After the Big Brains theory, the Poincare Conjecture its time now for a re-enactment of the big event itself that started it all.
The Reuters reports:
International physicists at a vast underground complex near Geneva launch a 20-year project on Wednesday to re-enact the “Big Bang” to try to explain the origins of the universe and how it came to harbor life.
In a giant machine called the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, at the CERN research centre straddling the Franco-Swiss border, they plan to smash particles together to create, on a small-scale, re-enactments of the event that started up the cosmos.
As the CERN team embarks on a mission to uncharted territories to go where no man has ever gone before, Offstumped reminicises of an event in 2004 at the CERN.
A special plaque next to the Shiva statue at CERN explains the significance of the metaphor of Shiva’s cosmic dance with several quotations from The Tao of Physics. Here is the text of the plaque:
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, seeing beyond the unsurpassed rhythm, beauty, power and grace of the Nataraja, once wrote of it “It is the clearest image of the activity of God which any art or religion can boast of.”
More recently, Fritjof Capra explained that “Modern physics has shown that the rhythm of creation and destruction is not only manifest in the turn of the seasons and in the birth and death of all living creatures, but is also the very essence of inorganic matter,” and that “For the modern physicists, then, Shiva’s dance is the dance of subatomic matter.”
It is indeed as Capra concluded: “Hundreds of years ago, Indian artists created visual images of dancing Shivas in a beautiful series of bronzes. In our time, physicists have used the most advanced technology to portray the patterns of the cosmic dance. The metaphor of the cosmic dance thus unifies ancient mythology, religious art and modern physics.”
In choosing the image of Shiva Nataraja, the Indian government acknowledged the profound significance of the metaphor of Shiva’s dance for the cosmic dance of subatomic particles, which is observed and analyzed by CERN’s physicists. The parallel between Shiva’s dance and the dance of subatomic particles was first discussed by Fritjof Capra in an article titled “The Dance of Shiva: The Hindu View of Matter in the Light of Modern Physics,” published in Main Currents in Modern Thought in 1972.
As the ancient meets the modern, all fingers crossed on what the CERN’s re-enactment of the Big Bang will likely reveal.
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Filed under: jeetega-bharat
I find this highly communal and non-secular. I think I will go and hold a protest march!
Carl Sagan’s interview in Rediff.
The Rediff Special / Carl Sagan
‘Hindu cosmology’s time-scale for the universe is in consonance with modern science’
You mentioned the Chola bronzes and I see also that in your book COSMOS one of the chapters called ‘The edge of forever’ begins with a picture of Nataraja. Could you say something to explain its relevance in that chapter?
The traditional explanation of the Nataraja is that it symbolises the creation of the universe in one hand and the death of the universe in the other – the drum and the flame – and after all, that is what cosmology is all about. So in addition to being artistically exquisite, the Nataraja provides exactly the kind of symbolism that we wanted. The Nataraja that is photographed in the book COSMOS is in a museum in Pasadena, California, but it will be returned to India at some specified time within the next decade.
http://www.rediff.com/news/jan/29sagan.htm
Surprised blog post, I didn’t expected. Its wonderful to see the Nataraja in Cosmic Dance form at CERN. Western mind value such things, as they generate mervelous ideas and imaginations.
See the western mind. Look at this site, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva atop Swiss mountains. And how they trying to correlate with three Gunas…
http://www.premyoga.org/
I saw few wonderful images of Samudra manthan (Churning of the Milky Ocean) from Bengkok, no website. There is a huge sculptor of Samudra manthan in front of new Bengkok airport. Could you imagine such things in Bharat? We are demonising our past and loosing invaluable ideas and imaginations.
Its time, we come out from Sickularism traps and utilise our ancient ideas and imaginations in advancement of science and technology.
I am eagerly awaiting the commemncement operations of LHC! Here’s the link for webcast:
http://webcast.cern.ch/index.html
Time is 9:00 AM (CEST -Central Europe Standard Time)
What enormous world of knowledge, esp in the Physics arena, will this operation open, its simply amazing!
BTW, regarding display of Nataraj @ CERN, Westerners will no doubt learn from ancient Indian science & knowledge (good for them!) and apply it to further advancement of science & knowledge, while Indians, the pseudo-sickularist kind, themselves will & force others to remain ignorant of the vast treasure-trove of knowledge that ancient Indian culture offers. Talk about “Diya Tale Andhera” (Darkness reigning supreme below the candle!)
Other than dance of Shiva, we also should be proud about the “God Particle” named as “Higgs Boson” Particle. This experiment is trying to verify existance of this particle.
Boson as we know is named after Satyendra Nath Bose – the Indian Physicist.
Bharat,
We have Gandhi, Neharu, Indira, Rajib statues in every corner. These are our godess of secular India. Do we need any ancient statu or epic image in India, like. you say, samudra manthan.
You will see our epics image all over world and they are even attracting tourist, But in India we have statues of political leader!!!
Bharat: don’t get disheartened. Scientists always have been very close to our culture. Vested Interest can’t do anything to this glorious tradition.
First higher institute of scientific reserach in India in modern times founded by JC Bose – the BASU VIGYAN MANDIR.
The interior design, landscape is filled with lots of symbolism from Indian culture- Buddhism, Hinduism. The design was done by Sister NIVEDITA herself. (Ashish Nandy is a confused person- but if not read already, pls read his essays on JC Bose, and Ramanujam- they are SIMPLY GREAT).
The biggest aspect of Indian Culture is: it did not demonise science as was done by Europe. SCIENCE WAS PART OF SACRED.
I shd write: SCIENCE WAS always PART OF SACRED, and still is.
After Einstein’s theory of relativity the old adage that energy can neither be created nor be destroyed is no longer true. In fact matter can be “destroyed” to create energy and that’s anushakthi. So matter plus energy or mass plus energy conservation is the new mantra. But still man has been able to go only in 1 direction (from matter to energy). If I understand correctly what they are attempting at CERN is indeed revolutionary, they attempt to “create” matter starting from vacuum (does this mean there is no matter to start with? But how can you create such a condition? This is where my layman’s brain fails) purely by using energy. This could throw a lot of light on the creation of universe (it still doesn’t explain how that energy was created but nonetheless we are one step closer). The physics gurus can shed more light perhaps.
The pseudo secularist Indian government sent a Nataraja statue to CERN? That is impossible, right?
Are you sure the statue wasn’t chosen by the last government, and UPA tried to get it replaced but failed due to time constraints. And is it true that it would soon be replaced by a bust of Rajiv Gandhi? An investigation, please?
Arvind,
If I understand correctly what they are attempting at CERN is indeed revolutionary, they attempt to “create” matter starting from vacuum (does this mean there is no matter to start with? But how can you create such a condition? This is where my layman’s brain fails)
I am not sure where exactly you read this. However it must be noted that, in particle physics, “vacuum” does not exactly mean what it means in English. It is a technical term for “ground state” or minimum energy state of a particle.
Yossarin,
According to the Reuters report you quoted
to try to explain the origins of the universe and how it came to harbor life
These experiments may take us one step close to explaining the origin of the universe but I don’t know how it can say anything about “how it came to harbor life”
The Churning of the Milk Ocean (or Sagar Manthan; Samudra Manthan; Samudra manthanam; or Ksheersagar manthan) is one of the most famous episodes in Sanskrit literature, appearing in the Srimad Bhagavatam, the Mahabharata and the Vishnu Purana. Demons and gods cooperate to churn the sea for thousands of years in order to bring forth missing treasures after the recreation of the universe, including the heavenly nectar of immortality (amrita).
The King Power Group donated this 48-million-baht art sculpture to Suvarnabhumi Bangkok Airport. (pronounced “Su-Wana-Poom” in Thai, meaning “The Golden Land”). http://www.photoseek.com/07THAI/content/07THIT_755_753pan_Bangkok_Airport_large.html
Another view.
http://travel.webshots.com/photo/2943567230067434207byyyeJ
Here watch the Samudra Manthan, Swarnabhumi Airport- Bangkok
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7777105236010914356
This rap song explains what it is they plan to do in the hadron expt:
The Department of Atomic Energy gifted a two-metre bronze statue of the Nataraja to CERN on June 18, 2004 to celebrate the centre’s India connection. Indian Atomic Energy Commission chairman Anil Kakodkar had then said: “The Indian scientific community is part of the quest for understanding the universe.
It is a gift from the Indian government and bears an inscription of a verse by Sri Adi Sankara as a dedication:
“O Omnipresent, the embodiment of all virtues, the creator of this cosmic universe, the king of dancers, who dances the Ananda Tandava in the twilight, I salute thee.”
http://www.mpg.de/english/illustrationsDocumentation/multimedia/mpResearch/2007/heft02/014/index.html
PS. Obviously, it was NDA govt time’s gift, not todays sicukar UPA.
****************
Uniqueness of Dancing Shiva gifted to CERN
Statue Height with Pedestal : 12 feet
Granite Base: 516(L) x 416(B) x 93(H) (cm)
Cost : Euros 70,000 incl.Transportation
Fabricated at Swamimalai by Mr Rajan Stapathy.
Technological challenge.
Tallest Nataraja in the World
Completed in 8 months using
Traditional lost wax process Without modern day technologies
Achieving excellent aesthetics and quality
How can NDA government communalize the world’s premier most scientific research center by putting a Shiva statue? This is outrageous!!!
I’ll call Prakash (Karat) who is now holidaying in Scotland to bring the matter to The Hague and condemn the action. That old senile Vajpayee should be brought to justice even on wheelchair from his Nainital residence. And I’ll include this action in the ten worst decisions by Indian government in the last decade that I’m going to telecast in Mid-October.
The presence of the Nataraja and importance of the “Boson” scalar named after Satyendranath Bose (as correctly pointed out by #5 Tathagata) reveal important Indic contributions to philosophy Science. India was a place where philosophy was integrated into science when perfect knowledge was unattainable.
However, there is something about “Big bang” theory – which this collider is attempting to prove, which falls more into dogmatic thought rather than science or philosophy.
“Cosmologists are always wrong but never in doubt”, Lev Landau, a theoretical physicist once said.
Quoting Landau, Jayant Naralikar criticized the science and the scientist behind the “big bang” theory as someone who have their “eyes wide shut.” He wrote:
“Most of the work on the Big Bang theory today is based on the study of the early moments when the universe was no more than a billion-billion-billion-billionth part of a second old… The physics used for the study is also highly speculative, since it deals with particles of such high energy that no one has observed let alone experimented with particles of such high energy in the laboratory.”
The LHC experiment is supposed to detect the presence of the Higgs-Boson particle, also called as the “God” particle – in a attempt to silence critics such as Naralikar.
The equipment that will observe these experiments are digital cameras that weigh over a ton and can take about a million pictures or more per second. In an attempt to witness the “god” particle “give” mass to other particles. Will they be actually prove what the universe looked when it was “one billion-billion-billion-billionth” part of a second old?
The big bang theory, as Stephen Hawking writes in “the brief history of time” is in many ways consistent with Christian theology. God created the world in six days… there could have been some rounding error, since according to these “scientists” it was created in a much smaller fraction – but nevertheless “created” as postulated in Genesis. There was no time, no matter and no energy prior to the big bang.
The point is that Science become dogma – when unprovable hypotheses are implicitly passed of as undisputed facts – because the voices of dissension are marginalized. This at some level they fit in with western religious beliefs.
In Indic thought – everything that has a beginning has an ending, yet not everything has a beginning or an ending. Some things are “anaadi” and “anant.”
Indic thought and philosophy makes no claim to perfect knowledge.
The creation hymn in the Rg Veda (10 mandal, 129 sukta) lays out a theory for creation, but wonders if God himself knows the answers to these questions.
Will the Collider provide the “absolute” answer to the creation question that has dogged Indian philosophers? Or will it simply be the Genesis of a “new science” that is is simply attempting to “scientifically” prove Christian dogma?
I will stay off the physics and scream, like the first comment from anonymous coward, at the communal insensitivity of evil Hindoos in trying to foist an idol of Shiva with utter disregard to the contempt the minorities have for the filthy idolators.
There is also the ‘Urdhva Thandava’, captured in stone in the Temples at Tenkasi and Krishnapuram in south Tamil Nadu. Urdhva means ‘raised’, and also ‘after death’. The urdhva thandava Shiva has one leg raised sky-ward.
The Merchant of Death.
Sirdesai, where do you live?? It is UPA not NDA in power.
@Sharma
NDA in 2004 sent this statue to CERN.
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