The Big Bang theory says that the whole universe started from a “singularity” — a single point. The first question then is, a single point where? It is not a single point “in space” because the whole space was a single point. The Discovery channel would put it fancifully that “the whole universe could fit in the palm of your hand,” which of course it could not. Your palm would also be a little palm inside the little universe in that single point.

The second question is, if the whole universe was inside one point, what about all the points around it? Physicists would advise you not to ask such stupid questions. Don’t feel bad, they have asked me to shut up as well. Some of them may kindly explain that the other points may be parallel universes. Others may say that there are no “other” points. They may point out (as Steven Weinberg does in The Dreams of a Final Theory) that there is nothing more to the north of the North Pole. I consider this analogy more of a semantic argument than a scientific one, but let’s buy this argument for now.

The next hurdle is that the singularity is in space-time — not merely in space. So before the Big Bang, there was no time. Sorry, there was no “before!” This is a concept that my five year old son has problems with. Again, the Big Bang cosmologist will point out that things do not necessarily have to continue backwards — you may think that whatever temperature something is at, you can always make it a little colder. But you cannot make it colder than absolute zero. True, true; but is temperature the same as time? Temperature is a measure of hotness, which is an aggregate of molecular speeds. And speed is distance traveled in unit time. Time again. Hmmm….

I am sure it is my lack of imagination or incompleteness of training that is preventing me from understanding and accepting this Big Bang concept. But even after buying the space-time singularity concept, other difficulties persist.

Firstly, if the whole universe is at one point at one time, one would naively expect it to make a super-massive black hole from which not even light can escape. Clearly then, the whole universe couldn’t have banged out of that point. But I’m sure there is a perfectly logical explanation why it can, just that I don’t know it yet. May be some of my readers will point it out to me?

Second, what’s with dark matter and dark energy? The Big Bang cosmology has to stretch itself a bit with the notion of dark energy to account for the large scale dynamics of the observed universe. Our universe is expanding (or so it appears) at an accelerating rate, which can only be accounted for by assuming that there is an invisible energy pushing the galaxies apart. Within the galaxies themselves, stars are moving around as though there is more mass than we can see. This is the so called dark matter. Although “dark” signifies invisible, to me, it sounds as though we are in the dark about what these beasts are!

The third trouble I have is the fact that the Big Bang cosmology violates special relativity (SR). This little concern of mine has been answered in many different ways:

• One answer is that general relativity “trumps” SR — if there are conflicting predictions or directives from these two theories, I was advised to always trust GR.
• Besides, SR applies only to local motion, like spaceships whizzing past each other. Non-local events do not have to obey SR. This makes me wonder how events know whether they are local or not. Well, that was bit tongue in cheek. I can kind of buy this argument (based on curvature of space-time perhaps becoming significant at large distances), although the non-scientific nature of local-ness makes me uneasy. (During the inflationary phase in the Big Bang theory, were things local or non-local?)
• Third answer: In the case of the Big Bang, the space itself is expanding, hence no violation of SR. SR applies to motion through space. (Wonder if I could’ve used that line when I got pulled over on I-81. “Officer, I wasn’t speeding. Just that space in between was expanding a little too fast!”)

Speaking of space expanding, it is supposed to be expanding only in between galaxies, not within them, apparently. I’m sure there is a perfectly logical explanation why, probably related to the proximity of masses or whatnot, but I’m not well-versed enough to understand it. In physics, disagreement and skepticism are always due to ignorance. But it is true that I have no idea what they mean when they say the space itself is expanding. If I stood in a region where the space is expanding, would I become bigger and would galaxies look smaller to me?

Note that it is necessary for space to expand only between galaxies. If it expanded everywhere, from subatomic to galactic scales, it would look as though nothing changed. Hardly satisfying because the distant galaxies do look as though they are flying off at great speeds.

I guess the real question is, what exactly is the difference between space expanding between two galaxies and the two galaxies merely moving away from each other?

One concept that I find bizarre is that singularity doesn’t necessarily mean single point in space. It was pointed out to me that the Big Bang could have been a spread out affair — thinking otherwise was merely my misconception, because I got confused by the similarity between the words “singularity” and single.

People present the Big Bang theory in physics pretty much like Evolution in biology, implying the same level of infallibility. But I feel that it is disingenuous to do that. To me, it looks as though the theory is so full of patchwork, such a mathematical collage to cook up something that is consistent with GR that it is hard to imagine that it corresponds to anything real (ignoring, for the moment, my favorite question — what is real?) But popular writers have embraced it. For instance, Ray Kurzweil and Richard Dawkins put it as a matter of fact in their books, lending it a credence that it perhaps doesn’t merit.

The genes in our body have only one motive–to get replicated. Our body is created in accordance with a blue print encoded in the genes to “run” this algorithm. How this algorithm gets mapped to our higher level goals and emotions is what life is all about to most people who are not physicists or biologists.

A simple mapping of this algorithm leads to the maxim in evolution “the survival of the fittest.” Any mutation that has the tiniest advantage in terms of survivability gets amplified over time. Similarly, all disadvantaged genes get wiped out.

But evolution in humans (and through our influence, the whole echo-system) has taken a new turn. Survival of the fittest used to mean the survival of the strongest or the smartest. For instance, if I had a genetic condition that made me prone to some life-threatening disease (in other words, if I was not very strong), my chances of passing on my genes would be a little smaller.

However, because of the advances in medicine, the survival chances for such disadvantaged genes are normalized to roughly the same level as those of the rest of the species. Then again, because of the dependence of the quality of health care on money, the survival chances get distorted in favor of the rich. So, is the mapping of the DNA algorithm now “the survival of the richest?”

Wealth is considered a product of intelligence. But intelligence (as defined by money-making ability) is not necessarily genetic. It may be, but we do not know that yet. So over several generations, it is not even the richest that survive, because time averages out the survival chances.

So what exactly is going to survive?

Ref: This post is an excerpt from my book, The Unreal Universe.

Around the same time B. Thulasidas (better known as Appu) also came to the High Ranges. His familty wasn’t all that poor and he didn’t really need the extra money. But he thought, hey rowdy place anyway, what the heck? Well, to make a long story short, they fell in love and decided to get married. This was some time in September 1962. A year later Sandya was born in Nov 63. And a little over another year and I came to be! (This whole stroy, by the way, is taking place in the state of Kerala in India. Well, that sentence was added just to put the links there, just in case you are interested.) There is a gorgeous hill resort called Munnar (meaning three rivers) where my parents were employed at that time and that’s where I was born.

Just before 1970, they (and me, which makes it we I guess) moved to Trivandrum, the capital city of Kerala. I lived in Trivandrum till I was 17. Lots of things happened in those years, but since this post is still (and always will be) work in progress, I can’t tell you all about it now.

In 1983, I moved to Madras, to do my BTech in Electronics and Communication at IIT, Madras. (They call the IITs the MIT of India, only much harder to get in. In my batch, there were about 75,000 students competing for about 2000 places. I was ranked 63 among them. I’m quite smart academically, you see.) And as you can imagine, lots of things happened in those four years as well. But despite all that, I graduated in August 1987 and got my BTech degree.

In 1987, after finishing my BTech, I did what most IITians are supposed to do. I moved to the states. Upstate New York was my destination. I joined the Physics Department of Syracuse University to do my PhD in High Energy Physics. And boy, did a lot of things happen during those 6 years! Half of those 6 years were spent at Cornell University in Ithaca.

That was in Aug. 1987. Then in 1993 Sept, the prestigious French national research organization ( CNRS – “Centre national de la recherche scientifique”) hired me. I moved to France to continue my research work at ALEPH, CERN. My destination in France was the provencal city of Marseilles. My home institute was “Centre de Physique des Particules de Marseille” or CPPM. Of course, I didn’t speak a word of French, but that didn’t bother me much. (Before going to the US in 1987, I didn’t speak much English/Americanese either.)

End of 1995, on the 29th of Dec, I got married to Kavita. In early 1996, Kavita also moved to France. Kavita wasn’t too happy in France because she felt she could do much more in Singapore. She was right. Kavita is now an accomplished entrepreneur with two boutiques in Singapore and more business ideas than is good for her. She has won many awards and is a minor celebrity with the Singapore media.

In 1998, I got a good offer from what is now the Institute for Infocomm Research and we decided to move to Singapore. Among the various personal reasons for the move, I should mention that the smell of racisim in the Marseilles air was one. Although every individual I personally met in France was great, I always had a nagging feeling that every one I did not meet wanted me out of there. This feeling was further confirmed by the immigration clerks at the Marignane airport constantly asking me to “Mettez-vous a cote, monsieur” and occassionally murmuring “les francais d’abord.”

A week after I moved to Singapore, on the 24rth of July 1998, Anita was born. Incredibly cute and happy, Anita rearranged our priorities and put things in perspective. Five years later, on the 2nd of May 2003, Neil was born. He proved to be even more full of smiles.

In Singapore, I worked on a lot of various body-based measurements generating several patents and papers. Towards the end of my career with A-Star, I worked on brain signals, worrying about how to make sense of them and make them talk directly to a computer. This research direction influenced my thinking tremendously, though not in a way my employer would’ve liked. I started thinking about the role of perception in our world view and, consequently, in the theories of physics. I also realized how these ideas were not isolated musings, but were atriculated in various schools of philosophy. This line of thinking eventually ended up in my book, The Unreal Universe.

Towards the second half of 2005, I decided to chuck research and get into quantitative finance, which is an ideal domain for a cash-strapped physicist. It turned out that I had some skills and aptitudes that were mutually lucrative to my employers and myself. My first job was as the head of the quantitative analyst team at OCBC, a regional bank in Singapore. This middle office job, involving risk management and curtailing ebullient traders, gave me a thorough overview of pricing models and, perhaps more importantly, perfect understanding of the conflict-driven implementation of the risk appetite of the bank.

Later on, in 2007, I moved to Standard Chartered Bank, as a senior quantitative professional taking care of their in-house trading platform, which further enhanced my "big picture" outlook and inspired me to write Principles of Quantitative Development. I am rather well recognized in my field, and as a regular columnist for the Wilmott Magazine, I have published several articles on a variety of topics related to quants and quantitative finance, which is probably why John Wiley & Sons Ltd. asked me to write this book.

Despite these professional successes, on the personal front, 2008 has been a year of sadness. I lost my father on the 22nd of October. The death of a parent is a rude wake-up call. It brings about feelings of loss and pain that are hard to understand, and impossible to communicate. And for those of us with little gift of easy self-expression, they linger for longer than they perhaps should.