Games God Plays 2.0

Does this happen with you, that sometimes when you think about something really intensely, that thing or related things manifest themselves! It is possible that this is just the tricks that our mind plays. When we focus our brain in one specific direction, our brain starts noticing related things, which to us appear as if have manifested themselves, while they have always been there. I am sure you remember how you started noticing all the new cars on the road, when you were contemplating buying one for yourself.

The latest that this happened to me was about the time that I was juggling this idea of “existence” in my head. I was in my favorite book store and there on the shelf, I saw this book, exclusively placed for my attention. “The Varieties Of Scientific Experiences – A Personal View Of The Search For God” by Carl Sagan. I had never heard of this book. In fact what was surprising and amusing to me was the title. It was so explicit as if inviting me to open and read it. It of course helped that the author is very well known scientist and one of my favorite science book authors.

So what did I find in the book? Well, some more interesting ideas about God. We think of God as someone who is omnipotent, omniscient, compassionate, who created the universe, is responsive to our prayers, intervenes in human affairs and so on.

Imagine that there were some definitive proof that there is someone who has some but not all these properties. What if there is a being who is the creator, but is indifferent to our prayers? What if this creator does not even know about our existence? What if this being is omnipotent but not omniscient or vice versa. What if, he understood consequences of all his actions but was unable to do many things, so he is condemned to his own creation where desired ends could not be accomplished. Much like a chain reaction that has gone out of control!

Consider all the possibilities; worlds without gods; gods without worlds; gods that are made by preexisting gods; gods that were always here; gods that never die; gods that do die; gods that die more than once; different degree of divine intervention in human affairs; zero; one or many prophets; zero, one of many saviors; zero, one or many resurrections; zero, one or many gods. And related questions about sacrament, religious mutilation, and scarification, baptism, monastic orders, ascetic expectations, the presence or absence of an afterlife, days to eat fish, days not to eat fish, days to eat only sweet, how many afterlives you have coming to you, justice in this world or the next world or no world at all, reincarnation, human sacrifice, temple prostitution, jihads and so forth.

As science advances, there seems to be less and less for God to do. It’s a big universe, of course, so He is profitably employed in many places. But what has clearly been happening is that evolving before our eyes has been a God of the Gaps; that is, whatever it is we can’t explain lately is attributed to God. And then after a while, we explain it, and so that’s no longer God’s realm.

We have so humanified God that we have even extrapolated all our weaknesses on him. We have placed God at a higher level in power and moral hierarchy, but not of intelligence! We have bound him by our own mental limitations! Physically, we picture him with nostrils, breathing oxygen, thus banishing him from airless worlds! We have him with a navel, appendix and all other vestigial organs in our body, making Him an inefficient machine.

How about the start, if any, and about the end, if any? Possibilities that exist – God might have no beginning but might have an end. Or, God might have a beginning but no end. Or, God might have no beginning and no end!

Another interesting idea related to “existence” that I picked from Richard Dawkin’s book “The Selfish Gene”. It is not our existence as an individual or even as a species that is important, as we are just tools used by something else for its survival and propagation. That something is called Gene. It is after all a Gene that replicates itself and moves from one generation to another. Everything else is left behind and gets destroyed.

We as complex organisms are just “survival machines” for Genes. Genes over many hundreds of millions of years have evolved these complex bodies that help them survive longer. Genes manipulate the survival machines and program them such that the survival machines have the best chances of producing as many offsprings as possible, thus enabling Genes to thrive from one generation to the next.

Games God Plays

I am sometimes amazed at what our brain is capable of. At one moment it is grappling with Outlook, which is taking more time than normal, to come up, and the next it is wondering about the billions of years that have passed and the billions that have yet to come! It can float back and forth in time. It can go to the farthest corners of the universe, that are imaginable, and to the innermost nook and cranny of our own physical form, that we can think of, in a blink!

Brain is probably the only thing that can think of itself, everything else is thought of by the brain and not by itself. Is that not interesting?

What is my relation to my brain? Do “I” own my brain or does my brain own me or is my brain and “I” the same thing? I won’t know what would “I” be without a brain. Religions talk about “soul”, which is supposed to be “I”, but I find it easy to identify myself with brain than with “soul”.

Brain is a container and a factory, a container and a factory of thoughts. Brain is bound by the limitations of everything that is physical, it must age and die. But thoughts are not physical. These are impressions and will survive. Survive in some other container; survive in the form of effects that they bring about when they are acted upon. What my brain contains and what it produces is what makes me, me! That is the only thing that differentiates me from you and you from me! I am my thoughts!

Recently on my way back from States my brain took me in a direction that I had stopped thinking about for a while, till someone dear to me rekindled those thoughts in me. While I was getting into my seat in the plane, my thoughts started racing towards the question of “existence”, existence of everything. Put differently, using double negation, the topic is “why there is not nothing”?

Why did existence of anything come about, even that of God, if there is one? Why there had to be anything, anything at all?

I discussed, I read, I thought. I must say, I have not discussed enough, or read enough or thought enough, but whatever I could, it did not reveal any rational reason for the existence.

Just for the records, I am not negating it for the sake of negation. I am not a nihilist. I am just inquisitive.

I dwelled upon the question of existence some more, I realized my situation was not that bad, I knew a few things already, namely, that we exist! That I am! Taking that as a given, I had to start working backwards.

The thought journey that I will now take you thru’ has reference to God, but, I am neither propagating belief nor disbelief, because I myself do not know. I am just sharing some thoughts and hence a piece of me.

Here goes -

That we exist, we know. But why and what for is the question. Is it for His amusement? If we assume that it is, then is it logical to assume that He would likely to be more amused by more number of intelligent species than just humans?

Is there a reason for us to believe that we as a species occupy a unique and privileged status in His scheme of things? Did He specifically create the humans or did he only set the basic physical and governance laws and let evolution handle the rest, including evolution of consciousness?

Consider this, if I were to architect a system, I would create the basic building blocks and set some rules for those building blocks to come together to create more complex entities. That is the most simple and elegant way of going about it. Now, why should we expect him to architect this universe any differently?

If that is a plausible scenario, then can we deduce the following from it?

a) Is it not likely that in other places in the universe, which follow the same basic physical laws, as us, the probability of evolution of intelligent species, as ours, is same as it was in our case?

b) Also, if He did set the basic laws, is it not likely that He would have set some very different basic physical laws for different areas/ places / universes, just so that He has more variety and more amusement? What is there to stop Him?

Why should we not assume that the chances of existence of other intelligent species, that follow the same physical laws as ours and otherwise are pretty high?

What might happen when other intelligent species, following same physical laws, come in contact with us? What might happen when the intelligent beings, following different physical laws, come in our contact? This is assuming that the other intelligent beings have reached a state of intelligence and maturity, where they could cross over from one physical law state to another.

Why should we not assume that such communities, of other intelligent beings, already collaborate? Why is that we have not been discovered by them as yet? Is it possible that we have been discovered or rather we were always known and it is just that in the grander scheme of things, He wants us to evolve to a certain level before allowing us to become part of larger community? He wants our species to figure out how to use our intelligence constructively and not annihilate ourselves and others? Otherwise, we are no good for the grander community of other intelligent species.

So where does that leave us? Is He asking us to reach a state of maturity where we have figured out various basic laws of nature, and have made our peace with them, before we connect with others? How do we get to that maturity level? Do we think, reach within, and realize, or do we continue to experiment, reason and explore?

Probably both!

He probably does not want to bring two intelligent species together till both have reached a state of maturity, where they collaborate, instead of annihilating each other.

Given the fact that Universe is much older than our solar system, and there may be many more Universes, it is fair to assume that other intelligent species probably had much more time to evolve. Hence, it is fair to assume that whatever species are out there are much more mature than us. This leads to some very interesting conjectures -

a) Chances that we are discovered by other intelligent species that reveal themselves to us, are much more than us discovering them.

b) We have not reached a stable/ mature state in the grander scheme of things, and that may be the reason that we have not been “discovered” yet. Clearly, we as a species, have some ground to cover.

c) When the other intelligent species do reveal themselves, they will be benign. Since, He would have set the same condition of maturity for the other communities as well. Chances of scenario, like the one in the Hollywood blockbuster “Independence Day”, are limited, very limited!

Is it logical to assume that there probably is a hierarchy of such connected communities and also that there is an entry criterion, in terms of maturity and evolution, to go from one level to the next, leading ultimately to Him and understanding His game, which He is playing for His amusement!!!

Making Venus out of Earth!

That we are heading towards a warmer (scorching hot?) climate is established beyond doubt. The differences lie only in the estimate of the rate at which we are hurtling towards it. It is also widely believed that increase in the greenhouse gases, in the atmosphere, is responsible for the increase in the temperature. This article starts with a primer on man made global warming and ends with some technology solutions, that may help us avoid the most devastating consequences, while we make our peace with Earth.

Most of you are aware of global warming, but when do you think it all started? Let me make the question unambiguous, when do you think “man made” global warming started? Approximately 200 years ago, the time since the huge industrial machines started spewing carbon dioxide and methane in the air? Correct? No, wrong! The correct answer, probably, is 8000 years ago.

Initially, global warming was beneficial. It helped extend the interglacial period (The warm period between two glacial ages) in which we live. If it were not for the man made global warming, Earth would have plunged into an ice age, approx. 5000 year back. However, man made global warming is one good thing that has been abused, knowingly and unknowingly; to an extent that now it threatens our collective existence. When I say collective existence, I mean entire life form on Earth, the whole jing bang and not just humans.

Earth began its existence approximately 4.4 to 4.5 billion years ago. For initial 2 to 2.5 billion years, it is mostly believed, Earth was hot and hellish. Around 2.7 to 2.3 billion years ago, it started to cool and froze. That was the first of the 4 ice ages that it has seen so far. The 2^nd Ice age was approximately 850 to 630 million years ago. It was supposed to be so severe that it produced a snowball earth. The entire globe was covered with snow. A minor ice age occurred 350 to 260 million years ago. The present ice age started approx. 40 million years ago with growth of ice sheet over Antarctica. Within an ice age, there are periods of extreme cold and relative warmth called interglacial. We are living in an interglacial period of the 4^th ice age. It is this interglacial period that has been extended by man made global warming and this started approx. 8000 years ago.

The magic stick that stalled the ice age is called agriculture - particularly wet agriculture, such as practiced in flooded rice paddies in India and other East Asian countries that started the fire under the globe. Agriculture on Earth started approx. 10,500 years back, however, not until 8000 years ago, did humans take it up in a big way along with rearing of domesticated animals.

Agricultural practices like this and the farts and belches from animals are a major source of Methane in the atmosphere.

So what’s the connection between methane and global warming? Methane is one of the greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases prevent heat from escaping the Earth and hence act as a glass shield, which lets the heat come inside but does not let it escape. The toasty inside of a car, sitting in sun, is all too familiar. The greenhouse gases work on the same principal, they make an invisible envelop around the Earth and prevent the heat from escaping the Earth.

There are bunch of other gases which are categorized as greenhouse gases. The most abundant greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide, then is methane, nitrogen oxide (laughing gas) and bunch of others. All of these greenhouse gases, combined together, do not even make one twentieth of one percent of the total atmospheric gases. But, it is this one twentieth of one percent that makes it all so interesting.

Initially, the additional Methane produced by human activity, increased the global temperature just enough to thwart the onset of the ice age. However, the humans did not know this and continued in the pursuit of “progress” which was heavily dependent on extracting energy from fossil fuel. So what’s wrong with that? Nothing, till you realize that all fossil fuel burning, whether, it is coal, or oil, or gas, releases carbon dioxide, which is a greenhouse gas and hence leads to increase in temperature!! Fair enough, what’s wrong with increase in temperature? Isn’t it something that anyway happens as part of the natural cycle? Aha, did you say natural cycle? That is exactly the point, when the change in climate is part of the natural cycle, it happens over a period of time that allows various species to adapt to the changing climate. However, when natural cycle is tinkered, it has consequences that are sudden and catastrophic, giving little chance to Earth to offer soft landing to its inhabitants.

We are at a stage, where irreversible changes have been done to the atmosphere. The point to note here is the fact that the changes done to the atmosphere haven’t yet shown completely in the oceans. Given that the oceans lag behind the atmosphere by approximately 30 years, our oceans are still living in 1970s. When the oceans catch up with the warming trend of our atmosphere, it will result in increasing stratification of the oceans. Stratification means the top warm layer of water gets lighter and floats on the lower cooler layers without ever mixing with it. This leads to a peculiar problem, the top layer that gets all the sunlight, does not get enough nutrients and hence can’t support any plant life. The lower layer that has all the requisite nutrients does not get any sunlight hence can’t support the plant life. The net effect is the breakdown of the food chain since the microscopic plants - planktons - that are at the base of the food chain, dwindle in numbers. Dwindling planktons result in positive feedback for global warming as there are less plants to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere resulting in even warmer climate.

Having gone thru’ a primer of global warming and its perils, question pops up - can something still be done to avoid the disaster or is it too late? Well, the answer may be “We don’t know if we are already late or not, but just in case there is still some time, here’s a list of actions that can help”. Actions can be divided into two categories –

a) Reduce the input of heat from the source i.e. sun

b) Take out the greenhouse gases from the atmosphere

These two set of actions can only help us buy some time, so that we change our extravagant ways and make our peace with Earth.

Some proposals that have the potential to reduce heat from the source –

- Space sunshade, placed between the Sun and the Earth, at Lagrange point. It is the point where the gravitational pull between Earth and the Sun is equal. This sunshade can help reflect or disperse some percentage of incoming sunlight, thus cooling the Earth.

- Artificial production of stratus clouds over ocean surface, by converting sea water into an aerosol of tiny particles that can serve to increase the density of the clouds. These clouds are proven to reflect sunlight back in space and hence can help cool the Earth.

- Injecting sulphur dioxide in the stratosphere(This is 2^nd layer of atmosphere. Just above the troposphere) where it is oxidized to form an aerosol of sulphuric acid droplets. These droplets remain suspended for years and help reflect the sunlight back thus reducing the greenhouse effect.

Some proposals to take out greenhouse gases from the atmosphere –

- Collect the carbon dioxide directly from the smoke stacks and sequester it safely. One sequestering option is to pump the recovered carbon dioxide in underground storage; however this is prone to leakages etc. One novel method suggested is to make the recovered carbon dioxide react with chalk suspended in water. This would produce a solution of calcium bicarbonate which is easy to dispose.

- Remove carbon dioxide directly from air with artificial photosynthesis and make it react with powder made from alkaline igneous rocks called serpentine.

- Fertilize the oceans, with iron, to increase the plankton(The microscopic plants that are the source for most oxygen in the atmosphere and also are at the bottom of the oceanic food chain) numbers and there by increase the natural recycling of carbon dioxide and also boost the ocean life.

All the above solutions, proposed by eminent scientists, are the solutions that are good enough only to buy some time, while a long term fix is found to this perplexing problem. As the noted climatologist James Lovelock says, the key to finding a long term solution is that we must approach it from “sustainable retreat” perspective vs “sustainable development” perspective.

If we are already late to this game or if we fail in our endeavors, we would end up making Venus out of Earth.

Star Dust

Imagine all the space around you, all that you can see, to the horizon and beyond, much-much beyond, space that is spread out millions and millions of light years across, all crunched in a tiny dot, so tiny that you probably can’t even see it!!

Seems improbable? It not only seems improbable, it seems impossible. But, this is exactly how it was. It is the origin of our existence!

What’s a light year?

It is the distance that light travels in one year. To help you get an idea of the scale that I am talking about -- light travel the distance between Sun and Earth – 150,000,000 km (mean distance) -- in eight minutes. Now imagine one light year!

Tighten your seatbelts, I’m going to take you thru’ a journey of your lifetime, literally.

It just happened. That it happened we know, with reasonable degree of accuracy, why did it happen no one knows. Big Bang is what it is called. A tiny dot exploded and expanded. It was not an explosion as we are familiar with; it was an explosion that created space and time as it happened. It created what we call universe.

In the beginning, the universe had zero size and infinite temperature. A second after the Big Bang the temperature had dropped to ten thousand million degrees. At this time, the universe was a dense soup of elementary particles – photons, electrons, neutrinos and their anti particles, together with some protons and neutrons.

What’s an anti particle?

Anti particle is a twin of elementary particle, each elementary particle has one. The difference between the anti particle and the elementary particle is that, it has same mass as the elementary particle but opposite charge.

You know there is something called anti matter as well?

When anti matter comes in contact with regular matter, a sort of nuclear fission takes place that produces energy equivalent to the antimatter and the regular matter.

As the space time continued to expand and the temperature continued to drop, the rate of creation of electron and anti-electron fell below the rate at which they were being annihilated, producing photons in the process. Only neutrinos and anti neutrinos remained as they were inert particles. (Neutrinos have same mass as electrons, but unlike electrons they are without any electric charge).

Hundred seconds from Big Bang, the temperature cooled to one thousand million degree. At this temperature neutrons and protons could no longer stay independent. The strong nuclear forces took over and combined neutrons and protons into heavy hydrogen (Hydrogen with 1 proton and 1 neutron. Normal hydrogen has only 1 proton). The heavy hydrogen further captured 1 more proton and 1 more neutron to create helium. It is calculated that 25% of all neutron and proton became helium. Rest of the neutrons decayed and became protons, which is the nucleus of ordinary hydrogen.

This continued for a few hours and then no more helium was created. The universe remained like this for millions of years.

As the universe cooled to a few thousand degrees, the electromagnetic forces became strong enough to bring the nuclei and electrons together to form atoms. As the universe expanded and cooled, some regions where the density of the matter was more than at other places, the expansion slowed down because of extra gravitational force. This made some parts of the universe to start collapsing.

As the matter collapsed on to itself, the gravitational pull from matter outside started them rotating. Eventually, the centrifugal force generated by rotation balanced the gravitational pull from the matter outside. This led to the creation of galaxies. Within these galaxies, the gas clouds kept on collapsing and getting hotter, till it reached a state where nuclear fusion started. In these nuclear fusion reactions, hydrogen was converted into helium. These were first generation stars.

Picture 1 – Star creation

The bigger the star, more quickly it burned its hydrogen into helium and shorter its lifespan. Star like our Sun has a life span of 9 billion years, some massive stars die within a million years and some stars have a life of 100 billion years.

The energy that is produced as a result of nuclear fusion, in star’s core, is what counteracts star’s own gravity and holds it up. After hydrogen is all burned into helium in the core, the helium left in the core starts collapsing again. As it collapses, the pressure and the temperature increase. For massive stars the pressure and temperature increase to such a degree that helium starts fusing together to make even heavier elements like carbon and oxygen. Our Sun will never reach a state where it starts burning helium. It will just extinguish after burning hydrogen. In the stars that have mass up to 8 times our Sun, helium fuses into carbon and that is the end for them.

For stars that are even bigger, the fusion does not stop after fusing helium, they keep fusing heavier atoms. Fusing atoms that produce atoms that are heavier than iron is not efficient, the reaction consumes more energy than it releases. That is where the fusion stops for the massive stars.

For massive stars, the end is very violent. As they reach the end of their fusion cycle, they run out of energy to counteract gravity, the outer core speeds towards the inner core at the speed of 70,000 km/sec. This heats up the core causing decay of iron nuclei into helium and decay of proton into neutron and neutrinos. Neutrinos escape the core carrying with them the energy and further accelerating the collapse. The star’s core detaches from the star’s outer layers as the speed at which the core collapses on itself is more than the speed at which the outer layers collapse. The collapse is eventually halted by the short range neutron-neutron repulsive forces. At this stage the density of the star is as much as that of nucleus of an atom. When the collapse stops, the in-falling material (outer core and outer layers) rebounds of off the core, this creates tremendous shock waves resulting in the explosion of the star. This explosion, called super nova, is responsible for scattering the life supporting heavy elements far and wide.

Our sun is a second or third generation star that is made up of remnants of an exploded star. The solar system bodies, including our Earth, are a product of the elements that were part of some massive star in the past. And so is everything that is on the Earth.

Some part of you, at some point in time in the past, was cooked in the core of a massive star. We are all star dust!

The question that still remains is the advent of consciousness. How did it come about? Is it the result of some weird chemical reaction that took place under some weird circumstances creating organic material from inorganic? Or are we now getting in the religion’s territory?

What ever it is, when I look up to the stars, I get a feeling that I’m connected. Realizing the enormity, I get a feeling of humbleness.

Contrary to the commonsense

Do you know Time is not constant? Do you know clock ticks slower if the clock is moving at high speed? If time can slow down, is it possible that it can stop? If time can stop, is it possible that it can move in reverse direction?

Phew! We are talking about time travel here. Mind you, this is not science fiction

Sometimes there are events and thoughts that completely turn the long held beliefs on their head. One such sequence of thoughts emanated in year 1905 from a giant among the humans - Einstein.

What Einstein produced remains unmatched in its simplicity and brilliance. His main contributions can be summed up in two major theories – Special theory of Relativity and General theory of relativity.

In this article, I am just touching upon some of the interesting aspects / consequences of Special theory of relativity that relate to Time Delay.

Despite the importance Einstein’s theory are least understood out side the science fraternity, not because it is difficult, but because it goes against our “rational” thinking process and some hard ingrained observation that are taken as facts.

It all starts with one basic principal – Constancy of the speed of light. Embellishing it further, it reads, Constancy of the speed of light irrespective of who is measuring it.

Pay attention, as this lies the bedrock for all further arguments.

You and your friend are standing some distance apart; you throw a ball at your friend at 50 km per hour. If your friend is standing still, he will measure the speed of the ball to be 50 km per hour. If he starts running away from you at 50 km per hour, the ball wont’ hit him ever and he would measure the speed of the ball to be 0 km, in his frame of reference. In the scenario that he rushes towards the ball at 50 km per hour, he would measure the speed of the ball to be 100 km per hour, in his frame of reference.

However, it does not hold true for the speed of light (300,000,000 m /sec). If your friend were to shine a light at you, you would measure the speed of the light to be same irrespective of your speed, towards or away from your friend. In other words, if you run towards your friend at the speed of 200,000,000 m/sec, you will still measure the speed of light to be 300,000,000 m/sec. If you run away from your friend at the speed of 200,000,000 m/sec, you will still measure the speed of light to be 300,000,000 m/sec.

Here’s a thought experiment that Einstein did to postulate his Constancy of speed of light theory – It’s called vanishing image problem. We know we see our image in a mirror because the light leaves our face, hits the mirror and comes back, thus we see our selves in the mirror. Consider that you start moving at the speed of light, with mirror held in front of you, since your speed is same as the speed of light, the light won’t leave your face to hit the mirror, hence your image will disappear. This experiment is basically flawed. The speed of the light relative to the observer, in this case you, will remain constant, irrespective of the fact that you yourself are traveling at the speed of light. The light will leave your face at the same speed, hit the mirror and come back to you at the same speed.

This thought experiment was conclusively proven in field experiments by Albert Michelson. I’ll get into details of this experiment in another article. For the time being take it that it has been proven that the speed of light remains constant, irrespective of the frame of reference used to measure it.

Let’s see how does constancy of the speed of light explains time delay. We will use an easy to follow experiment -


There are two observers, Observer A in a moving train, moving at a speed close to the speed of light. Observer B standing on the platform, stationery relative to the moving train.

Observer A conducts the following experiment – She takes a light source, a flashlight, and points it at a mirror, which is vertically below the light source. The light reflects back from the mirror and shines on the light source itself. The distance of the light source and the mirror is such that it takes light 1 sec to do the round trip, as measured by the Observer A. Pay attention to the fact that for Observer A, the light is traveling between the light source and the mirror, and back, in a straight line – Straight down and straight up, as shown in Figure 1

Observer B is watching this standing still, relative to the moving train, on the platform.
Let’s see what has observer B recorded – For her, when the light leaves the source and before it hit the mirror, the mirror has moved ahead with the speed at which the train is moving. Hence to her, the light is traveling a slated path (Path A in the Figure 2). Again, after the light is reflected back by the mirror, it travels a slated path to hit the source (Path B in the Figure 2), which has moved ahead with the moving train. Essentially, the light to this observer has traveled along slanted paths.

Basic geometry tells us that the slanted paths that the light traverse, as observed by the Observer B, total up to be greater than the round trip distance covered by light as observed by Observer A.


We know a basic physics equation

Time = Distance / Speed

Interpreting the above equation in light of our observations, we conclude the following.

Given that the speed of light is constant, the time observed is directly proportional to the distance traveled. Since for B, distance traveled is more, the time observed is also more. Which means, for B, time is moving faster. For A, time is moving slower!! Time delays for the fast moving bodies.

So here’s the secret of travel to the future – Spend some time traveling at speeds close to that of light and you would have arrived in future!! If you want more time to work on your job, move at the speed of light and the time will expand!!

In fact if the time delays were not being factored in the calculation of the GPS systems; we’d be way off in our calculations and positioning. Someone wanting directions for Delhi would land up in Amritsar!!

Now the speculation part, if the time can slow, can it stop? Can it flow backwards? Perhaps not, since there is nothing that travels faster than light, or shall we say, we don’t know. Perhaps there is a phenomenon that makes it possible for something to travel faster than light and we have yet to figure it out!!

Road to Nowhere

Infrastructure is the coffee table discussion topic these days. Roads take the major portion of it. With everyone eying a bigger and better car, it is expected. Of course, oil has been a great dampener, but still! With all the talks notwithstanding, are we building enough roads? Well, as far as I can see, not really, we need to speed up the road construction activity multiple times and not just by a few percentage points!

But, that is not the point that I wanted to make. I wanted to focus on one critical aspect of the highway system, the access points. I believe having right access control policies and rules will allow us to consolidate our existing highways and build further on that base. Without one such policy, we may squander away what we got and may get caught in typical two step forward one step back syndrome.

All of you who traveled between Chandigarh and Delhi by road must have come across two massive flyovers one in Panipat and the other in Zirakpur. Do you know why these two flyovers are being built? No, the flyovers are not just for the intersections, the flyovers actually cross the entire congested stretch of the city. Central Government agreed to foot the bill to take the national highway on pillars and leave the earlier highway for city traffic. In Panipat the highway was elevated for a good 3.4 kms. I can bet, as Panipat stretches, which it will along the highway, the stretches of highway around which the new colonies and new commercial areas come, will again double up as city street, till the long route traffic comes to a halt in those stretches, prompting another outcry for yet another flyover and so on.

The above scenario is not specific to a city but is being played out across the length and breadth of the country. Almost all the cities and towns thru which highways pass, simply start using these highways as city streets. There are as many entry and exit points into the highway system as the City / Town deems necessary. Shops come up along both sides of the highway system with each individual shop having a direct entry/exit to the highway system!

To ensure that we have a credible highway system, we got to regulate entry and exit points of the system. Any populated area (City/Town/Village) that wants access to the highway system, must do so at some predetermined point(s). Depending on the size of the populated area, the number of entry and exit points should be determined.

The only way highway system should be tapped is by building clover leaves to the highway. The populated area that wants to access the highway system must pay for creating the entry exit infrastructure. There must not be any direct entry into the highway system.

The key to success of such an access policy is that the local government bodies must plan their City/Town such that the population is not just dependent on the highway system for their intercity transport needs. The urban / rural planning departments must not accept any outlay that does not have city streets for the intercity transport and that does not have well defined regulated access to the highway.

I don’t think it is prudent for us as a nation to spend money on building elevated highway system when the one on ground perfectly suffices, if only we could manage it properly!