May the Force be with You
Irfan HUSAIN
LIGHT SPEED: Columnists are supposed to rejoice at times of political
turmoil as there is so much to write about. But as politics in Pakistan
heats up, I have a confession to make to readers: I am bored stiff. Will
Benazir Bhutto return or not? Is there a deal between her and Musharraf?
When is Nawaz Sharif returning? Will Musharraf take off his uniform? I’m
afraid that all too often, these pressing but puerile questions leave me
cold.
Currently, Pakistani newspapers and TV channels are full of the sage
analyses and comments of those of us who have chosen to join the
commentariat. But at the end of the day, all our endless words go
unheeded.
As IH Burney, the late and much-missed editor of Outlook - probably
Pakistan’s finest weekly that flourished in the Sixties and Seventies —
once told me when I began writing for him: “Don’t take the stuff you
write too seriously. Remember, our articles will be used to wrap betel
leaves next week.”
All of us need to get away from the over-heated political speculation
rife in our dailies and on our TV screens every once in a while. I was
on the beach in Sri Lanka recently when the electricity went off one
night as I was reading on the porch of our small cabana.
Instantly, the large garden was plunged into darkness, and as I
looked up, I could see the stars shining brilliantly through the canopy
of trees. The odd firefly flitted past.
Without the light pollution from large population centres obscuring
it, the sky is a stunningly bright panorama.
Living in cities, we have lost the sense of wonder inspired by the
immensity of the universe. An entire generation has grown up without
seeing the magic of the Milky Way. Ultimately, we lose the sense of
humility nature inculcates in those who gaze upon its huge diversity and
its power.
While in Sri Lanka, I got the exciting news that two German
scientists had made microwave photons travel faster than light.
For science fiction devotees, faster than light (or FTL) travel is
the holy grail of cosmologists and dreamers alike. All my life, I have
railed silently against the tyranny of Einstein’s physical constant C,
or the speed of light, as the ultimate limiting factor in the universe.
One would have thought the speed of light at 186,000 miles per second
would be fast enough for mankind. But even at this brisk pace, it takes
a radio signal 20 minutes to reach Mars when the planet is at its
closest point to Earth. The nearest solar system to ours is 20 light
years away. In other words, even travelling close to light-speed, we
would need over 20 years to get there.
Apart from the speed constraint, FTL travel has other problems.
Einstein’s theory of relativity decrees that as matter accelerates, it
becomes more massive; at the speed of light it would have infinite mass,
a physical impossibility.
But time is the real barrier: according to Einstein (and corroborated
by many of his successors), if we were to break the light barrier, we
would travel into the past. This would set up many temporal anomalies,
as the past could be changed, leading to a different present and future.
To overcome these paradoxes, science fiction writers and cosmologists
have come up with ingenious theories. Star Trek fans will recall
expressions like ‘subspace’ and ‘hyperspace’.
Then there are wormholes that supposedly connect distant sectors of
space. Some theorists have posited ‘ripples in spacetime’ to speculate
that these anomalies could be used for FTL travel without breaching
Einstein’s causality principle.
Concepts like ‘quantum entanglement’ that theoretically permit
sub-atomic particles to move across a gap make me recall the familiar
command from Star Trek: “Three to beam up!”
Andrew Bender, an American physicist, has written a book called
SlipString Drive in which he has outlined an FTL spaceship. This is
based on the controversial Membrane Theory of Gravity on which the
author bases ‘gravitationally isolated space’ through which his FTL
craft would fly.
Friends are amused at my excitement over the possibility of FTL
travel. I was six years old when the year 1950 rolled around, and I
still recall some adults speculating on what the millennium would bring
fifty years hence.
My young brain began its own feverish guessing games, and the one
thing I was sure of was that we would have colonised the solar system by
the year 2000.
One of the abiding disappointments in my life is that we have not
even been able to establish a permanent base on the Moon so far.
As a teenager, a large part of my reading was science fiction by
writers like Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke and Ray Bradbury. As far as I
was concerned, space travel was just around the corner. But wars,
diminishing budgets and unimaginative politicians kept interfering with
my dream.
Every so often, the whole concept of space travel is questioned by
economists who would rather see space agency budgets diverted to other
causes. The common refrain is: “With so many problems on Earth, why
should we spend billions on the space station now under construction?”
I suspect that if these people had been around in the past, we would
not have the pyramids, the Great Wall of China, or the Taj Mahal to
inspire us today.
The truth is that even if money had not been spent on these and other
splendid monuments, we would still have poverty with us today. Even very
rich countries have been unable to eradicate human misery from their
midst.
Surely it is our sense of curiosity, and our ability to overcome
complex problems, that sets us apart from other forms of life. But
ultimately, it was the profit motive that drove the great maritime
explorations throughout history.
What is beginning to emerge now is space travel financed by
entrepreneurs who seek to charge passengers for the experience of
orbital flight. To be sure, from here to interstellar flight is a very
long journey.
But many visionaries are now focusing on cracking this final barrier.
Who knows, perhaps I will see at least the theoretical solution emerging
in my lifetime.
For curious readers who would like to learn more about FTL, one
website is www.stardrive.org. For more fanatical devotees, there is
www.crank.net. May the Force be with you.
Irfan Husain is an eminent Pakistani writer based in London. He can
be reached at [email protected]
Khaleej Times
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