The Mind of God

Yesterday we remember well but that is not the case with tomorrow. Quite strangely and disappointingly the theories that govern our life are valid regardless of past or future and yet they do not allow us to know what is going to happen tomorrow.  If we could travel across time, probably this will be likely, but is time travel really possible? 

Who can forget the imaginative and yet depressing novel of H G Wells, the Time Machine, which takes the Time Traveler to 802701 AD. Physics and Mathematics are not silent on this topic. The most beautiful and illuminating essay comes from the greatest living physicist Stephen Hawking, titled Arrow of Time. The universe is moving from Order to Disorder, from Past to Future and is continuously expanding. These three movements and their direction are represented by Thermodynamic Arrow, Psychological Arrow and Cosmological Arrow respectively. 

A jigsaw puzzle has only one ordered state but several states of disorder. The tendency is always to be in a state with greater disorder and a special effort is needed to arrive at the complete picture, which is only one. A broken cup on the floor has greater disorder than a tea-cup on the table. This is thermodynamic arrow according to which with time, we will see greater disorder. It is difficult to say much about human memory as it relates to brain and we know precious little about it. However we do know about the functioning of a computer which can safely be assumed to be like a human brain. When data is ordered in the computer or any application is processed, a certain energy is required which in turn is dissipated in the form of heat and sound in some cases. This further increases the disorder in the universe and also implies that thermodynamic and psychological arrows are one and the same. 

The universe would have started with sudden and explosive expansion which we call Big Bang and the fragments of cosmos are scattered across the space thus forming galaxies and stars and beings like us, also increasing the disorder from the ordered state of one cosmic egg.  That disorder increases with expanding universe is not difficult to answer, given our understanding of thermodynamic arrow. The expanding universe also provides sufficient conditions for intelligent life to exist. A contracting universe is like being in a black hole where before you try to remember your past or future, you will turn in to spaghetti. 

Stephen Hawking was born in Oxford on 8^th January 1942, 300 years after the death of Galileo and is today considered to be the greatest scientific thinker since Newton and Einstein. He studied physics at Oxford University and pursued graduate and doctoral studies at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He did not do very well in his early education at Oxford and at a point of time had to undergo an oral examination. His physics tutor Robert Berman remarked about the examination “And of course the examiners then were intelligent enough to realize they were talking to someone far more clever than most of themselves”. 

Stephen Hawking was unlucky to get ALS or Motor Neuron Disease. He is now almost completely paralyzed and communicates through a speech generating device. He frequently posed questions to himself, what do we know about the universe and how do we know it? Where did it come from and where is it going? Did it have a beginning and what happened before then? What is the nature of time, will it ever come to an end? These questions bewildered him and he wanted to make sense of what he saw around him. He is currently working towards creating a Grand Unified Theory that explains everything. He believes that if he is able to find it, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason and then, we would know the mind of God.