The tesseract

In the early hours of March 1911, a man wakes up in his bedroom in London. The sun has only just begun to come out and it is still fairly dark. Careful in his movements, so as to not wake up his wife who is still sound asleep, he sits up on the side of his bed. He seems to be in his early fifties, hints of aging have only just begun to appear. A wide moustache marks the top of his lips. He must get back to work urgently, he thinks to himself, the analysis of the experiments may be complete, but he must start writing the research paper soon. He rubs his eyes and stretches a bit, since his back is sore from sitting in the study all night. His feet still dangle some centimeters from the floor. He proceeds to stand up, his feet barely touch the ground, and only then does a distant thought dawn on him. He finds himself staring at the floor, quite perplexed, and most definitely stupefied. The feelings inside him are first of curiosity, which subsequently breed concern and the concern, not lo...

Premise: Analog and Digital systems If you attended the lecture on electrical physics in your school, you might recall hearing your teacher telling you something about two essential types of systems, an important distinction if you happen to stumble into the topic of electronics viz. that a system can be either analogue or digital. As trivial as this distinction may seem for someone who doesn't intend to pursue a career in applied electronics, these two words, digital and analogue happen to hold a lot of meaning outside of this little bubble of scientific jargon. That our understanding of the basic nature of the universe might rest upon this trivial distinction might seem like an overstatement at this point, but what follows might sway you into believing it very well might be true. For starters, what do these two words mean? Let us look at an analogue system. An analogue system, operates across a wide spectrum of states. Say for example, a system which provides variable volta...

Rene Descartes once said.... Well, you already know what he said. If you don't, he said "Cogito Ergo Sum"("I think so I am"), the infamous line that has become somewhat of a pillar for the modern philosophy of subjective reality to stand on. Most of western philosophy still revolves around the subject of mind and matter, of whether or not this world IS in reality or if reality is something objective at all. The whole thought process sprouting from this very absurd (and still very rational) question, leads to quite a lot of strange stuff, but never produces any rational or conclusive verdict. You don't really get to a point where you are able to answer the question already asked. You just come up with even more questions that leave you knowing less than you already did. But that is how philosophy is. It is not about answering questions, its about asking them. The answering part should be left to science. Fear not though, I am not going to write a whole...

The sky was red….. blood red. The sun, crimson, almost bleeding, struggled to shine what little light it had upon the fading horizon. The air smelled of depression and the scarlet soil, already of the blood that was to spill on it. Everything seemed to hail impending dismay. The very aura of the battlefield was unnerving. The silence was untouched….. that too, to a chilling extent. And then it broke, with sounds of footsteps. Quick. Rhythmic. Coordinated. Knifing the very atmosphere. In the beginning, much akin to the beating of a distant drum, and then slowly multiplying, the countless sounds slowly fading into existence. The sounds of an approaching army. The sounds of undoubted conflict. The slow, horrific and dismal sounds……of death. An armor-clad horseman appeared, apparently out of nowhere and then behind him, lines and lines of countless soldiers. An army of unfathomable magnitude. Emerging out of inexistence. Hastening towards the field of battle and still, somehow,...

It strikes me sometimes, how often we use the word "sixth sense" in our daily life, and yet, never think about it in the literal sense. Of course, it would be absurd to think that such a sense exists in humans at all. Everyone of us has grown up with the belief that the world we live in can very clearly be understood by the five basic senses that we possess. What is this sixth sense then, that we oft talk about? In the sense that we usually use it, the sixth sense is a superstition. The ability to precept things that others cannot. It is a form of vibe, if you will. This form of the sixth-sense, I strongly disagree with. I can see how someone's wild guess can come true at some point in their life. With over 7 billion people currently alive and with an average lifespan of nearly 80 years, it shouldn't come as a surprise, applying the principles of probability, that people can at some point randomly guess something that has not yet happened. But that is not th...

A little while ago, my mind came across a question, which, although is very confusing, but is of vital importance nonetheless. I was actually quite stunned, that many of us live our lives and don't even think about it, although the very process of thinking, is a major part of the question. "Is our brain controlling us, or are we controlling the brain?" That is a question, some of us don't bother to ask ourselves, and yet, it is still such an obvious question, that it should keep on repeating itself an endless amount of times in our mind. The question, you see, is fairly simple. The brain is the organ of control. It is in control of everything. The fact that I am writing this, is a clear example of this very truth. Your eyes are moving to read this, and those too, are being controlled by your brain. Then, as your eyes scan these sentences they feed them into your brain, which then processes the information provided, all of this happening in a fraction of a se...