odisha (currently), India
"Treason of Reason". I try to find out the reasons of my discomfort and I try to pen down a few thoughts. That's how I have started writing blogs...

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Monday, March 29, 2010

Ten ideas in my mind...

7.30 pm

10 ideas in my mind...[To kill off the dull evening I challenged myself to see what I can think]

Science and Technology India needs Today...

I have grown a little impatient with the amount of support sometimes I don't get [don't get actually] and ask myself to sit in my office [a privately created space that has all the facilities that I need to write a decent piece of essay [on a decent topic if possible ]

I am impatient because I have been waiting for more than three years to get a position somewhere [rather than a job or an employment] and to add to my own list of failures I don't have a degree for all the useful work I did and published or presented in some way or another.

To stave off my frustration I try to find time that I can utilize to write my own mind. [I don't want a job at many places despite of my qualifications because I can't find time and money for things that I must do to keep myself in reasonable shape].

Towards this in mind I am writing this to check to see what ideas I have in my mind from what I know from what exists today or in the recent past or whats even ideally possible or must be visioned if we are to make true progress in some aspects of our existence.

For this particular write-up then I have chosen to write on, a little about the present day science and technology issues of India where I have been living since the last two years.

(1)
Power, highways, advance forms of energy sources, national policy on power utilization and power generation and resource mobilization:

The first thing India needs is infrastructure, everyone gets to hear. "Power, highways, basic health and so on". Now India has been making great amount of economic progress. Although the wealth gets amazingly accumulated to a selected few it has created unprecedented amount of employment and good living conditions for the rest of the folks, that have access to such progress, and this is pretty much everyone, the Dalits, adibasis, priests, teachers, you just name them.

And with such growth in prosperity India is definitely looking towards more bargaining just about anywhere. So the natural question is how much do we really have before we can ponder over what we must aim for.

Lets talk power by which I mean electricity. In the last 2 years I have been in India I have had frustrating level of experience of the state of our power consumption options. I have lived for more than 2 weeks to 1 year at places including major metropolis of India and everywhere its the same experience: power-"cuts" to power-"denials" to power-"deficiency" due to power un-management, non-management and over-management.

From a consumer's point of view this sounds like a gross mismanagement. Although this may have been blind-sided by a chairman of atomic energy commission or a future prime-minister of India while giving their visions about how to go about nuclear power in a country which lacks enough provisions to utilize the traditional forms of electric energy.

My basic question is how can we really wrap up, revamp and optimally use all forms of electricity available to us since a century. Why must we not use such provisions in a way that saves us 150% of the energy that we must have wasted along, in our lackadaisical schemes of producing, distributing and selling such energy, [possibly due to a careless system rather than a technical snag.]

And if, we can consider such revamp of the electricity system to be one nationally important or significant course of effort we can leave the other significant effort viz. the issue of nuclear power and technology to an educated bunch of folks who can influence policy making and resource making policies in positive and fruitful ways much in the same way "green or white revolutions" have taken place in this country.

(2)
Tele-Communication infrastructure:

Roughly 10 years ago India was a much more pleasant country for me, given my energy levels and my spellbound attitude towards exploration. it was possibly easier to communicate, to hook oneself to internet in the evening, to call someone up from a public booth and talk for hours, to prefer the train over the bus and utilize this towards keeping my own outlook in shape.

Talk 2009, [or is it already 2010?] I have internet at home. I drive myself up, everywhere, I even fly inside India at a cheaper cost and telephones have been replaced by cellular..for such casual calls.

I believe my outlook for the world has become lopsided and often procrastinating, my comfort is personally discomforting and sometimes scary and expensive even if in terms of absolute numbers for currency the prices are cheaper. Why is that so?

I tend to believe a kind of monopoly which has been incorporated so thoughtlessly into our psyche as well as our collective way of living, that our personal economic system has become more draining than the economic progress and access to telecommunication we enjoy.

In many ways jobs are created to save the culture of privatization than the corporates themselves. There are mindless amount of commercialization at one place which serves to create jobs at another place and this creates a hollow in our psyche as well as in our private space.

I find it more difficult to recharge my cellular today than I found it hard to take my bicycle to a place which is 10 km farther. One reason I don't like to drive a car is the mindless crowd, but the real reason is I enjoy my manual burst of energy more than my ability to crush someone at the tip of my finger.

Given the difficulty of my persona to enjoy the advancement of technology and access I wonder with much frustration what is the real state of telecommunication in today's India. I believe true corporations are missing from our options which can provide much convenient service to the country rather than exploit every penny someone has with thoughtful capitalism.

An average capitalist like "Tata" or Reliance "Ambani" are much less reliable compared to the street side vendor that sales you a bag full of vegetable. Or are they? Am I a "regressionist"?? But my sensibilities tell me a different story altogether.

For every penny the street vendor earns he hardly does any capitalism. But the capitalist corporate giants do more and sometimes clearly unfavorable tricks.

Then who is a good businessman? You see the basic sense of business for the former is "look, this is what I have got and I have a price which is not going to be much different from the guy next block". If you find it convenient here, you buy it and he earns his penny.

But for a corporate giant they are going to research the whole market although not always in an acceptable way. They will have better commodities, at exorbitant prices. The amount of effort and push and pull they might spend may as well bring them a fraction of penny for the same thing the street side vendor sold at a penny.

But I for one prefer the dust free zone of the corporate shops although at some level of consciousness I know I am spending more because someone somewhere is doing the amount of thinking or transportation or preservation of the commodities.

The huge amount of profit that the capitalists make are because of the scales involved. Because once the process has been thoroughly understood by a few at some level and not preferably by the employed themselves a tiny fraction goes to the employed while much of the profit goes into the preferred banks and stock exchanges of the owners.

Now that I have ended up from telecommunication to business strategies of corporate giants and street keepers, I can safely jump to another idea.

(3)
I have possibly thought in my mind all the problems one can face in relocating from a community which is much developed. [although much expensive as well and hence in the cost cutting practices much different in the way people live their lives] But I believe most of it should go without saying that they all are correlated and with their non-existence they bring much difficult problems to deal with.

So I go to the real intention of writing this piece of article. What are 10 different problems where some of the efforts and energy and resources must be spent in this country.

I don't always think in terms of the money. I think in terms of capabilities and how to go from what we have to what we must have. And where does the vision come from. It does come form a very few people, and not always in very un-debatable ways. And my ideas are subjective, to my own background...

1. Dark matter, dark energy, study of universe.
2. Send satellites to study more about our universe.
3. Send rockets into space, 100 of them in 5 years if not 1 year.
4. A robust scientific data keeping system, for the whole country. ***

[*** this whole country is not 1 billion. Its roughly a million educated people, and that's all]

5. Use of scientifically advanced technology everywhere even if its expensive to buy from outside countries. If we can buy from them some day we can really make them. If we haven't we can worship Gandhi and Kalam but we will always be a handicapped nation even if we are a very rich nation.

We don't need sophistication for just a selected few but for the whole country. While "Ramdev Jee baba jee" fly in business class he talks shit about modernization. Look at the empire of goo he has created. Shun such people from our own psyche...

[let me stop preaching]

6. "Corporatize" the whole country. Because one system should prevail even if that means we have a credit of 1 trillion dollars. It takes us to the status of the rich and the famous. If we delay this process we will learn very late, may be into our sixties, when others would have learned it while they are teens.

7. particle accelerators and medical technologies, and neutrino studies and why not the international linear collider??

8. Major car company that can really compete in all aspects [eg price] with Volkswagen or say BMW. In the same vein 3 major operating systems from India and a state head who can be accepted in the west like Tony Blair is accepted in India.

The point is everyone talks about TB but no Indian knows about him. [Who cares what the media knows about him or a person from his own country does] We need to have our indigenous leaders with respect and dignity and a sense of royal privilege.

9. A major university [Only I.I.Sc. is close, there may be a few more that I may not know, but not more than 3], a monument [You may say already Taj is there, lets built an airport which is a city]

10. Revamping the city infrastructure across India and in 5 years. Having a cap on the highest price at which land can be sold in cities.


8.57 pm

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Spontaneous symmetry breaking, an insight.

Spontaneous symmetry breaking, an insight.

The Nobel committee decided to award the 2008 Nobel Prize to the Japanese Physicists, Yoichiro Nambu, Kobayashi and Masukawa for their theoretical works leading to our understanding of a phenomena called spontaneous symmetry breaking.

Nambu immigrated to the US and became a naturalized citizen while Kobayashi and Masukawa retained their Japanese citizenship. Nambu had corroborated the idea of spontaneous symmetry breaking from the theory of superconductivity to particle physics. But Kobayashi and Masukawa along with Cabibbo had formulated this in terms of a model of quark interaction leading to several measurable angles.

These angles represent "mixing" or rotation of meson systems from one type of eigen-states to another. A meson is a "bound" state of 2 different types of quarks and an eigen-state is a complex number function or wave function amplitude with a definite value for the physical properties of the quark or meson system. eg the meson can be either measured in a flavor eigen-state or a mass eigen-state. In the former it's flavor [quark content] is definitely known and in the latter its mass can be measured definitely.

A transformation or rotation or mixing between these two states is caused by an interaction or force in this case the weak-force. This force was thought to be symmetrical under a reversal in charge and parity [CP] of the wave-function state.

But its found that this symmetry is broken or that such a symmetry of CP does not exist. This is called CP violation. While Kobayashi and Masukawa had proposed such a violation or symmetry breaking through their mathematical work, the experimental evidence was found in the K-meson system [or Kaons]. The Belle and BaBar experiments found the evidence in the B-mesons.

A spontaneous symmetry breaking is akin to the symmetry breaking in the following situation. If you hold a sharpened pencil on a plain surface and release your hand, for a very small time, howsoever small, the pencil stands on the plain upright, and then falls in a specific direction.

Before the pencil falls, it stands upright because of the symmetrical situation provided by Gravity. No particular direction is chosen over another. But when the pencil falls it takes a particular direction and obviously the symmetry of the situation is lost.

If we "look" a little deeper into this its easy to find the reason. While the gravity is symmetrical, the fluctuation which may be present in the air which is much smaller in scale compared to the gravity can push the pencil in a particular direction.

While the air fluctuation is not a part of gravity we can't measure the gravity precisely enough. A little fluctuation in that force can cause a spontaneous loss of symmetry in the so called ground state or minimum energy configuration.

In the realm of subatomic particles and their interaction fluctuations are present as higher order [lower in strength] perturbations of the force field and provide an asymmetry or a loss of symmetry.

While in idea this sounds like a simple explanation the physicist's job is to measure the forces and the underlying processes so precisely as to measure this asymmetry. Particle Physics experiments measuring such processes do exactly that.

Furthermore it can be understood that spontaneous symmetry breaking is not a phenomenon confined to only CP violation type asymmetries. If there is an asymmetry in any process it can come because of presence of an additional small component of a force.

An experimentalist should try to measure any type of asymmetry and small forces that may occur in a particle production process. One such measurement which the author has tried to perform is the so called KS0-KL0 asymmetry or the asymmetry in the production of KS0 and KL0 from a D0 meson.

This process does not involve a significant CP violation but a significant interference between Cabibbo-Favored and Suppressed amplitudes.

This process may be akin to a process of spontaneous symmetry breaking.

Religion and science

Secularism is not an idea of looking at religions equally as we have often been told. All religions are different from each other and so are their Gods. The "Gods" reflect the mindset of their believers and thats the most powerful evidence why Gods are created by the human mind. But secularism is about separating the influence of religions, old and new alike, from the ways of governance.

Religion is the most powerful way to cause bloodshed, not atomic bombs. When the latter explodes people are killed but the blood evaporates within essentially no time.

Without religion Science may be lame but with religion Science is blind. A religiously influenced mind lacks scientific discrimination, thats why.

One scientific dogma can be busted by another. one religious dogma often nurtures another. (You see) religion is a multiplication of dogmas, necessary for its existence. Science could be dogmatic as a matter of "fact" not as a matter of necessity.

Scientists never have monasteries because they don't have to live in unison. Science itself is a miraculous phenomena of unison in disunion.

Science is the most cultivated value system. It gives you a "job" without asking "why?" for asking why.

We don't need monasteries, but we need laboratories and libraries and universities and downtowns with a lot of bars. Without the laboratories we will be tyrannous to our families, without the universities and libraries we will be wonderers but without the bars and hang-arounds our creativity will be like a dead man's dreams.

Science is like sex, the pain and pleasure are necessary, guilt is personal and ethics is power, morality is a dogma but choice is natural.

[If you can't take the pain, don't want pleasure, can't deal with the guilt, enjoying power eludes you, you are stuck with morality and can't make a choice, don't think of science]

On freedom of science and freedom of doing science

A log of a discussion I had with a bunch of folks I never saw...

Tony Owopetu
To what extent do you think data from scientific research should be shared ?

Austin T Mohr
Fully, freely, and without reservation. Of course, I'm a mathematician AND an idealist, so what do I know?

Manmohan Dash
Dear Austin, your sarcasm at self is very well taken. But I fully, freely and without reservation agree with your observation...

Manmohan Dash
the problem the antagonists of that scheme cite are ones of propriety and plagiarism. Like, if you share your data somebody else might coup you in going ahead and claim the science to be their own. But then I think that's a basic problem of science rather than problems of this scheme.

Austin T Mohr
"Like, if you share your data somebody else might coup you in going ahead and claim the science to be their own."

When are we going to move beyond notions of "my discovery vs. your discovery" and just work toward the common goal of "discovery"?

Manmohan Dash
Probably never. Because there in lies the threads of our bread and butter. I can happily give up on notions of my discovery [and i have done many times] but the fact that i can still talk about these discoveries are in a fundamental way reflecting as "my discovery". In other words there are no selfless discovery.

But your ideals are something I cherish myself. Our ultimate goals should be to emancipate these discoveries from the chains of "you" "me" and "mine", "yours". Only in those circumstances can we truly realize the passions of these discovery and feel embarrassed by the rewards it brings forth. This in itself is one of the most important ideals of science.

Austin T Mohr
"...but the fact that i can still talk about these discoveries are in a fundamental way reflecting as "my discovery"."

The word "my" here can be applied only in a extremely strict, technical sense. It reminds me of a similar argument about selflessness in general. If I value selflessness, then performing a selfless act is in itself a reward, and so my act is no longer selfless. I feel this is an exercise in semantics brought about by a poor definition of the word "selfless". One acts selflessly not because it brings joy (though it should and does do so) but because it is the RIGHT thing to do. This nebulous notion of "right" is what some attribute to mere warm feelings, but I feel that in attaining true selflessness, one rises above even these feelings. I do something because it is what SHOULD be done - no other reason.

Manmohan Dash
the "should be" and "right to be" done are pretty subjective, not only in the sense we perceive it but also how others would appreciate it. Otherwise it wouldn't only be selfless it would also be useless not in the sense that a person is useless because he discovered these ideas. But how would you feel if you are not at-all appreciated after making selfless discoveries. These discoveries have to be appreciated by everyone yourself including, for it to have some meaning.

Manmohan Dash
in other words nature doesn't intend us to be selfless. it intends us to be part of the process. selflessness is not excluded. Its just part of the process as much as self-involved-ness

Austin T Mohr
I feel we are a bit afield from the original topic. I call for free, open sharing of all scientific data. If I understand your rebuttal correctly, you fear such openness will result in misappropriation of due credit for discoveries. Consider, however, the rapid pace of development that could be achieved if all information was shared and all work was joint work. Can you defend that ensuring the discoverer receives proper credit is more important than quickening the pace at which new discoveries are made?

Manmohan Dash
Hi Austin, you got me exactly opposite to what I intended. I supported your idea of free science. I mentioned the antagonists of free science. Ideally we both are holding same values. I just cited the practical side as well.

I just wanted the discussion to be a little less lopsided.

And about credit, I still hold that due credit be given to the due person because the discovery has been made, so credit is not going to hamper the process of discovery, and giving credit to "someone's" discovery doesn't make it a selfish discovery. The discovery is still waging its tail to be used by us selfish humankind.

Giving due credit to due people propagates science and discovery in the right direction. But giving credit to the wrong person may kill the motivation of good science.

Also there may be multiple independent discoverer of the same discovery. eg. Richard Feynman, Tomonaga and Schwinger all of them discovered QED independent of each other.

I agree that freeing information and data can make discoveries rapid as well the competition. In that sense I don't care if someone can not compete to make a discovery fast enough. I am not vouching for such a person at-all even if hypothetically that person could be me.

But once the discovery has been made he who has discovered [or they, independent of each other] be given the credit. Also I have been sometimes felt handicapped due to lack of "free" information by a supposedly free collaboration, so I wouldn't have a reason to put-forth a non-free regime of science and discovery.

The megalomania of numbers.

The megalomania of numbers.

The experiments in High Energy Physics can usually be linked with the gigantic. Its contained in its own nature. When compared with the other fields of physics, its size, its numbers and some of its characters stand out in stark contrast.

For some these are not very welcome or at the least initiates a sense of peculiar response. But ask the high energy physicist, the experimenters, its pretty natural for them. To cut the cake fresh not just to eat it but to show that its fresh is a meaningless exercise. Here is a online-conversation to that in mind.

Nzola M.Z. De Magalhaes
How to publish 50 papers in 2 years?

This is the number of publications that a faculty once told me that would take a postdoc to be competitive when applying for a faculty position. Could anyone share tricks they use to submit papers at a high and steady frequency?
Thank you.

Matthew R Lockett
I find that 50 publications in 2 years a daunting -- and near impossible task -- for anyone. I would suggest the following strategy: pick a few institutions that you could see yourself working and look at the number of publications the faculty members had prior to joining the department. I would bet money none of them had 50 publications.

I also encourage you to remember that quality of publications is far more important than quantity. If you can get one field-altering paper in a good journal such as Science and Nature I think it is more impressive than a large number of iterative papers in journals with lower publication standards.
My two cents -- for what it is worth.

Alex B Berezow
With all due respect, that faculty member either is making stuff up or flat-out doesn't know what he/she is talking about. I just looked up a recent hire in our dept (microbiology), and he has 18 papers. 50 papers is insane-- I don't care what field you're in. In microbiology, at least, you're lucky to get out 2-3 papers per year. That's if you're REALLY good.

Michael R Webb
Are you sure it wasn't 15? A postdoc publishing 50 papers in two years is ridiculous. I'm assuming that it was also total papers by the time they apply, not papers published in a two-year period.

Approximately 15 papers from grad school and a postdoc combined is a reasonable number to have if you are applying for a faculty position, but certainly not the minimum. The field, the quality of the paper, and whether or not you are first author are also factors.

Nzola M.Z. De Magalhaes
Thank you very much for the replies. Believe me the number was 50. Going from experience, I also thought it was quite suspect. But why wanted to give this faculty the benefit of doubt since he's close to retirement, a leader in his field, and has had many post-docs become successful professors.

His most recent postdoc (the one who has published 50 in 2 years) was offered an assistant professor position this year. I thus wanted to learn from scientists in other institutions if this was the "new" norm for faculty appointments. Based on the replies, I'm much more relaxed and feel less pressured to start pumping out papers regardless of quality.

Jordan T Vidrine
I believe in quality over quantity - thank you very much! Solve the damn problems, already instead of publishing innovations. Innovations doesn't solve problems. I can come up with innovations all day if I want to, but it isn't going to solve any problems. I much rather solve the damn problem and get a Nobel Prize for it.

Manmohan Dash
Its relevant only to a particular field. In high energy physics e.g. in recent days if you are working in experiments, you can have 300 papers in 4/5 years

Matthew R Lockett
Could you please cite an example (or multiple if they exist) of an individual obtaining 300 papers in a 5-year span? I am highly skeptical of this statement.

Manmohan Dash
Dear Matthew I myself have 311 publications roughly in that time, check spires web page for author M. Dash. Ok I will give you the link here. Of these not all are published but have been submitted to journals and as usual all will be published in due course.

Also I haven't signed up for many papers due to various reasons which could have easily added at-least 50 more papers. this is nothing unusual in high energy physics as I had mentioned previously

Manmohan Dash
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=ea+Dash,+M
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=ea+Dash,+Manmohan

Manmohan Dash
please copy/paste this to your browser as the link is not updating properly.

Miquel Bosch
In Neuroscience, it usually takes 2-5 years to publish ONE SINGLE first-author paper. Fifty papers in 2 years means writing a paper every 15 days (assuming first-author papers, which obviously is impossible). 300 papers in 5 years means writing a paper every 4 days. Wow. It almost takes me that time to READ a paper :)

Manmohan Dash
That's why I stressed on the HEP scenario. To my knowledge no other field would have such a scenario. Its extremely difficult for a HEP guy to have too many first author publications. Simply because the machines and experiments they deal with are gigantic.

What this means is the work they do to have 10% of one of the paper is equivalent to a paper in many other fields i.e. 1 HEP paper may be equivalent to 10 papers in condense-matter physics papers compared on the basis of information and work involved.

But there are 400 guys involved in producing this 1 paper. [simultaneously they are working on 30/40 other paper's works] So they can collectively churn out this many number of papers. So all the papers where I am an author I haven't worked towards the analysis that's presented in the paper.

But I am an author, because I am involved in many different important aspects of the experiment without which this paper wouldn't have been possible. One example is the efforts towards collection of data. This aspect is the most important one in HEP experiments. One small mistake somewhere and the whole experiment has to stop.

If there is no new data this essentially means we can not produce another paper with significant value compared to a last one. Of-course there are many different kinds of studies that are done in the experiment.

And if you think of the Large Hadron Collider [the LHC] there are easily 2000 people there in one of its many experiments, who can be contenders to one paper while at the same time they may produce large number of papers in a short time. There is nothing to be surprised.

But if some of these HEP guys were to do publications in another field given their productivity, expertise and out of box thinking [again only some of these people] they would easily produce a factor of 2 or 3 times more high quality paper than the most outstanding guy in the field.

Again the most outstanding guy in another field, after proper experience can be a very valuable High Energy Physicist. A word of caution though is that there is a time lag in the beginning. Its extremely scary to learn the field of HEP experiment in the beginning because of the complexities of the experiment and therefore the complexities of the techniques to be mastered or learned.

This may easily take 2/3 years. After that an average guy produces papers at that rate. But an average guy can not explain any detail satisfactorily, only a few outstanding guys can.

Manmohan Dash
Another important aspect of HEP experiment I must draw open from the closets is the fact that much work might have been done before someone joins one experiment, e.g. many software modules and software frameworks. These would have taken an additional time if they were not done and significantly reduce the number of papers that could have been produced.

In these "past efforts" also included is the work towards the R&D work, machinery, simulation and so on. We also do the same before we produce our papers, but then if something has been done in a generic way in the past it makes life easier.

In that number 300 of papers there is also a factor of multiplicity somewhere. One particular study might have been done many times because the data that was available was more and some techniques were different.

So you may consider that 300 to be 200.

Consider the past effort to be another 5 years. So that makes it 10 years.

Consider there were an average of 200 guys in these 10 years that worked towards this. Each paper is say 10 papers in another field, Then one person produced (200x10)/(10x200) = 1 paper per year in another field.

Does it sound consistent now??

40 ideas in my mind, in a go...let it go

40 ideas in my mind, in a go, [41 actually, go ahead, some you will definitely laugh]

40 commandments from "life's a ghetto". Some jokes are rusty and not beyond the level of racism but that's because I don't know my race..

1. Protect yourself, protect others

2. You can fool yourself like you can fool others

3. Looking outward is like looking inward, we are a physical medium through which we see the outside as well as we see the inside. All principles of physics must be valid for our behavior. So learn to let go like the principles caused it. Not you. You are a mere observer.

4. When somebody says you did what they think you did, you did. When you say you did it, it sounds like you are following them. Learn to lead, as much as to follow.

5. Philosophy is the output of casual human thought. Science is the output of thought of the most learned people. Their thoughts are epitome of focused learning for decades. Their thoughts are pristine, in consonance with nature, often useless from a momentary consideration, yet careful and invincible.

6. Compassion is a virtue, anyone can master it, anyone can fake it.

7. humor is like a pain reliever. Don't take too much of it. Do not hesitate to apply when necessary.

8. A leaf that has medicinal value is not medicine. Nonetheless when necessary use it. We were all apes at one point in our life..

9. A dollar is the most powerful currency even if its not the most valuable one.

10. Science is the opposite of religion. Everyone is allowed to talk about science even if they are wrong. A selected few are allowed to talk about religion.

11. Politics is the step cousin of science. Things that are created in science can be used for politics. Politics can be used to decide the fate of science. Science can be disrespectful of politics. Politics can be vengeful of science. But science and politics must allow each other. and someday they can drink together, make rusty jokes towards others as much as to themselves.

12. Philosophy is a swift passage to unanimity. Science is a natural passage with the possibility of failure. Politics promises everyone a passage, for some it builds tunnel with lights inside [whoever said light at the end of the tunnel, light can also be inside the tunnel]

No sweet corn for anybody. Sweet carrots are expensive. What I see. Doesn't matter if I was wearing ray-ban or not.

13. God is like a witness. Anything can be done or undone in his name. He who witnesses does not have the power to change. Some people can decide the fate of Gods. At-least they have been entrusted to do so. Their heads are like pumpkins. Yellow from outside. Hollow inside with a lot of seeds for next generation of pumpkins. Also pumpkins are the most cheaply available big size vegetables that anyone wouldn't deny to buy. Difficult to cook. Sometimes tasty, sometimes unavoidable. When Americans go sane during thanksgiving they combine it with turkey to remember their past. Modern-day thanks giving can be celebrated with Pizza and meats of German Shepherd. Koreans may feel for one-day that they are welcome in the United States of America.

14. Indians often lampoon about what is right about them.

15. Russians love to drive when they are drunk. They tend to think that's when their mind is working. Also they love to go naked in sauna because everybody else is going like that. Its also a bathing-day for them. Usually the winter is in their heads.

15 Americans love the way they twist everything the opposite way. What about their heads? Is it twisted ??

16 Extra large is a word coined in USA. What a great contribution to English.

17 The Japanese are the most stubborn people in the world. If they think it is left, it has got to be left. For the rest of the folks it doesn't matter it is left or not. But the Jappy people will keep coming back to the same argument. Its like Egg is white. [but the yoke is yellow, but you have to break the egg to explain that and its not always possible, what if the egg is on the roof and the key to the roof is lost. The Jappy says what if the ladder is available? and you know how to take it from there. But then you decide to stop for upholding cultural etiquette. ]

18 Germans?? How many of them are there really? in this world??

19 Australians belong to the committee of nations, like prison belongs to the city.

20 Middle easterners are enjoying their life everywhere while the media is harping on their plight. Media has to harp on something, how else are they going to make their bucks??

21 There are no cities in India. Of-course there are bungalows, designated and special forest zones inside cities. Then there are rural areas inside the city, because democracy begins at villages and then it spreads. [like a fire or a flood?? or you make them spread like butter on bread?]

22 Canada is in Connecticut unlike Connecticut is in USA and also unlike USA is in USSR. Actually part of USA is in USSR and part of USSR is in USA.

23 Newzeland is in New-England. When the Newzelanders were babies they could not say it right, that's how they become.

24 The black ass has no connection with black holes. Black-holes and big bang were just pep talks and may qualify as aphrodisiacs to the less learned. Black ass could be a result of colorblindness or oversensitivity to color-talk [color-ism]

25 If you need an explanation for something ask Leon Lederman, he will forward this to me. That's my way of telling you something about Leon, but when I am fortunate he will talk something about me.

26 What does a Physicist mean? and this is a double question.

27 If I study so hard why can't I tell you the importance of education??

28 Why I like great scientists?? why anyone would like me. why I will always get what I want??

29 Why am I connected to so many people?? what do they really see in me??

30 What does it take to be a great scientist?

31 How do you, as a person, connect with the idea of science??

32 Do you like driving cars or you want to enjoy the other space in the car??

33 when I first thought the word lunatic I thought it would in someway associated to the moon, may be a lunatic person is one who stares at the moon a lot more than the normal person. and since no one can stare at the sun, there are no sunatic person or solarific person? terrific. can moon be called as lun in accordance with sun.

34 can a black-hole eat-up a star which is bigger in size compared to the original size of the star that produced the black-hole. May be the only guy that can answer this is S.Hawking. But you can give it a shot.

35 why is vacuum not a state of matter? is it by definition ? No presence of matter is defined as vacuum?

36 why would light bother traveling all the way up from another galaxy to ours?? If there are so many stars in the world why the universe is a cold place?? And if we know so much about the universe how many seasons are there in the universe? just one? winter??

37 In a wave equation in classical physics the time derivative is of 2nd order. In quantum mechanics its 1st order. is that something to think about??

38 Why time has only one dimension. why can't it have more than one?? you can always define space to 1 dimension with just the radial vector. Of-course you can break it up to 3 perpendicular axis. But can we not break time into such multiple dimensions?? if time at a very small scale proceeds infinitesimally small and there are many such dimensions in which time is making a progress so that at the perceivable scale we only measure time in one axis. Is there a contradiction to such an idea?? that would be the only effective way to cancel such an idea.

38 S.Hawking thinks about imaginary time. Its like you have a complex number associated with time so one is a real time and one is imaginary. [Although he states there is no connection between imaginary time and imaginary component of complex number.] Can we associate a vector with a time?? or a matrix of infinite dimension??

39 why almost all kinds of forces obey the wave equation? [Schrodinger's]

40 How does the world regard the crazy people? Why crazy people do not care about the world. Or do they??

The world will always be infected by some sucking relativists

If you want to know the mind of a great scientific mind of our time, read on. What he thinks about relativity and modern mechanics.

Yes I am a sucking relativist. The world will always be infected by some.

the cold (really?) the insight(wow) and the emotions(ha ha) are all going together. I miss my freedom, I miss myself and my ex-girl friends...and all the alcohol that I drink...I sure miss that too. can't talk much about women though. those chattering birds are sweetened fen-u-greek, painted shit, have them cos you need them. I am a chauvinist but I am a womanist too. so I am okay with it and what a contrast. I am just independent of all the shit. Like a man ought to be [in order to be safe from the shit]

I need my woman too. The shit is fine as long as she is intelligent enough. And who is going to decide on that? That's a question, the kind that I would entertain, to some extent. Look at my helplessness. Hey, here I am, the strictest of them all and the intelligent of them all but I am not going to rid myself of that unhappy situation of deciding on the merit of another person's intelligence because I am, all that I just said. I am going to do so because I am kind of dumb, I tend to think, of myself. So I am going to be much less loose than I should be and entertain the real dumb ones, if not ugly. So what is relative ? The beauty. No. Its manifestly invariant. [Yes, you are either beautiful for all men alike, or, you are not, No poet or looser allowed in the selection committee] Its the relativity of sense of pride and of prejudice and of predictions and of premonitions.

In that relativeness [if not relativity] of being tight or loose one may win or lose.

Now onto modern mechanics. I am a modern mechanist as well. Hey I travel really fast but I am tiny too. And that's why I see them all but they don't, see me. alas. I am un-attended and un-noticed and un-affected and un-understood. Oh, that's how it can not be spelled? pardon me and my sense of emphasizing and my sense of taking help from the dictionary in checking how things spell in English before seeing how they spell in my mind. But I am un-cluttered. And by my being so knowledgeable of my surrounding, my surrounding is often negligibly knowledgeable about me. I am an electron and they are my boundary conditions. they often don't see if I am an electron or another point with another charge. Its all the same for me but not for them. Oops I am a negatively charged point particle. What the hell is so good about me. Well if I travel opposite to time [what a seditionist ] they call me another name, a positron and never mention the fact that I am just exercising my free-will. Now who is a maverick, the electron or the positron? Well both. relativeness again. well take a clue. none of them. So here goes my knowledge of modern mechanics.

some more.

Kiss my ass, [thats an acronym for "be affectionate" even if you are not as intelligent as I am ]

Good night,
Oyasumi nasai
Shab Bakhair
Shubh ratri

Outsourcing science

Outsourcing science into India

I am initiating a piece of debate that can be personally un-tasteful to some or at the outset an irrelevant one. But I am of such an opinion and I have a view which is based on such an opinion. Therefore howsoever crippling it may be towards my own good, I am unable to think that its untrue.

Without any further glassblowing therefore, I am cutting right into what I am proposing. India needs to outsource science and create a formidable scientific great wall before the world will truly take note of its tremendous "scientific GDP". [don't de-abbreviate it].

While India can talk about its reasonable history and modern day activities of science its still not considered a bastion of science much in the sense of many advanced countries.

If an outsourcing like process for the creation of science and a culture of science can ensue, the later can take shape in as less as 5 to 10 years of trade like efforts, as compared to a war like effort. Yes, science benefits more from trading, of ideas, of equipments, of programs, of human power and so on, more than it does from politicking which is essential but not very fruitful.

Now what an outsourcing is?

What we do essentially is we transfer skills or services or products usually from one source to another for reasons of trade benefit or simply saying profit. How can we outsource scientific knowledge, skills, acumen, technology, process and the stringent of them all, a quality criteria?

Well we can take an exact clue from the example of business outsourcing. What we essentially do in a business outsourcing is directly transfer the technology to a destination regime [from a source regime] and then formulate or strategize business transactions, transfer or train the crew in a destination regime [or business enterprise?] and have a communication line up for checking any specifically defined business process such as a timely finish of a product or solution, a regular communication meeting and so on.

One can say , ah we already have a name for it, in the scientific world. Its called collaboration. But my point is how effectively do we really collaborate in scientific conglomerates across the globe, that business transactions are so much more effective and quality satisfying than one between scientific communities in two different nations.

I have one answer and you may come up with one. My answer is science is often offered a ridiculously and shamelessly lower strata in many societies, including the west, where, while science can seem to be envious to one from far east and middle east and no man's east, its still accorded a very low and often misleading priority compared to an unnecessary brouhaha, blame it on media, the political herd or some one's watch, it sticks like a strain of ink blotted on my shirt or yours.

So in this lower priority of scientific matters we lead a life of culturally and morally lowered self esteem but if we have the money or line of credit we purchase the best of the best of scientific or technological invention.

Now I have made my point. If you do science in Uganda you have to stay put with that country's material prowess to purchase a scientific necessity and non-necessities and if you stay put with the economy of United States of Austerimeca [oops mis-spelled] you have to purchase in accordance with that country's whim.

So there lies the road-blocks of science. It does not work on the basis of a business constraint [and it should not] But here is my point: it should made to work like one to bring further credits of quality into the name and game of science.

Open up the jobs of science in one country for people in another for the over all benefit of the mission of a specific objective. And that's a kind of outsourcing, you would agree.

Are laws of nature logical??

Are laws of nature logical??

Complex, they are, for sure. How we scientists describe the laws of nature can be a simplistic way of presenting them, even if we quantify them in exactitude. [and solitude from other laws] But the way they interplay themselves in real life is as natural and complex as the original phenomena they describe.

[hello, that's why we need computers and supercomputers even if the law is an exact solution, because of the complexities involved, the law doesn't exactly act like it were in its most simple form. ]

Then are these laws logical?

Now let me ask you, what do we mean by something to be logical. Let me give an example, when something follows our understanding, in a mathematical or quantifiable way, we say its logical. "Its only logical that this happened, or that happened and so and so, that's only logical" we don't wait to calculate stuff but in our hindsight we continue perceiving things as logical or otherwise.

So are nature's laws logical? Then the obvious answer is yes. We have always been successful in describing physical and natural phenomena in quantifiable ways and sooner or later they become perceivably logical.

Quantum mechanics? Is it perceivable? Wait for another 100 years for an answer, we would no longer be saying "no one understands QM". The small scale phenomena might already have been a way of life so much so that our mind would find it hard not to form perceptions about truth and laws/rules at the same scale.

May be we would be so accustomed to quantum gadgets, so much so, that once in a while when something goes wrong some where and a bunch of atomic bubbles hit our skin we would scream much in the same way we would if somebody takes off wax off our skin.

Our body would have become a sensitive detector of quantum level phenomena and our minds would have formed perception of such a strange world much in the same way we perceive free fall or gravitational push and pull.

Where are WE heading ??

This is an "instantaneous" essay I wrote as I see our standing in the world, or as I can think.

Disclaimer: I can be completely wrong-witted and you may be completely dumb-witted.

Where are we heading really??

in a normal sense nowhere. But in a subtle way we are moving into a brighter future for mankind as opposed to a negatively painted picture by the propagation of a culture of pseudo-science. This culture is adhered so religiously that it has created a myth of its own.

Talk Global warming. Its a myth. [Don't throw your shoes on me for saying that] Why is it a myth? A lot of evidence can be accumulated and precariously substantiated in favor of GW. How many opposing theories are really there which are equally debated in scientific communities and which has for example an equal footing as far as scientific methodologies are followed or involved?

I might not have come across one. You can say there is scientific unanimity about such a phenomena. Let me ask you this? What evidence are there that a reverse trend will not start itself, call it Global reverse warming [not exactly global cooling] Why GW must be considered one that is a constant change in the planet's thermodynamics? And this phenomena of GW which is causing so much rise in the temperature, the causes are human activity, if you generically summarize all the factors that are supposedly causing the GW.

Now we are saying we are devastatingly capable of changing the thermodynamics of the planet on a scale which is equal to it if not more. Alright ! So the thermodynamic capabilities of nature are less effective on that scale compared to what we can contribute by our greedy and needy manipulations. Unbelievable!

A natural forest fire doesn't increase the temperature of a region for a decade. But an industry in that region will. But then this is more a local affair thermodynamically, than one which is global in scope both in space and time and more so in time.

Well the industry is running day in night out but its operations are controlled. And if you live exactly near the industry you complaint about pollution and temperature and if the industry is not built with the best practice of safety it might pollute remote distances as well.

But there are patches nearby which are independent of such effects. So change on a global scale induced by large scale human activity is not exactly one that bothers me. I tend to believe that reverse thermodynamic changes do take place and sometimes can take place on an unbelievably nicer way compensating for the melting of the polar ice and so on.

And at-large this is a regime where power of nature conquers over whim of man-kind. And how do we know that we are the ones that are causing the ice to melt? It might be another natural thermodynamic process on our planet. 3/4th of the planet is water. This will take in the temperature, get heated up, evaporate.

And if it worries you that we are constantly increasing our temperature then remember this we are also living in a cold dark universe. Our planet is embedded in such a space where the thermodynamics of the atmosphere will be connected to the thermodynamics of the space immediately next to it.

Now let me cut back into the subject where we are progressing rather the specific example I am citing to counteract the menace of culture of pseudo science. You may like to criticize mine as the prophetic science but is there anything beyond that to tease me?

Why I believe the future of mankind is more brighter than a scary one. Well our way of living changes for better and have always been like that at-least since the unset of industrial revolution and even before that.

Our quality of life on average over geography, possibilities of calamities, disjoint social status and so on, has bettered and I tend to believe that it is directly proportional to the applicability of the knowledge we often accumulate.

So the unusable portion of our knowledge isn't contributing towards our life issues, but that's because we haven't pursued them enough. And to the mind of a person with common sense the amount of knowledge is always on the increase, it gets added up.

The number of books increase, the libraries increase, their readers and practitioners they are always on a path of rise. They never dwindle like the water in a river dries out.

The accessibility to knowledge can dwindle.

We do not get smarter day by day or even wiser day by day. But our options are always on the path of rise. Our prosperity is a matter of our options. Our fathers, grand fathers and theirs had lesser options, we have more.

But they might have been wiser or else we wouldn't have the wealth we have for ourselves. They might not have been smarter because they didn't have to compete with the future generations. But they did have to think about producing or conserving enough resources for the future. So they had to have been wiser.

Now where does the world really suck if such a prosperous growth need to be overseen. Its human greed and mindless consumption. For example an artificial blockade can appear from intense greed or even just human existence which could be a trigger for a negative fall of our brighter future.

Nature may not replenish every-what and everywhere. So we need to be guarded against our consumption needs. But we do not need to be over-scared.

Now again where are we heading? Nowhere. But to be subtle we have a brighter future. because we are yet to fully appreciate the beautiful world we live in. The amount of comfort it has in store for us. And the forgiving nature of nature which has always inspired us to be its true slaves. We are not the master of the universe. If we behave like one we must take its consequences.

Friday, March 5, 2010

My tryst with the unimaginable.

My tryst with the unimaginable.

What's the smallest scale of distance we hope to measure or we have almost measured using our most modern techniques and equipments is something of a scientific discussion we can have in the coziest of environ, usually available to someone who has an iota of interest in such insights.

And in such a discussion I had, with someone, I was asked a few questions which are as fundamental and interesting to the lay audience at the same time as they could be. To be mentioned specifically is this one: Do we really see something we call an atom, or a molecule to exaggerate for the purpose of satisfying our imagination for the macroscopic scale?

[boom...bizarre...how can we call something of a molecule a macroscopic reality?]

Well anybody who can submit himself to an insight which is uncanny and unusual at the same time for the layman has the probable aptitude for such a misnomer especially since the mechanics of the smallest is precisely understood and helplessly acceptable.

In that world of the smallest by which I mean an atom or a proton or a bound state of a couple of quarks, a molecule has a macroscopic presence. Yes, for the lay audience, again, an orgy of many quarks has been known to exist or at-least has been espoused in experimental ways which I have been an audience to and where I have had my personal contributions as a hard-toiling citizen experimentalist.

And the answer could be a prototype of what I can always remember even if all my scientific prejudices are busted, all my scientific facilities are doomed or all my interest quivers like a skidding automobile does on a uncontrollable unpredictable sheet of icing on the most unexpected patch of the highway.

Its something of a very fundamental intuition in understanding and aptly answering that piece of question. "What do we really mean by we see an atom? or for that matter a gross object that we hold in stark contrast to an atom for the gratification of our average sensory system?? "

We mean we see them, we mean we really see them. But that also means we see them because how the bunch of light particles bounces off of such objects and how we have grown to form impressions about such objects and their "see-ability" via such a process.

Now this light-reflection or more precisely "visible" light reflection might not be available in all the situations where we try to see something whose "see-ability" itself is of an esoteric concern.

We do see the vastness of the Universe not through the visible light rays but through the more powerful candidates for the detection such as the X-ray [a preferred candidate as well] or the UV rays.

And when we convert our X-ray image back into something that our eyes can readily perceive we claim we have seen and we have. And we claim we have seen a source of unusual radiation or no radiation, such as a black-hole, sans its Hawking leakage. And we make more truthful representation of our ability to see such cosmological objects.

Such a notion of our ability to see extremely tiny objects is also a significant claim of the philosophy of vision of such otherwise inaccessible visual reality although when we come down to the discussion of such small objects our claims are further complicated by our knowledge of the small aka quantum mechanics and wave particle duality.

Nonetheless one can give an example of such "see-ability" in the last one decade which was impossible in the preceding 8 decades of knowledge of the behavior of such small objects. I am evincing the power of an invention made in the last 1 or 2 decades, an atomic force microscope or a STM [scanning tunneling microscope] which in its output acts no less than an ordinary microscope in giving us direct vision to the wickedly small that escapes our ability to see them.

But in its input there are technologies that surpasses our common-sensical knowledge of the world around us even if in reality such a world consists of the tiny realities that escape our common sense at the first place.

This involves a probe which uses other physical quantities as a variable to detect the structure than the direct intensity of light that fall on the object and reflects, such as in a camera.

And when such other than light signals are converted in a way that gives an impression, howsoever partially the information is retrieved, of an image readily perceived by our eyes we claim we have or we can see it as in we have seen it, much in the same way we have seen the moon.

So in the last decade or so we have seen or we have created a great potential to see the atom, disrespectful of the question, "directly or indirectly?"

In another 6 decades when people will be buying use and throw cameras from wal-mart to take pictures of atoms and molecules we wouldn't be concerned about such a question. May be just the scientists will be.

But before the passage of those 60 years, now, in 2010, I can wholeheartedly claim to have seen an atom and a multitude of them in a microscope which I don't want to categorize as a gadget any different from the one which is a regular eye opener like the one you find in a dilapidated laboratory of Maxwell. Did he really have one or anyone of his time did is a question you shoot at a historian.

This is my tryst with the imaginable. I just bothered to talk about it because this is close to my heart for 15 years now shooting its ugly head from memory of a discussion about the meaning of seeing something. I didn't have a sophisticated answer and 5 years from now I will have a more sophisticated answer.

But my tryst with the unimaginable concerns with our ability to detect scales which are much smaller than an atom which has been possible. But how far down have we really been?

I never pondered to ask myself that question until very recently when I downloaded a technical description of a detector that is on a mission to evince the presence of gravitational wave-particles in the making of our Universe.

This detector which uses the principle of interferometry to detect a distance scale as small as 100th of a proton which is 10th of an atom, therefore 1000th of an atom in total, is an ongoing experiment that provides much promise in the way of experimental discovery that has the potential to be one of the most remarkable discovery of the century, the gravitational wave-particle.

I read through a summary of this experiment called advanced LIGO and another related measurement that they performed to evince the pleasure of progress of real fundamental science in a way which gives credence to many worthwhile schemes of theoretical physics itself such as making aptly clear how a precise measurement of strains at the level of quantum mechanical system extends to the reality at the non-quantum or the classical level itself.

The specific article [in "New Journal of Physics"] is about measuring the near quantum mechanical state of an object [which can be as large as 1 kg] which is like saying we can measure a deflection of such an object to the scale as small as "10 to the negative 18" thereby measuring its oscillation which has got to be in the scale of 1000th of an atom's extent and hence essentially quantum mechanical in nature.

In the only other words possible "The quantum mechanical behavior of a large object such as your mom's head is measurable by present day detectors" and its only possible because we can measure particles of the size of 1000th of an atom.

If you happen to know that there are already grand equipments on this earth or a planetary system where we have sent one which can measure such distances or particles of such extent then you are the one who should be writing another essay to talk about our ability to "see" the smallest.

A recession in Science

A recession in Science.

6th December 2009

Is a scientific recession as imminent as one in economy? Scientific explorations aren’t often directly influenced by a ”demand and supply” and a market volatility. You’d think that I am out of my mind to suggest that.

[and add to that the mind of few others and I am still out of it like I am out of my credit limit or I am out of the gasoline.]

You’d say ”Hey Mr Scientist, how can you even say lack of funding isn’t going to directly cut the lifeline of scientific missions, thereby bringing a calamity ”as large as” a economic one, into the routine activities of the scientific communities?? I do not agree despite of the fact that I am still agreeable.

If its ensured that a billion dollars is supplied for the operation, overhead, weekly supply of pizza and champagne [doesn’t go together, does it?] and a full and generous support for a full year for the full size of staff of a laboratory that's trying to explore the universe, to excavate the colloquial Higg’s Boson [or balls?, does he have them, that seems to be the problem scientists are looking to solve] for upholding the sanctity of the most standard of all the theories that have come up so far in the history of science, still the Higg's boson won’t be delivered to the doorstep of whoever ordered it.

This is a fundamental difference between the laws of economics and the laws of science which extends to the laws of nature. There is no ”demand and supply” in science. Nature is not amenable to such a scheme. You demand a Higgs and that will be delivered to you. That happens in fairy tales and wonderland.

That lack of scope for a demand and supply type approach to science doesn’t yield any positive as it doesn’t yield any negative. Lack of a economic fire-power can severely cripple the infrastructure of science in a way lack of finance can cripple your dreams for a new house, nonetheless you can live somewhere and in comfort.

That is not to say the importance of economic power in making the goals of science unaffected. But here is a simple reasoning why an economic recession could not directly lead to one in science given other factors aren’t quite different.

Science acts on the fundamental strength of human mind. Economy is a scheme of human society and the most powerful minds aren’t always, fortunately, affected by such schemes.

[And these minds are scattered in the world, over centuries, over wide geography and completely independent of each other.]

The culture of scientific societies can be extremely loathsome and unproductive towards the progress of knowledge but this is so even in times of great economic flexibility. Scientific activities thrive in the most fundamental requirements and as long as these fundamentals are available, science goes on. It doesn’t go at full pace but doesn’t characterize a recession.

But exactly how a scientific recession creep in? Its a matter of history, one of politics of communities, nations and inter-nations, of lack of true scientific minds, of lack of fundamentally needed space and creativity, of lack of dissemination of knowledge that has been accumulated painfully over decades and centuries and to the lesser fortunate parts of the globe.

When human community suffers in one part of the globe, no matter how much progressed we are and capable of luxury with our amassed wealth, a fundamental reason for the cause and progress of science is lacking. Science can greatly flourish if its usefulness is greatly appreciated, its power is greatly harnessed and its power is greatly shared.

Such a principle may not be greatly attractive for a economic system like a bank but it is forthright and attractive and creates a scientific mission out of nowhere. Its a human activity, its not a human scheme.

A recession in science is well avoided by creating newer values and newer activities. Science is often an exploration. And only then its value is transferable to other regular requirements of the consumer communities. There can be a swift transfer or an extremely unyielding transfer that lingers and a period of darkness and blind alleys ensues.

This is probably natural to a process of harnessing related to exploration of something which hasn’t been explored before. A supply of economic caliber can enhance or diminish, the likelihood of something. Its lack even to the magnitude of an economic recession can not masterfully control the fate of science. Economic recession exists at maximum for half a decade or so. Scientific plannings and futuristic missions can be envisioned and even executed in matters of decades and more.

There are many examples in fundamental as well as applied efforts, even at the grand scale. An economic recession is easily recognized and avoidable with long and short term precautionary measures but not so can be said about a scientific recession.

That is a fundamental reasoning why the two must not be connected. All it took me to write this essay is to take a pen and a paper and an hour of human activity including ”focused thinking”. I can do this even if I am involved in a war or a depression or an epidemic. Scientific minds are relatively unbridled. Complete handicap of a scientific mind by the influence of economy is unthinkable.

An economic recession is a period of discontinuity in economic prowess and economic prosperity. A scientific recession would be one where scientific power such as the capability of a nation to run its infrastructure, power generation and consumption pattern is severely hampered without the unset of a natural or unnatural calamity such as a war.

A war is then a political or social calamity directly influenced or influenciable by economic state of affairs that may or may not trigger the productivity of scientific missions directly because of economic reasons, of-course the political and social state of affairs can bring in great damage to scientific progress. There are also examples to the reverse when after a damaging period for economic prosperity and scientific progress there has been great boost to such wealth because of shear upward mobility in the human minds ”not to perish under great calamities", which is otherwise hard to fathom.