A child looks up in the sky, sees stars, finds their twinkling astonishing. It was a beginners mind, which Newton seemed to posses to come up with the theory of gravity. Newton arrived at the theory of gravity not by going through equations, running through formulae, it was a beginners mind in him which made him to think and ask himself - Why? The child in him forced him not to follow his common sense and education and to have the strength to say, against the whole world, “Why?” The result was a theory, which dominated mankind for more than three centuries.

It took the same beginners mind which scientists seem to posses to apply Newton’s law to the stars to find out why they are there, since when etc etc. But to their astonishment they found that if the stars followed Newton’s law then all should have collapsed at the center of the universe. It was suggested that maybe the universe is infinite so every point is the center, so the stars are also stable. But then every line of vision should end up in a star, although we all know that is not the case. Then it was suggested that, maybe the stars are so far that the light from them has not yet reached us as yet or that it gets absorbed, considering the latter to be true, then the whole of universe should have been as bright as a sun, even at night, thus we reason out that light has not reached us as yet.

But then if it hasn’t reached us as yet it must have been triggered at some finite time before, by whom? And why?

Then Hubble came up with a startling discovery that the universe is expanding, so all the other things were explained, i.e. why stars do not collapse, because of the relative motion in which all are getting away from each other like points on a surface of an inflating balloon. If everything is expanding and getting away from each other, it means that at some finite time ago it all must have been at a common point.

Then how and why did it start to expand, how was it triggered with such enormous energy? Thus came the concept of someone or something who was not part of this universe and who was capable of providing a trigger with such immense energies to give us the shape we have now.

-Shantanu Nigam

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

at a three minute presentation at Tata's education and training center, Trivandrum June, 99 India.