Friday, January 16, 2009

Interesting links...

If you have ever wondered how they inspect high-voltage cables .... even if you did not care (like me) .. check out the video on this link -> http://www.neatorama.com/2009/01/14/high-voltage-cable-inspection/ (from Reddit)

The whole story and video are quite mind bending stuff.

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Our world might be a giant hologram (New Scientist Article)
This is an area of research that has always spiked by interest driven by an innate curiosity regarding the nature of the world and self . The whole article talks about some new unexpected findings that suggest the holographic university theory may have some experimental evidence (certainly not conclusive, but gives hope to the may be argument. It also starts providing some additional data for the string theorists that have been wandering the mathematical abstraction land for far too many years).

Another area that I study is eastern philosophy (esp. Vedic philosophy and Advaita) which has certain interesting fundamental beliefs which would kinda-sorta give modern scientific validation to some age old beliefs:

1. The whole world as we see it is nothing but 'maya' (a near translation would mean illusion). In effect they state that nothing that we see/perceive is real, but a projection from a singularity (brahman -- though tempting to match up with a god it is not quite right).

2. The key term is singularity. The belief is that there exists only one. The fact that we see multiple (or duality) is purely due maya and it is not the fundamental truth. The word 'advaita' in Sanskrit quite literally means - 'not dual'. The whole philosophy is built on an negation argument (rather than describe its properties, they go down the path of negation and state what it is not)

I've over simplified here ... but, it is quite fascinating to see this 'may be' from the physicists.

-- rv

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