figuring out the bright sides of darkness!

Its looks really kiddish n i pretty much made a mess out of a good idea. This time fachha times (BSP's 1st magazine) is having the theme of shadows n we thought we ll try to figure out a very ungloomy side of  'shadows' n work on the cover page through that... well, turned out that i just have to try better!:P

on the sketchy side of i..

Cartooning has turned out to be a really new side of the weirdo inside;-)
it really is fun... n i always try to improve.. 
only problem is that i am not very well trained in sketching n painting n stuff. So thats kind of a low-low... but then again who cares, i am still 19 n there is so much more to learn;-) 

things that shouldnt be happening...

self conflicts..

one of those equations i couldn't solve..

n next time he hangs onto that tongue... i swear i ll get myself a freaking crane!

Weighing its way into reality...

The world of physics has had its share of truly euphoric moments before but none were as much awaited as the one that took place at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN on 4^th July, 2012. Two completely independent experiments, ATLAS and CMS carried out in two different Higgs decay modes confirmed that a new resonance has been found that proves the existence of the last missing piece of the standard model, ‘The Higgs Boson’.

The Standard Model of particle physics that helps us in understanding the dynamics of all the known sub atomic particles and their interactions could not predict the exact mass of the particle named ‘Higgs Boson’ and so it has been extremely difficult for the experimentalists to find out simply because they just didn’t know where to look for! It is the particle that is formed during the Higgs mechanism which is a very crucial part of our understanding of how different particles while flowing through space-time acquire mass and with its discovery mankind has been able to take a significant step towards understanding and appreciating nature and her mysteries.

The discovery of the Higgs boson has its own story held deep within. During the 1960s when it was realized that gauge symmetry was a fundamental aspect of understanding sub atomic interactions in particle physics, the emergence of weak interactions posed a great problem to the physicists of that time. The newly found weak interaction were so short ranged that the mathematics required the exchange of bosons of considerable mass between particles unlike the exchange of the massless photons in electromagnetism. Gauge symmetry completely fell apart because of it and people started looking for ways to develop a mass generation mechanism that is consistent with gauge symmetry.

By that time a mass generation mechanism was developed by Condense matter physicist Phillip Anderson for his own field in 1962. Finding it on a condensed matter journal two groups of particle physicists Robert Brout , Francois Englert and Gerald Guralnik, C.R Hagen, Tom Kibble developed the corresponding relativistic model. This idea was finally applied in the weak interaction problem by Peter Higgs in 1964. These physicists were able to show that when a gauge theory is combined with an additional scalar field with 0 spin, the gauge symmetry can eventually break itself down spontaneously to give the gauge bosons finite mass. And in the process a new particle is created called the Higgs boson.

Ironically it so happened that after Higgs’ paper was rejected by ‘Physics Letters’ (a leading journal of that time) while he was revising it to send it this time to ‘Physical Review’ he added a line at the end mentioning that his analysis implied the existence of one or more new massive spin-less bosons… which eventually came to be known as Higgs Bosons. Later it was realized that these bosons and the same Higgs mechanism is responsible for giving mass to all known particles. That missing term in Higgs calculations that occurred in 1964 turned alive in LHC on 4^th July 2012 after a long wait of 50 years ending the age old mystery of how things in nature acquire mass… why they have to…

P.S – I hope I have been able to create the same excitement in readers as much as Prof. Ravishankar created in me while telling the story of Higgs Boson. It has only been possible because of him.

Let her be free...

The lazy days and the stagnant times at home do come up with its own surprises n breaks at times. This time it was my mom trying to take me to a temple for the evening.. or rather 'ordering' me to do so. Now many of you who are really religious and daily goers to temples might be finding me awkward over here and so i guess i should take you guys along with me to this little journey. A journey along the river of time back to my childhood.

I grew up in a Hindu family. Mom was always pretty religious, dad - not so much until along the way i started finding him develop faith as well. So within this set up i grew up with my mom doing all the daily rituals and teaching all the basic stuffs like God is one who looks over us , who has made this world , who punishes the bad n takes care of the good people... She even gave me a locket and has made the little 3 by 3 room for the photo of Ramthhakur (a guru followed largely by the bongs) n all other Hindu idols at my room.
But the only thing that seemed to be the problem was me. I was never able to find anything special in the photo or the idols. I could never realize the rationality or the  basic urge of worshiping any God or believing in any supernatural superior spirit of that sort.
For some reason i have never been able to catch their wave n every time they take me to the temples or the religious functions i kind of feel left out or awkward.. And as i grew up.. i started developing a passion for science especially physics and maths and all these things started becoming more and more senseless to me...
And even though i have a deep respect for the rich diversity and the beautiful cultures of the world i always used to hate these Hindu rituals and irrational ways of looking at the world coz somehow someway i used to feel as if they were imposed on me... i absolutely hate it when something is imposed on me...

Even though i dont mean any disrespect but frankly speaking.. When i look at the spiritual idols.. -snakes around the neck or a four handed person with weapons of left back days or even when i see a lady who is riding a lion i kind of think if they are actually designed by people like us. I mean the foot prints of 'artificial' human thinking are all over. People who wanted to understand why the world is the way it is , who made this world n why things happen the way they happen made them finally appreciate the amount of  thinking and power that might have been required to design this universe. So they imagined the gods with immense power.. powers like someone having four hands or a lady with the power of riding a lion....

But i wonder at times if these ideas take us away from the truth.. the beautiful truth that lies beneath the amazing mysteries of nature.. of why really is the sky blue?...  of how the sky touching the lands at the horizon can mean that the sky has actually curved around behind the lands.. which means the lands must be curving too along with it too which finally tells you that this earth must be round!!!... 
or even of how the sounds of the waves create symphony.. of how a psychopath killer can have a distorted childhood which must have made him to grow into a different mind pattern... of how the lift falls along the curvature of the distorted space-time... of how the electron never falls into the nucleus as before it can it diffuses into beautiful clouds of uncertainty.... n i can just keep blabbering all day....... . . :D

But the point is not that. The point is that i really dont know much. I too dont know why n how the world has come forth, who made this world , why every thing happens the way they do n yes there are many other things that i dont understand.. but i dont want to assume my answers. I am not afraid of not knowing things.. of being lost in a mysterious universe, which as far as i can tell is the way it really is. I would rather keep looking and keep searching and appreciate the mighty universe for the way it is. I would rather accept nature along with her mystique beauty... I dont want to imagine nature to have been created by the hands of God. I want her to be free.. to be wild... to be completely independent from the minds of a mechanical power.... I personally dont like to believe in the existence of a God.

But then again... i guess it is important to realize that 'reality' itself is very much relative n i shouldnt impose on others my ideas or my ways. The world should be free n everyone should be allowed to have their own ways. So even though i will never be able to appreciate the ideas of God but i wont mind sharing the seat with someone who does.. like right now i am sharing it with a beautiful etrovert bengali woman whom i have known since the day i was born. N guess where we are heading to... 
a beautiful temple at the end of the Jail road;-)

Coming back..

Hi again. Its been a long time that i have written something or at least have given it a thought. But i guess its the very first time i have decided to give 'his confessions' its very first direct confession. It does feel a lil awkward actually coz till now all my confessions were stories of my life, my thoughts , my crazy ideas of physics or the loud cries of the depressed side disguised in made up stories or imaginary setbacks just to hide the slightly conscious inside of the outside world (and also to try out different styles of writing at times:P)... but then again i guess sometimes its important to close your eyes and deny to look at the world out there.. guess sometimes its important to close your eyes and let go... 
So here i am.. letting go... 

I am home. After a very long time actually. Its been like 5 months that i had bid good bye to Agartala and its Sub-urbs (thats where our home is).. Its nice to be home again. It really is nice to be amongst all the people i had known since i was a kid, to blend in among all the bongs again. Most of the evenings i go to teach my cousin brother geometry and its also fun to be amongst lines and points again: )
At nights the mom made fish turns out to be the perfect way of giving the home flavored days its own happy endings. Mom is a great company. She after all is one of those typical bong girls... the beautiful etroverts alongside whom it does get tough at times to feel bored at all. Now that i am officially an iitian sometimes i end up getting more attention from people here than i actually deserve. But i guess its alright, not something i didnt expect:P.

Its still hard to catch up with the friends though; partly because not everyone here is having their summers this time of the year and everyone is busy n partly because i never was that good in keeping up the connections with people i ounce knew. I never was that good in looking back and missing people.
I ll be lieing that back in Delhi i used to miss my home a lot. As a kid i wasnt quite fortunate enough to have one of the best childhoods and i guess somehow someway i am the one responsible behind it. I still regret the fact that i havent been able to develop a strong connection with the place where i was supposed to belong. But thats okay i guess, everyone of us makes mistakes at certain points of their lives that go on to be a defining character of their identities...
As a kid i always dreamt of going out there... away from home, away from the bongs, away from all restrictions, out there in the wild... exploring, perceiving, discovering and believing in the ways i wanted to. It was nice to think of a life where there is no more requirement of being obedient , no more requirement of being dependent , no more requirement of staying 'restricted' anymore.

But i still dont find anything wrong in it. i guess growing up in a small city is like growing up in a small island, cut out from the world, where you grow up looking at the same old horizon with the same old dreams of someday growing up and going up to that infinite line and peepig theough it at the lost world out there. And as you grow up your childish dreams practicalize to some extend but still they manage to not loose the childish charm they ounce had... and hence one day you do walk out in search of your newer horizons but i guess every ounce in a while its always nice coming back to your lil island;-)

But even though mom is a nice company it does get boring at times. On top of that my lap top has become completely empty! It did come all loaded with ODC downloads from hostel network.. but soon viruses , crashes n emptiness followed by!!:D.. leaving behind my days here pretty 'empty' n boring.
I did plan a lot of stuffs for the summer. I was supposed to learn cooking , work out in a gym and move ahead of feynman lectures (partly because i had already seen the schrodinger equation getting proved after 16 long chapters:P and partly because i wasnt finding many problems to solve on my own... feynman lectures have no problems:-/)
So i decided to learn the non feynmanian formulation of q.m from Sakurai. But nothing seems to be pulling together for the moment. The sick boredom seems to have eaten up my spirit. It also has become difficult to concentrate on physics and bring back that same old addiction, that passion after a year long vacation that i have spent with all the einsteins back in iit and its shit courses(you all who think iitians are bunch of nerds should come to our hostel sometime;-). Sometimes i do question myself of how much i actually like physics.. Surely something that no true physics student has ever asked himself, let alone the physicists.
In short.. i am bored, confused, dead and lost and i want to come back...
I want to came back to those times when i used to be "the passionate addicted physics student out with his own voyage in the unknown seas of nature..."