Expectations from String Theory

 There are two expectations from string theory. Firstly it should address the gauge part of the theory of fundamental interactions. Secondly it should give us a quantum theory of gravity.

RBI Reserve

Nirmala Sitharaman took away seventy five thousand crore rupees of RBI reserve and publicly said that she can not reveal to what purpose it has been used.

I am ashamed of financial experts of the country because they did not pay due attention to the issue.

Now because of the news related to Viral Acharya I know better.

Anyone who figures out this money would be scared for his or her life.

Viral Acharya served as the Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) from January 2017 to July 2019, overseeing the Monetary Policy Department.

During his time at the central bank, he also served as a member of the advisory council of the RBI Academy. He famously stepped down from his position six months ahead of his scheduled term citing personal reasons, following a period of well-publicized differences between the RBI and the government regarding central bank autonomy and the transfer of RBI reserves.

It seems that the Saffronites used the reserve of RBI for poll expenditures of the ruling party.

The Monster Group

 The Monster group, also known as the Fischer-Griess Monster, is a very large structure in mathematics, particularly in group theory. It stands as the largest of the 26 sporadic finite simple groups, boasting around 8.08 x 10⁵³ elements. Discovered through the collaborative efforts of Bernd Fischer and Robert Griess in the 1970s, with Griess later fully constructing it in 1982, this group is notable not only for its colossal size but also for its intricate structure, encapsulated in the 196,883-dimensional Griess algebra.

The Monster group's significance transcends pure mathematics; it plays a pivotal role in connecting disparate fields such as number theory, algebraic geometry, and theoretical physics, particularly through its involvement in the Monstrous Moonshine conjecture. This conjecture, which highlights deep connections between the Monster group and modular functions, was proven by Richard Borcherds, leveraging techniques from string theory and earning him a Fields Medal. Thus, the Monster group exemplifies the profound interconnectivity within mathematics and its unexpected relevance to understanding the fundamental structures of the universe.

Ibn Al-Haytham

 An Arab scholar in 1011 was placed under house arrest in Cairo for 10 years. He used the time to invent the scientific method, prove how vision actually works, and write a 7-volume book that Newton studied 600 years later.

His name was Ibn al-Haytham. The book is called the "Book of Optics."

The textbook story names Bacon, Galileo, and Descartes as the founders of modern science. All three of them came 600 years after Ibn al-Haytham. All three of them studied his work directly or through Latin translations. The man who actually invented the scientific method was working alone in a single room in Cairo while Europe was still in the Dark Ages.

Here is the story almost nobody tells you.

He was born in Basra around 965 CE. By his 40s he had a reputation across the Arab world as one of the most original minds alive. Then he made the mistake that almost killed him. He claimed publicly that he could regulate the flooding of the Nile. The mad caliph al-Hakim of Cairo summoned him to Egypt to do it.

Ibn al-Haytham took one look at the river and realized the project was impossible with the technology of his era. The caliph had executed dozens of scholars for less. So he faked madness. The caliph believed him and put him under house arrest in his own home in Cairo for the next 10 years.

Most people would have lost their actual mind. He used the time to invent science.

Before him, knowledge worked one way. You quoted authority. If Aristotle had said it, it was true. If Galen had written it, it was correct. The role of a scholar was to memorize and defend the ancient Greeks. I

Ibn al-Haytham broke this completely. He wrote a sentence in the Book of Optics that quietly destroyed 1,400 years of intellectual culture. "The seeker after truth," he said, "is not the one who follows his natural disposition to trust the writings of the ancients. The seeker after truth is the one who suspects them, questions them, and submits only to argument and experiment."

That single sentence is the foundation of modern science. He wrote it 600 years before the European Renaissance.

The second thing he did was build the actual machinery of experimentation.

He insisted that no claim about the physical world was acceptable until it had been verified by an experiment anyone could repeat. He gave detailed instructions for every experiment in his book. He told his readers, in writing, not to take his word for any of it. Build the equipment. Run the tests yourself. Verify or destroy my claims with your own eyes.

The third thing he did was use the method to overturn one of the most settled questions in physics.

The Greeks had taught for centuries that vision worked because the eye emitted invisible rays. Ibn al-Haytham proved them wrong with a darkened room, a small hole, and a wall. The first camera obscura. He showed that light from the outside world enters the eye, the exact opposite of what every Greek thinker had taught.

Two hundred years later his book was translated into Latin in Spain. Roger Bacon cited him. Kepler cited him. Galileo's work on the telescope was built on his optics. Newton's foundational work on light rested on his framework.

Walk into any physics department today. Ask who founded the scientific method. Almost nobody will say Ibn al-Haytham.

The man who invented the way humanity actually knows things did the work under house arrest, with no funding, no laboratory, and a paranoid caliph next door waiting for an excuse to kill him.

He did it anyway.

(Source: @ihteshaam2005 on X)