මායාව
ලංකාවේ ප්‍රසිද්ධ ජනමාධ්‍යවේදියකු ව සිටි ටාසි විට්ටච්චිගේ පුතකු වූ දැනට හොං කොං හි පදිංචි නූරි විට්ටච්ච් ලියා ඇති මේ ලිපිය මා පළ කරන්නේ කරුණු දෙකක් නිසා ය. නූූරි විට්ටච්චි ලංකාවේ ඉපදී ඇති නමුත් මෙරට පදිංචි ව සිටියේ නම් ලිපිය ලිවීමට ඇති ඉඩකඩ අඩු වීමට තිබිණි. මා දන්නා අන්දමට ඔහුගේ පියා මුස්ලිම් ය. මව බෞද්ධ ය. ඔහු මේ ලිපියෙන් කියන්නේ ඇස්පෙලා ඊනියා යථාර්ථය මායාවක් යැයි කියන බව ය. නොබෙල් තෑහ්හ සම්බන්ධයෙන් ථෙරවාදයේ මධ්‍යස්ථානය කියන ලංකාවේ අරුණ පුවත්පතේ වරුණ අබේසේකර පළ කළ ලිපිය හැරෙන්න කිසිදු සාකච්ඡාවක් ඇති නො වීය. අඩුම තරමේ පළ වී අවුරුදු තිස්දෙකක් වූ මගේ ලෝකයේ මායාව ගැන සඳහන් වීත් ඒ පොත ගැන කිසිම සාකච්ඡාවක් නො වීය. මෙරට බෞද්ධයන්ගේ තරම ඉන් දැන ගත හැකි ය.
දෙවනුව මේ
ලිපිය ලංඩනයේ පළකෙරෙන ලංකාවෙබ් සඟරාවේ උපුටා දක්වා තිබිණි. එහෙත් මායාව ගැන මා
බොහෝ කලකට පෙර ලියු ලිපි එහි සංස්කාරකවරයාට රුචි නො වීය. ඔහු මගේ ලිපි පළ කිරීම
නතර කෙළේ ය. ඔහුත් සිංහල බෞද්ධයෙකි.
Scientist
wins Nobel for showing that reality isn’t real
BY
NURY VITTACHI OCTOBER 12, 2022
A
VISITING HONG KONG scientist has just won the Nobel prize for experimentally
proving that the real world… isn’t real.
Wait,
what? The world isn’t real?
Correct.
And even though the physical world is not real, it has nonetheless given
scientist Alain Aspect the Nobel Prize for Physics, along with two other
scientists in the same field of research.
Aspect
is a Senior Fellow at the Hong Kong Institute for Advanced Study at City
University. He’s actually a Frenchman, but he is on a team of top global
scholars that visits Hong Kong regularly.
Scientists
meet regularly at the Hong Kong Institute for Advanced Study. Image: HKIAS
So,
what did he and his colleagues actually discover? It’s interesting. To answer
that question, we have to go back a century to the 1920s onwards. An argument
started between Einstein and the fathers of a new field of science called
quantum physics.
FLAWED THEORY
In
1935, Einstein said that the discoveries about the nature of the basic
particles that made up everything in the world, including people and objects
and space itself, were fundamentally flawed. Quantum physics as a theory only
worked if the particles were not subject to the rules of time and space.
And
that, of course, made no sense. It would mean that at a fundamental level,
nothing was subject to the rules of time and space. Nothing was actually real.
Just
try and defend that proposition, Einstein challenged his opponents.
The
quantum fathers admitted that Einstein’s point was correct – but they stuck to
their findings, even admitting that it made them sound like mystics. They even
noted their theory’s similarity to ancient eastern sayings like “reality is a
dream in the mind of God”.
Early
experiments suggested that Bohr, was correct – so Einstein said that the theory
wasn’t wrong, but was certainly incomplete.
ONGOING
DISPUTE
The
dispute remained unresolved for decades. Einstein was seen as the leader of the
side which said that reality was real, while the quantum fathers, led by Niels
Bohr, said that reality was an illusion. It remained basically unsolved at the
time of Einstein’s death in 1955.
But
in the 1960s and 1970s, several scientists worked out solid experimental ways
to check whether particles were physically “real” or not. The findings were
clear. They appeared to indicate that the quantum fathers were right.
REMARKABLE
EXAMPLE
A
big step was taken with an experiment designed in 1981. Aspect and his team
split a photon (a unit of light) into two pieces and moved them 12 meters (40
feet) apart.
They
then showed how the pieces behaved as if they were still parts of the same
particle. This showed that as far as sub-atomic particles are concerned,
there’s no such thing as time and space. And everything is made of subatomic
particles, so there’s no such thing as time and space for anything. Or anyone.
In
other words, physical reality – the 3D world in which we exist and move around
in – is an illusion or a projection. This is now the default position in
physics.
The
bestselling science writer at the moment is Carlo Rovelli, who writes in his
latest book: “We are nothing but images of images. Reality, including
ourselves, is nothing but a thin and fragile veil, beyond which … there is
nothing.”
Congratulations
to
Professor Aspect.
Einstein, left, with Denmark’s Niels Bohr, one of the fathers of quantum physics. Image by Paul Ehrenfest, now in Public Domain.
