WHERE IS THE UNIVERSE HEADED-AND WHAT WOULD FINALLY HAPPEN?

 

From the time of the Big Bang that took place 1377 crore years ago, the Universe is expanding incessantly and galaxies in the Universe are flying away from each other. 

As per the Big Bang theory the matter in the Universe was concentrated in a small area before the Big Bang happened. The diameter of the Universe at the time of Big Bang was indeterminate, but the heat and pressure in that primordial ball were immense beyond imagination.

Theoretical models suggest that the entire matter in the Universe coalesced into a singularity. However later estimations indicate a size as big as a few meters.  What is the state of matter at this primitive stage, we cannot even fathom. But whatever the temperature and the pressure of the primordial ball, it is inevitable that it had to explode given the conditions, and so it did 1377 crore years ago. In 1 year the Universe has expanded to 100,000 light years in diameter.

But how did that happen? Einstein postulated that nothing can travel faster than light which means that the Universe can at best expand to only 1 light year in diameter in 1year. But it expanded 100,000 times more which is phenomenally faster than light.

Scientists say that is because space itself stretches and the fabric of space expands faster while the objects in it do not travel at more than the speed of light. They say that there is no limit to the expansion of the speed of the Universe.

But that looks to be a paradox to me, and in their enthusiasm, it looks to me that the theorists seem to have gone overboard. 

They claim that there is no speed limit for the expansion of space unlike in the case of objects but obviously if the space expands so fast, then is it not inevitable that the objects in it should also do so?  How can they say that space would expand far faster than light, while the objects within it would not? What the basis do they to rest their theory on? How can anyone postulate such a thing when they cannot even judge the conditions of that time and not knowing the properties of space?   

The primordial ball contained not just the matter known to us, but it also contained dark matter and dark energy to the tune of 95% which today none of our instruments are capable of measuring. The mass of the Universe is estimated by scientists to be 1.5* 10⁵⁰ tons. The Dark energy which consists of 68% mass-energy of the Universe speeds up its expansion continuously so that it accelerates.

We know that the Universe is constantly expanding, and today the known Universe should have a diameter of 1377 crore light years. However, the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes have revealed that the expansion of the Universe is in fact accelerating and this acceleration is on account of the Dark energy present in the Universe. Considering this acceleration, the diameter of the Universe has now grown to 9300 crore light years. One should keep in mind that this diameter is the diameter of the observable Universe.

That is which our instruments can allow us to postulate on and we have no means of knowing what is beyond it.  For all we know there may be other such similar Universes outside it, and logically that have to be so. There is no reason to assume that there is only Universe just because we know of only one.     

The Big Bang did not happen at a single place in the universe. It happened everywhere at once. So each Galaxy is moving away from another. As galaxies drift apart, new star formation would stop and older stars would die and the Universe would become cold, dark and empty.

But most of the theory of the Universe ending is a mere assumption. It may or may not have an end, and we can only speculate on that. Theoretically all the Hydrogen and Helium should have been exhausted by now given the rate of fusion in stars and the 1377 crore years age of the Universe, yet even today 73-75% of the mass of the Universe is Hydrogen.  Then Helium makes up 24-25% of the mass of the Universe. 

It is postulated that all the Hydrogen in the Universe has formed after the big bang. That being the case, despite zillions of stars burning Hydrogen up for 13.7 billion years would not bring down its content?

There is no explanation as to why this is so? New stars continue to form while the older stars die, so given the current conditions in the Universe, it is very difficult to accept that it would finally become cold, dark & empty. But Astronomy in some areas is like a dark street wherein one has to venture with dark glasses. Our knowledge and technology is too meagre to speculate about the ending of the Universe. 

INDIAN SCHOLAR WHO NEEDED NO FORMAL EDUCATION-RAHUL SANKRITYAYAN-

 

I was a book lover when I was at college; but it was pretty difficult to get hold of good books. I studied Chemical Engineering at the Andhra University College of Engineering between 1974-79 at Visakhapatnam. I used to search around in the few book shops that were there at Vizag for buying books. One of the shops was “Visalandhra Book House”. They used to publish many books with a communist slant.

One day when I was browsing books at the shop I found the Telugu Book “Rigveda Aryulu”. I got attracted to it and checked it and found the name of the author Rahul Sankrityayan. The name sort of intrigued me. I checked for more books by the author and found ‘Olga to Ganga”. Both the names of the books as well as the authors name pulled me toward them and I flagged them for purchase later because I had no money then and was just browsing. However, it so happened that I never purchased them later. 

Recently by chance I came across and I downloaded one of the books from the net. I read about 3 stories from the book. His first story was from 6000 BC when humans were yet primitive and the family functioned in a way which is animalistic  and is totally revolting to us. We would find the societal conditions rather revolting, but that was perhaps the way then as civilization has not yet touched them, and they behaved just like animals. But it was a matriarchal society where the mother was the head of the family, because in those days finding who is the father of a child became rather difficult.

The subsequent 2 stories of 3500 BC & 3000 BC slowly made people less barbaric yet they are very primitive compared to what we are today. So this guy approximated the behaviors of that particular age and wove their behaviors into a story which is a very difficult task indeed. So in those stories he acted like a historian of those times while he

Then I read about the author and found his life story rather fascinating. Becoming master in Buddhism and Sanskrit without actually studying them formally speaks of great intellect. That the Leningrad University itself has asked him to be a Professor despite that speaks about his merit. I give below a brief profile of the guy.   

Rahul Sankrityayan was born as Kedarnath Pandey in the year 1893. He was the eldest child in a Bhumihar Brahmin family in the Azamgarh district of UP. His maternal grandfather educated him in Urdu as it was seen as a court language. This district was in the erstwhile Oudh state. He then also attended a Hindu school where he learnt the Devanagari script. In 1902 Sakrityayan started studying Sanskrit with his uncle who was considered a great pandit in that language. In 1909 Sankrityayan completed studying middle school and his grandfather wanted him to go in for English education, Sankrityayan resisted it and preferred Sanskrit. He called English an alien language.

Sankrityayan’s travels began in 1910 with his pilgrimage to the Western Himalayas. He went to Haridwar, Rishikesh, Badrinath and Kedarnath to study Vedanta. Then he went to Varanasi and started his studies there in 1911. Because he has travelled for much time he did not have any formal education and he was a self-taught man in many subjects. Next year he travelled to Chhapra in Bihar where he was initiated as a Sadhu and was made the heir to a mahant of Vaishnava tradition. However, he got bored, left Chhapra and arrived at Ayodhya.

In 1914 he came to know about the Arya Samaj and again he left to Agra where he studied free of cost and where he picked up Arabic and other religions of the world. After 2 years he went to Lahore and studied in a Vedic school. This led to his first introduction to Buddhism as he travelled to spread the Arya Samaj movement. He visited Kushinagar, Sarnath, Lumbini & Bodh Gaya.

His political career started in 1921 when he was jailed several times. During this stay in Bihar he turned to Buddhism. He took up teaching of Sanskrit in Srilanka in 1927 where he immersed himself in the Buddhist texts and the Pali language and earned the title of Tripitakacharya. He left for Tibet in 1928, and such was the nascent state of transport then,  it took him one and half years to reach Lhasa. He learnt the local language and collected Buddhist texts there. He returned to Srilanka and was initiated as a Buddhist monk and was given the name Rahul Sankrityayan. He again travelled to Chhapra, Sindh and Sarnath and returned back to Srilanka in 1931.

In 1932 he visited London as a representative of the Mahabodhi society. The society asked him to promote Buddhism in Europe and the US but he refused and returned back to Srilanka saying that he finds the capitalist life very dreary and there are similar things in the USA so he does not want to waste his time.

In 1933 he spent his time in visiting places and also in writing. He visited Patna, Ladakh & Lahore. Then between 1934 and 1938 he visited Tibet 3 times and Burma, Korea & Japan. He brough back more than 80 Sanskrit works on Buddhism which he translated.

He visited Russia first in 1935 and then in 1937 when he started teaching Ellena Narvertovna Kozerovskaya Sanskrit at the Leningrad University. She was to be his Russian wife later and was a scholar in Mongolian.  They married that year itself and a son Igor was born to them in 1938. Due to the marriage he had to shed his Buddhist monk status and become an Upasaka instead.

In 1938 Sankrityayan joined the Congress Socialist Party. He was also a founding member of the Bihar state Communist party. He was imprisoned several times when he wrote his work ‘Olga to Ganga” in Hindi.

This work consists of 20 historical fiction short stories on the migration of the Aryans from Central Asia into India. The stories start in 6000 BC and end in 1942 spanning 8000 years. This book is now considered a classic in Hindi literature and that is something coming from a man who had very little formal education and is self-taught. This book has been translated into Nepali, Assamese, Marathi, Bengali, English, Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu and Punjabi. It was also published in Russian, Czech, Polish, Chinese and also other languages. This is a great classic. Yes, there was criticism of scholars on distortions, anomalies and loaded history in his work, yet what the man attempted was quite mighty and mistakes have to be accepted as a part of the book. That it has been translated into so many languages alone proves its readability and romanticism of the earlier times.

In his 3^rd stay in Russia from 1945 to 1947 he was invited to take up a Professorship at the Leningrad University. He was considered an authority on Buddhism. Hs family joined him in Leningrad. He wrote a book “25 months in Russia” to narrate his experiences there. He returned back to India after Independence.

His experiences in Russia solidified his belief in Communism and also in his nationalism. In India he was active in literature and politics. His strong advocacy of Hindi and opposition to Urdu as the national language led to his dismissal from the Communist party.

Sankrityayan married very young and never knew his first wife Santoshi. H e saw her once when he was in his 40’s. That may well be because he was never home and was constantly travelling. Then he married Ellena in Leningrad who did not come to India along with him when he came back after Independence..

Later he married Kamala Sankrityayan and they had a son named Jeta and daughter named Jaya.

Sankrityayan knew 30 languages and Bhojpuri was his native tongue. He wrote on Indology, Communism, Buddhism and Philology in some 100 books. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1963 and passed away the same year.

 

ASIAN GAMES 2026-CURTAIN RAISER FOR INDIA.

 

Another big event for us, the Asian Games are fast approaching. They would be held at Nagoya in Japan from Sep 19^th to Oct 4^th.

The Nagoya games would have participation of 11,000 athletes from 45 nations and that is big. Asia accounts for 58% of the world population and so a big proportion of the World population would be represented at these games. In contrast the recently concluded Commonwealth Games had only 2715 athletes but from 74 countries. However, of these 74, only 55 were sovereign states and 19 were other dependencies.

In the last Asian Games held at Guangzhou, China, India did extremely well and won 28 Gold, 38 Silver & 40 Bronze with a total of 106 medals and stood 4^th on the Medal Tally after China, Japan & South Korea. This is the highest ever medal tally at the Asian games for India. India also sent a massive contingent of 655 athletes to those games.

At the recently concluded Commonwealth Games too India stood 4^th on the medal tally with just 39 medals. Therefore in most disciplines the Asian standards would be lower than the Commonwealth standards.

Medal Count Total for the Asian Games                2022-Gold -Men 335, Women-326.Total -661. India medals 107 is a strike rate of 16% total medal wise.

Medal Count Total for the Commonwealth games 2026 the total number of medals was 674. India medals 39 is a strike rate of 6% total medal wise.

That indicates, by Asian standards we are better than for the Commonwealth games standard.

INDIA MEDAL BREAK-UP BY SPORT 2022 ASIAN GAMES AT GUANGZHOW.

SPORT	GOLD	SILVER	BRONZE	TOTAL
ATHLETICS	6	14	9	29
SHOOTING	7	9	6	22
ARCHERY	5	2	2	9
WRESTLING	0	1	5	6
ROWING	0	2	3	5
BOXING	0	1	4	5
SQUASH	2	1	2	5
SAILING	0	1	2	3
BADMINTON	1	1	1	3
CRICKET	2	0	0	2
KABADDI	2	0	0	2
EQUESTRIAN	1	0	1	2
CHESS	0	2	0	2
TENNIS	1	1	0	2
HOCKEY	1	0	1	2
ROLLER SKATING	0	0	2	2
GOLF	0	1	0	1
WUSHU	0	1	0	1
BRIDGE	0	1	0	1
SEPAKTAKRAW	0	0	1	1
CANOEING	0	0	1	1
TABLE TENNIS	0	0	1	1
TOTAL	28	38	41	107

 

At the Commonwealth games we got medals only in 5 sports, while at the 2022 Asian Games we got medals in 22 sports.

The top 3 teams on the Medal table China, Japan & South Korea are way ahead of us and it would be difficult for us to approach even South Korea. Uzbekistan was in the 5^th place at our heels and got 22 Gold. If we can preserve our 4 th place we got last time, we can be happy.

India is sending a contingent of 503 athletes for the games. I prepared a list of 492 which was initially announced while 10 more athletes, 6 in Athletics & 4 in Surfing were added later and 1 more in some other sport whose detail I could not get. In the side column I gave the medals won in 2022 in those disciplines against respective squads for this time.

INDIAN TEAMS GOING TO NAGOYA FOR THE ASIAD 2026.

SPORT	MEN	WOMEN	TOTAL	MEDALS WON 2022
ARCHERY	6	6	12	9
ATHLETICS	35	38	73	29
BADMINTON	10	10	20	3
BOXING	6	5	11	5
CANOEING	10	9	19	1
CRICKET	15	15	30	2
CYCLING	6	8	14	0
EQUESTRIAN	7	1	8	2
ESPORTS	15	0	15	0
FENCING	8	12	20	0
FIELD HOCKEY	20	20	40	2
GOLF	3	3	6	1
GYMNASTICS	0	1	1	0
JUDO	0	3	3	0
KABADDI	12	12	24	2
KARATE	1	1	2	0
KURASH	3	4	7	0
MIXED MARTIAL	0	1	1	0
ROWING	17	5	22	5
RUGBY	0	13	0	0
SAILING	4	6	10	5
SEPAK TAKRAW	12	9	21	1
SHOOTING	15	15	30	22
SOFT TENNIS	5	1	6	0
SPORT CLIMBING	1	1	2	0
SQUASH	4	4	8	5
SWIMMING	12	0	12	0
TABLE TENNIS	5	5	10	1
TAEKWONDO	0	3	3	0
TENNIS	5	2	7	2
TEQBALL	2	1	3	0
VOLLEYBALL	12	0	12	0
WEIGHTLIFTING	1	4	5	0
WRESTLING	11	6	17	6
WUSHU	3	4	7	1
TOTAL	265	227	492

 In the last Asian Games the bulk of the medals came from the following disciplines:

1.       ATHLETICS           29

2.       SHOOTING            22

3.       ARCHERY               9

4.       WRESTLING          6

5.       ROWING                5

6.       BOXING                 5

7.       SQUASH                5

We are sending a good number of athletes in these disciplines and are bound to do well this time too.

In the following sports where we did not win a single medal last time we are sending big contingents in 2026.

1.       CYCLING              14          

2.       ESPORTS               15 New Event added.

3.       FENCING              20

4.       SWIMMING          12          

Hopefully we would pick up some medals in these events.

More women than men are in the Indian team. Surprised to see the women’s team participating in Rugby this time. No men’s team there.