Star Trek image downloaded from IMDb
The story of Contact:
As the story goes, Carl Sagan was writing his fictional novel “Contact”, he wanted his heroine, Ellie, to travel to another point in space several light years away. Carl Sagan collaborated with the theoretical physicist Kip Thorne to find a theoretically feasible solution for this travel through space-time. The solution was to travel through a “Worm Hole”. Now let us understand what a wormhole is, though the reader may skip the explanation entirely without losing the sense of this article, go directly to the section “Proposed Idea”.
Worm Hole:
Einstein’s theory of relativity discovered that the universe has a speed limit. Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light in vacuum, which is roughly three hundred thousand kilometres per Second. Let me also, state that Einstein discovered that just like space, time too is a dimension inseparable from space, this is referred to as space-time. We live and move around in space-time not just in space. Now imagine two points in space-time separated by several light years (Note that light years is a standard of distance; the distance covered by light in one year). For the fastest spaceship to travel this distance it may take many thousand years. How do we then travel through this? So imagine an A4 sheet of paper as space-time, this means only surface of the paper is the space-time. We can't jump up from the paper; above the space is what will be called hyperspace, and we can’t be there.
Figure 1 shows this paper (space-time) and the two points are marked as blue and brown, in conventional way to travel thru space we need to follow the pencil line marked by the arrow. Now let us bend (warp) the space-time and bring the two points one over the other thru hyperspace, as shown in Figure 2. If you notice closely there is also a micro warping happening at the blue and brown points, there are protrusions over them. These protrusions will grow and the space-time undergoes extreme bending, until these two protrusions touch each other, as shown in Figure 3. At this point of contact, the two protrusions will open out and form a bridge, this is a wormhole between the two points, and now the travel time between the two points is tremendously reduced.
How Innovation comes about:
The reason why the wormhole was explained in so much detail is to drive home the point that inspite of all these details of how it works, this idea is not yet established and accepted physics. This remains a putative theory with many hiccups. This is a very popular idea for science fiction movies. ‘Interstellar’ the movie by Christopher Nolan uses this idea for the astronauts to travel 10 billion light years to Garguantua, the black hole. Even Christopher Nolan had consulted with Kip Thorne to get the scenes as right as possible in the movie. These are examples of the collaboration between the fertile minds of an artist and a scientist.
There are other examples where the creative genius preceded the scientific development. HG Wells published his story “Time Machine”, in the year 1895, whereas Einstein discovered the special theory of relativity giving the theoretical background for time travel in 1905. In the case of Jules Verne, he published his “From earth to the Moon” in 1865, some 94 years before Neil Armstrong took that ‘Small Step’ which was a ‘Giant Leap’ for mankind.
In these examples, we have seen that in new ideas of science there is a huge element of innovation where an artist has a role to play. I would like to believe that this is always the case and that Art leads innovation and creative thought in the human civilization. An interesting take on this is in the Book “This Chancy, Chancy, Chancy world” by L Rastrigin. He explains that the process of innovation is always intuitive and its only while explaining and justifying it that deductive logic is applied. Rastrigin illustrates this through a story of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. Holmes tells Watson “That is perfectly correct Watson, -but a little too orthodox. It is true that one has to be logical in one’s conclusion; the question is how does one arrive at those conclusions? Logic merely permits one to verify the truth of a conclusion. it does not enable one to reach a conclusion.”
It will be interesting to note Kekule’s Dream. Kekule, the scientist, discovered the structure of the benzene ring after having a dream of a snake consuming its own tail. In my experience while grappling with any problem, often the solution occurs to me while I am in the shower. These insights aren't arbitrary flashes of inspiration; they occur when I am deeply contemplating a problem, and the solution seems to elude me. Suddenly, a thought emerges, pointing me in the right direction. These won’t be some independent flash of inspiration out of the blue, but this would be on problems that we are in deep contemplation about, where the solution eludes us. Why does this happen? Perhaps the answer has to do with what Rastrigin’s Holmes said. The solutions are intuitive; it is the justification that needs the rigour of reasoning.
Without sufficient reason, I harbour the idea that such flashes of intuitions are significantly influenced and facilitated by our engagement with the arts. Creative ideas, whether derived from literature, paintings, dance, music, or simply observing nature, play a crucial role. Aren’t so many of us inspired by USS Enterprise of ‘Star Trek’going to “Space the final frontier, -----To go where no man has gone before”?
Reference / Further material:
1) The Chancy, Chancy, Chancy World – L Rastrigin https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/125788232-the-chancy-chancy-chancy-world
2) Neil deGrasse Tyson explaining the wormhole: https://youtu.be/1fFrpBJDMJo?si=LyF3MaVgfZCDT33o
3) Kip Thorne speaking of wormholes and his work with Carl Sagan on Cosmos: https://youtu.be/cQ0O1HwlFRA?si=KcX4o26nahN2sG-p
4) Kekule’s dream of benzene ring:
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