MULTIVERSE MIGHT EXIST

Newton's laws are awesome! Once you know position and velocity of a particle , you can figure out the entire future of the particle using just one equation - > F=mass × acceleration

In quantum mechanics we say that we have a wavefunction carries all the properties of a particle and using the Schrodinger Equation , we can determine it's future. But Quantum mechanics does not stop here. As I discussed in my previous blog on introduction to Quantum Mechanics , the world seem to care about being observed and this opens up the new rules to the game - the ways of understanding Quantum mechanics.

The freakiest part about Quantum Physics is that we are using it in our daily lives without even understanding it's meaning. "Shut up and Calculate" is so famous here.

Let's look at 3 major things you need to know about to understand the whole story-
1. Superposition - It States that everything exists in all the possible permitted states at the same time; like Schrodinger's cat-both dead and alive at the same time( we gonna come to it soon).

For more look at the double slit experiment in my previous blog about quantum mechanics here .

2. Wavefunction - It gives all the information about particle and the square of wavefunction gives the probability of location of particle

3.Entanglement -

SCIENTIFIC REPRESENTATION OF ENTANGLEMENT(DON'T WORRY ABOUT THIS FOR NOW)

The quantum mechanics is probabilistic .Schrodinger himself didn't like this idea so he came up with a thought experiment to show how weird this idea is.

Here is the recipe for the experiment ⏬                      

#Take a radioactive element and place it in a box
#Put a radiation detector that triggers the release of element

#Put the cat in box and close it.

The way we have been taught Quantum mechanics - Copenhagen Interpretation , says that the because the element in the detector has the probability of being decayed and not decayed , the state of cat 🐱(Wavefunction) gets entangled with the detector and hence has the probability of being both dead and alive until we open the box.
So is it that the whole world outside the box is also a quantum blur until it is observed ?
There are two ways to answer this question , thus understand Quantum Mechanics and they both predict the concept of Many Worlds - Multiverses
1. COPENHAGEN INTERPRETATION: It just says that the quantum blurriness just disappears to macroscopic levels.

What we see as an outcome of cat being dead or alive or the double slit experiment is the result of many parallel histories and the final outcome depends upon the way system has interacted with environment resulting in Wavefunction collapse - the final outcome. It's like all the outcomes from all the possible worlds merge to give us the reality.It just says that the quantum blurriness just disappears to macroscopic levels.

But another Interpretation says that when you open up the box, you create a new universe🤯 You are made up of atoms - electrons right so each of them, so you gets entangled with the environment and hence the cat.

AND HERE IT IS-THE MANY WORLDS THEORY

This interpretation says that every outcome is possible ; opening up the box creates two different worlds in in which there is a version of you watching cat dead or alive but these new created worlds can never interact with each other .

In scientific terms, it says that the whole of the universe has one Wavefunction and when you make any decision ( not violating basic rules like - conservation of energy ) you are basically creating a new world which is doing the 'not' thing or a thing which as very less probability like - "You going outside of house amid the pandemic and not catching the virus " 

So how many worlds ??
Ah...maybe not infinite but a very very big number for sure
Radioactive decays in your body create about 10^1500 universes per second ;so yeah you can imagine
These two Interpretations are highly debated and no one knows which one is right 🤷🏻‍♀️ but they both predict the existance of multiple worlds.

Don't worry if you didn't get any of it . Believing the Many Worlds Interpretation , there is a version of you in some other universe who got the all of it ;)


refrences:

https://youtu.be/gpEvv349Pyk

https://youtu.be/kTXTPe3wahc

Copenhagen interpretation picture:https://youtu.be/gpEvv349Pyk

Many world interpretation pic -https://youtu.be/kTXTPe3wahc

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AN INTRODUCTION TO QUANTUM MECHANICS (BELIEVE ME IT'S NOT THAT STRANGE)

Who says Physicists can't be cool
Here's one of the greatest minds of all
time-Richard Feynman

If you think you understand Quantum Mechanics , you don't understand Quantum Mechanics
- Richard Feynman 
Where does the word 'Quantum Mechanics' come from?
It's a made up of two words -
Qunata- Latin word for amount ; smallest packet of any physical quantity - like quanta of energy
Mechanics- Study of motion
So basically quantum mechanics is the study of the behavior of energy / matter on very small - atomic, subatomic scales.
Imagine you are trying to figure out the rules of any of your favorite game🎮 just by looking at someone playing the game. You will be making guesses right , and you will have to change your rules  on seeing something different . This is pretty much Physicists do (-Feynman)
In terms of figuring out rules, Quantum mechanics is a phenomenon that has made us reject some of the important and kind of obvious rules like -Each particle should exist at one point in a time.
Everything is boiled down to the concept of probability.


Like the discovery of fire had completely changed the way of living of early human beings , the study of the 'glow' has laid the foundation stones of a new way of understanding Physics.

Thomas Wedgewood , Charles Darwin's relative observed that all the objects in his oven , regardless of their shape , size or  nature became red at the same temperature🌡. Down the road,finding the answer to how the things glow-basically the answer to the nature of this graph     ➤

Max Planck accidentally laid the very first stones of Quantum Mechanics by quantising energy ->  E = hv ( h = planks constant ; v= frequency of radiation). From then we never looked back - there was discovery of photoelectric effect - by Einstein , Compton Effect and so on.



Then there was Schrodinger Equation and birth of concept of wavefunction 🌊- that marked the birth of Quantum Mechanics.

Imagine a scenario of shooting bullets through two doors. After a while we will get two bunches of particles.
Now , let's turn it down to microscopic level and try it with electrons and turn the doors to tiny openings called slits. Now let's shoot them by opening one door at a time and , we get our bunched pattern.

Bunched Pattern
(Trishula like thing you see here is the symbol of wavefunction)

Common sense says , when both the doors are open and you shoot the electron through one hole , it should not affect the bunched pattern. Each particle should go through one door and should not care about whether the other door is open or not , but no , quantum mechanics falsifies both of them.
Even when you shoot a single electron through a slit keeping both slits open , what you get is an Interference Pattern🤯

electrons passing through slits one by one

this is what we get -an interference pattern

The interference pattern gets distorted once we know through which door the particle passes through.
Quantum mechanics provides answer to this by introducing that every object exists in all the states together(superposition) and it's the act of measurement that actually makes the particle select one of the states and we observe it(i.e. wavefunction collapse).

So why didn't you observe interference with large particles even when you didn't place any detector ? -🧐 That's because the wavefunction for them has already be collapsed by atmospheric interaction. All the air around them , and other environmental factors acted like nature's detectors to collapse the 🌊 wavefunction.

 Actually it's like everything behaves in a spooky way, i.e. everything is probabilistic  until it's observed. 

But it raises many other psychologically uncomfortable queries-
Does a particle passing through a slit splits into two ?🔨
Every time we measure a trespass of the particle , the pattern vanishes - so does the universe care about being observed and why ?
Do we live in multiverses ; 🤯where each act of probability has a different timeline?


Many of them are still a mystery and answer to these questions makes the interpretation quantum physics even more weird. But that doesn't mean that we should stop knowing the fundamental nature of reality 💫
Always remember - "Universe🌠 is under no obligation to make sense to us"


references-
Image credit- Modern Physics by -Serway/ Mosses/ Moyer (blackbody radiation diagram and bunched pattern)
electron interference(left image)-Wikipedia
Feynman-valdas.blog
links- https://www.youtube.com/user/LookingGlassUniverse

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BREAKFAST AND PHYSICS- CHEERIOS EFFECT

You cannot escape Physics if you are genuinely curious well not even on the breakfast table
How ? Let me tell you
Have you ever noticed how Cheerios in your meal bowl tend to form clusters in the center or the edges.It is as if they were some sort of suspicious force making them behave this way.
No one knew the secret until 2005 when a pair of "mathematicians" solved the mystery

Here's the simple Physics behind it -
Cheerios float on the surface of milk because they are less dense than water and milk is mostly water. Look at the place where cereal meets the milk. Can you see it , here it is slightly curved upward.

 This upward curvature is also there at the point where the milk meets the edge (meniscus effect) Because Cheerios are lighter than milk they want to slide up that meniscus. It's like they actually want to go up to the highest point that actually what makes them stick to the edges or just stick together.
Well I don't recommend eating paper clips but when you gently place them on the liquid surface and tend to push them together , they repel each other and also repel the edges of the container. What's happening here ?? Paperclips are held together by the force of surface tension(not by the buoyant force as in the case of Cheerios )  , they are heavier than water so they curve the meniscus down. Since they are heavier than water , they want to slide down the meniscus and that's why they attract.

You can also try it out with thumbtacks . They curve the meniscus down and attract each other for the same reason as paperclips.

 If you will remove the plastic coating and let it surf on the water surface and try to bring thumbtacks closer to it , they will repel 😎
Similar thing will happen if you will try to push Cheerios and paperclips together.
The point is that the things that curve the water different ways don't like to stick together. They just cannot find a common point to be with each other.
You know , there is a way you can check out whether substance is held by buoyant force or surface tension. What all you need for this is soap. It Lowers the surface tension but has no effect on buoyant force so anything that is held by the surface tension will sink. Cool eh ...try this at home
Same effect is responsible for the clustering of bubbles in your tea cup.
Well you might be wondering what's the use of all this?
Aha..good question 😼
This concept is extremely useful if you are tiny as an insect.

Insect taking advantage of water accelerator

 They are clever enough to make use of this phenomenon to have a water accelerator to come out on the edge of the glass. Woah beauty !

So next time you sit to have your breakfast , don't forget to cherish the simple yet cool science you have right there in your bowl.
Every event happening around you is waiting to get comprehended; just be observant and patient enough to form a story 💫

Can attraction of cheerios be explained using surface energy ? let's know in the comments :)




refrences-
It's Okay To Be Smart -

https://youtu.be/mbKAwk-OG_w

Martin F. Haase

https://youtu.be/NIcNrsTlbVU

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WHAT THE HECK IS PARTICLE PHYSICS?

 Wanna learn about particle physics ? 

You need to just break the things. You can start by manually breaking the things, but eventually you will need accelerators ( for collision of particles at high speed so that you can find out what's inside or what E=mc^2 leads to)

Boom!!

It's beautiful that how our thinking about what are made up of has evolved over years

From thinking about fire , earth , air , water and soil now we have come a long way to Higgs Boson

Let's take a look upon the journey

So it all basically started with Dalton - his atomic theory. He said that everything is made up of small indivisible particles called 'Atoms'.

Dalton's Postulates

Then in 19 th century Bang!Electron was discovered. Atom was no longer indivisible.

Along the timeline, proton( By Ernst Rutherford ) and neutron ( By Chadwick) were also discovered.

     But wait , protons and neutrons are also not fundamental.They can be broken down to "quarks".

      These are elementary particles.

When you answer what forms the universe , you might refer to this Periodic table

 But there is something more fundamental-

There are 6 flavours of quarks -

Up , down , charm , strange , top and bottom ( up and down being the lightest). Quarks occupy  the top two rows

Heavier the quark , more is the decay probability so up and down quarks are the most found in the universe. The particles made by combination of quarks are called hadrons example - protons , neutrons  as shown-

each up quark has a charge of + 2/3 and each down quark has a charge of -1/3

Proton has two up and one down quark so total charge is 2*(+2/3e)+1*(-1/3e)=+1e

Quite Similarly, a neutron has two down quarks and 1 up quark making up a total charge of 

2*(-1/3e)+ 1*(2/3e)= 0

Caution : Now you are going to see some really freaky names, but yeah concept is fairly simple

Then we have leptons. Again as you might expect electron being lightest muon and tau be heavier successively and electron neutrino being the lightest and muon and tau neutrinos  being relatively heavier ones

Each of these 12 particles have an anti-particle that has same properties as the corresponding particles but opposite charge.

But wait , how do the particles interact with each other - via forces you might answer, well yeah but how do they experience those forces ?

We have four fundamental forces-

1.Strong force

2.Electromagnetic force

3.Weak force

And 4. Gravitational force

Well yeah , get excited because the vertical table you see  corresponds to the force carrying particles

Photons - carries of electromagnetic force ( light )

W and Z bosons-(collectively called Guage bosons) - carries of weak force (The sun🌞 you see           every morning , its existence is majorly  because of W bosons , so yeah they are important).

Gluons- They basically form  connection between the quarks

Graviton- Hypothesized to be responsible for Gravitational force but hasn't been detected yet.

(Strength of gravitational force is about  10^40 times smaller than strong force ).

Higgs Boson - You might have known it in the form of 'God Particle' ( which is absolutely not true..but yeah media...)So this is basically a kind of proof of a field that actually gives mass to these elementary particles.

There are a total of 61 fundamental particles ( as for now )

With these particles in your hand , you have the power to create your own universe- well you might think so but wait;

 Remember dark matter , the matter that makes up roughly 28 percent of the whole universe , it's still a mystery.

Don't loose heart reader , everything that you look around tells a story , just keep on gaining enough knowledge to comprehend one🌠

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GRAVITATIONAL LENSING

Gravitational lensing- sounds very sci-fi eh!
Believe me it's not a thing that you cannot get your head around because you observe it everyday
Let's figure out what it is!
So when it comes to Universe and the way we can know about it , telescopes are the first thing that come in our minds. But you know what! Nature has got its own ways to reveal us the secrets and one of them is Gravitational Lensing
What had Einstein said-
1.Light travels in straight lines -
These straight lines are called geodesics in spacetime.
2.Mass tells space time to curve and the curved spacetime tells mass how to move -Imagine the whole spacetime like a fabric(actually no fabric is there but this simple analogy helps a lot in understanding the complex concepts).

Anything you put on that fabric creates a dimple on it ..so yeah get excited you too are creating a dimple on it. The fabric is not an ordinary one ! It's rigid one its noticeable with massive objects of astronomical scales only.

Here's your recipe for gravitational lensing-

Take some galaxy or star which you want to observe so it becomes your source 

Take a massive astronomical object - for producing significant  bending of spacetime

and you- for observing gravitational lensing.

Place them in a way -

You - Massive astronomical object - Star which you want to observe 

And  wallah you have gravitational lensing.

Here's the explanation -

The light from the source gets bent due to the warping of spacetime around the massive astronomical object. We see the lights travelling in straight paths so what we actually see as the image of the object is the lensed image/images 

You can now play with it 

Vary the mass of the source bending the light and you have three types of Lensing effects -

Strong Lensing - For this the lens should be very powerful like cluster of galaxies and the light source should be sufficiently near. For point like sources there maybe multiple images whereas for extended background emissions there can be rings. The image is magnified too

Look here at the beautiful Einstein’s ring-  

When the source , lens and observer all will be at a straight path then due to uniform bending of light from the source by the lens, we get a ring like structure.

Weak Lensing - As the name suggests , it occurs when the lens isn't powerful enough to produce ring , multiple images , instead it leads to the stretching/magnification or extra elliptical appearance of the source. It is useful in obtaining the galaxy mass distributions and by taking into account the magnification of the light from the lens and it’s size and shape we can also detect  the presence of dark matter.

Microlensing – Source isn’t powerful enough to produce distortion in the image of source. So the light of the source changes with time. The source of lensing is very faint like a star or a planet and/or the source and lens are far away. We use this to detect the presence of the faint/very far away stars for there is significant variation in the magnification of the light from star over time.

Another one is cluster lensing in which the image produced is the kind of combination of weak and strong lensing.

You will be amazed to know that this phenomenon was already predicted by Newton’s calculations but it was finally Einstein that got the correct answer for the angular deflection.Shift in the position of the star was noticed by the Aurthur Eddington at the time of solar eclipse and this result brought Einstein huge glory , marking the front page of newspapers.

Bending of Light 😯

Beginning of Einstein's era

Remember everytime you look around, the things aren’t exactly at the same position(they even aren’t what you see them at the moment..but that’s the story for some other time)

 Every patch of the sky tells a story…can you tell??




Refrences-

VIGYAN TV- -https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtmJDTw7G0ExgAzZTbmeTcw


WIKIPEDIA-https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens

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