After shunting between classes and returning from my job, I was bone tired and immediately fell asleep. I would not have woken up even if my roommate had played heavy metal on her laptop! At 2am, I finally woke up. Sipping hot tea, with really blank expressions, I saw this book lying in the corner. I 'accidentally' laid my hands on 'The Nature of Space and Time :Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose'.
I flipped through the first few pages and at once realized that this one was not one of those read-and-forget type fictions. I sat up straight and this book was really demanding, as it needed a lot of concentration! The first few words of Classical Theory were a total blur. There were some incomprehensible bunch of words like: Quantum Theory, Particle Physics, String Theory, Supersymmetry, Supergravity, Zeroth Law of Black Holes, Spacetime, Cosmic Censorship...blah blah blahh !!! Coupled with that, there were particles like Bosons and Fermions 'spinning' and dancing all round the place. All these were total gibberish to me. Thanks to Wikipedia, Answers, Google and few other favorites; I at least had 0.01% clue as to what was happening around me.
Then there were people like Max Plank, Pauli, Heisenberg, Einstein, Bohr, Raychaudhari, Newman, Penrose (himself), Freedman and many many more making it all the more confusing!Each of these great men, has made vast contributions to this field. But, reading the book was a challenge for a Mechanical Engineer with just a tiny bit of Particle Physics background.
Each paragraph was disguised as a research topic for me! After every 20 words and I was desparately hunting definitions and overviews. At one point, I almost decided to give up. I almost did. But since I could not get the topic out of my head, I simply had to complete it. So was the hypnotic effect of the book. Past the first few pages and I could perfectly say all these words without stammering!!! A few more pages, and I could associate things to each other.
Things like Bosons and Fermions, Leptons, Quarks, Antiparticles, Flavors, their (bosons and fermions) interchangability (Supersymmetry) were now a bit familiar (All these came from Wiki and the likes). How black Holes are formed can be perfectly answered ,mathematically.It was then that I actually started enjoying the book a great deal. My poor laptop was working overtime. Every now and then, I took my think-break. All these great scientists have made such immense contributions to the world od Classical Physics. Their entire lives must have been swallowed up by their research. Any words to describe their significant contribution would be feeble. Back to my book.
Past the second chapter, the book was getting all the more interesting. It was becoming difficult and easy both at the same time!I really do not want to wirte a summary of the book as that would be a pain to read for anybody :) By the time, I finally completed the Stephen Hawking chapters of the book, it was 6.30am.After reading the book, I felt that I have actually seen not even 0.000001 percent of the whole picture. Or may be even 100 times less than that!!
This field is so VAST! It will take a life time of reseach to know all the stuff.But after completing the book (though partially), I felt like it was a major achievement on my part. It really took a hell lot of browsing. Getting past things, that were just a 'casual mention' was also taskful. I really felt happy. Just a couple fo hours in to this topic and I was literally drained. But I felt like Johnathan Livingston Seagull - 'happy and hungry'!!
Physicsits and mathematicians are indeed a blessing to the world. People who already have a lot of knowledge in this field have all rights to mock my close-to-zero knowledge in this area. This region has no boundries and I feel like writing a few more things atleast.
But again, some things are better left unsaid. :)
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