Sunday, October 18, 2009

A New Beginning and a New Hope

I wanted to share with you a story…

An 11 year kid was challenged by a new mathematics teacher to solve a congruent triangles problem in front of the class. Without hesitation he picked up the chalk and solved the problem on the black board. When he turned around, he saw all the students and the teacher were laughing at him. He was convinced that he has solved the problem correctly but yet no one bothered to look at the solution. All he wanted from the teacher was to read at his solution before laughing at it, because he knew after reading the solution, the teacher won’t laugh at him.

12 years later, the very same kid decides to publish his research ideas in cosmological sciences in a top journal. Unfortunately, not even a single journal was ready to accept his work. Disappointed, he decides to submit to pre-print archive (http://arxiv.org). Even there, the moderators reject his work. There is nothing more hurting for a researcher than his work being rejected even before being read once. And when, he was going through all the rejections, there were those people, again laughing and pulling him down. All he wanted from people was to read his paper before laughing at it, because he knew after reading the paper, people won’t laugh at him.

Do you know why I told you the above story? That kid was me. Do you know why that teacher and students were laughing at me? I was using Hindi alphabets to represent the angles and sides instead of Greek mathematical symbols. My use of Hindi alphabets didn’t have any effect on the solution but yet, the teacher and the students felt it’s hilarious to use Hindi alphabets. And do you know why my paper got rejected everywhere? That’s because I wrote it in Hindi. Yes, I wrote a full-fledged cosmological sciences paper entirely in Hindi.

When ArXiv moderators rejected my paper, I felt bad at them. ArXiv has over half a million research papers but there never has been a paper written in Hindi. And when a paper written in Hindi was submitted, the moderators had no clue what it is. But you know what hurt me most? There are over 410 million people who speak in Hindi across the world and yet we don’t have even a single science journal that publishes papers written in Hindi. For that matter it’s not just Hindi, we don’t have a research journal in any of the native languages of India. It is as if, we Indians have given up that a native language speaking person can ever do research. That seriously hurts me. A language should never become a barrier for research and scientific ideas.

One fine day, I came across this website called viXra.org that helps the researchers to post papers on internet without any moderation. Of course, the no moderation policy has attracted lot of junk papers on viXra.org and my well-wishers suggested not to post the paper on viXra.org. I waited for while and it was hurting. Eventually, I decided to post the paper on viXra.org. In science, if something is correct, it will stand on its own and research should not depend on the reputation of journal but rather on its merit.

The paper is titled ‘फ़्रीडमन-लेमैट्रे-रोबर्टसन-वाकर ब्रह्माण्ड विज्ञान में असतत उर्जा की परतें’, which translates in English to ‘Discrete energy bands in Friedman-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker Cosmology’. You can download the PDF file of the paper from the below link

http://vixra.org/pdf/0910.0027v1.pdf

The below link contains the English abstract of the same paper.

http://vixra.org/abs/0910.0027

The actual Hindi abstract of the paper is given below for your quick reference

अज्ञात उर्जा (dark energy) और अज्ञात तत्व (dark matter) की संरचना और स्वभाव आधुनिक ब्रह्माण्ड विज्ञान (modern cosmology) के महत्वपूर्ण समस्याओं में से एक है। फ़्रीडमन-लेमैट्रे-रोबर्टसन-वाकर (Friedman-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker) ब्रह्माण्डीय सिध्दांत के दायरे मे, अज्ञात उर्जा और अज्ञात तत्व की व्याख्या करने के लिए कई संशोधित प्रस्तावो (modified proposals) की रचना की गई है, तथापि सम्पुर्ण समस्या का समाधान प्राप्त नही हुआ है। इस खोज्-पत्र मे, साधारण तत्व, अज्ञात तत्व और अज्ञात ऊर्जा युक्त असतत ऊर्जा परतो (discrete energy bands) की परिकल्पना (hypothesis) की गई है। बलो को सार्वभौमिक (global) तथा सीमित (local) बलो मे वर्गीकरण किया गया है जिसके आधार से, ब्रह्माण्ड में ऊर्जा के असतत परतो की परिकल्पना की गई हैं । अवलोकनीय साक्ष्य (Observational evidence) द्वारा हम असतत ऊर्जा परत की परिकल्पना प्रमाणित करते है ।

Now that the paper is there on internet, I want it to be read by all those who know Hindi. Believe me, you will understand it. Science isn’t that complex that it can’t be understood. In fact, it is beautiful. Trust me and give a read, you will enjoy it.

A lot of friends have asked me, why am I doing it when I can publish the same paper in English? Yes, I can easily publish the paper in English because I know English. But what about the 500 million odd people in India who don’t know English? What if the next Newton or Einstein is born among those 500 million people and just because he doesn’t know English, the world will not be able to recognize his/her research talent. I am afraid, by now we might have lost few such intelligent minds. There is a strong need to have research journals in our native languages. Scientific Research isn’t an alien thing that can only be done by developed nations. Some kid from a remote area of Bihar or Jharkhand who doesn’t know a bit of English can also come up with a spectacular scientific idea. And just because, we don’t have a forum, we will are losing such talent. And my intension behind writing this paper is to set an example that research can be done in our native languages and soon we will have scientific journals in our native languages. Insha’Allah.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Yeh Dooriyan…

Last thirty days have been the loneliest days of my life and I have no idea how long this would continue. It isn’t that I have never been lonely earlier but it wasn’t as painful as it is now. Every hour, every minute and every second, the waves of time make me feel the isolation. The roads which once enjoyed passing through today have become unappealing. The discussions in which I participated fail to attract me anymore. The songs that once made me happy seem like piece of noise. The coins and stamps which I collected passionately don’t give me happiness anymore. The stars and galaxies which I loved looking at through my telescope appear to be nothing but few dots in the empty space. Everything around appears so lifeless and disinteresting.

And then I hear her voice. It reminds me of the promises I have made, to myself, to her and to God. Yes, the promises. Every time she talked with me, it was not the ‘Abubakr’ that I am she was talking to, it was the ‘Abubakr’ that I wanted to be. Unfortunately, there is a huge difference between ‘Abubakr’ that he is and ‘Abubakr’ that he wants to be. For some reason, I was confident that someday I would be the ‘Abubakr’ that I wanted to be. But given my current state, I am failing miserably. Now, I feel like I have betrayed her and the rest of the people around me. I have failed to keep my promises.

This is my fight with myself. I don’t know why, I always believed that I can be a big scientist who unravels the deepest secrets of universe, experiments the craziest ideas and spreads around his intelligence. But somewhere, the life was not going in the correct direction. I was just living the life of a normal Indian, who spends his day working hard for his livelihood and returns home exhausted. There was nothing extra-ordinary, there was nothing intelligent and there was nothing special about me. And all the while, I was in some sort of identity crisis.

I would have never come out of that identify crisis had I not met her for those two days. I was there, in front on her and there was nothing special about me. I was just another guy, who has often spoken highly of himself but done nothing to prove it. And when that moment hit me, I was devastated. There I was, woken out of dream, facing reality. All I could say was… Will there be light in life?

And from last thirty days, I am searching every corner of my life, which led into that identity crisis. My heart still says, it wasn’t any identity crisis - it is actually what I am. May be, I have lost my way in between, but I shall soon be there. But then, if it was that easy, everyone around would have been a superhero.

Until I keep those promises, I am just living on the dead planet under isolation. And I promise, I shall keep those promise. I shall win her love and I shall win the respect.