Relativity, IUCAA and Cambridge : Recalling the beginning of my love for Theoretical Physics

 It was a very usual evening on the 16th of February. I was waiting in queue at a bustling petrol pump to refill my bike with fuel. Everyday used to be a generous dose of anxiety for me as I was anticipating for decisions from the universities that I have applied to. There were a few heartbreaking rejections, but I was still in hope, awaiting a decision from my top choice. In the queue, I was resisting the compulsive urge to check my e-mails and refresh the application portal - the habit was mentally exhausting but with each e-mail refresh and portal login, I held in a small hope of receiving a positive response. Eventually, I succumbed to the urge once again and opened my email inbox with complete unpreparedness of seeing any update. What were the odds after all that I will receive the good news at a petrol station?! Turns out, I was utterly wrong! There was an email with the subject line - "University of Cambridge - Conditional Offer of Admission". Completely taken aback by this email, I opened it and there it was - an offer from the University of Cambridge to study for the Master of Advanced Studies (MASt) in Theoretical Physics course. In those few minutes, while the "emotions" department of my brain was still processing the news, the "memories" department decided to play a quick recap of my journey so far. 

The University of Cambridge
Image Credit : University of Cambridge

The desire to study at the prestigious University of Cambridge was not new for me and it certainly was not inspired by Hogwarts (I have not even watched the Harry Potter movies). In fact, it was sparked when I was in the 8th grade, when my interests transitioned from rockets and space exploration to astrophysics and relativity. The transition was inspired by a set of biographies titled - "Genius" written by a Marathi businessman and writer named Achyut Godbole. The biographies were given to me by my mother as a "gift". Eventually, the books got me hooked even though they were entirely written in the Marathi language in which my comprehension skills were somewhat limited. The first ever book that I picked up from the set was of "Albert Einstein". The life of a seemingly ordinary child growing up to be an extraordinary genius resonated with me at the time and served as a good fantasy for my innocent self. But that is not what struck me the most in that book. Throughout my schooling, I had a bitter-sweet relationship with Mathematics. A subject which I found really hard to tame and master unlike my other favorites - Physics, Biology and Chemistry (the last one unfortunately fell out of the list in due course, thanks to the abomination named Organic Chemistry). I can still vividly recall a small paragraph of the book which attempted at explaining Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity to the layman. Well, not the entire theory but a small and popular consequence of it that we call - "time dilation". The time dilation which is responsible for the apparent slowing of clocks in a moving frame of reference as observed by someone who is in a stationary frame of reference relative to the first. At the end of that paragraph stood the mathematical equation for time dilation - 

It is fairly easy to understand and holds no deeper meaning than what the theory specifies. However, at that time I was deeply fascinated by it. As I tried to connect my existing mathematical knowledge with the interpretation of that equation, I ventured straight into its limiting case - "What happens if v is equal to c?" - I asked myself. In the blink of an eye, the answer was apparent - "The denominator becomes zero, and t' becomes infinite. Therefore, the stationary observer measures that the one second hand of the clock of moving observer takes an infinite amount of time to tick. Time freezes for the moving observer". Of course, there were some inconsistencies with my line of thinking at that time. By unlocking the meaning of the equation, I also unlocked many more questions which plagued my mind. "Is this time dilation simply a mechanical fault of the clocks?" "What does the moving observer feel when time slows down?" (the answer to this is of course is nothing unusual, as time dilation is only a relative phenomenon), and so on. Inspite of all this, one thing was very clear - I loved Mathematics when it is applied in Physics. Finally, the key to overcoming the fear of Mathematics was to view it as a tool to understand the Universe. 

With my newfound passion, a surface level knowledge of the Relativity Theory accumulated very rapidly through books and online resources. Soon, I discovered the General Theory of Relativity. The infamous trampoline bending by heavy ball analogy came like a revelation. The question of - "Why is there an invisible force between two massive bodies?" had no answer because there is no such force. Objects move through shortest possible paths in a curved spacetime like the balls moving through the curved fabric of the trampoline. As usual, I was flooded with a plethora of questions - "Why is the spacetime warping at all because of the presence of mass?" and "What about stationary objects that are not moving on the trampoline?". My previous experience with the time dilation equation in that book cued me to probe into the mathematics of this subject. I thought that a deeper understanding of the theory and equations is bound to give a satisfactory explanation. I searched on YouTube - "Deriving General Relativity" and stumbled upon this video. For the next few months, that video was on repeat on my computer as I tried to grasp the meaning of all those pesky symbols and navigate through a maze of notations. The rigorous mathematics of Differential Geometry and Tensor Calculus was of course too harsh for a school-going student, but the most important thing was it didn't scare me off and that kept me going. The end result was that I understood the equivalence principle , gravitational lensing and gained a gist of what tensors are in 9th grade.

 This year also had one of the most memorable moments of my life. In the month of February, my mother decided to take me and travel almost 300 kms to Pune for attending the National Science Day celebration at IUCAA. My father sent a nice car with a driver for the journey. Such continuous support of parents has always been pivotal in encouraging my passion for the science.  It was during this time that I got the chance to meet the renowned astrophysicist - Dr. Jayant Narlikar. At first, the idea of going up to him and striking a conversation with him as he was leaving after the "Ask a Scientist" session was very daunting (I still struggle with this problem). Fortunately, I had my mother with me who bravely decided to take the initiative herself and approached Dr. Narlikar, dragging me by my hand at the same time. The security tried to stop us, but my mother called Dr. Narlikar - "Sir! One moment!" - she said. As we stepped forward to him, my mother said - "This is my son! He won a NASA contest previous year and is also interested in Astrophysics like you." Dr. Narlikar looked at me impressively and said - "That is very good! All the best to you!", bringing his hand forward for a hand-shake. His few words of encouragement were greatly inspiring and is still fueling my journey till date. After the meet, we were intercepted by a friendly journalist with a scribble pad, wanting to know about my encounter. A small piece of this was featured on the Indian Express' account of the National Science day celebration.

My first meet with Dr. Jayant Narlikar engraved in a newspaper.

On the same day, I attended a concluding lecture by Dr. Sanjeev Dhurandhar on "Gravitational Waves and LIGO". It was the first time I heard about gravitational waves - a subject in which I hold substantial research experience at the present. At the end of the lecture, I asked him a question - "Do gravitational waves pose a risk to our Solar System?". He was quite amused. I was unaware back then that I would get another chance to meet Dr. Dhurandhar once again after six years and learn about gravitational wave theory in detail from him at a workshop. I also had the chance to meet with the then director of IUCAA - Dr. Somak Raychaudhury - who was also impressed by my achievements. The memory was relieved with him, when I met him once again for the winter solstice party at the director's residence in IUCAA for which I was invited as a participant of the Radio Astronomy Winter School.

My first meet with Dr. Somak Raychaudhury at IUCAA in 2017

Meeting him again at IUCAA during RAWS

As I returned back to my city from Pune, I had a lot in bag. It dawned upon me that one of the biography books from the "Genius" series was still left to be read completely. The biography of Stephen Hawking. It was certainly very inspiring and motivating learning about how the disability of Hawking never stopped him from thinking and asking the right questions.  The book taught me about the Big Bang theory, Hawking Radiation and Singularities. It also introduced me to the University of Cambridge for the very first time. Later, I searched about Dr. Jayant Narlikar and his works on the internet, only to find out that he also went to the University of Cambridge to study Astronomy. What about Dr. Somak Raychaudhary? - also a Cambridge graduate. With time, I only found that a large number of prominent Physicists were in fact graduates of the University of Cambridge. I searched about its programs in Physics, immediately falling in love with it and the beautiful city of Cambridge. Thus was born my desire to study at this university. Even my desktop wallpaper at the time was a picturesque image of the university.

Today, I stand at a very important point of my life. Till date, the knowledge of theoretical physics that I have managed to acquire is like a bucket of water retrieved from the oceans. However, now I am all set to embark on a ship to explore these oceans with no final destination in mind. There would be no smooth sailing of course, but that is where all the fun lies. 

- Thank you for reading! <3