 
Namaskar!!!
This is Arun Ramchandramurthy, and welcome to another presentation on Sanskriti today channel.
Every day we see that science is pushing the frontiers of the physical understanding
of life and universe.
I am going to talk about particular areas where scientists are struggling to find
Convincing answers to some of the most baffling, but fundamental questions.
We will also briefly explore the conceptual approach of scientific understanding
and present a contrasting view point of the Vedanta philosophy.
So let's begin first with the bigger picture of things — the cosmological scale,
where we will briefly explore the Big Bang Theory
The dark energy and the dark matter.
 
The first question is how did the universe come to be?
The Big Bang Theory is the prevailing scientific explanation.
The theory is that the universe expanded; that is all matter and energy that we see
expanded from a high density and
High-temperature state to what we currently see
over a total span of approximately
13.8 billion years since the Big Bang happened.
The Big Bang Theory is widely accepted in the scientific community
since it explains many phenomena that are observed in the universe.
So the question is if the universe is still expanding?
That is, are the groups of galaxies moving away from each other
Or are they being pulled towards each other by mutual gravitation?
In 1929 Edwin Hubble showed that the universe appears to be expanding;
that is the objects are moving away from each other.
The scientists were obviously curious as to how fast were they moving away;
That is, moving away at what rate of velocity?
In 1998, a team led by Adam Riess, published the evidence
that the universe is NOT ONLY expanding
But also accelerating!
What does that mean? Let's take a simple example?
When we drive a car, we accelerate, and we achieve a speed of say 80 km per hour.
If we let go off the accelerator pedal the car slows down and eventually halts due to frictional forces.
However, in outer space there are no frictional forces,
so if you achieve a speed, you keep moving at that constant velocity
You can only reach higher velocities only by spending more energy.
So one would expect that the expansion of the universe would have a constant velocity
since obviously you need an energy source to achieve acceleration.
However, we find that the universe is expanding with acceleration.
Now this was a big Nobel Prize winning discovery
that there is an unknown energy that is spread throughout the universe
that provides the required
acceleration to this expansion.
This energy was termed the "Dark Energy"
and no one yet has any idea what it is and where it comes from.
To make matters a bit more darker,
scientific observations
shows that 84.5% of the total mass of the universe is made up of an
unknown and unseen form of matter.
In 1933 a Swiss astrophysicist, Fritz Zwicky
studied a cluster of galaxies called the "Coma Cluster"
and showed that the galaxies in it were moving too fast to hold the cluster together.
He found that the total mass of the cluster is too small
to provide the required gravity to assist such fast orbits. That is,
with the speeds at which the galaxies were moving,
they should have broken away from each other's gravitation.
Consequently he surmised that there should be an unseen mass in the cluster
that provided the missing mass he termed it the "Dark Matter".
He used the term "Dark" because it neither produced light like the stars,
nor it reflected light, like the moons and planets
This finding of the existence of the dark matter did not gain so much popularity until later in 1980,
when astronomer Vera Rubin
presented an influential paper on
Galaxy rotation curves
where she concluded that most galaxies we see in the universe
must contain about six times as much dark matter as much as no
normal form of matter.
In our relatively small solar system where planets orbit the Sun,
Kepler's second law holds that further a planet is from the Sun it has a slower orbital speed.
That means, the orbital speeds reduce as we go from Mercury to Venus to Earth and further.
However, Rubin found that this law does not hold for spiral galaxies.
The rotation velocities of objects remain constant, even as we go further from the center of the galaxy.
She concluded that there's a lot of unknown dark matter surrounding the galaxies
at the outskirts, which accounts for the observed constant rotation velocity curves.
Later, many other observed phenomenon supported the existence of the elusive dark matter.
Like weak gravitational lensing,
Cosmic Microwave Background,
Formation of large-scale structures in space, amongst others.
The subject of dark matter and dark energy form cutting-edge researches in the field of astrophysics.
Millions of dollars are being spent each year
in the search for the dark matter in underground laboratories, all over the world.
One such facility has been recently inaugurated in India in Jharkhand,
called the Jaduguda Underground Science Laboratory.
Dark Matter is not ordinary matter because it is not made of
the regular standard model particles that form the ordinary matter.
It does not emit or interact with electromagnetic radiation
such as light, and is thus invisible.
It is also collisionless. The dark matter particles interact only through gravity.
The fact that this Unknown, Invisible and Intangible matter constitutes
84.5% of the universal mass is really staggering.
While dark matter and dark energy are mysteries observed at astronomical galactic scales
relatively, the complexities reach a higher level
at the scale of quantum mechanics, where behaviors of subatomic particles are studied
Quantum physics has been one of the most powerful theories ever discovered.
It has led to the development of both the television and the nuclear bomb.
However, much of the internal workings of quantum physics appear somewhat puzzling.
Remember, quantum physics deals with subatomic particles like Photons, Electrons
Neutrons etc. that are the smallest possible entities known to science.
So the puzzlement is somewhat expected
Now let's get to the crux of the matter — The Double-Slit experiment.
We may have heard before, that light is made up of entities called photons.
In his Nobel prize-winning discovery of the photoelectric effect,
Einstein establishes that light delivers energy in the form of individual quantum packets called photons.
When we beam these photons, ONE AT A TIME on a plate with two parallel slits,
many photons hit the plate itself while a few pass through the slits
and hit the screen behind where we record the hits.
As the photons hit the screen one at a time,
we see a pattern emerging with discrete fringes separated by dark areas.
To give an example in the macroscopic world,
We'd expect that the pattern would be similar to what we get when we spray paint
Through two parallel slits on a blank canvas behind the slits.
One would expect just two painted areas corresponding to the slits itself.
However, at the quantum scale we see more than two bright spots.
We really don't know why these fringe patterns emerge,
but we can only calculate probabilities of where a photon might hit the detector screen at.
For example
The probability that a photon will hit on the central fringe area
is more than on other fringes. While at some places
the probability is close to zero, that is, they remain dark.
Incidentally, this pattern, not the actual phenomenon itself,
but just the pattern that we see is strikingly similar
to what you get when two water waves interfere with each other.
At some places they overlap and add up while at some places they cancel each other out.
Moreover, the equation formulated that accounts for this pattern,
that is the Schrodinger equation, gives a wave like solution.
It's also worth mentioning that when we close one of the slits,
we just see one bright spot as expected
So what do we make of all this this?
Is light made of particles, called photons?
Or is it a wave?
If it is made of particles,
how does the infinitesimal photon know that there are 2 slits in the first place
to cause interference.
Does the photon pass through both slits like a wave
interfere with itself and then recombine on the screen as a point?
Or as suggested by the pilot wave theory
are there empty waves permeating the entire space and time,
that physically determine the available paths that a photon may take?
No one knows since no one can physically observe a photon in motion.
Some scientists
just prefer the "Shut up and calculate !!!" approach, since interpretations, they think,
unnecessarily create contradictions and lead us nowhere.
Essentially, this wave particle duality is one of the central difficulties in
comprehending quantum physics.
In some situations light can be explained as waves
and in others a particle explanation is more suited.
Albert Einstein seemed uneasy when acknowledging it. He said -
 
 
 
 
What we saw was just a primer to the much deeper complexities
in understanding the results of quantum physics.
For example, the problems get compounded
when we try to know
which particular slit a photon goes through.
To give an analogy, if you flip a coin
There's 50/50 probability that the coin will land heads or tails.
Now if we know all the possible forces acting upon the coin,
and if we know the position of the coin before we flip it,
we can easily calculate what the result will be.
There are no more probabilities
Along the same lines if our double slit experiment setup is equipped
in such a way as to know which path the photon takes.
That is, which slit it passes through,
surprisingly the interference pattern just disappears.
There are no more probabilities.
The photons start behaving just like regular particles.
This experiment has been performed
innumerable times and this behavior is most wonderful and startling.
It has been close to a century, since Solvay conference of 1927,
where quantum theory was first formulated.
And yet, there is no consensus in sight, regards to any particular interpretation.
 
Subtler than the quantum scale is the undeniable phenomenon of consciousness itself.
Consciousness has been the biggest elephant in a science lab
that no one gives any mention about. Here again,
Neuroscientists physically try to derive a mapping
or a correlation of brain's activity to feelings, like happiness,
sorrow, anger, etc.
but they miserably fail to explain the subjective experience of consciousness
as a continuous evidence of existence itself.
David Chalmers, a philosopher and a cognitive scientist
describes this problem as the "Hard problem of consciousness".
openly ignored for a long time,
And he thinks that we need radical ideas to incorporate it (consciousness)
into mainstream science, as a fundamental concept.
Whereas, others like Dr. Daniel Dennett, believe that
there is no such thing as a hard problem of consciousness,
And he reduces consciousness to just a result of interactions of
physical and cognitive processes in the brain,
totally denying subjective experience in essence as being  mere illusions.
The idea that dull matter can evolve into the complex,
conscious life organisms, is the most counterintuitive argument
that science rigorously tries to substantiate.
The origin of life is not just emergence of life supporting structures
like amino acids.
It is the emergence of a particular kind of dynamics.
It is the emergence of structures that replicate itself
and the ability of those dynamics to influence further life sustenance.
Even if we are to accept that natural selection
and natural adaptations are capable of producing
complex, conscious and intelligent life forms,
it will only be reasonable to conclude that nature itself is intelligent and conscious.
It remains a wonder that a simple earthen pot is viewed by a human
as a product of intelligence, whereas
Life itself is viewed as a result of chance!
From all these examples, it seems scientific knowledge
has surrounded itself with hard questions of
cosmological scale, quantum scale and consciousness.
And, it doesn't look like the quest is ever going to get over
as long as there's obstinate philosophy materialism.
 
It is interesting to note that a student of Vedantic understanding of reality
shares a common beginning with a student of science — that is observation.
However, the path they follow in response to observation is in opposite directions
Whereas scientific knowledge is concerned more with the observed phenomenon
of particularly how something happens?
Vedantic knowledge is primarily concerned with what causes observation itself
or to be precise, who is the observer?
What is the cause of existence?
This fact is made clear in the very first verse of the Brahmasutras
Now as a human one must inquire into brahman or consciousness
So from the get-go,
Vedantic knowledge is pushing our curiosity
away from matter, instead of indulging us in it and
accepts consciousness as a self-evident non material agency; That is
it is not caused by matter and that it enables
observation and existence itself.
How the creation works is of secondary concern
Whereas,l the primary concern is who we really are and how and why this creation came to be?
The Vedanta philosophy proposes the subjective evolution of universe from consciousness
That is matter came from consciousness and not vice versa.
That gross came from subtle and not vice versa.
From the Bhagavad Gita we have a list of elements that are considered as matter:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
This says that living entities are
Fundamentally, units of consciousness, that is Atma,
that gives life to the external cover of the material body.
In the Vedanta philosophy,
There are descriptions in various places of gradual progression of creation
from consciousness and sound, to space or ether,
down to Air, Fire, Water and Earth in succession 
– From subtle to gross.
Not only the conceptual idea of creation has been mentioned,
but also the purpose of life in the following popular
Upanishadic verse.
A general direction is given.
A purpose is suggested to search for the world of eternal happiness.
Happiness being the original purpose of any living entity
and that the quest should be to attain eternal happiness.
 
This mantra is directing us on which way to initiate our enquiry
to attain our real necessity that is, lasting happiness.
In essence, it persuades us to move towards the eternal world of consciousness
rather than phenomenal or causal world of matter.
This principle forms the central theme of the whole canon of Vedanta
— the Vedas & the Upanishads,
the Puranas, like Mahabharata and Ramayana
the Brahmasutras, and all the commentaries and writings of sampradayika or
traditional teachers of the Vedantic school.
It doesn't so much matter as to who wrote these texts
or that if just a human wrote these texts
or how old they are?
These are immaterial concerns.
What really matters is that they are a vast body of coherent knowledge
that offer a highly plausible view of Reality,
the purpose of existence and the process to achieve that purpose.
We don't discard Gold based on how old it is
or where it came from. We know that real gold has real value.
Moreover the philosophy of Vedanta is not just another unfalsifiable
hypothesis. That is, it is not just another claim that cannot be tested.
However, since the process is subjective,
it can only be known by understanding and following the process itself.
The symptoms of progress is also mentioned as an analogy in the following verse:
 
 
 
For those that are interested to further learn about the philosophy of Vedanta,
we strongly suggest the Bhagavad-Gita as an ideal primer to the subject.
And, we are very excited to tell you that
Gosai publishers have come forward with a special discount on their beautiful version of the Bhagavad-Gita
for the viewers of Sanskriti today channel.
So friends you'll find the purchase link to avail the discount
in the description below. If you don't own a Bhagavad-Gita
This is a great opportunity to get one.
If you do have one, this Bhagavad-Gita will be a worthwhile gift for anyone.
And as always, please don't forget to like this video and subscribe to Sanskrit Today.
This was Arun Ramchandramurthy for Sanskriti Today channel.
Namaste !!!
