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Introduction

As soon as we start asking basic questions about life, we seem to enter the body of knowledge called Philosophy. Let us look at the latest Wikipedia definition:

“Philosophy (from Greek φιλοσοφία, philosophia, literally “love of wisdom”) is the study of general and fundamental questions about existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved”.

However, philosophy has also been simply seen as “any body of knowledge”, though gradually, three streams have been developed:

  1. Natural philosophy: Includes astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and cosmology.
  2. Ethics or Moral philosophy: Concepts of right and wrong, good and evil, etc. A related subject is Aesthetics and Axiology is a collective term for Ethics and Aesthetics.
  3. Metaphysics: Dictionary defines it as the branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, possibility and actuality.

While there many more formal definitions including here and here, the simplest description comes from American philosopher David Kellogg Lewis (1941 – 2001) on Standford archives:

On a traditional conception, metaphysics aims to answer, in a suitably abstract and fully general manner, two questions:

What is there?
What is it (that is, whatever it is that there is) like?

This is what we are aiming to look at – What is there?

What are the different parts of existence?

Living Matter | Homo Sapiens | Consciousness | Space | Time | Energy | Fundamental Interactions incl. Gravity | Matter | Celestial  / Astronomical Objects (Astronomy, Astrophysics, Cosmology …) | Space Travel

Fundamental Interactions incl. Gravity

One of the best commentaries on Gravity has been written by Dr. Sten Odenwald (his bio states: “an astronomer and educator with the NASA Heliophysics Education Consortium, who also runs an online resource called The Astronomy Cafe. He received his PhD in astrophysics from Harvard University in 1982.”). Some excerpts from his  “The Mystery of Gravity”:

  • Gravity does not exist like the frosting on a cake, embedded in some larger arena of space and time. Instead, the ‘frosting’ is everything, and matter is embedded and intimately and indivisibly connected to it. If you could turn off gravity, it is mathematically predicted that space and time would also vanish! You can turn off electromagnetic forces by neutralizing the charges on material particles, but you cannot neutralize gravity without eliminating spacetime itself.
  • Currently, physicists have explored two of its most fundamental and exotic predictions: The first is that gravity waves exist and behave as the theory predicts. The second is that a phenomenon called ‘frame-dragging’ exists around rotating massive objects.
  • Theoretically, gravity waves must exist in order for Einstein’s theory to be correct.
  • They are distortions in the curvature of spacetime caused by accelerating matter, just as electromagnetic waves are distortions in the electromagnetic field of a charged particle produced by its acceleration. Gravity waves carry energy and travel at light-speed.
  • Gravity also doesn’t care if you have matter or anti-matter; both will behave identically as they fall and move under gravity’s influence.
  • Applying general relativity, and even Newton’s Universal Gravitation, to large systems like galaxies and the universe leads to the discovery of a new ingredient called Dark Matter.

Celestial  / Astronomical Objects (Astronomy, Astrophysics, Cosmology …)

This can be real fun – exploring the planets, solar systems (yes, there are other stars with revolving planets – see link below), galaxies, et al. Then you never know, you might bump into another place in the universe where biological life exists – it would be most exciting to chat with aliens (unless of course, they want war!).

We seem to be doing a great job in this field. Countries are racing to make the biggest telescope . We have been stretching things as much as possible – for example, Lyman Spitzer (1914-1997), American theoretical physicist, astronomer and mountaineer, came with the idea to have telescopes operating in outer space. The idea of “Space Telescope” was born in 1946. Now we have a number of Space Telescopes as listed here and here.

We are doing “Deep space exploration” – the wikipedia page shares about Voyager 1:

At present the furthest space probe mankind has constructed and launched from Earth is Voyager 1, which was announced on December 5, 2011 to have reached the outer edge of the Solar system, and entered interstellar space on August 25, 2012.

Further work to be done in this section: What are the constraints to stretch further? What technologies are going to help us maneuver the universe in a bigger way?

Links:

Related:

On Mauna Kea in Hawaii (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauna_Kea):

With its high elevation, dry environment, and stable airflow, Mauna Kea’s summit is one of the best sites in the world for astronomical observation. Since the creation of an access road in 1964, thirteen telescopes funded by eleven countries have been constructed at the summit. The Mauna Kea Observatories are used for scientific research across the electromagnetic spectrum and comprise the largest such facility in the world.

References

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