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For some reason, I borrowed a copy of George Gamow’s book “Mr Tompkins in wonderland,” some days back. Actually, it was because someone I know asked me to write a light, readable article on what would happen to our experiences if the physical constants (such as velocity of light, Planck’s constant, and so on) were tweaked a bit.
This being easier said than done, I reached for this book. In order to illustrate the ideas of the special theory of relativity, Gamow talks about what would happen if the speed of light were not as high as it is now, but something more like 10 kmph, speeds which a cyclist is likely to reach in the normal world.
A physicist to whom I mentioned this book, was quite sceptical. He was of the opinion that nothing would change – everything would proportionately scale down and it would be as difficult for someone to accelerate and reach the speed of light as it is, now, in reality.
While that may be true, how much easier it is for a person outside the world of physics and research to imagine a real cycle suffering a length contraction, than to understand how relativistic particles experience time dilation. Or, rather than to try and understand curved space, general theory of relativity and multiply connected domains by reading treatises and technical drawings, what pleasure it would be to imagine a bug crawling on the surface of a giant torus or something like that.
Analogies and illustrations in popular science may actually not be the strictest of truths, but they serve well in reaching the subconscious and conveying essential concepts. Why don’t people write more and read more science fiction?
Take films on science fiction. They may even exaggerate or present inaccurate information, but turn out to be runaway hits, popularising the theme. For instance, the exaggerated reality of recreating dinosaurs in Jurassic Park or the way special theory of relativity is presented in Back to the Future, may have strong critics, but no one can deny how enjoyable the experience was. In these films, visual imagination and scientific theories combined in the hands of a master storyteller like Spielberg to produce fascinating films such as these.
Kubrik’s Space Odyssey, a lonely saga on space travel, was an experience, but I am yet to figure out what possessed the director to end it like that. Perhaps I prefer simpler films, or perhaps it was just that the film even challenged notions of “end” itself, leaving one to grapple with uncertainty and unleashed imagination. While remaining an engaging film, Inception was, too, somewhat oblique and not grounded enough.
As if to compensate, Interstellar was fiction that challenged even fact. For the first time, in this film, the CG crew imagined (aided by massive computing machines) what it would be like for someone to view a massive black hole while rotating around it. This is not an easy thing to imagine or visualise, for light beams bending around a black hole do not follow a simple path. The team, in fact, got a research paper published on this topic. Not surprising, as they had on board the theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, co-author of the famous classic text book on gravitation (by Misner, Wheeler and Thorne). As an aside, one must mention that Kip Thorne has also written a book entitled, Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein’s Outrageous Legacy, in which he describes a voyage undertaken into deep space.
Over the last few months, there have been a spate of biopics that have described the lives of famous scientists – Alan Turing, Stephen Hawking and Ramanujan — which are all very fine, but there are so many areas left untouched. Also, how much better if some of the magical effects of visualisation had been used to bring alive the maths and the sciences developed by these heroes.
Still, when reflecting on the times when the only science fiction was about war and missiles, one can’t help being thankful for these treats of today. If this trend should linger and hundreds of films on sci-fi take off in the global arena as well as in the Indian context!
