The Paradigm of Cancer Care in the Era of Genomics, Proteomics and Immuno-oncology

The word “paradigm shift” is used fairly loosely in many contexts, but in the field of Oncology there has truly been a paradigm shift in both the understanding of cancer biology as well therapeutics in the last decade and the pace of change has accelerated even more so in the last couple of years. Those outside the fields of oncology and related fields are unaware of many of these seismic shifts taking place, and this blog is an attempt at briefly updating the reader on what is happening in the field of oncology.

Let me start by illustrating by the example of a current patient of mine; she is a 56 year old patient, non smoker, with stage IV adenocarcinoma of the lung with brain metastasis, diagnosed over 2 years ago. If some one asked me how to treat a patient like this when I was doing my Hematology-Oncology fellowship over 12 years ago, the appropriate answer would have been “any doublet chemotherapy containing a platinum compound”, along with brain radiation. Basically, it didn’t matter what kind of mutations the tumor itself possessed as we not only knew little about mutations withing lung cancer, we also had no specific or targeted therapy for individual mutations even if we found them then. So all lung cancers were treated as a single group, and given a pretty similar type of chemotherapy regimen. Some of the patients responded to this, and those who did not and those who progressed, there were few, if any viable options apart from palliative care.

What has changed in over 12 years? So many things. For once, we have now so many different sub types of lung cancers, based not just on histology but also based on molecular and genetic profiling. My particular patient was found to have a lung adenocarcinoma with a so called EGFR exon 19 mutation, which is very sensitive to an oral kinase inhibitor called Afatnib. My patient initially underwent so called “Cyber knife Radiation” for her brain metastasis – which is a highly focused form of radiation targeting the metastasis while sparing normal brain. After this she was started on afatinib. This is a pill taken once daily while she continued to work. A PET scan done after 3 months of this therapy showed she was in a PET negative remission. She continued the same medication for another 18 months but unfortunately progressed with a new bone lesion. At the time of progression, a new test which can test mutational status of any circulating tumor cells became available and was performed, and this showed she had now circulating tumor cells positive for a mutation called T790M. This is a classic mutation which makes the EGFR clones resistant to drugs like afatinib. These mutant cells are actually a bit less robust than cells without the T790M mutation, but in the presence of drugs like Afatnib the cells with the T790M mutation have a specific survival advantage.

At this point she was enrolled in a clinical trial looking at a so called third generation EGFR kinase inhibitors which works around the T790M mutation, being developed by Astra Zeneca. She responded nicely for about 5 months on this yet to be approved drug; then around 1 month ago she progressed again. A repeat cell free DNA testing now showed she has developed cells expressing so called BRAF V600E mutation, which was not present in the original tumor or on first progression – one of her cancer cells have now mutated to be now the “fittest” clone. We have now obtained a BRAF inhibitor and a MEK inhibitor on a compassionate use protocol (as these drugs are not yet approved for lung cancer but only for melanoma). We and the patient and her family are all keeping our fingers crossed to see what would happen. My guess is she will respond for few months, and then her cancer cells will find a way around that pathway also and then progress, but hopefully we will find another mutation which we can target by then, or she could get conventional chemotherapy which is yet to receive nearly 2 years after diagnosis. And during these nearly 2 years of ongoing therapy, patient continued to work and enjoy a fair quality of life allowing her to pursue her work and hobbies. 

The above case illustrates how from randomly treating all lung cancer patients with a generic “platinum doublet” 10 years ago, cancer treatment now involves sub dividing the cancers in to very specific molecular sub types and treating with appropriate medications. The case also illustrates how dynamic is the process of cancer; we spoke about targets in the past as if they were fixed (like "estrogen receptor positive breast cancer"). We still do so, but is realizing these targets change and mutates and cancers evolve over time. While vast majority of cancers still do not have "targetable mutations " like the patent's case above, we are at the cusp of some exciting new fronts in cancer care. What follows is a very short summary of cancer biology as well as how this is changing how cancer is treated now a days, along with a brief overview of future potentials and challenges.  

Cancer as an Evolutionary Process:

What we have learned is that the best way to look at the cancer is through a Darwinian lens. This so called micro evolution – or evolution at cellular levels and happening at warp speed can explain a whole lot of once mysterious things about cancer biology. In the past we used to look at cancer as a “monoclonal process”, a set of uniform cells competing against normal cells. This appears to be a very simplistic way to look at cancer – cancer is unfortunately a way more complex disease process than that.


What is meant by looking at cancer through Darwinian lens? Here is how: A body can be considered as an entire eco system –whose individual members are cells. These cells have ecological and classic Darwinian features like cell births, deaths, habitats, territorial limitations, and maintenance of population sizes. The one Darwinian rule that does not apply is however “natural selection” – there is no competition among somatic cells. The rules of somatic cells are instead self-sacrifice—as opposed to survival of the fittest. Ultimately, all somatic cells are committed to die; they dedicate their existence to support of the germ cells, which alone have a chance of survival and propagation. One could think of germ cells like the “queen bee” of an ant colony. There is no mystery in this, as the body is a clone, and the genome of the somatic cells is the same as that of the germ cells. By their self-sacrifice for the sake of the germ cells, the somatic cells help to propagate copies of their own genes.

To coordinate their highly cooperative behavior, cells send, receive, and interpret an elaborate set of signals that serve as social controls, telling each of them how to act, when to divide, when to die. As a result, each cell behaves in socially responsible manner, resting, dividing, differentiating, or dying as needed for the good of the organism. Molecular disturbances that upset this harmony mean trouble for a multi cellular society like our body. In a human body with more than 10^14 (or 100 Trillion) cells, billions of cells experience mutations every day, potentially disrupting the social controls. And an occasional mutation can give one cell a selective advantage, allowing it to divide more vigorously than its neighbors and to become a founder of a growing mutant clone, a “selfish” clone. Once cells learn to be “selfish” then the typical Darwinian “survival of fittest” rule applies within that clone– each subsequent cancer cell population gets “better” at resource utilization. And since mutational rates are higher among cancer cells, purely from random chance one of these cells would develop a special property (like more efficient anaerobic metabolism) - this cell then have a survival advantage over other normal and cancer cells. Note that by this time cancer cells are competing among themselves, and not against normal cells. Because cancer cells are way so advanced in their ability to divide and utilize resources, competing with normal cells is like Michael Jordan playing against a school kid. Their competition is mostly with other cancer cells.  Such repeated rounds of mutation, competition, and natural selection operating within the population of cancer cells cause matters to go from bad to worse, see the diagram below. 


For example: when a critical size is reached, the cancer cells may not get enough oxygen, then one of these cancer cells – who are all competing with each other like it is the great African Serengeti plains – would develop a mutation that allows it to utilize anaerobic pathways better, or attract blood vessels to grow in to it, or develop an ability to pump out chemotherapy drugs etc.  Several more cell divisions later another cell would find a way to get out of the resource poor primary site and goes and thrive in another, healthier and "less competitive" environment - what we call metastasis. See the diagram below to show how clonal evolution works:








This is why recurrent cancers are harder to treat and cure. Thus cancer is a disease in which individual mutant clones of cells begin by prospering at the expense of their neighbors, but soon their competition is among cancer cells themselves, each “out mutating” each other, eventually becoming such a remarkable , and almost immortal, dividing cells, who only dies in the end when they destroy the whole body. If those cells can be taken out and given perpetual nourishment, these cells can literally live forever (portrayed in the wonderful book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks). These advanced cancer cells have actually mastered what humans have been searching for all of history - immortality.

As noted a single mutation alone can rarely causes cancer. Genesis of a cancer typically requires that several independent, rare accidents occur in the lineage of one cell. If a single mutation were responsible, occurring with a fixed probability per year, the chance of developing cancer in any given year should be independent of age. In fact, for most types of cancer the incidence rises steeply with age—as would be expected if cancer is caused by a slow accumulation of numerous random mutations in a single line of cells. In fact if one lives long enough, it is almost a given that some type of cancer is bound to happen. A recent study from Sweden looked at whole genome sequencing of healthy adults, and found that over 12% of general population over age 65 had what we now call as ARCH (Age Related Clonal Hematopoiesis) in their blood – and they had 15 times risk for developing subsequent blood diseases like AML and MDS. (Interestingly those with ARCH in their blood also had higher cardio vascular and endocrine morbidity and mortality suggesting a possible common inflammatory pathway to both cancers and other common diseases)

Why are so many mutations needed for cancer? Because think of cell as a car; but instead of a single accelerator and a single break, cells have many many breaks and accelerators. A critical number of breaks have to be gone and a critical number of accelerators pressed before a cell truly becomes “cancerous”. (By the way those with familial cancer syndrome like Li Freumani already are born with some major breaks - like p53 - already gone, so it takes less mutation for them to get a cancer). Moreover, not all cancers are the same in terms of how "fast" they are. In fact we now routinely use a test called “Mammaprint” to decide which of the early stage breast cancer patients need treatment, and who does not. I explain to patients this test differentiates whether their cancer is an old car or a brand new Ferrari. And if they are lucky and if their cancer is a like an old car, we don’t give them chemo these days and treat them just with hormonal therapy.


Just to add some subtlety to this story – mutations alone can’t cause cancer – often many mutations are needed unless it is one of the “driver” mutations like 9-22 translocations in CML. An estimated 10^16 cell (100,00 Trillion) cell divisions take place in a normal human body in the course of a lifetime. (By the way these are truly cosmic numbers. For example an average human have 1000 times the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy!)  Even in an environment that is free of mutagens, mutations will occur spontaneously at an estimated rate of about 1 in a million mutations per gene per cell divisions.—a value set by fundamental limitations on the accuracy of DNA replication and repair. Doing the math one can see that in a lifetime, every single gene is likely to have undergone mutation on about 10^10 (or 10 billion) separate occasions in any individual human being. Among the resulting mutant cells one might expect that there would be many that have disturbances in genes that regulate cell division and that consequently disobey the normal restrictions on cell proliferation. From this point of view, the problem of cancer seems to be not why it occurs but why it occurs so infrequently. I routinely get asked by patients – often who have done all the right things from their diet to exercise who gets cancer – why they got cancer. (Without elaborating the numbers what I tell them is this: That it is a miracle of our immune system that we don’t get a new cancer every day!) 

What is a Driver Mutations versus “Passenger” mutations:

Countless studies have shown that sequential acquisition of mutations results in gains in evolutionary fitness. Furthermore, tumor initiator clones (also often referred to as cancer stem cells) have been identified in a subset of cancers and highlight the potential for a genetically “simple” tumor cell progenitor to propagate disease relapse. There is perhaps no disease with greater evidence of this than CML.

The introduction of imatinib, a small molecule inhibitor of ABL family kinases including the BCR-ABL fusion gene, revolutionized the way that CML is managed and dramatically improved outcomes for these patients. An important factor contributing to the unusual success of imatinib is that it targets the initiating event in the clonal evolution of CML. This means that all daughter cells that evolve following this initial event (ie, every cell in the clonal pool) also carry the BCR-ABL trans location and are susceptible to the effects of imatinib. . The terms “driver mutation” and “passenger mutation” were coined to discriminate between (1) those mutations that play an active role in disease pathogenesis (ie, driver mutations) and (2) those mutations that do not contribute to disease pathogenesis but undergo clonal expansion alongside one that does (ie, passenger mutations). Also note that not all driver mutations are created equal but rather are acquired in an ordered hierarchy. That is, some driver mutations occur as early events during clonal evolution and play a role in disease genesis (early drivers), whereas others occur as later events during clonal evolution and play a role in disease progression (late drivers/accelerators). Early driver mutations that have a role in disease genesis, such as the BCR-ABL trans location, will therefore be present in every tumor cell, whereas late driver mutations may only be present within a subset of tumor cells (ie, in a subclone).


To further complicate understanding and measurement of the clonal origin of mutations, each driver mutation will confer a variable boost in evolutionary fitness, which will cause them to overtake less-fit clones at different rates. This means that some driver mutations, despite occurring as late events in disease evolution, may appear to be present in the majority of tumor cells because they provide a significant boost to clonal fitness.


Currently, we do have “actionable” mutations (mutations that are matched to targeted therapies) for a number of cancer types, but as of this writing we know of many more “mutations” than there are “actionable mutations”. However, the future of precision medicine is one in which we will have a much wider array of actionable mutations matched to suggested therapeutics or clinical trials. Understanding the hierarchical order in which somatic mutations are acquired in each cancer will become an important consideration in ranking therapeutic targets for drug development, but this is a complex scientific undertaking, to say the least, and would require significant computing and clinical resources. A future format of molecular genetic results should incorporate a measure of not just the presence or absence of a mutation, but also the clonal representation or allelic frequency for each mutation, so that oncologists can be more informed about the biology of the tumor they are treating.While cancer is primarily a disease of the genes and result from acquired mutations within somatic cells, there are additional layers of complexity involved in actual cancer. We have to consider many host factors affecting the development and propagation of cancer (like familial predisposition, immunologic factors and metabolic factors). Add to this fact that cancer cells are intimately linked to the host in multiple ways, briefly as shown in the diagram below; unlike in experimental models, cancer in vivo has complex interactions between various host factors as represented below:

The initiating event in CML is acquisition of the t(9;22)(q34;q11) translocation, which creates a fusion between the BCR and ABL1 genes. Secondary genetic alterations, such as mutations of TP53, RB1, and CDKN2A, can be acquired after the BCR-ABL translocation and may play a role in progression of CML from an early chronic phase to a more aggressive blast phase.

We also have to consider that not all genetic changes will lead to protein production, so will need to interrogate cancer cells at not only genomic level but also at the proteomic levels. But once we start looking at cancer in such a comprehensive way, oncology care wil change from one that relies primarily on trial-and-error treatment strategies based on the anatomy of the tumor to one that is more precisely based on the tumor’s molecular, proteomic, metabolic level and appropriate for the particular host, thus enabling many cancers to be turned into manageable chronic disease, and providing patients with long-term high quality of life.

Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, MD is one of the leaders of this new push for a paradigm shift in how to address cancer given all these current understanding in to the biology of cancer. He is the inventor of nab-paclitaxel (Abraxane), the first U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved nanotechnology-based chemotherapeutic agent. He is also the Founder and CEO of NantWorks and its subsidiary NantHealth, a cloud-based biomolecular medicine and bioinformatics company that uses high-frequency, high-throughput tumor genome sequencing to analyze the DNA, RNA, and protein levels of an individual patient’s cancer cells. Proud to say the our practice is one of the select few from the US South Central region who is collaborating with Dr. Soon-Shiong’s company in developing a global consortium of cancer providers and patients to advance this field of precision medicine.

A GPS for the Oncologist:

How do you navigate this “maze” of molecular genetics, protoemics and other data to come up with the best suited treatment for a particular patient? I think Dr. Soon-Shiong is a true visionary in this regard, as his aptly named GPS (genome/proteome sequencing) involves a next-generation sequencing technology to analyze genomic (DNA) and transcriptomic (RNA) sequencing data. This identify variants between somatic and germ line DNA. What was interesting, though not unexpected was that, after analyzing a cohort of 3,784 patients (on 19 anatomic tumor types), it was found that genetic mutations in gene panels do not always result in protein expression. Thus even the informed clinician who is up to date with the latest molecular genetic data could miss or over read these reports – as what truly matters is downstream protein expression and not just DNA alterations alone. And this signatures change with time. Luckily however this entire GPS Cancer can be run now on circulating tumor cells, avoiding the need for repeat biopsies, capturing cancer as it evolves, rather than considering cancer as a static process as was the orthodox - and flawed - view in the past.

Advancing the Next Paradigm of Cancer Care

As detailed above, cancer is no longer considered as a single clonal disease nor static in it's genetic make up. Cancer cells also show enormous inter- and intra patient tumor heterogeneity and cancer progression is driven not just by one genetic mutation, but in many instances driven by tens and even hundreds and perhaps thousands of mutations, rearrangements, and structural changes in the genome, dynamically changing across time and space.

What is the downside of this approach of interrogating cancer at a much deeper level? Basically from being a “common disease” cancer becomes a set of rare diseases. Each patient’s mutational, proteomic, immunologic signature is going to be unique, and hence treatment should be tailored to that individual patient. Even large institutions will not have enough patients of a “specific GPS signatures” so Dr.  Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong is spearheading a large collaborative “omics” network—a muscularly sophisticated network of oncologists to share outcome data and create an “adaptive learning system.”  This will require an infrastructure for sharing of outcomes in real time as well as an infrastructure to receive an in-depth whole-genome, RNA, and proteome sequence analysis in a timely manner to take advantage of real-time knowledge that may better inform a clinical decision.

Cancer care in the not distant future:

How do we effectively attack this multi clonal disease that changes its gene expression over time and space? The best way is to explore ubiquitous pathways driving proliferation and metabolism of the cancer cell, to attack both the stem and metastatic cancer cells, to recognize that the biology and evolution of these two cell types differ, and to use multiple drugs focused on multiple points of attack, targeting the cell’s nucleus, DNA, cell signal pathways, and metabolism and micro environment all simultaneously while also enhancing host immune system. The field of immunotherapy for cancer is worth it’s own blog, but briefly this has been one of the most exciting areas in all of oncology in the year 2015, with several new medications approved across a variety of cancer types where the treatment work by stimulating patient’s own immune cells or by enhancing the anti tumor immunogenecity.

Is there going to be a “magic pill” for cancer:

If you are still asking this question after reading the above blog, I would strongly recommend reading it again! Cancer is an extremely heterogeneous disease, so unlikely we will have a “magic pill” that will work across cancer types. However by “intelligently and selectively” blocking the various metabolic and survival pathways of cancer cells, by going after the cancer stem cells as well as the metastatic cells, and by enhancing the patient’s immune system we have a chance of changing the paradigm of how we manage cancer patients. Eventually, by more deeply understanding the biology of the cancer stem cell, we will provide long-lasting remission and get closer to a functional cure for cancer.

Buddha, Bohr and Einstein

What I needed, according to a dear friend, was some spirituality to uplift my mid life blues, and I was kindly provided with a copy of the book “Universe in an Atom” written by none other than His Holiness, the Dalai Lama himself. As most impartial observers would appreciate, Dalai Lama has become a global symbol of what a spiritually enlightened being looks like. In comparative terms, if the picture of Einstein immediately conjures up the image of super human genius, the picture of the Dalai Lama conjures up the image of a fully enlightened being while still fully human. Though I had been fascinated by him, and actually had the privilege of listening to him in person when he visited Birmingham last year, I never had the privilege of reading a book by him. While I expected what he would be writing – the importance of spirituality and the Buddhist ideals of “Ahimsa” or “non violence”, I was very pleasantly surprised after reading this book on the depth of understanding the Dalai Lama shows in the modern sciences, especially in the fields of quantum mechanics, relativistic cosmology and consciousness research, and provide valuable pointers to places where Buddhist (and ancient Indian) philosophy can meet modern science, and at times even fill the gaps in our understanding of issues on the borders of physics and metaphysics. This is a humble review and summary of the book. For anyone interested in a deeper understanding I strongly recommend to read the full book, which can be finished in 2-3 hours but is full of useful information as well profound insights.

Many religious leaders and scholars have written books claiming to connect their particular faith with modern ideas of science. Almost all of them are written to prove the author’s particular theology has pre-dated or even predicted all or part of modern science. However this book offers something much wiser and more humble; this book is written by a compassionate and well read religious leader who not only respects science but, for the most part, embraces it. "If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims," he writes. No one who wants to understand the world "can ignore the basic insights of theories as key as evolution, relativity and quantum mechanics."

That is an extraordinary concession compared with other religious leaders who conducts seminars and conferences devoted to “reconciling” science and their particular faith. These “dialogues", some of which I had attended or watched online, implicitly begin with the non negotiable like  “Jesus was born of virgin mother, and after death on the cross He was bodily resurrected into heaven. . ."  then seek scientific justification for what is already assumed to be true.

The story of how someone so open-minded became the Tibetan Buddhist equivalent of the Pope reads like a fairy tale. When the 13th Dalai Lama died in 1933 he was facing northeast, so a spiritual search team was sent in that direction to find his reincarnation. The quest narrowed further when a Lama had a vision pointing to a certain house. The little boy in that house, considered the re incarnation of the previous Dalai Lama, was then taken to the official residence of the Dalai Lama, the Potala Palace. The Buddhist elders soon realized they have indeed selected a very special child, as the little boy showed a wide ranging curiosity and sharp mind, learning not only the ancient traditions and scholarly work, but in his lonely childhood found solace in the very few technological marvels in the ‘otala palace, like a clock and a brass telescope. When he focused it one evening on what Tibetans call "the rabbit on the moon," he saw that it consisted of shadows cast by craters. Although he knew nothing yet about astronomy, he inferred that the moon, like the earth, must be lighted by the sun. He had experienced the thrill of discovery of himself and it appears he continues this tradition of discovery – spiritual and scientific – even today. When I saw him speak at Birmingham, what impressed me most was, despite his age and wise looks, he acted, spoke and most importantly laughed with the innocence of a child. In this book also one can see the insatiable curiosity of a child trying to grasp some of the deepest questions humans have ever faced.

What is remarkable is, despite absolutely no formal training in the fields of mathematics, biology or physics, his childish curiosity would serve him well to have a perfectly adequate understanding of the basic concepts in these fields. In no small part this was helped by his association with some of the greatest scientists and philosophers of the latter half of 20^th century. These scientists and philosophers included American Physicist David Bohm, German Physicist Carl von Weizsäcker (a student of quantum mechanical pioneer Werner Heisenberg) and British philosopher (and a friend of Albert Einstein himself), Sir. Karl Popper. In his humble way he praise these and other scientists and philosophers as “my respected teachers” – he treat them with the same regard he holds for his spiritual masters who taught him while he was a young monk at the Potala palace.

His interest in the intersection of science and spirituality and his willingness to embrace science with an open mind endeared him to spiritually inclined scientists all over the world. He has been conducting the so called "Mind and Life" conferences which have brought physicists, cosmologists, biologists and psychologists to Dharamsala, India, where he now lives in exile from the Chinese occupation of Tibet. He and his guests discuss things like the neuroscientific basis of Buddhist meditation and the similarities between Eastern concepts like the "philosophy of emptiness" and modern field theory. In fact when he visited Birmingham he was the distinguished guest speaker at a seminar organized by UAB Department of Neuroscience on the topic of Neuroplasticity and Healing. 

Dalai Lama is very open when it comes to admitting where scientific reasoning far exceeds the traditional “concrete logic” as used in Buddhist and ancient Indian philosophy. He explains it by describing how Buddhism and science differ in the role of deduction. While in science reason uses highly developed use of profoundly complex mathematical reasoning, Buddhism, like all other classical Indian philosophies, has a very concrete use of logic, whereby reasoning is never divorced from a particular context. In contrast, the mathematical reasoning of science allows a tremendous level of abstraction, so that the validity or invalidity of an argument can be determined purely on the basis of the correctness of an equation. Thus the generalization achievable through mathematics is at a much higher level than is possible in traditional forms of logic.

Dalai Lama explores this further by stating that “given the astounding success of mathematics, it is no wonder some people believe that the laws of mathematics are absolute and that mathematics is the true language of reality, intrinsic to nature herself”.

While accepting the superiority of science in general, Dalai Lama argues against scientists and some non scientists, who appear to believe that all aspects of reality must and will fall within the scope of science, the view also shared by “hard atheists” as well as by Marxist dialectical materialists. He argues against this view, in which science is perceived as having disproved many of the claims of religion, such as the existence of God and the eternal soul. Per him “Such views are effectively philosophical assumptions that reflect their holders’ metaphysical prejudices” which to him sounds very similar to theistic presumptions. He argues that the scientific cannot exhaust all aspects of reality, in particular the nature of human existence, the subjective world of feelings, emotions, thoughts, and the values and spiritual aspirations based on them. One finds it hard to argue with his point that “if we treat this realm of spirit as though it had no constitutive role in our understanding of reality, we lose the richness of our own existence”. Below I have summarized his book in to the following three sub headings. 1) Buddhism and Quantum Mechanics 2) Buddhism and Relativity / Cosmology 3) Buddhism and Life/Consciousness.

Quantum mechanics and the Philosophy of Emptiness:

One of the most important philosophical insights in Buddhism comes from what is known as the "theory of emptiness". Briefly from what I understood, this argues against a “separate self”. Though our every day experience makes us want to think of us (and other sentient beings as well as non sentient matter) appear as discrete particles, the theory of emptiness argues this is just an illusion. Per the theory of emptiness, our individual identity and “separateness” is a persistent but false delusion of the mind. This delusion of separateness leads to our “discrete ego” which in turn leads to many of the ills at individual and societal levels including attachment, loneliness, and development of our numerous prejudices. This theory of emptiness was first systematically expounded by the great Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna (c. second century C.E.); though little is known of his personal life other than that he came from Southern India, he was—after the Buddha himself—the single most important figure for the formulation of Buddhism. Historians credit him with the emergence of the Middle Way school of Mahayana Buddhism, which remains the predominant school among Tibetan Buddhists to this day. 


Dalai Lama argues the ideas of quantum mechanics leads to very similar conclusions. It is fairly well known even among those who are not very scientifically literate that the microscopic world of quantum mechanics challenges our commonsense understanding. Examples abound, including facts like light can be seen as either a particle or a wave (In fact, the man who won the Nobel Prize for showing that the electron is a wave, George Thomson, was the son of the man who won the same prize for showing that the electron is a particle, J. J. Thomson.), and that the uncertainty principle tells us we can never know at the same time what an electron does and where it is, and the quantum notion of superposition all suggest an entirely different way of understanding the world from that of classical physics, in which objects behave in a deterministic and predictable manner. For instance, in the well-known example of Schrodinger's cat, in which a cat is placed inside a box containing a radioactive source that has a 50 percent chance of releasing a deadly toxin, we are forced to accept that, until the lid is opened, this cat is both dead and alive, seemingly defying the law of contradiction. Dalai Lama argues that to a Mahayana Buddhist exposed to Nagarjuna’s thought, there is an unmistakable resonance between the notion of emptiness and the new physics. If on the quantum level, matter is revealed to be less solid and definable than it appears, it is like science is coming closer to the Buddhist contemplative insights of emptiness and interdependence.

Dalai Lama, quoting Nagarjuna, suggests that the theory of emptiness is not a question of the mere conceptual understanding of reality. It has profound psychological and ethical implications. He then recollects a conversation he had with American physicist David Bohm: “From the perspective of modern science, what is wrong with the belief in the independent existence of things?” Bohm responds that “if we examine the various ideologies that tend to divide humanity, such as racism, extreme nationalism, and the Marxist class struggle, one of the key factors of their origin is the tendency to perceive things as inherently divided and disconnected. From this misconception springs the belief that each of these divisions is essentially independent and self-existent”. Bohm’s response, grounded in his work in quantum physics, echoes the ethical concern about harboring such beliefs that had worried Nagarjuna, who wrote nearly two thousand years before. Similarly the “observer effect”, where reality depends on the observer (collapse of the wave function in quantum mechanical language, where a “cat could be alive and dead at the same time as in the Schrödinger’s thought experiment) suggest that we must abolish as a matter of principle the separability of subject and object, the observed and the observer.

Relativity of time in Buddhist philosophy:

Einstein’s theory of relativity showed conclusively that time is “relative” to the speed of the observer. This leads to many of the interesting paradoxes, like the twin’s paradox, time dilation, or the contraction of objects at high velocity. (For those interested to read Einstein's ideas in more depth, click on the link to these blogs What time is it? and How fast does Brahma moves?). Dalai Lama quotes the story from Buddhist mythology of how Asanga was taken to Maitreya’s Heavenly Realm, where he received the five scriptures of Maitreya, a significant set of Mahayana texts, all in the time frame of a few minutes. Thus it appears, according to Buddhist and Ancient Indian principles, the concept of time as relative is not new. Dividing the temporal process into the past, present, and future, the Sautrantikas demonstrated the interdependence of the three and argued for the untenability of any notion of independently real past, present, and future.

EPR Paradox and Buddhism: Named after its creators, Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen—which was originally formulated to challenge quantum mechanics, the EPR paper is a famous thought experiment in the early days of quantum mechanics, and was suggested to explain why quantum mechanics can’t be true. Briefly the EPR paradox is this: Assume a pair of particles is created and then separates, moving away from each other in opposite directions. One of the properties of this pair of particles is that their spin must be in opposite directions—so that one is measured as “up” and the other will be found to be “down.” According to quantum mechanics, the correlation of measurements (for example, when one is up, then the other is down) must exist even though the individual attributes are not determined until the experimenters measure one of the particles. Such an entangled particle pair could be at great distances from each other, say at either ends of the visible universe; but a “measurement” of one particle could cause a simultaneous change in the paired particle, even if that particle is at a great distance. Einstein’s relativity conclusively showed nothing can travel faster the speed of light. So how is it possible for this paired particles to communicate instantly across vast cosmic distances? Stranger is the fact that this EPR paradox has now been proved experimentally to actually exist in reality. While the authors of the original EPR paper wrote it to discredit quantum mechanics, it appears EPR phenomenon actually happens. Einstein called the EPR phenomenon “spooky action at a distance”. And it appears nature is spooky after all!

Dalai Lama gets in to this argument as follows: He quotes the so called "Vaisheshika atomism", which substituted a plurality of indivisible “atoms” as the basic units of reality for a single underlying reality. So what appear to be events separated by great distances are in fact connected through this underlying substratum of reality, one that is not obvious to us.

Cosmic origins:

It appears there are two main traditions of cosmology in Buddhism. One is the Abhidharma system, and the Mahayana Buddhism, especially the version of Indian Buddhism known as the Nalanda tradition. The primary work on the Abhidharma system of cosmology that made its way into Tibet was Vasubandhu’s Treasury of Higher Knowledge (Abhidharmakosha). Buddhist writing in the fourth century describes cosmic origin in terms of the theory of “dependent origination”. This theory states that all things arise and come to an end in dependence upon causes and conditions.

The second cosmological tradition in both classical Indian philosophy and Buddhism is called “Kalachakra” or the wheel of time. Both the Abhidharma and Kalachakra suggest ours is one among countless world systems. Evolution of a particular world system is understood in terms of four stages 1) Emptiness 2) Formation 3) Abiding and 4) Destruction. Each of these stages is thought to last a tremendously long time. At the heart of this idea is that there are not only multiple world systems but they are in a constant state of coming in to being and passing away. According to Dalai Lama, the idea of a single beginning, a singular big bang, is inaccurate – because such a singular beginning could suggest one of two things 1) Theism which suggest a universe created by an intelligent designer 2) Universe came in to being with no cause at all as hard atheism suggests. Surprisingly (for me), it appears Buddhism, like science, share a fundamental reluctance to postulate an intelligent designer. Buddhism in turn proposes the following origin story; In the beginning was the vast void; out of which (“emptiness”) a new universe if formed; this universe go through immense period of expansion, and is finally destroyed or turn back to pure emptiness. And the cycle continues. What is remarkable is how closely this indeed resembles our best understanding on the structure and life cycles of the cosmos.

A Mahayana text titled “The flower ornament” describes with precision about the large number of “worlds” and the limits of human knowledge. A section titled “incalculable” contains numbers named “the measureless”, the “boundless”, the incomparable” and “square untold” which is “unspeakable” multiplied by itself! Amazing that they were at least thinking of really huge quantities at a time when our everyday experiences did not require use of such large quantities. As any one familiar with modern cosmology must have read, the currently accepted "pre big bang" cosmology mandates vast amount of "parallel universes". And famous Physicist Lawrence Krauss discuss in explicit details in his fascinating book A Universe From Nothing how an entire universe could form literally from "nothing" - where "nothing" is described as unstable quantum form from which, statistically at least, an entire cosmos could arise.

Evolution, life and consciousness in Buddhist traditions:

For a brief overview of the modern ideas on consciousness, please click on the link (Some Random Thoughts on Consciousness) The Buddhist realm consists of three realms of existence – the desire realm, the form realm and the formless realm, each progressively subtler and higher levels of existence. The formless realm transcends physical sensations and lives in a purely mental realm. Human evolution in Buddhist philosophy is somewhat “anti Darwinian” – it suggests humans have “descended” from a higher level of life; from “formless celestial beings”.  This is of course very different from the “upwardly mobile” ideas accepted in science where humans have evolved from apes. Dalia Lama readily accepts the modern Darwinian rules of evolution, though he believes in some of the ancient ideas of Karma and the permeation of energy and consciousness throughout the cosmos, something that cannot be contained in a vessel or within a single body. He argues for additional forces other than “survival of the fittest” should have shaped evolution to explain emotions like love and altruism. At least in this section, His Holiness appear to wobble a bit, as clearly defined Darwinian rules of group selection and even anatomic features (like Mirror neurons) appear to explain these puzzles clearly. Unfortunately even Dalai Lama confuses Darwinian Theory with the much maligned social Darwinism, which has nothing to do with the scientific theory of evolution.

With regards to consciousness and the study of “qualia” or that indescribable “inner feelings”, Dalia Lama gives an excellent over view the Eastern ideas on this most elusive of subjects. He describe that the Tibetan word “Namshe” or Sanskrit “Vijnana” encompasses a much broader range of conscious experiences. Buddhist philosophy describes consciousness as “luminosity” and “cognizance” as the two features of consciousness. As the primary feature of light is to illuminate, so consciousness illuminate the objects. Buddhism suggest three fundamental aspects of the world – 1) Matter consisting of physical objects and energy 2) Mind – subjective experiences 3) Abstract composites or mental formations  like a theorem in Mathematics. Consciousness transcends both the realm of Mind as well as Abstract composites. This is surprisingly similar to the ideas of Karl Popper. 

He asks a very valid question on the nature of consciousness – that while we have known the levels of certain neuro transmitters like serotonin can affect our emotions, could it be also true that the “emotions” came first and changed the level of the neuro transmitter? He briefly also dwells in the controversial topic of quantum mechanics as an explanation of consciousness, including the “non locality” as described above in the EPR paradox and how the observer and observed could be part of a larger quantum system. He talks about the ideas of Buddhist thinker Dharmakirti, who argues that the rational basis of rebirth (that the consciousness comes from a prior instance of cognition, so the consciousness of the new born also must have existed prior to being born). Then he explores how meditative practices could change our consciousness (this is a well researched field with empirical evidence supporting the notion that meditative practice could indeed change our brain’s “wiring” as is shown in several experiments using functional MRI). He quotes the work of Nagarjuna “Praise to the Ultimate Expanse” which argues that essential nature of the mind is pure and the mind can undergo meditative purification from impure thoughts. The modern ideas of neuro plasticity (that new connections between neurons can be formed and brain is highly malleable even in adults) support many of these traditional Buddhist arguments.

In short, this is an unusual book written by an unusual and charismatic Religious leader. Even though the category of "science and spirituality" is a subject matter of many books, this book shines through for it's simplicity, humility and deeply spiritual writing, just as the author Himself. His Holiness, who appears to possess the inquisitiveness of a child while also deeply well read not only about classical Indian and Buddhist philosophy but also well versed in the language of modern science, shows science and spirituality can not only co exist but inform and strengthens each other. A must read for anyone interested in these timeless questions.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) - A Primer

When a future civilization looks back at ours, hopefully they would look at the LHC and wonder at our ingenuity, the way we look at the Pyramids and wonder. Every civilization has spent money and man power to build huge monuments to the Gods - from the Great Pyramids to the Mayan Temples all the way to the great modern cathedrals, temples and mosques of worship. The LHC is our contemporary society’s monument to answer the ultimate questions that our species has been struggling with all of human history – how did the universe start and what is the underlying nature of reality? And LHC is indeed a very appropriate monument of our modern times, since unlike our ancestors, we are trying to answer these profound questions with empirical evidence rather than faith based belief systems. Here is a short primer on LHC in celebration of it's resuming experiments as of today (April 5, 2015)

LHC stands for Large Hadron Collider. Large due to its size (approximately 27 km in circumference), Hadron because it accelerates protons or ions, which are hadrons, and Collider because these particles from two beams travelling in opposite directions, which collide at four points where the two rings of the machine intersect. Hadrons (from the Greek ‘adros’ meaning ‘bulky’) are particles composed of quarks. The protons and neutrons that atomic nuclei are made of belong to this family. On the other hand, leptons are particles that are not made of quarks. Electrons and muons are examples of leptons (from the Greek ‘leptos’ meaning ‘thin’).

How does LHC help with answering such fundamental questions like the origin of universe? A little primer on particle physics and big bang cosmology is needed to appreciate this so allow me to get in to some details here. Particle physics studies the tiniest objects of Nature. Apart from looking into the very small and fundamental particles, it also looks very far back into the past, just a few moments after the Big Bang. A particle accelerator studies these ultra tiny particles as well as the forces acting between them by accelerating them to very high speeds, and bombarding them with each other. Note that no particle can move with speeds faster than the speed of light in a vacuum; however, there is no limit to the energy a particle can attain. In high-energy accelerators, particles normally travel very close to the speed of light. Protons at full energy in the LHC will be travelling at 0.999999991 times the speed of light.  At this near light-speed, a proton in the LHC will make 11 245 circuits every second. And a beam of protons might circulate for 10 hours, travelling more that 10 billion kilometers, enough to get to the planet Neptune and back again! The protons that are accelerated at CERN is obtained from standard hydrogen. Although proton beams at the LHC are very intense, only 2 nanograms of hydrogen are accelerated each day. Therefore, it would take the LHC about 1 million years to accelerate just 1 gram of hydrogen!

It is not the absolute energy but the energy concentration or density that makes particle collisions so special. In absolute terms, these energies, if compared to the energies we deal with everyday, are not impressive. In fact, 1 TeV (1 trillion electron volt) is about the energy of motion of a flying mosquito. What makes the LHC so extraordinary is that it squeezes energy into a space about a million million times smaller than a mosquito, so the “energy concentration” is unprecedented. At near 13 TeV, the energy concentration achieved at LHC this time around is about 1000,000 times the energy concentration in the center of our sun, or equal to the energy concentration just 1 pico second (1 trillionth of a second) after Big Bang - allowing us to investigate questions that so far had been beyond the grasp of human experiments.

The Standard Model

The following pictures summarize the Standard Model’s basic points.

Our current understanding of the Universe is incomplete. The Standard Model of particles and forces summarizes our present knowledge of particle physics. According to the theory, which is supported by a great deal of experimental evidence, quarks are the building blocks of matter, and forces act through carrier particles exchanged between the particles of matter. 

The Standard Model has been tested by various experiments and it has proven particularly successful in anticipating the existence of previously undiscovered particles. However, it leaves many unsolved questions, which the LHC will help to answer. The Standard Model does not explain the origin of mass, nor why some particles are very heavy while others have no mass at all. The answer was postulated to be the so-called Higgs mechanism. According to the theory of the Higgs mechanism, the whole of space is filled with a ‘Higgs field’, and by interacting with this field, particles acquire their masses. Particles that interact intensely with the Higgs field are heavy, while those that have feeble interactions are light. The Higgs field has at least one new particle associated with it, the Higgs boson. It was at LHC that we were finally was able to detect this particle at last during the last round of experiments done at LHC in 2012, resulting in 2013 Nobel prize being awarded for this discovery .

What are we expecting from LHC this time around?

When the LHC started today (April 5, 2015), the energies of collisions would be even higher than what was achieved in 2012. The questions the scientists are trying to answer are to fill in the gaps in the Standard Model and includes ideas like Super Symmetry, Dark Matter, Anti Matter and Structure of Early Universe and even Alternate Dimensions as predicted by String Theory.

Super symmetry: A theory that hypothesizes the existence of more massive partners of the standard particles we know — could facilitate the unification of fundamental forces including gravity, as Standard Model does not explain gravity. If super symmetry is right, then the lightest super symmetric particles should be found at the LHC.

Dark matter: Cosmological and astrophysical observations have shown that all of the visible matter accounts for only 4% of the Universe. The search is open for particles or phenomena responsible for dark matter and dark energy making up 23% and 73 % of the whole universe! The first hint of the existence of dark matter came in 1933, when astronomical observations and calculations of gravitational effects revealed that there must be more ‘stuff’ present in the Universe than we could account for by sight. Researchers now believe that the gravitational effect of dark matter makes galaxies spin faster than expected, and that its gravitational field deviates the light of objects behind it. Measurements of these effects show the existence of dark matter, and can be used to estimate its density even though we cannot directly observe it. Dark energy is a form of energy that appears to be associated with the vacuum in space, and makes up approximately 73% of the Universe. Dark energy is homogeneously distributed throughout the Universe and in time. In other words, its effect is not diluted as the Universe expands. The even distribution means that dark energy does not have any local gravitational effects, but rather a global effect on the Universe as a whole. This leads to a repulsive force, which tends to accelerate the expansion of the Universe. The rate of expansion and its acceleration can be measured by experiments using the Hubble law. These measurements, together with other scientific data, have confirmed the existence of dark energy and have been used to estimate its quantity.

Anti matter: The LHC will also help us to investigate the mystery of antimatter. Matter and antimatter must have been produced in the same amounts at the time of the Big Bang, but from what we have observed so far, our Universe is made only of matter. Why? The LHC could help to provide an answer. It was once thought that antimatter was a perfect ‘reflection’ of matter — that if you replaced matter with antimatter and looked at the result as if in a mirror, you would not be able to tell the difference. We now know that the reflection is imperfect, and this could have led to the matter-antimatter imbalance in our Universe.

Very Early universe: In addition to the studies of proton–proton collisions, heavy-ion collisions at the LHC will provide a window onto the state of matter that would have existed in the early Universe, called ‘quark-gluon plasma’. When heavy ions collide at high energies they form for an instant a ‘fireball’ of hot, dense matter that can be studied by the experiments. According to the current theories, the Universe, born from the Big Bang, went through a stage during which matter existed as a sort of extremely hot, dense soup — called quark-gluon plasma (QGP) — composed of the elementary building blocks of matter. See the pictures below of the current model of Big Bang cosmology in it's first fraction of a second. 

As the Universe cooled, the quarks became trapped into composite particles such as protons and neutrons. This phenomenon is called the confinement of quarks. The LHC is able to reproduce the QGP by accelerating and colliding together two beams of heavy ions. In the collisions, the temperature will exceed 100 000 times that of the centre of the Sun. In these conditions, the quarks are freed again and the detectors can observe and study the primordial soup, thus probing the basic properties of the particles and how they aggregate to form ordinary matter. What is so incredible remarkable is that with the collision speeds anticipated at 13 TeV, we can create, albeit at an extremely small scale, the condition of the universe just 1 pico second (1 trillionth) after the Big Bang itself!

What is LHC made of?

Dipole magnets cooled to near absolute zero forms the heart of LHC. The magnet coils for the LHC are wound from a cable consisting of up to 36 twisted 15-mm strands, each strand being made up in turn of 6000-9000 individual filaments, each filament having a diameter as small as 7 micrometers (for comparison, a human hair is about 50 micrometers thick). The 27-km circumference of the LHC calls for some 7600 km of cable, corresponding to about 270 000 km of strand — enough to circle the Earth six times at the Equator. If all the component filaments were unravelled, they would stretch to the Sun and back five times with enough left over for a few trips to the Moon!

Cryogenics:

As noted this magnets at LHC are kept near absolute zero at the LHC, similar to the magnets of a MRI machine. The LHC is the largest cryogenic system in the world and one of the coldest places on Earth. To maintain its 27-km ring (4700 tonnes of material in each of the eight sectors) at super fluid helium temperature (1.9 K, –271.3°C), the LHC’s cryogenic system will have to supply an unprecedented total refrigeration capacity.

Detectors:

What are the detectors at the LHC? There are six experiments installed at the LHC: A Large Ion Collider Experiment (ALICE), ATLAS, the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment, the Large Hadron Collider forward (LHCf) experiment and the Total Elastic and diffractive cross section Measurement (TOTEM) experiment.

Data capture from LHC:

LHC is not only the largest man made machine ever, but also tests the computing capabilities by taking it to the limit. (Note here that it was at CERN the world wide web was invented). LHC creates more data to be analyzed per second than humans have ever been dealt with. The data flow from all four experiments will be about 700 MB/s, that is around 15 000 000 GB (=15 PetaByte) per year, corresponding to a stack of CDs about 20 km tall each year! (around twice the height of Everest!) This enormous amount of data will be accessed and analyzed by thousands of scientists around the world. 

Are the LHC collisions dangerous?

The LHC can achieve energies that no other particle accelerators have reached before. The energy of its particle collisions has previously only been found in Nature. And it is only by using such a powerful machine that physicists can probe deeper into the key mysteries of the Universe. Some people have expressed concerns about the safety of whatever may be created in high-energy particle collisions. However there are really no reasons for such concern. Accelerators only recreate the natural phenomena of cosmic rays under controlled laboratory conditions. Cosmic rays are particles produced in outer space in events such as supernovae or the formation of black holes, during which they can be accelerated to energies far exceeding those of the LHC. Cosmic rays travel throughout the Universe, and have been bombarding the Earth’s atmosphere continually since its formation 4.5 billion years ago. Despite the impressive power of the LHC in comparison with other accelerators, the energies produced in its collisions are greatly exceeded by those found in some cosmic rays. Since the much higher-energy collisions provided by nature for billions of years have not harmed the Earth, there is no reason to think that any phenomenon produced by the LHC will do so. The LHC’s energy, although powerful for an accelerator, is modest by nature’s standards.

Will LHC make Black holes?

Massive black holes are created in the Universe by the collapse of massive stars, which contain enormous amounts of gravitational energy that pulls in surrounding matter. The gravitational pull of a black hole is related to the amount of matter or energy it contains — the less there is, the weaker the pull. However these microscopic black holes produced inside the LHC will not generate a strong enough gravitational force to pull in surrounding matter. If the LHC can produce microscopic black holes, cosmic rays of much higher energies would already have produced many more. Since the Earth is still here, there is no reason to believe that collisions inside the LHC are harmful. Black holes lose matter through the emission of energy via a process discovered by Stephen Hawking. Any black hole that cannot attract matter, such as those that might be produced at the LHC, will shrink, evaporate and disappear. The smaller the black hole, the faster it vanishes. If microscopic black holes were to be found at the LHC, they would exist only for a fleeting moment. They would be so short-lived that the only way they could be detected would be by detecting the products of their decay

Can we investigate at energy levels higher than even the LHC?

Though LHC is indeed the most marvellous and powerful machine ever made by humans, and the energy concentration obtained at LHC can investigate early universe almost a trillionth of a second after the big bang, to achieve even higher collision speeds is limited by the size of the accelerator that can be made. To make an accelerator to recreate the situation a femtosecond (quadrillionth of a second) after the Big Bang will have to be bigger than the whole earth! And taking it to energy levels to ever smaller fractions of time after big bang would be truly beyond humans even theoretically (one calculation suggest an accelerator to test the inflationary period after big bang would need a particle accelerator almost a 1000 light years across!). However  we may be able to update our technology so even higher power accelerators than LHC can be made humanly possible, and one of the candidates for such an accelerator is based on new techniques like Laser Plasma accelerators. It is quite conceivable that in another generation we will have a particle accelerator that would help us see even farther back in time, even deeper in to the mind of God. But as of now, it is LHC and the brilliant scientists working there whom we are looking up to come up with answers to the deepest and hardest questions ever faced by humanity. 

How Fast Does Brahma Move? Einstein, Brahma and Time Dilation

Please note the following blog is written neither to prove nor disprove a super natural force; it is merely to elicit the reader’s interest in the wide ranging implications of Einstein’s theory of special relativity. Even after 100 years, the true implications of his theories, which forms the foundation of modern physics, remain hard to grasp for even the highly educated. One reason is the lack of emphasis on post classical physics education even at secondary / higher school level. Educators appears to shun away from relativity and quantum mechanics due to the counter intuitive nature of these theories. It is however unfortunate that many people never had a chance to learn the beauty of these profound concepts, grander than almost any other attempt by humans to understand reality as it really is. So below is my humble attempt at making just a small aspect of relativity accessible.

Almost all of the physics we learn in school is classical physics, founding fathers of which were such eminent names in history like Galileo and Newton. This so called classical mechanics is very intuitive as well as an extremely accurate way of describing the world. However towards the end of 19^th century, one peculiar phenomenon – how to explain the constant speed of light – was causing much debate in the physics community. According to classical under standing, the measured speed of light should be different for different speeds of the observer and its source. However, Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism the and subsequent Michelson-Morley experiment showed that this is not true. The speed of light was a constant, irrespective of the speed of the observer or the speed of the light source.

Let us do a "thought experiment" using a moving train to understand this dilemma. Of note, most of Einstein's breakthroughs came from these types of “thought experiments”. Unlike a real train, it is certainly easy to propel your "thought train" to near light speed if needed! So let us assume you are inside a very long train travelling at 70 km/hour; and assume you are running inside this long train at 10 km/hour; for an outside observer, your speed would be the combined speed of you and the train (80 km/sec). This is one of the bed rocks of classical mechanics, called "velocity addition” and a very intuitive principle to grasp. For an out side observer looking at a man running inside the moving train, the running man's speed is the combined speed of his running and that of the train. So far simple - right? 

Now assume a man is sitting at the back of the train and flashing a light to the front of the train; we know the speed of light (c) is 299,792,458 meter/second. (From now on I will just use "C" to denote this speed to make this blog look less number filled!) So the question is for an observer outside the train, will the speed of the flash light would look a little bit faster than "C" as we have to add the train's speed to "C"just as the running man's example above? As noted above and per classical physics (and to most people’s common sense understanding even now) the answer is yes – one has to add the speed of the train to the speed of light to get the perceived speed of light for the stationary observer outside the train. But as noted, Maxwell’s equations suggest that the speed of light is a constant irrespective of the speed of the observer or the speed of the light source. Let us assume for fun this is a “super duper rocket train” moving at half the speed of light (say 0.5 C). Then for the outside observer, should the speed of light be 1.5 C (C+0.5 C)? No - despite the enormous speed of the train, for the outside observer, the flash light inside the train would be still moving at the same constant speed C. How is this possible? As you can see this “lack of velocity addition of light” is a very counter intuitive problem. And though several brilliant scientists pondered over how to solve this puzzle, it took the imaginative Einstein to come up with the correct solution to explain why light speed will appear constant to all observers, irrespective of how fast they are moving relative to each other or how fast the light source is moving.

Again, the solution of this puzzle required more imagination and "thinking outside the box" than mere expertise in Math and Physics. Renowned Physicist and Einstein’s close friend Hendrik Lorentz came very close to solving this puzzle; similarly the French mathematician and philosopher Henry Poincaré was also working on how to solve this riddle. But, though extremely brilliant they all were, they all were still working under the assumption, which most of us still carry as almost scared, that time is universal. Our intuition assumes time passes the same way for the man standing outside the train and the man inside the moving train. In the ordinary speeds we travel, this is indeed the way things appear. What sets Einstein’s genius apart was his ability to question even such a cherished and "common sense" belief like the immutability of time.

Now let us see how Einstein solved the above riddle on the speed of a flash light in a moving train. His “Eureka” moment was when he figured out what a measure of time - a "second" for example-  in the fast moving train is not the same as a "second" perceived by the stationary observer. In the above example of an imaginary train moving at half the speed of light, the light speed within the train would still appear to be C for an outside observer - because for him a “second” inside the train would be equal to a whole lot longer than a second outside! The faster the speed of the train, the longer the "second" inside the train would appear. So instead of the cherished Galilean velocity addition, the speed of light will appear the same to all observers. Until Einstein, space and time were the fixed background on which events plays out in the universe. This amazing intuition of Einstein was the first hint at understanding space and time not as a static background but a dynamic structure that can move, warp and most importantly can have different relative values for different observers! Most revolutionary of all these ideas is again the fact that there is no "universal clock" ticking way; time for you and me could pass at different rates if we are travelling at different speeds. This is not the "subjective" feeling of time passing fast or slow depending on how one's mood but an actual change in the rate at which time passes; where my "second" could be actually longer or shorter than your "second"! Of course these become obvious only at near light speeds, so we don't feel this in our every day life.

Take a deep breath here – as it is truly counter intuitive. To recapture; what Maxwell’s equation proved and several subsequent experiments confirmed was the speed of light is an absolute constant in our universe. (Note this is not speed of “light” but of all electromagnetic waves whether we can see them or not). Einstein’s great insight was this can only be so if what we perceive as the passing of “time” depends on your velocity. This phenomenon – where a unit of time in a fast moving frame would appear longer to an outside observer – is called time dilatation. At the ordinary speeds we experience this is negligible. Even a rocket escaping earth’s gravity only has to travel above 11.2 km/sec which is such a puny speed when compared to light speed. However one can easily imagine when the time dilatation could be enormous as the examples below shows; where a minute in an imaginary rocket flying very near light speed could equal to even several years on earth! By the way these are all not idle speculation but time dilation and Einstein’s theories of special relativity have been experimentally verified. In fact, his famous formula E = mc² is  derived directly from special relativity and as we all know, that sure does work, as most dramatically and destructively proven in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Interestingly enough, several old religious texts speak of time as relative. What humans perceive as a year may be a day for a “higher being”. Certain verses of Quran and Bible indicate where an angel could experience 1 day while humans will measure it as 50,000 years. The most extreme form of this time dilation I could find however is from Hindu mythology. More than most religions, Hindu mythology gives a very prominent role for time in its scriptures. Again note this is just as a fun exercise, purely to show how special relativity works, and has very little to do with super natural beings moving at close to light speeds! So here we go - how do we use Einstein’s time dilation equations to calculate the speed of Brahma? This is not as hard as it first appears; Hindu scriptures give specific directions on how long is a Brahma day. It is enormous! A Brahma day is also called Kalpa, is 12 hours of Brahma time, and is equal to 4.32 billion human years! After 12 hours of day, Brahma then sleeps for another 12 hours - kind of lazy for an almighty, if I may add!. So one full day of Brahma is two Kalpas or 8.64 billion human years or 3.06 Trillion human days! (Special thanks to my friend Anindya Sen for getting me up to speed on this aspect of Brahma!) Now that we know how big is the time dilation, we can easily calculate Brahma's speed. Below is the formula for calculating time dilation based on Einstein's special relativity:

So the only unknown variable in the above equation is V – the velocity at which an entity like Brahma should move so the time dilation equals when 1 Brahma day is equal to 3.06 trillion human days. Plugging the numbers we get Brahma's speed V has to be:

299792457.99999999999999999999839916026955444487163044482974 m/sec or 

99.999999999999999999999999999466017343756674783203 percent the speed of light. Now assume one wants to move an average human weighing say 70 kg to the speed of Brahma. How much energy would be needed? Einstein’s equations again help us figure this out quickly; it is M (Mass of the person who needs to be accelerated) x C² x time dilation factor. So plugging the numbers above, if the rest mass of Brahma is 70 kg, the energy needed to attain the “Brahma” velocity noted above is a mind boggling 1925230456800000000000000000000000 Joules! Now this number is so huge it makes no sense; so just for comparison the annual global energy consumption is about 0.5 zettajoule (ZJ). 1 ZJ is equal to one sextillion (10²¹) joules. (Note the annual global energy consumption is almost 7 million times the energy released by the atomic bomb at Hiroshima; in another word, world consumes the energy equivalent of around 21,000 Hiroshima sized bombs every day!) But even thought the global energy consumption is enormous, the energy required to get to Brahma speed is a ginormous 1.93 Trillion zettajoules; or about the annual global energy output for the next 4 Trillion years! That is at least a 1000 times more than the expected life of our dear earth itself!

How about time dilation and potential for future space travel? What about the famous “Twin Paradox”? We are nowhere near even 1% of light speed but assume a future technology can propel our rockets to near light speed – what happens then? Assume our rocket can travel at 99% the speed of light and assume one of the twins became an astronaut and traveled in this rocket while the other remained on earth. To calculate her time dilation relative to her earthly twin; 1 - (0.99)² = 0.02, the square root of this is 0.14, so the Time (Rocket₎ would be only 14% of Time (Earth). So if the twin left Earth at 99% the speed of light, visited a star system say 25 light years away and came back,  50 years would have passed on Earth, but the rocket twin would be only 7 years older by her biological clock! Two important things to note here: For the person in a rocket travelling at 99% speed of light, it does not "feel like" a star system 25 light years away take a little over 25 years to reach – it only takes about 3.5 years due to the effect of time dilation! Also note that for the astronaut, a day and a year would feel exactly as it would feel for the earthly twin. Only the passage of time between them is different. Are you getting a headache now? Won't blame you - as nothing is wired deeper in to our brain than the deep awareness that time should be the same for all - but trust Einstein- it is not! Time passes at different rate for different observers. Even our language fails to truly communicate this concept!

Now on a side note – some of you may have seen one of the best science fiction movies of 2014, “The Interstellar” which deals extensively with time dilatation. Unlike many science fiction movies, the science of “Interstellar” is quite well thought of. The movie had several consultants from the world of Physics including some of the world’s foremost experts on topics like relativistic time dilation, black holes and worm holes, most notably Kip Thorne, the famous Caltech physicist and close friend of Stephen Hawking. Let me take a short detour here to explain the time dilation shown in the movie; what we have so far described above is time dilation with increasing velocity; there is something else that also causes the same exact effect of time dilation and that is increasing gravity. As noted above the time dilation with increasing velocity is based on Special Theory of Relativity, which can be understood with some basic knowledge of mathematics. However the gravitational time dilation is based on Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, an absolute “Mathematical Tour de force” and a much harder theory to grasp. While Einstein formulated his Special Theory of Relativity in a single year along with 4 other major breakthroughs (all in the same “Miracle Year of 1905"), his General Theory of Relativity took even Einstein over 10 years of hard work to come up with the final correct relativistic field equations. A true understanding of this requires deep knowledge in many fields of Mathematics, especially tensor calculus. Just looking at the Einstein's Field Equations of gravity gives me a head ache. Suffice is to say that time not only dilates with increasing speed but also with increasing gravity. 


Now does it all matter in real life? Yes indeed! If you ever used a GPS in your car or phone, believe it or not, these esoteric facts of time dilation becomes a major factor in accurately measuring your position. Why?  A GPS, whether in your car or the one made as part of your smart phone carries with it an atomic clock with an accuracy of 1 nanosecond (1 billionth of a second). A GPS receiver can determine your absolute position to within 5 to 10 meters, and to achieve this level of precision, the clock ticks from the GPS satellites must be known to an accuracy of 20-30 nanoseconds. However, because the satellites are experiencing a different level of gravity than a clock on the surface of earth and since they are constantly moving relative to observers on the Earth, effects predicted by both the Special and General theories of Relativity must be taken into account to achieve the desired 20-30 nanosecond accuracy. As the satellites are in motion relative to ground, Special Relativity predicts their clocks ticking more slowly - by about 7 microseconds per day; however as the satellites are experiencing less gravity than on ground level, and according to the General Relativity, clocks on satellites will be faster than identical clocks on the ground by 45 microseconds per day. The combination of these two relativistic effects means that the clocks on-board each satellite should tick faster than identical clocks on the ground by about 38 microseconds (or 38,000 nanoseconds) per day! If these effects were not properly taken into account, errors in global positions would accumulate at a rate of about 10 kilometers each day! The whole system would be then worthless for navigation in a very short time, so the design of GPS system has to include these relativistic effects.

Now assume a conscious being, say a God consciousness if one is inclined to call it that - is moving at the speed of light? What happens to its time compared to a stationary observer? As you can see from the above equation on time dilation with speed that for such a being, when V=C, time dilation becomes infinite – i.e., time literally stops for any entity travelling at light speed (or when gravity increases to the level of a black hole). Assume a star you are looking at is 5 billion light years away; so the light left the star 5 billion years ago, and we are indeed seeing not only the distant star but also peering in to the very distant past; we are looking at the star as it was 5 billion years ago, before even our earth was formed! But assume the photon making up the light has a conscious awareness of the passing of time. Would it feel it left the star 5 billion years ago? NO! For the photon “time” has no meaning, and it left the star and reached the earth at the same exact instant as far it is concerned. Time dilation reaches infinity or time literally stops at light speed. Very hard to have an intuitive understanding of this but this truly revolutionary idea – that what we think of as this immutable force of time is just a relative quantity that can vary between different observers – is one of the many reasons why Einstein is called, well Einstein! Now what did Einstein himself think of time? He had a way with not only numbers but also with words, so let me end this blog with a direct quote from Einstein himself. This is from a letter he wrote on the death of Michele Besso, one of his dearest friends. In fact this letter was written only few weeks before his own death; one can see in this poignant words how Einstein himself thought about the passage of time: “Michele has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."

Reference:

Albert Einstein: Physicist, Philosopher, Humanitarian by Professor Don Howard (The Great Courses)