Math and Science
Richard Feynman - The great thinker
- Devansh mishra
Richard Feynman:
11 May 1918 - 15 February 1988
Source: Wikipedia
Richard Feynman, now a grad student at MIT, wanted to learn more about how light interacts with matter. Since the whole theory of light and its interaction with other particles had just been broken down like a pack of cards, Feynman didn’t find any course of his interest at university. He picked up all the books he could find which interested him at the time and by the age of 23, he had a good grasp of theoretical physics. After coming across such talent, some researchers recruited him for the Manhattan Project, where he would work with the greatest minds of the time, including Oppenheimer and Niels Bohr.
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After creating the first atomic bomb known to man as part of the project, Feynman turned to greater problems that were troubling the physics community. Paul Dirac had just figured out how an individual electron acts in all sorts of environments. But when the same theory was applied with two electrons, it broke down completely. This problem came to be known as Quantum Electrodynamics (or QED) and Feynman was one of the top physicists in charge of scaling this mountain.
He seemed to have this unusual knack of breaking down the complex problem at hand into something even a fifth-grader could have understood. This proved to be of great help for QED. Skipping all the complex math, with symbols and interactions even he didn’t understand, he came up with some eloquent diagrams. Diagrams that had just a few lines here and there, with a few symbols scattered across the surface. Diagrams that seemed to make the quantum world almost unfold like puzzle pieces where they just seemed to fit in at just the right place. Diagrams that we now call the Feynman Diagrams.
Feynman giving a lecture about QED to grad students
Source: Science Photo Library
When Niels Bohr, the father of atomic physics at the time, saw this piece of art, he lashed out in rage, denying all the statements that Feynman made for his theory of QED. It was everything Bohr had ever stood against - coffee and the visualization of subatomic particles. Richard Feynman, on the other hand, was unmoved by the criticism he got from one the greatest minds of the 20th century and kept working towards proving this theory. He went on to meet Julian Schwinger, another physicist trying to solve QED, and later could definitively prove his diagrams to be correct and subsequently, the theory.
Feynman had the eyes of a child, questioning everything he saw with curiosity brimming to his surface, a part of the very essence that made him a remarkable scientist. Without his proof of QED, we would never know why we aren’t falling through the floor or why we can touch things. Feynman Diagrams just showed us the simple, uncomplicated, unadulterated essence of the truth of the universe. Widely known as the King of Physics, he stands on the podium for being a revolutionary in the field, a title he will continue to possess in the years that come.
Scientists in the 1930s were flabbergasted by how the fundamental particles in the universe worked. When the universe is just about to make sense to you, and one small little anomaly jaywalks up to you, and suddenly distorts all your understanding of the world. That is precisely what scientists in that era felt. Little did they know that the ingenuity and talent of Richard Feynman were yet to come.
Physics suddenly was a total mess. Just thirty years ago, Einstein had come up with his special and general theory of relativity, which the whole universe seemed to follow ubiquitously. Then came light quanta, particles of light that seemed to break all the predefined conventions of our world. This made way for a new branch of physics - quantum mechanics, which aimed to figure out how particles interacted on a subatomic level.
The Starry Night:
A rare blend of physics and Post-impressionism
- devansh mishra
It was the time just before sunrise, and the morning star was the only object that was recognisable in the sky. Vincent Van Gogh stared into the endless dark blue, through the bars in his window, from the Saint Paul-de-Mausole asylum. The world, as we knew it, was going to change on that warm summer morning, making way for one of the most influential pieces of art the world has ever witnessed. The Starry Night was born.
Van Gogh had brought out one of the most confusing topics from the painting, one which has astounded physicists and mathematicians even today. It was the subject of turbulence, baffling humanity since 13.8 billion BCE. The Starry Night had brought out this phenomenon in an effortless art piece.
'The Starry Night' by Vincent Van Gogh is kept at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City today
Merging of two similar shades of colours in the painting created a swirling effect of dust and gas around the stars. Van Gogh had tried to picture light quite differently from his predecessors. His attempts to capture the motion of light rather than its intensity was the defining aspect of this famous art piece. When two shades of similar intensity are close together, the primitive part of our brain tends to merge the two shades and will not differentiate them based on colour. On the other hand, the more evolved part of our mind will attempt to sort out the shades based on their colours. These overlapping viewpoints are what creates a disturbance in our heads (some might call it a ‘turbulence’), and we perceive the swirls of colour to be moving.
We could go into a more mathematical reasoning to it and find out how turbulence occurs here (which in fact, is yet to be done in math). Or we could simply admire its beauty. Some may picture themselves down in the little village gazing into the night sky, while others may get lost into the whirlpools created by the stars. Considering the man had just cut off his ear in a chaotic incident, which led to his self-admission into the asylum, this miraculous artwork has an astounding beauty. When we look at one of his paintings from a relatively peaceful era in his life, it doesn’t have the signature brushstrokes forming the flickering and movement of the paints.
Turbulence has been, and very well may still be, one of the unresolved mysteries in the world of physics. Brought out in a perfect piece of art, Van Gogh probably gave us one of the first insights into this abyss. To quote the famous Werner Heisenberg - “When I meet God, I’m going to ask him two things, ‘Why relativity?’ and ‘Why turbulence?’. I believe he will have an answer to the first.”
A self-portrait of Van Gogh, done during a relatively calmer period in his life.
Artificial Intelligence:
redefining what machines can do
- Aashaya Anand
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the future of this world. Being thought of as harmful and destructive at the time, AI was only seen in sci-fi movies starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, at that time. That approach clearly wasn’t taken seriously, because today, one of the most common, yet amazing breakthroughs is the virtual assistant on your phone. Google Assistant, Siri and Alexa will always be by your side when you need a friend to talk to.
The term AI was coined by Stanford computer scientist, John McCarthy, in 1956. Inventions built around AI, for example, robots have been feared for years. Who hasn’t watched at least one movie about robots taking over humanity? Mankind has been predicted to destroy itself. We all remember ‘Terminator’, where human look-alike android assassins were programmed to kill people. In spite of these fears, people are coming up with new ideas. Artificial intelligence has peaked in the year 2019.
A snapshot from the movie 'Terminator Genisys'
An example is when Open AI succeeded in solving a Rubik’s cube using a robot hand they made called Dactyl. They initially trained the hand to memorize all the moves required to solve a Rubik’s cube. Eventually, it got the point where the hand could solve any given jumble. The hand has some colour sensors on the tip of its fingers which help it detect patterns on the cube, and the algorithm does the rest of the solving. Of course, the hand can’t do much more than solve a Rubik’s cube, but this is the first stepping stone to a fully built and engineered robot.
Another breakthrough was the AI’s war of algorithms. Coming back to the topic of robots crushing humanity, a research team came up with a way for AI to be involved in a potential war. They basically trained AI to fight each other. The way to look at this is that if WWIII breaks out in 20 years, nations will be using AI to fight each other. Even with the presence of the current COVID-19 pandemic, they are working on improving it in 2020.
A model of Open AI’s Rubik's cube solving hand, Dactyl.
Samsung also developed a video making software called Deepfake, that creates a fake video with only a single picture, or an audio file. They use techniques like animation to create a short video, much like a GIF. Just put in a single picture and a full video will be generated in seconds! Impressive, isn’t it? Although, there is the fear of people using it for wrong purposes like creating fake videos of people to spread false information. In the world of AI, there is always a risk of something going on. Unless we implement and utilise AI for its intended purpose, we practically are walking on thin ice.
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These were some of the greatest AI breakthroughs in 2019 and there’s a lot more exciting stuff waiting for us in the year 2020.