I keep wondering why we, humans, tend to crave and look for connections. Connections with each other, with things, with other creatures, even with aliens. We keep questioning where we belong, where we came from, and if there are other species that exist out in this universe or other universes. And yet we are so alone. Lonely and alone. And we continue to live life alone without bothering to pay attention to the most intricate layer that can link us all together for real, the layer that already exists and that we all need to realize that it exists.

Our universe began and was created from a piece of matter the size of a chickpea.  This means that everything we are and is around us today belonged once to that little chickpea. Everything in this infinite universe was so tightly connected once upon a time. And we still are, all our atoms are still connected, separated by distance and space, but still very much interconnected. The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) showed us that this whole universe is connected through a faint background glow that goes back all the way to the Big Bang. The CMBR showed us not only that, but also that the universe is flat and that stars and galaxies leave ripples on the fabric of space-time the same way that a stone dropped into a pond leaves ripples on the surface of that pond.

And what is space anyway? We don’t know for sure. The way we perceive space is something, but the way it actually is might turn out to be something completely different. We know that space is shaped, that it bends, stretches, and that it varies in relation to time. We know that our retinas perceive things around us in 2 dimensions and that the brain adds the extra depth dimension. And now we know that space shrinks the more we speed.

But can space not exist at all? The non-existence of space is a concept very difficult to imagine, it’s something we are not used to, completely outside our comfort zone. Yet for some people who suffer a special kind of brain injury, it is part of their everyday lives. People living with a condition called “spatial neglect” lost their sense of space due to a blow or a shock to the head. One person living with this condition completely lost all sense of the left half of his world. He wasn’t aware of the presence of the left-hand page of a book, the checkers pieces on the left side of the board, or even turnings on his left-hand side. But the most intriguing part was that he was completely unaware of his lack of sense of space. To him, everything seemed normal.

And as we go through our daily lives, everything seems normal to us. We get busy with our problems, our problems at work, at home, on the commute to work, our cars, paying our bills, and so on. Everything that is material in our world. Stress. It’s the plague of our generation. We are so used to it that we don’t realize that it’s not normal. Things should not be this way. Stress confuses us and keeps us busy from looking around us and seeing things for what they are. It keeps us from enjoying life, from smiling, from being human. We instead wake up, have a terrible commute to work, spend our day battling with other miserable human beings and trying to make ends meet, yell at our spouses or kids when they call us at work and interrupt the “important” things we are working on, and finally have another horrible commute back home. We get home, the only thing we worry about is having some sort of a dinner. We watch TV, if we got time, about people who lead better or worse lives than we do, and then go to bed so we can wake up in the morning and start another miserable day. Things should not be this way. Things were not meant to be this way. How did we end up in such a terrible state of life? How did our world get contained within the four walls of our stressful work? And why does the world now revolve around Wall Street? Why do the smartest and brightest school graduates end up with investment banking jobs instead of working in the physics or applied sciences fields? This just does not make any sense! We should be out there talking to each other, instead of connecting on a virtual social networking website called Facebook. But we really have not much of an alternative. Facebook is our only way out. We crave connections, and deep down something will drive us in that direction, no matter whether it’s real or an intangible electronic and optical network called the Internet.

This week, the next time you meet someone, try to make a connection. Look that person in the eyes and try to go beyond the superficial. Ask this person a few more questions about how they are, how they’re doing, how they’re feeling. Follow through. You’ll be amazed at how quick you can make a connection. Or can re-establish the connection that is already there and has been there for billions of years.

“You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.” – James Allen

Despite rapid scientific progress, much about how the brain works remains a mystery. The way individual neurons cooperate in ensembles of thousands or millions has been very difficult to decipher.

The mind-body problem is one of the central issues in the history of philosophy, which asks us to consider if the brain and the mind are identical, partially distinct, or related in some unknown way. In philosophy of the mind, Dualism is a school of thought that believes that when it comes to the relationship between mind and brain, mental phenomena are non-physical. The mind is identified with consciousness and self-awareness, while the brain is where intelligence is located, within our bodies which are in the end highly advanced biological computers.

I was recently surprised to learn that up till this day and age the precise mechanism of storing memories is not well understood. How do we remember things so vividly some times, and other times hardly remember something that took place yesterday?

The mechanism of memory formation has been identified, and is located in a part of the temporal lobe called Hippocampi. The mechanism of storing memories and where they are located, however, is a different story. There have been numerous experiments to crack the code, with several outcomes. The end result however is that the mechanism of how memories are stored is still undetermined.

The intriguing part is that when scientists tried to locate memories in any specific area of the brain, they failed. There was an experiment conducted on mice a few decades ago – and yes I am against lab experimentation on animals – to try and locate the part of the brain that contains memories. The mice were first trained to find their way around and out of a little maze, then subjected to partial brain tissue removal in order to find out which part of their brain contained the instructions on how to get out of that maze. No matter which part of the brain was removed, the mice always made their way out of the maze with the same exact precision. This led scientists to the conclusion that memories exist in all parts of the brain equally at the same time.

But this makes me wonder, what if memories are not stored in the brain to begin with? What if they are stored elsewhere within or even outside the body, leaving only the mechanism to recall those memories within the brain? What if we are nothing but avatars to a consciousness that is located somewhere else? What if this whole system is nothing but a super advanced computer program? A hologram?

In quantum physics we are told that we can’t find where one particle is because it’s always a reflection of all particles. Einstein showed us that light has always the same speed, that we live in a vacuum, while Quantum physics showed us that matter does not exist, that atoms are 99.9% empty. On the subatomic level, reality behaves according to the expectation of the observer. Does that mean that the way we think can alter our physical reality?

I could be wrong, who am I to know, but something inside me refuses to believe that this is all an accident. It’s just too perfect to be an accident. And now that we know that there are billions of galaxies out there with trillions of stars, most claim that Earth is an accident bound to have happened and that the conditions needed for life to exist – and believe me there are endless conditions that somehow managed to coincide here and now – miraculously got together to allow human beings to form and develop, and that Earth is unique. Which is an argument that could go either way: Earth could be so unique and therefore someone must have planned for all the conditions of life to exist in one place and create it, or Earth could have been an anomaly in a vast universe full of failed stars and planets and just happened to exist by accident. But even that we do not know for sure. We are finally discovering exoplanets out there, and hopefully one day soon we can determine whether or not Earth is a blip or is more common than we originally thought.

So eventually, humanity went into lots of ups and downs, including the dark ages, and finally a light came through. Einstein. And precisely in 1919 when Sir Arthur Eddington, a British astrophysicist, proved indeed that Einstein is right and that Sir Isaac Newton was slightly off in his calculations. Up till Einstein’s time, Newton’s theories were the best we had to understand gravity – the most important factor in our universe and the reason why we exist. The application of Newton’s gravity theory proved right in every instant, except for one: when it comes to measuring the rotation of the planets, all matched perfectly, all but Mercury. Something about Mercury, the closest planet in our solar system to the sun, did not add up. So for 300 years, this did not bother many people and we accepted the notion that we don’t have to know everything at precision, until Einstein came and questioned things. And it turned out that this small insignificant variation in Newton’s theory was a huge step for humanity. So all of a sudden, humans took a big leap forward in technology, and thanks to Einstein’s general relativity theory, things like the GPS, nuclear fusion, and semiconductor chips that are built into our laptops exist. And we finally uncovered the secrets of gravity, or so we think.

Otherwise, we can live without thinking about the general relativity theory on a daily basis, because the theory revolves around two principles which – up to this day and age – do not seem to take place in our every day lives. The theory is used to understand situations when objects are moving (a) near the speed of light, and (b) near a strong gravitational field. That is why Newton’s theory still works even although it’s incomplete, and up till today we still use his formulas. But Newton’s formulas are simpler and they do work here on earth in most situations.

Einstein showed us that space and time are intermingled and that they combine to form a fabric upon which objects are placed, and the heavier their mass is, the more gravitational power they exercise on this fabric and on other objects around them. Please refer to this youtube video for more explanation:

So for a long time I struggled with understanding Einstein’s general relativity theory, and that is because I jumped the gun and got all confused by the main conclusion of this theory: that time is relative to where we are and that it slows down the faster we move. Another hard to grasp aspect of it is that the speed of light is always the same, no matter how slow of fast you’re moving, it will always be 186,000 miles/second relative to you.

Regarding the first dilemma, that time slows down the faster we move, I was more comfortable with the idea when I understood that Time is nothing but a direction. In addition to the 3 dimensions we are currently familiar with, length, width and depth, Einstein advocated that Time is nothing but the 4th dimension. To illustrate this I recommend watching this youtube video:

So time is nothing but a direction that is motion related, and the faster we travel the shorter this direction is in space. Distances shrink the faster we travel, therefore the slower the time.

What is interesting to note is that really, in space, there are no dimensions. Whatever we perceive as a 3D world is the result of mechanism embedded in our brains. Most animals perceive our world in 2D only. Our human retinas are made to perceive in 2D too, while the extra depth dimension is added by our brain. We view the world through cortical pictures organized by the brain.

A practical example of this is the new 3D TVs now out in the marketplace. With these TVs, you can watch a 2D movie, then with a press of a button and by using special effect glasses, the 2D movie is transformed into a 3D one. Dimensions are an illusion.

To address the second part of the dilemma, that the speed of light is always the same, I struggled even more. Up till Einstein’s time, scientists used to believe that our world is contained within some sort of ether. By proving that the speed of light is always constant, Einstein showed us that there is no ether, and that we live in a vacuum, since the speed of light is variable only when not moving through a vacuum. Light never slows down, it might get delayed when moving through other mediums, such as air, water or glass, but when it exits these mediums it continues traveling at the same rate as when it originally entered them, with no energy added. Since energy levels did not change, we realize that slowdown was merely an illusion.

And to further demonstrate how time and light are perceived in our brains, I found another youtube video to be helpful:

Lately, and thanks to our modern advanced technology, we were able to determine that the universe is 13.72 billion years old. We did so because our most advanced telescopes were able to see the furthest out galaxies and stars away from us, which are 13.72 billion years away from us. Thus, as far as we know and can see today, this is how old the universe is. But it literally took 13.72 billion years for the light to travel from these galaxies and reach us here on earth for us to be able to see it. This means that whatever we see today actually took place in that star 13.72 billion years ago. Who knows what happened to that star afterward, we can’t see it yet, and by now it’s probably long gone into some supernova. What all this is telling us is that we will always, always, observe events in the past. Even here and now, in your room, looking at this chair 2 feet away from you, you are seeing the past that just took place in the smallest split of a second ago. The past is nothing but an illusion.

So I figured the best way to start my blogging experience is by discussing basic topics in physics under a category that I call “The Basics.” In The Basics, I will cover topics such as Einstein’s general relativity, gravity, string theory, and above all quantum physics. Of course there are more basic physics than this, such as the understanding of light, molecules, and atoms, but I will bypass these and might touch base on them at one point or another throughout the blog.

Now when I first began looking into physics, I was more interested in Einstein and his theories, but eventually ended up becoming a bigger fan of Quantum physics with the likes of Bohr. There are apparently two schools of thought in physics: general relativity which is concerned with the large and the grand such as stars and galaxies, and quantum physics which focuses on the minute small things in this world, i.e. the atomic level. Apparently also, these two schools don’t agree on how things are and contradict each other. So for a long time – and by that I mean around 50 years, not so long in the whole scheme of things – there was a problem in physics in the sense that something was missing. How could things on the atomic and sub-atomic level be controlled by different laws of physics than larger objects around us? Well the dilemma still exists, but we know for a fact that both schools are correct in their own way due to numerous scientific experiments and real life applications that prove their claims. Now some scientists claim that a new theory, called String Theory, is the answer and is in fact the mother of all theories, and that it does bring the two schools of thought together. The issue with this theory is that it is indeed just a theory, and that until today we have no proven facts to support it. I will discuss this theory in a later blog, but for now let’s get back to quantum physics.

What is quantum physics? A bizarre mystery! In a nutshell it is the description of how things work on the microscopic level. There are five main ideas represented in this theory:

- Energy is not continuous, but comes in small but discrete units.
- The elementary particles behave both like particles and like waves.
- The movement of these particles is inherently random.
- It is physically impossible to know both the position and the momentum of a particle at the same time. The more precisely one is known, the less precise the measurement of the other is.
- The atomic world is nothing like the world we live in.

To further explain this, I recommend watching this youtube video:

Hmmm… there are endless probabilities to how the electron acts and where it ends, but the electron behaves in a predetermined manner when it’s being observed… what does this all mean?

Well physicists have been trying to understand that for years. Welcome to the strange world of quantum physics! I was greatly surprised when I learned that, but the world we live in is a very strange world and this is what we have to accept and understand.

On a sub-atomic level, uncertainty of the electron’s exact position and behaviour does not impact us in our daily lives. It happens so fast, too fast for us to notice, and on such a small scale. Imagine if the atom is a football field and the electron is a football player, metaphorically the electron can appear and disappear at random locations within that field an endless amount of times within a split of a second.
As a matter of fact, over 99% of the atom is empty space, leaving the electrons and protons with the remaining less than 1%. That means that we are empty, humans and everything around us, we are empty. What we see is nothing but the result of these electrons moving around the atom at high speed. In other words, thanks to the probability of the electron appearing in random places around the atom under endless occasions in such a short of amount of time, we are who we are and this world exists in the way it does today.

Well if the atoms are empty, what binds them together? How can we see an apple, a tree, a running dog, an airplane? Scientists attribute this to a force called electromagnetism, with derivations that they call the strong and the weak force. I will explain these terms more in later blogs. Despite appearances life is actually more complicated than it seems.

Hello world. Big world. Strange world. Whatever you are, I am here to try and understand you.

A few years ago I listened to Lisa Hall’s “Is this real?” song for the first time, and it moved something inside of me. That something was not the love feelings, happy or sad feelings that typically get triggered by most songs. It was more along the lines of “what does she mean by ‘is this real’? What is she referring to?” Now Lisa Hall could have been referring to anything, but this question deeply bothered me, and at the time I didn’t know why. Is this real? Mind you at the time I was too superficial and plain to consider Physics a hobby. So I didn’t explore it back then, didn’t explore why this song and this question in particular moved something inside of me.

Now, a few years later, and after getting lost in life and losing my sense a direction, a couple of years ago I decided to explore the desire buried inside of me to understand things, life, what we are and who we are, to understand whatever my little tiny brain can understand. Turns out there is an actual branch of physics specialized in that, and the branch is called Cosmology. The study of everything large and small in our universe.

Over the next few weeks, months, years, who knows how long, I will try to explore the pieces of physics that will help lead to an answer to the question of “is this real?” without over indulging in too many technical terms as unfortunately most physics books end up doing. I know I’m exaggerating when I say that I can help lead to an answer, after all who am I?! I’m nothing but a small little person who is not half as smart as many of those physicists out there. But I’ll try in my own terms and language to find some answers, or rather to theorize some as I evidently cannot prove things for a fact. I will be looking into questions including, but not limited to:

- why is everything in the universe so perfect — the grand design as some call it.
- why does normal matter represent 4% of the universe and what really could dark matter and dark energy be.
- why is the universe flat.
- how do quantum physics and the theory of uncertainty impact our every day life.
- what is gravity and what role does air and electromagnetism play in it.
- why is time relative.
- how come the speed of light is always the same.
- what is consciousness, what are dreams and what is hypnosis.
- is it possible that there are multiple dimensions and multiple universes out there.
- the power of thought — how can we influence things around us.
- what is telepathy.
- what are neutrinos and what role do they play.

Above all, the question that I will be looking to address is what is world we are living in? Is it real? Is it a dream? Is it a sophisticated computer program? Or maybe a mix of all of that? A few years ago, and out of the blue, something happened. Somehow I can’t remember what happened, it was completely erased from my memory. It was a glitch. I stopped and realized that it was a glitch, and until today I am perfectly aware that there was a glitch in the program that we live in, but no longer recall what it was. Has anyone ever experienced something like that? When you realize that something is not the way it’s supposed to be and then it hits you that what’s around you is not totally real?

So what is it? I wish I have an answer now and here. But I don’t. However that won’t stop me from trying to get as close as possible to an answer. This is what this blog is about, an effort to explore our world and understand what it really is through researching and sharing what I learn. I will use this blog as an opportunity for me to learn and understand, in my own philosophical and not so physical way. Your comments are most welcome.