Does God Play Dice? An Excerpt from Stepehen Hawking

I just read this wonderful Lecture by Stephen Hawking about Predicting Future "The Scientific Way" the pitfalls of doing so and answers if God really does have power to change this or he just plays dice with our lives?...On a more serious note I found this so interesting that I wanted to share it with as many as I can....and hence wanted to post about it in my blog :)

The essence of the Post is contained in the first and last paras.....please read the whole only if you are a big fan of Physics (Like me)....Else read only those paras in BOLD to save some time and some senses :) ;-).

CAN WE PREDICT FUTURE? or is it like a Random process that no one has control over? Over the centuries people have believed that Natural disasters like floods, famines etc happened due to the whims and fancies of Gods and did Prayers and offerings to please him. This belief is still around and most people bribe God "You are the Best God if only you can make me get this Job"


Laplace said "If the position and speed of each and every particle is known then its behavior in the past present or future can easily calculated.When asked as to where "God" fits the picture, he answered that he a scientific law can hold good only when the supernatural being decides to leave things as it is and not intervene with science." Ok does that mean he did not believe in the existence of God? He just thought Science and Supernaturals don't cross paths.

Officially by the Principle of Scientific determinism, one can theoretically predict future. It is complicated due to the presence of factor called Chaos which is neither repeatable nor predictable.....Despite all these limiting factor people still believed this Principle throughout the 19th century. Ok can some kind of uncertainty be attached to the factor called chaos.....like may be a certainty test (similar to the significance test in statistics to test how much amount of chaos is good enough to change the course of future.....Watch "The Butterfly Effect" if you get a chance and you will know what I am talking about.)

"Classical Physics states that any hot body will give out radiations at the same rate in all the bands starting from Infrared....going through visible to Ultraviolet....meaning all of us will get skin cancer and die at the same point of time....and the whole human race will become extinct while everything in earth will be in temperature equilibrium (will have the same temperature....no heat loss or gain)......Max Planck came to the rescue with his Quantum Theory.....He stated that energy is given out in packets just like sugar or flour in a shop....in grams, Kilograms (Quantums in this case) etc....and stated that the energy packet size is greater in the Ultraviolet Band than for visible and Infrared band.....Which is why we dont get sunburn for a cup of coffee."

In 1926 Heisenberg put forth his point of view that both the speed and the position of a particle cannot be measured at the same time with certainty (Remember the Principle of Uncertainty). There was some kind of uncertainty involved. In order to find out where a particle is present in space we need to shine light on it (atleast one quantum of light) which will change the speed of the particle....(Ooooooops what can you do when a medicine that is trying to find the bacteria in your body increases the speed of its growth....OKOK that was a Lousy comparison....Just tried to be creative....dint work out....never mind).....Hence this brings about a big blow to the Principle of scientific determinism....that says future can be predicted if one can accurately predict the position and speed of the particle in the present......Hence nomatter the complexity of equations you try to frame when you have data with a large percentage of uncertainty associated with it then it becomes.....GARBAGE IN = GARBAGE OUT.

Deep inside his heart Einstein was not very convinced with this randomness in Nature.....which brought about his famous Phrase "GOD DOES NOT PLAY DICE".....It is just our inability to see though things when they are dark (ie....if you dont need light to see the object (which was the main argument by Heisenberg)...its position or speed is going to be the same....)





Later the famous Quantum theory was put up...that claimed that any particle in space can be described by a wave function....the size of the wave representing the range of positions the particle can be present in space and time and the rate at which this wave function varies at every point gives the speed of the particle.....Hence it brought a part of determinism back in line....but the resolution with which we can find the position of the particle is limited by the wave function....if the size of the wave function is big then it gives us poor position resolution and good speed resolution.....Hence you cannot predict a particle's position and time accurately but you can predict a wave's position and time accurately....and a wave may encompass few to infinite number of particles depending on its size...This can vbe determined by Schroedinger's Equation....Hence a part of our Future can be Predicted???????? Well Lets see...

The more recent developments claim that Space and time can also be distorted by Gravity......In a couple of papers written by Laplace and John Mitchell some stars had enough gravitational field to pull back the light so that no light goes out of it......This was not acceptable as the experiments conducted by Michelson and Morsley showed that Light traveled at a speed of One hundred and eighty six thousand miles per second no matter wherever it comes from...and at this speed no amount of gravity can hold it back.

It was at this point that Einstein published his General Theory of Relativity.....which considered Space and time to be different directions of a single object....This was not a straight line direction but it was warped depending on the amount of energy contained within the particle....Just a ball on a sheet of rubber....The sheet of rubber is depressed according to the weight of the ball. Now if a marble is rolled then it follows a curved path.....Just like a light from another star that passes through the sun (near its space time curve)...The deviation of Light's course from its normal position was observed and Hence Theory of Relativity was Proved.

When the weight of the Ball within the rubber sheet becomes higher and higher (In our case the energy within the star) the ball falls down and makes a bottomless pit out of which nothing can get out of....since it is neither in the direction of space nor in the direction of time.....Now the way we all reason out the fall of the ball through the rubber sheet is due to the pull of gravity.....The Theory of Relativity says that the concept of gravity itself is created due to the tendency of particles to move towards the direction of masses....This pull is experienced as "Gravity"...This becomes excessive as the mass of the star increases and hence the pull creates a bottomless pit called a black hole that pulls light inside it and not enabling it to escape...which precisely proves the hypothesis proposed by John Mitchell and Lapalce regarding the effect of gravity on space and time.






Now Black holes just swallow up everything and nothing that ever goes inside comes back....whether it is light, computer, hair or even your best enemy......It was believed that Black holes will continue to exist forever...when Stepehen Hawking discovered that Black holes were not black but consisted of particles and antiparticles and it radiated both these at a constant rate.....Hence no matter whatever goes inside the Black hole everything comes out as a particles (With antiparticle present inside the Black hole).....Now as these particles are being emitted by the black hole.....the Black hole loses energy and finally disappears....This means that the information that is was present inside the Black hole disappears...or rather evaporates and goes into another universe maybe....(No one cares as long as one is prudent enough not to fall into it...Although we call it information loss...the energy balance still is maintained due to the information coming out as particles but the position and speed of the particle also depends on other particle within the black hole or emitted by the black hole at a randomly different time and space....."GOD NOT ONLY PLAYS DICE BUT SOMETIMES CONFUSES US BY THROWING IT INTO PLACES WHERE WE CANNOT SEE (BLACK HOLES) IT."




Finally to connect all this with Prediction of Future by the deterministic principle of science put forward by Lapalace....these were the conclusions...The classical Physics says that the future position of the particle is determinable if the present position and speed of the particle were known accurately...This was further limited by Heisenberg when he said that position and speed cannot be measured simultaneously....However prediction could be made with a some certainty with the wave equation though it was not accurate....This also breaks down when Black holes are taken into account....The loss of information through the Black Hole although given out as particles are given out in random which makes predictions even with certain amount of certainty impossible.

"FUTURE OF THE UNIVERSE THUS CANT BE PREDICTED COMPLETELY BY SCIENCE......GOD STILL HAS A FEW MORE TRICKS UP HIS SLEEVE" - S.HAWKING

Astrology is something that is based on the same principles and people who are completely educated still believe that planetary motions have an effect on a person's well being.....I m curious to know how those kind of people will react to this article.

GOD REALLY DOES PLAY DICE WITH US.....WHEN WE THROW DICE IT IS RANDOMNESS AND CHAOS.....AND WHEN HE THROWS IT....IT IS A PREDETERMINED CALCULATED MOVE.

If anyone is reading this and is still alive and is still sane.....then Kudos to you..Dont tell me I did not warn you.

Just to make the Mood lighter....I have tried a nice romantic song sung by Kavita Krishnamurthy....Please do listen to it at your convenience.

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