ORIGIN OF UNIVERSE – PART I
I was reading 'The Hindu' which had reported announcement of this year's Nobel prize for physics. It was conferred it on Francois Englert. Francois Englert, a
Belgian theoretical physicist who along with Robert Brout, in 1964 formulated the mechanism describing
how fundamental particles acquire mass. Further Peter
W Higgs, a British theoretical physicist who within a few days of Francois
Englert’s proof published a process through which fundamental particles could
have gained mass. I quote from The Hindu
“The
universe was born with a Big Bang 13.8 billion yrs ago, releasing a lot of
energy. This energy was symmetrical, uniform in space and time. This symmetry
broke 1011 s later. The particles become non uniform because they
had acquired mass. This was due to the Higgs mechanism. The universe is
pervaded by an invisible field of energy the Higgs field. Higgs boson is the
smallest disturbance in it. Higgs bosons couple to the fundamental
particles moving through the field, giving them mass. For Higgs mechanism to
occur, 4 particles were necessary, electroweak forces swallowed 3 the only
survivor is the Higgs boson. Large Hadron Collider (LHC) found the Higgs boson
beyond reasonable doubt in January 13”.
I was reading
this to my son studying in 9th class. Though he did not understand the theory in full,
partly understood that at one point of time
it was hot everywhere during the Big bang, and because of those high energy and high temperatures, there was hot gas everywhere.
Slowly it started cooling and crystallized into small rotating balls which
resulted in Solar Systems and planetary systems. My grandma, old but still very active did not understand a thing as she was not proficient in
English. I tried to tell her about origin of universe and how it all
started. I told "First there was flash of energy, then there were hot and vapourised
gases everywhere………" of course I was translating it in Marathi so that she could grasp it. We entered into a conversation and to my surprise this
religious old lady was at ease with the subject. “Ok this is discussed
in Rig Veda in Nasadiya Sukta (Rig Veda 129 sukta of 10th mandala)”, she said,
and started telling about it,
“There was nothing in the beginning, or was there everything in
subtle Tejas? Because something cannot come from nothing. ‘There was not even
nothing in the beginning’ so the Tejas was breathing without a breath. The
subtle Tejas which was uniform all-pervading got a desire to manifest itself, which aggregated into gross. This started the
process of creating differences thus forming the matter”.
It was a
great experience to hear this from religious old lady who never studied
physics. She told me that she has read it in Bhagwat, read it in Puranas,
read it in Gita and heard it in Pravachans and Kirtans in
different forms.
In fact
she was most comfortable with the last sentence of the news referred, which I have
quoted “For
Higgs mechanism to occur, 4 particles were necessary, electroweak forces swallowed
3 ..................” she said this is how our Pravachankar
tells us, in a very simple language which everybody understands. “There
were four Anurenukan earlier. Three were swallowed and one remained, when that
remaining kan interacted with the Tejas and thus gross was born………….”
Tailpiece – What was
there before Bigbang? If the process started with a big bang then was there
nothing before it? How can something come from nothing? Who switched ON the
BigBang button? Was the Bigbang with a mind?
To be continued…..
