Science and Technology – Parts Per Billion

Dune: Psychology in Science Fiction

Our identity is heavily influenced by the surroundings we live in. A healthy understanding of the gap between ‘labels given to us by our surrounding’ and ‘what we consider ourselves at core’ defines how we perform, how we behave in given situations. Frank Herbert effectively used these ideas of human psyche in his Dune Saga. The antihero story of Paul Atreides indicates psychological ideas of cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, and Pygmalion effect. It is interesting to understand how our minds are so sensitive at the levels of self and group simultaneously.

How Frank Herbert used human psyche in the creation of Dune’s antihero?

We saw how some fantastic philosophical ideas come alive in the character arc of Paul Atreides. The discussion hereon is the extension of the previous philosophical one, now we will dive deeper into the psychological aspects of Dune Part Two.

There will be heavy spoilers for Dune Part Two hereon!!!

Existentialism in Dune Part Two

As Paul gets more and more involved in the events on Arrakis with Fremen, he finds out what needs to be done, he finds clarity and purpose. He is renouncing the leadership in the early part because he does not know what to do with it. The moment he decides to become the Lisan al-Gaib, the moment he finds the purpose of his being, he gets the clarity.

According to Existentialism, there is no other meaning to the life but the meaning you give it yourself. Existentialism says that man is born free and can chose any actions to live but in the end he/ she will feel like they lived for nothing. They will remove this ‘existential angst’ only when they decide what they want to do with their life. The moment people consider themselves responsible for the events and consequences in their lives, take deliberate actions to achieve them that is the exact the moment where they find the meaning in life. Then everything, every action every decision starts to make sense. You feel like you exist for something.

This existential journey of self-discovery is exactly what we see in Paul’s journey to become the Mahdi. Avenging his father’s life becomes the ultimate goal of Paul in early moments but later on things take different turn. This is existentialism on personal level.

Fremen of Arrakis are the best example of existentialism in masses. The Fremen people are able to sustain in the hostile environment of Arrakis not because that is the only choice. They also have a strong belief, a hope that someone from outer world will save them one day and make their planet the Paradise, the Lisan al-Gaib will come to save them. Although Paul and Jessica know that it is a story properly planned by Bene Gesserit, although there are also Fremen who oppose this prophecy (Chani is one of them) still it gives them all hope, a reason to live for, a reason to survive for. Everyone makes sense of this prophecy in their own ways, their own belief systems.

Do you see what is happening here?

There is one group who is religiously putting their faith in the hope of the messiah for their survival and on the other hand there is a group who dismisses this idea and think that they themselves have to take care of their survival. The messiah will be one of them, not someone sent from the outer world.

We know what happens in the end. But from an objective point of view we see that people create there own perspective for survival. It doesn’t matter who was right and who was wrong in the end. What matters is whether is guaranteed the survival of Fremen. No wonder Jessica considers the artificially planted faith for Lisan al-Gaib among Fremen as an act of giving them a hope.

In either way, some sort of meaning would ensure survival of the Fremen.

The meaning of the life given to us is the meaning we assign to it.

The Prophecy – A Perfect Example of Confirmation Bias

The Prophecy plays key role in deciding the fate of key characters in Dune Part Two. Although we are aware that the prophecy a highly detailed plan to get the hold on Arrakis there are certain moments which fool us in believing that the prophecy might really be true. There is one justification for the correctness and validity for the prophecy. Somehow any powerful member from Bene Gesserit could have unlocked the exact power to see the future like Paul or Lady Jessica this person who could have seen the future and made this prophecy. We get no such signs in the narrative, but the story has enough resources and reasons to make it a valid point.

The event of Paul riding an elder worm, the worm stopping for Paul and Jessica in Dune Part One while crossing the dessert, Chani’s teardrop bringing back Paul alive (although she is manipulated to do that) are such events which confuse us when we try to reject the Prophecy. Either Bene Gesserit were too good to plan the people and resources for making the prophecy a reality or the person who made prophecy also unlocked the powers which Paul unlocked.

It is very interesting when Fremen come in one-to-one contact with Paul and Jessica. They are so influenced by this prophecy that whatever Paul may do, they attribute it to the prophecy. In early part at Sietch Tabr when Stilgar (who is one of the fundamentalists) is having discussion with the Fremen elders, we are given a hint of this strong Confirmatory Bias in Fremen, especially the fundamentalists.

Stilgar – I saw things.
Elder – Stilgar, your faith is playing tricks on you.

This is an indication to how a blind faith could drive people into looking for signs and making sense from anything that supports that faith.

You must understand that, the existentialism makes life as a meaningless affair – we try to calm our mind/ our senses by assigning a meaning, a perspective to make sense out of the creation. Cognitive Bias lies on the negative extreme of such existentialism. An existence where we are only accepting the events, signs which support out beliefs. This also the transition region where spirituality is converted into pure religion. Stilgar is the perfect example of one such religious follower suffering from Cognitive Bias.

It is also very understandable for the people like Fremen who have nothing hopeful to live and nothing to pivot on, the idea of savior from outer world fuels them to continue the fight for survival.

There is subtle hint that Paul may not be the only messiah that Arrakis might have seen. The Emperor in his discussion with Princess Irulan mentions Muad’Dib as “some new Fremen Prophet”.

Confirmation Bias is the prejudice where we try to accept the proofs which support our beliefs and reject those which don’t. Fremen people demonstrate such high levels of confirmation bias because Arrakis is the only reality they live in. People living outside the Arrakis like the emperor, Bene Geserit very well know that this is an intentionally planned act. And they very effectively implant such prophecies over the generations. It also shows how difficult it is to reject and go against the conventional beliefs especially the religious ones.

Did you ever have had an encounter with people who tell that this was already written in the older documents, scriptures? When we made certain scientific breakthroughs only then we are seeing them clearly mentioned in older writings, how is it possible? It feels counterintuitive but I would say going by the data instead of the intuition always helps to break such biases.

It feels against our mind because our mind only accepts that which will support the current beliefs. If the current belief gets falsified then our mind will start looking for another belief system which is much more like an existential angst – the existential confusion and the sadness that comes with it. If one meaning is falsified the mind must stick itself to a newer one otherwise life will feel worthless.

Image source: sketchplanations.com by Jono Hey

Cognitive Dissonance and Identity – What Makes Paul to Seek the Ultimate Power?

The confirmation bias is more powerful when it comes to the questions like ‘who you are?’, ‘what is your identity?’

Generally speaking, you are the best person who knows who you are (except your parents and some people close to you). What would happen if you are presented with the data, proofs which indicate that your parents are not your parents, your friends are not really your friends? They are just some paid actors (just like in the movie Truman Show).

Paul is portrayed as the Prince belonging to the House Atreides which is powerful and believes in fairness, justice, and the truth. The ideas associated with House Atreides support constructiveness, upliftment of those who are getting used for others’ benefits. Paul also strongly associates himself with these ideas even when his house is attacked by Harkonnens. He never tries to take advantage of the Fremen beliefs for personal gains. That can also be explained by one of the reasons he has to reject the Fremen Prophecy.

Then what makes Paul to accept this prophecy even when he knows that there are more proofs to reject the prophecy than to accept it?

It is when he knows the truth about his identity. The moment when he drinks water of life.

Upon understanding the ultimate truth, we come to know that Paul’s mother Lady Jessica is the daughter of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. Paul understands that he is as Harkonnen as his villainous cousin Feyd-Rautha.

This is where his identity of Atreides filled with justice clashes with the cruel and much more powerful identity of Harkonnen. You can see him telling his mother that this is the way they survive – by being a Harkonnen.

When a person goes through such uncomfortable events where his/ her beliefs clash it creates a in harmony. These are the events where the person is confused about what exactly he/ she should believe in. As the early beliefs which were true for him, on which the person lived whole life were inherently false what defines him now?

Paul faces this cognitive dissonance about his identity. He himself is a Harkonnes – the Harkonnes whom he was considering the villains of his life and the lives of the Fremens.

What identity would Paul chose makes him the hero or the antihero in the end.

And Paul chooses the Harkonnen identity which make him the antihero. Please understand that he could have chosen a fair Atreides or Fremen ways to fight for the cause. The circumstances created around Paul supported him to become as ruthless as the Harkonnens. The Emperor and the great houses denying his ascension further fuel his wish to remain ruthless to justify the actions. The moment Paul associates himself with the Harkonnens, he justifies his urge for power as a valid one. Paul forgets his Atreides roots which could have made him the hero of the Dune’s story.

The Pygmalion Effect – Is Paul Really the Messiah?

The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated.
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

One factor in Paul’s journey to become the leader of the Fremen and ultimately the Emperor can be largely credited to the support system created around him. It is clear that he goes through many hardships and sacrifices to achieve his goal but you cannot deny the inherent public support he receives through Fremen. It only because of the support from the Fremen people you will see Paul build the confidence even though in Dune Part One this was the exact person who tried to deny future leadership in front of his father.

How a person refusing leadership of his own house later accepted the leadership of the most controversial group, that to in very adverse conditions? Leading house Atreides was Paul’s birthright, an easy one. But, leading Fremen in clear opposition of the House Harkonnen, the emperor and the great houses was one very daring act to follow. What gave him all this strength?

The answer is – Pygmalion Effect

In psychology, Pygmalion Effect is the effect where high expectation from a person lead them to perform highly and effectively even in adverse condition.

Pygmalion word comes from the story of a Greek sculptor called Pygmalion who falls in love with his sculpture so much that the statue comes to life.

It’s like worshiping the rock can make it a God which could ultimately is believed to fulfill wishes.

The Bene Geserrit propaganda very smartly takes advantage of this idea. They create such support system around Paul which create one powerful leader in the universe who in his early life was not considering himself worthy.

Pygmalion effect highlights how the environments in which we live, how the people around who put their trust in us can boot our performance. According to Pygmalion effect, if a high performing person can deliver poorly if the environment and people are not supportive, it also is true the opposite way, any low performing person would deliver exceptionally when he is trusted by the people and the environment around him.

Pygmalion effect is also known as Rosenthal Effect in psychology. Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson conducted a study on classroom students where they found that the students who are inherently reinforced to be the smarter perform better whereas students who are told that they are worthless already show under-performance.

Pygmalion effect shows us that we internalize or identity based on the surroundings we live in. No wonder they say that when you want to be a great man be in the company of great people. This internalization of or beliefs lay the foundation of our performance. That is exactly why so many Fremens believing in Paul gave him the power to stand against the Harkonnens, the Emperor, the Great Houses – entire Universe.

This is exactly why Pygmalion effect is highly associated with the self-fulfilling prophecies. The declaration of such prophecy irrespective of the knowledge of the future conditions people to create ways for such prophesied person; the person who show some signs aligning with the prophecy gets a boost which ultimately follows the prophesied path as the environment now completely supports that path – that is the path of least resistance leading to the glory.

Supporting environment creates high performers

Paul could have chosen another path to fight just like Chani chooses in the end but the Pygmalion effects kicks in, leading him to become the antihero – a high performing powerful antihero.

You should appreciate that Pygmalion effect also shows how the opposite and downgrading environment will create a villain. A famous and itching question can be answered using this explanation. If baby Hitler was killed way before, would it have prevented the occurrence of the future world war? The answer is – NO. The conditions were developed in such way that even after killing baby Hitler someone else would have risen among that much hatred who would have led to the end effect, the name would have been different but the acts would be roughly same and inhumane. That is why our environment is an important part of our identity, even if the environment is hostile, what we consider ourselves at the core is equally important.

Nonsupporting environment creates low performers

(You can see that, even in adverse nonsupporting conditions of cognitive dissonance and identity crisis, a person can chose to remain good, can choose one identity over the other. I have discussed such scenarios in pop culture before. Read more about that here.)

The Prophecy – Does ‘Free Will’ Really Exist in Dune?

The identity which Paul chooses after a cognitive dissonance about his origin and the Pygmalion effect from his environment make his the prophesied Lisan al-Gaib. Now it feels like it truly was the plan all along. This goes against the idea of free will.

Existentialism is based on the idea that as man is born free. It is in his mind, his responsibility to assign the meaning to his/ her own life. The ways and reasons for which Paul consistently rejects the prophecy is because he knows he is not ‘the one’. He knows that he is the son of Leto Atreides and should avenge his father’s death, hence his only purpose was to use the ‘desert power’ to defeat the Harkonnens and the Emperor.

Paul despises everything that is connected to the Prophecy. It is his interest in Fremen people and purpose of completing the vision of his father which drives him into becoming one of the Fremen. You will see Paul rejecting the idea of him being the Messiah in the early discussions with Chani.

The creation of prophecy and instilling the faith into Fremen for Paul indirectly always pushes him into doing what is expected. Paul never makes any decision out of the box. There are chances where he could have created other opportunities but the people around him, his blind followers could never let that happen. Paul is center of attraction for everyone that is why he is always bound to do what they want, otherwise he knows that he will lose that advantage and desert will immediately consume him like any common outsider. The advantage of being the center of attraction of your followers is that your followers will justify your every action; But in the end, you will also be bound to their expectations.

The powers of Bene Gesserit to manipulate people to do what they want, the unfolding of events leading to the war during the Fremen rebellion against the Harkonnen, the necessity to prove injustice with Leto Atreides to the Great Houses ultimately make the realization of prophecy possible.

That is exactly why Paul gets tied up in the expectations of Fremen, his own self-respect and his own duty as a son. He knows he can avoid this path but chooses that path because that is how he will have ultimate power.

On the other side you will see Chani, she is fighting the same war but can chose her own ways to accomplish that goal. Remaining out of the focus of the religious followers gives her more freedom.

Lady Jessica also falls victim to the prophecy. Stilgar informs her in Sietch Tabr that if she doesn’t become the Reverend Mother she would have to die and Fremen people won’t save Paul. Even when she knows that the prophecy is false, she accepts it as a way to get things done according to her wishes. But again, the pressure from the faithful Fremen followers force her to follow the prophecy. Things doesn’t go right for her in the end. Lady Jessica also faces the cognitive dissonance like Paul about her origin as Harkonnen and chooses the predefined path of being the Reverend Mother.

One must appreciate how Frank Herbert created the story of Dune where the psyche of person drives the narrative. Frank Herbert was heavily influenced by Carl Jung’s archetypes and Dune reflects those archetypes. Dune also gives the psychological justifications behind the blind hero worship through some important character arcs.

It becomes very important to notice our end goals and whether our surroundings, our people are supportive of that. We as humans, are the beings of infinite capabilities, what we consider ourselves internally at core becomes very important in the end. Otherwise, the world is already prepared to overwhelm us with its preconceived notions of living a life.

References and further reading:

Dune: Philosophy in Science Fiction

The focus of Dune saga is on the ill-effects of hero worship. Frank Herbert warned his readers about the life altering consequences of granting too much power in the hands of a person who refrains to be questioned by his followers. The character arc of Paul Atreides depicts a moral dilemma. It also shows how power and aesthetics play a vital role when one is justifying actions, character and intent.

Dilemma of morality in the character arc of Paul Atreides

Dune Part Two shows how any person would react when thrown into the events where morals and ethics clash. Dune Part Two is about the creation of the antihero and his blind hero worship. It is important because it breaks down and effectively depicts the stages in which even a humble and good-hearted person can degenerate. Surrounding around such person has big role in it.

The focus of Dune saga is on the ill-effects of hero worship. Frank Herbert warned the readers of Dune about the life altering consequences of granting too much power in the hands of a person who refrains to be questioned by his followers. Superficially, Dune feels like a story where Bene Gesserit – a low lying powerful sisterhood planting an extremely powerful but manipulable Messiah to control the galaxy and how this Messiah ruins that plan. Deep down, Dune successfully amalgamates many philosophical, psychological concepts like Existentialism, Hero worship/ herd mentality, confirmation bias, free will and determinism.

Denis Villeneuve’s Dune Part Two has successfully translated the vision of Frank Herbert’s 1965 Sci-Fi which is more relevant than anything in the current times of 21^st century. In Dune Part Two you see the transition of a young, humble, calm boy into an aggressive, extremely powerful leader – a leader who is worshiped like the God by his followers. As a fan of Sci-Fi movies, I would say Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movies have made justice with what the source material wanted to convey. (Historically, Dune series is known to be one of the most difficult materials to adapt into visual media)

The discussion hereon is not a movie review rather it is about how some fantastic philosophical, psychological, spiritual, and political ideas are brought together to create a more relevant story which is purely fictional. Despite being a fiction, it successfully depicts some important real-life scenarios and dilemmas we face in our very real lives. This all is credited to Frank Herbert and Denis Villeneuve’s vision.

There will be heavy spoilers for Dune Part Two hereon!!!

After watching Dune Part Two it is obvious that it is all about how an antihero is created. There is a moment in the end when you will lose the sympathy for Paul’s character because of the choices he makes and it is intentional. The movie gives us multiple viewpoints to justify why Paul Atreides becomes who he is. Obviously, his antihero arc creates a deep void in our heart. When I started to understand the narrative from Paul’s perspective, I stumbled upon some of the important ideas we use to justify our actions, decisions.

Boundaries of Right or Wrong – What is Moral? What is Ethical?

Let us understand the stages in which Paul is always rejecting the leadership – the prophecy of Messiah he is offered every time.

Rejection 1 – Paul has not demonstrated any grand act yet. He lacks clarity, vision.

Right from the beginning, Paul knows what it means to become the Lisan al-Gaib – the Messiah. You will see him rejecting the concept of becoming the prophesized leader. In Dune Part One you will see that he asks Leto Atreides, his father – What if he does not want to be the leader, the future of house Atreides? In response, Paul understands from Duke Leto that leadership is not a personal choice and when there will be a moment in which people will choose him as their leader and he will have to answer that call. The fear of leadership in Paul here is created due to very superficial simulation of future possibilities. He hasn’t even landed in Arrakis – the desert Planet. Here, Paul is just a well behaved, properly trained royalty who hasn’t tasted the reality of life yet. He theoretically understands the burden of leadership, the burden of the expectations of the people and that why humbly rejects it – as it is the ‘right’ thing to do. Understand that Paul’s rejection in this instance is because he doesn’t consider himself worthy. It is unethical for him to accept leadership which is granted just from the birthright. Understand that prophecy of Messiah is not apparent here, this is the leadership of his House.

Rejection 2 – The prophecy is just a clever plan. There is clarity on what and how events will happen but no clarity on what will cause them.

When Paul lands with his mother Lady Jessica on Arrakis he looks at the local Fremen people chanting his name as the one who was promised to free them from this exploitation of the foreigners – the Harkonnens for the precious Spice Mélange. Here, Paul understands from his mother that the religious Bene Gesserit sisterhood has planted a very meticulous storyline – a prophecy to ease out their path on Arrakis. The knowledge of ‘the prophecy’ being just a clever plan of Bene Gesserit sisterhood consoles Paul that he will always have the choice to reject the future responsibility of leadership. This rejection of leadership is due to understanding of the underlying truth and how hopeless people are getting fooled. Utilizing such false knowledge for self-benefit makes Paul uncomfortable.

Rejection 3 – Paul has clarity but doesn’t want to take the advantage of the Fremen Faith

After the death of Leto Atreides, Paul escapes to Fremen territory with Lady Jessica. Fremen accept him as he shows his skills in a fair fight. From this moment his goal is to survive with Femen’s to acquire the ‘Desert Power’ as desired by his father Leto Atreides. He still despises the Bene Gesserit Propaganda. He knows he will be fooling the Fremen by following the said prophecy. It is not ethical to utilize others’ faith for the personal benefit. That is why Paul is just trying to learn the ways of Fremen to avenge his father’s unjust murder orchestrated by the Emperor through House Harkonnen.

There is a discussion between Lady Jessica (who is now Reverand Mother) with Paul where she says that the prophecy has given Fremen people something to hope for and to fight for. This is the exact moment when Paul actively and aggressively rejects what she says.

Paul – It’s not prophecy. 
        It’s a story that you keep telling. 
        It’s not their story, it’s yours. 
        They deserve to be led by one of their own.

His rejection to leadership here is because it is unethical to play with other people’s faith.

Rejection 4 – Paul loves Chani. He knows the moment he accepts ‘the prophecy’ he will lose her.

There is a scene where Chani tells Paul that the Fedaykin worship him now, they count his victories. Chani (who doesn’t believe in the prophecy) warns him that people have already started worshiping him and this will not end well. To counter Chani’s fear Paul positively clarifies that he is not the Messiah and will always be a Fremen warrior – the Fedaykin. Paul mentions several times to Chani that he will love her as long as he breaths. As the prophecy goes, he should reserve his hand for the most strategic alliance which is with the Princess Irulan – the daughter of Emperor. Here, the rejection is due to the love he has for Chani.

Rejection 5 – Paul knows that while becoming the Mahdi, he will lose his comfortable connect with Fremen. He will have blood of billions on his hands.

Upon the encounter with Gurney Halleck, Paul clarifies certain important things. Gurney is surprised that even after having following of 200 people and millions more, why isn’t Paul taking advantage of the prophecy to avenge the death of his father? Paul tells Gurney that the moment he becomes the Messiah, he no longer be friends with Fremen, because even his Fremen friends will worship him as the God – Lisan al-Gaib. He considers it unethical to utilize the innocent beliefs and trust of the people for him for his personal benefit.

Gurney Halleck – With thousands of these guys you can take control of the entire planet. It’s your father’s dream. What you are afraid of?
Paul – Worship, Gurney. They used to be friends, now they are followers.

Gurney tells Paul that he holds the ability to avenge his father by accepting the prophecy. Then Paul clarifies that the moment he becomes the Messiah, the galaxy will be thrown into the holy war leading to deaths of billions of people. Paul doesn’t want their blood on his hand.

The rejection of prophecy here is due to fear of losing personal connect with the people who define and respect you. It is also because Paul wants to preserve his character.

At the end of the Dune Part Two, you know what exactly happened!

Are Morality and Ethics Objective?

So, even after having at least 5 concrete reasons to reject the prophecy, why does Paul decide to become the ruthless Messiah, Lisan al-Gaib? What made him lose all the ethical and moral standards he had preserved in him?

Simple and superficial answer to these questions is – the circumstances!

Deep down the answer is totally different. Let us understand what are morals and ethics

Morality is the sense of judging a decision, event or an action being proper or improper. Morality is the sense of what is right and what is wrong.

Ethics are detailed down, systematic small-small actions which show what doing good is. The opposite act of doing a good act will be doing a bad act.

Morality are the universal standards for right and wrong and ethics are the rules to implement this morality in daily practice.

Question – How is it decided whether certain act is good or bad?

This is where the trick starts.

The base line to decide morality or ethics is always changing. It is like deciding ‘What level of big picture are you talking about?’

Frank Herbert was very intentional while creating such moral ethical dilemma through Dune series. As you are introduced to Paul right from the start of his journey, from a kid to the Messiah, you know why he did what he did. His Great House was betrayed by the Emperor and the Harkonnens. They tried to kill him, his pregnant mother, and his people. The responsibility to handle Arrakis was forced down on his house by the Emperor. He had every reason to kill his enemies. Whatever act Paul did to avenge his father/ his house was right and justified.

Does that mean that “whatever” and “everything” that he did and would do is right?

The death of billions of people he would cause (as seen in his visions) will it be justified?

Many Fremens devoted and died to Paul’s cause, will their deaths be justified?

You will see that the moment you shift from Paul’s personal baseline of morality to the baseline of the ‘good for all’, you will appreciate why the same Paul – the Messiah – Lisan al-Gaib – the Savior is also ‘the destroyer’ for remaining others. Thus, it is important to define that baseline while judging his actions.

Philosophy of Morality

There are two ideas on how to decide this baseline for morality of given things.

Immanuel Kant says the duty assigned to you; your obligation decides the morality – The duty-based definition of morality.

John Stuart Mill says that whatever is good for most of all should be good for one – The utilitarian definition of morality.

Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages of moral development give us a structured view about how the baseline to justify morality of anything works. This single image deserves a detailed explanation but it is self explanatory.

Morality needs understanding of “the big picture”

In Dune’s case, it was Paul’s duty to avenge his father’s unjust death hence he was right. Whereas letting his followers kill billions of people belonging to the houses who were not accepting his ascension as the Emperor was wrong – immoral. He commanded to destroy such opposing Great Houses just to establish respect for him out of fear. The intent was not pure.

For Fremen, the act of destroying everyone opposing their leader is way better and important than living a life of slave. At the same time same Fremen killing billions in the name of their Mahdi is bad.

For Jessica, survival of her children was more important than anything. She had also promised Leto Atreides that she will save her children not as Bene Gesserit but as a mother first. That is why she eases out the path laid for Paul which guarantees his and his sister’s survival. You will understand that Jessica fears becoming the Reverand Mother, she knows that she will have to carry the pain and memories of all those who came before her but upon hearing to the clarification from Stilgar, she realizes that it is the only way to ensure the survival of her children. So, she controlling the Fremen and spreading the prophecy of the Messiah (despite knowing it as just a clever plan) feels moral.

Stilgar strengthening the events from the prophecy in the minds of Fremen ensure betterment of his people. If his actions to spread and strengthen the path for Paul would lead Fremens people to a better life then his actions are well justified. But, the moment he blindly follows every order from Paul to obliterate everyone opposing him his actions become wrong.

When it comes to mere survival of Feyd-Rautha, Baron Harkonnen, Rabban, the Emperor, Princess Irulan, Reverend Mother Mohiam someone would feel that their actions are justified. (But, we already have many other reasons to assign them villainy.)

It’s like checking which one is more wrong – Killing an ant or murdering a person!

The moment you favor the life of the person than an ant, you will feel bad for what kind of animal you are. And the moment you favor life of that ant over the person you will feel bad as a human being.

Taking any life is bad in the end, but what if it’s about survival. Then it goes in the direction which poses question – whose life is more precious?

The Trolley Problem – Which lever will you pull?

Do you see how this streak goes on and on! This will not end until the questioner will be satisfied with comfortable answer!

One must appreciate the genius of Frank Herbert’s writing which created such important intersecting points in his story.

Power and Aesthetics

So, final question – what ultimately is the right or wrong?

The answer is how deeply are we able understand the scenario (and we may never understand every aspect most of the times.) Actions are always changing with respect to the circumstances, killing a murderer will always be justified and right at the same time killing a Saint is wrong.

This reminds me of Nietzsche’s quote:

Thus, the dilemma grows bigger.

What is right and what is right is highly dependent on your limits, your capabilities, your ability to reverse the things to exactly how they were before. If you don’t hold that capacity, then you immediately lose the power to justify your actions.

Which is exactly why what Paul believes is completely wrong, it shows how Paul character has made transition…

“He who can destroy a thing has the real control of it.”

The power will enable him to destroy any given thing; but can he reverse that destruction if things did not turn out the way he intended? The ability to restore the consequences of your decisions decides whether you hold the power to assign good or bad.

If Paul does not bear the capacity to reverse or at least restore the impact of his decisions, then he is wrong to send his followers in that direction.

I think, this is the warning Frank Herbert gives to the real-life leaders and followers among us. This is exactly where powerful people go wrong and take their blind followers with them.

So, even though his intent was to avenge his father by becoming the Messiah, the path he would choose is wrong.

The path Jessica chose to control the Fremen through prophecy is wrong. The plans Bene Gesserit orchestrated to plant a powerful yet manipulatable person on Arrakis just to have control over Spice are wrong. There are always multiple choices,

(The conclusion of the Paul Atreides’s story and ‘Dune: the God Emperor’ will make us change our current opinions. That we will discuss again when the time is right.)

Anyways words fail me when such real-life scenarios are flawlessly presented through fiction. There is no need for anyone to teach us what is right or wrong in such stories. The dynamics of the events and the characters show us the mirror. We always have such inner compass inside ourselves, stories like this are the greatest calibrator of such inner compasses.

The power to restore the consequences of our action is the real power, I think. This idea somewhat frees the justification of our actions from the dilemmas of morality.

There is more to discuss about Dune, find out here….

(Movies Scenes from Warner Brother’s Dune: Part Two)

Love is in the Brain

The heart always gets credited for the feelings of love but it is the brain which plays the most significant role. Neuroscientists have made attempts to interpret the emotions of love by closely studying the events in the brains of lovers. A study in neuroscience shows how acts of expressing love through embracing, kissing, and conversing about common experiences positively influences our brains. It also indicates why and how men may feel embraces deeper and more emotional than women, how an emotional speech creates similar neural effects as the neural effects during kissing.

Neuroscience of the languages of love

Kiss, speech and embrace are the most common languages of love

Background – What is love? What is an emotion?

Emotions are one inseparable part of human life rather every living thing. They can be attributed as the response we generate for the interactions we have with our surrounding – a response to various stimuli. Responding to the events/ interactions is one important way of communication for living things. Out of these responses, physical responses are generally very easy to notice and interpret but at the same time the emotional responses are more complicated, sometimes difficult to even notice and interpret. Body language mostly gives away the what’s going in a person’s head, what they are thinking (like most of us have a tell when we are uncomfortable/ nervous or are lying). Understanding body language can give straightforward answers about person’s condition and personality but it is always difficult to gauge what exactly the person is feeling in given condition.

Love is one of the most important and at the same time the most exploited feelings we living things have. Love is the feeling which we can connect with anything real and imaginary that is there in the universe (trust me, this is not inferred from the pop culture philosophy) There are more things to love than to hate for everyone of us. For the sake of generalization, love brings in the comfort, safety and hope for the survival of every species. Love for certain things can push the individual to do something extraordinary – good (because it can create purpose irrespective of the situations and challenges in life) or bad (that is exactly why love is the most exploited emotion, you can make people do wrong things just for the sake of love).

Love language

Even though love is the most general emotion all of us have (like love for something, some person, some song, some place, some season, some animal, love for everything); the love between couples – romantic couples remain always at the focal point. The love between couples is not important because pop culture, poets, painters, singers, saints mentioned it repeatedly everywhere; it is important because it is what makes our lives less artificial. The love romantic couple can have, affects the future of society in every possible and productive way – it also ensures diversity – randomness in species. As we are highly expressive and responsive species, communication is the most important part of our life especially the love life. When two people from different backgrounds come together in the name of love it becomes very important as how they express their love for each other. Today we call it “the love language”. Some couples love to talk a lot with each other, some like to sit in silence together, some always feel cuddly, some would be always staring into each other’s eyes, some would travel together, some like to cook together or for other, some like to eat together, some are always pulling pranks, some would peel orange for the others, some would send flowers, some would be writing poems, singing songs, some would always fight (yes…, you read that and accepted it). You get it; every couple has their own (sometimes weird) love language and communicating in this certain language deepens the relationship.

Brain vs heart – Neuroscience of love

Even though heart has been attributed to the origin of the feeling of love due to various reason, its original job is to just pump the blood. Nothing interesting happens in the heart of a person in love than in their brain. Brain surely is the epicenter for the study of love and how we feel when we are in love. Just like love, our brain is the most complicated thing we are yet to understand fully. Neuroscientists are always trying to figure out what generates certain set of emotions and responses. Love is one such important emotion which is also an attractive subject for them. Its association with every aspect of our life, its complexity and simplicity at the same time has always attracted scientists who are trying to understand human behavior. (love hasn’t spared the brainiacs too.)

Modern neuroscience is blurring the lines between the intangibility of emotions especially love and the tangible – physical parameters like electricity (synapse, wave-forms), chemicals (hormones, neurotransmitters). From providing shock to certain part of the brain to see which muscle it twitches to enabling the paralyzed people to walk again through brain implants, neuroscience has had many quantum leaps.

How does a neuroscientist interpret love?

I think every person who is in love can tell what it is but it will always have a touch of subjectivity, thus a neuroscientist is always the most qualified person to create an objective fact on the emotion of love.

Today we will see an interesting study in neuroscience about the emotions in romantic couples. Before going into the details and the conclusions of the study, it is important to roughly get the hold of some concepts neuroscientists used to interpret their results.

Our brain is made of approximately 100 billion neurons whose network is always firing some electrical signals to generate responses and create memories. The measurement of such electrical signals and their interpretation is important aspect of studying brain.

fMRI – functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

It is found that when there is a neural activation in brain, the blood flow increases in that region. This change in blood flow can be monitored using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

De-oxygenated hemoglobin in blood is paramagnetic (attracted by external magnetic field) and oxygenated hemoglobin in blood is diamagnetic (repelled by external magnetic field). Producing a strong magnetic field around brain and monitoring their interactions with the magnetic fields generated during blood flow are measured in MRI. Such measurements require bulky and specialized instruments with controlled conditions.

fMRI shows what part of brain gets activated from increased blood flow

fMRI machine is huge thus creates limited experimental environments

Electroencephalography (EEG) – it is a method to record an electrogram of the spontaneous electrical activity of the brain. It monitors the electrical signals from brain using electrodes on scalp instead of measuring the changes in magnetic fields. The EEG devices are now very lightweight and portable thus they have less influence on the neural activity of the subject under observation. The portability also widens the test environments for the subjects under observation.

EEG can be used to interpret the signals from the outer surface (cerebral cortex) of the brain as the electrodes are put on the scalp. It is difficult to understand what is happening inside the brain from the signals of EEG although they will always be interfering with the overall signals sensed by the electrode at the scalp.

An EEG system is highly portable to collect neural data

International 10-20 system – It is an internationally accepted template for putting electrodes proportionately on the scalp of head. This ensures homogeneous observations and reproducibility of the results during EEG. 10 and 20 refer to the percentage of the gap between the electrodes meaning the electrodes are placed at 10% or 20% of the total distance between front – back of the skull (called as nasion and inion respectively) or total left-right distance.

International 10-20 system to locate the electrodes of EEG system

A good, healthy person will show waves of certain frequencies according to their conditions. These frequencies are between 1 to 30 Hz and the amplitude varies between 20 to 100 micro volt. The frequencies are divided as follows:

Alpha waves – alpha waves have frequency between 8-12 Hz and are observed when a person is relaxed in a wakeful condition. These are mainly attributed to activity in parietal and occipital lobe of the brain. When a relaxed person opens their eyes, it is observed that their alpha activity reduces and beta activity increases. Alpha waves are produced when you’re awake but your mind is in a resting state.

Beta waves – beta waves have frequency above 12 till 30 Hz. Beta waves are associated with intense mental activity like doing some arithmetic calculations, making inferences from given data, being busy, focused on something. The frontal area of brain shows significant beta activity in such wakeful instances.

Gamma waves – these are the fastest brain waves with frequency between 30-80 Hz. They are attributed to deep thinking and state of high focus. Generally, people with high IQ show more gamma activity; lower gamma activity is attributed to memory and learning problems, short attention span.

Delta waves – delta waves are associated with frequencies between 0.5 – 4 Hz

Theta waves – theta waves are associated with frequencies between 4-7 Hz

Theta and delta waves are not observed in wakeful state. If delta and theta waves are observed in wakefulness then it indicates brain dysfunction.

Output wave-forms from the electrodes of an EEG system

Lateralization of brain – We have come across one misleading fact that we only use certain fraction/ percentage of our brain in routine activities. (the popular number is 5-20%) This popular but wrong fact could be attributed to the idea of lateralization of brain. (Sci-Fi movies have exploited this wrong fact already)

Generally, almost all areas of every healthy person’s brain are always active. But, certain cognitive functions or neural functions (like movement of body parts, thinking, calculating, watching, tasting) are associated to either of the hemisphere of the brain (left or right hemisphere). Although brain as a whole is always active, certain activities/ functions activate one hemisphere more that the another one. Simply put, there is difference in brain signals between right and left hemisphere during a cognitive function. This dominance of brain signal from one “side” shows lateralization of brain. One side will be more activated in brain for given activity.

Asymmetry indices (AI) – So, this heightened activity from one side of brain is measured by taking difference of the signal power of the brain waves from left and right hemisphere.

Increased asymmetry index indicates that the signals in right hemisphere are getting inhibited, restricted. Thus, left hemisphere especially left frontal activity in brain is increased.

Decreased asymmetry index means that the signals in left hemisphere are getting inhibited and thereby right hemisphere is more activated.

Simply put, more the asymmetry index more is the activity in left part of the brain.

There are two main theories on how our brain is lateralized. One is Valence Model (VM) and another is Right Hemisphere Hypothesis (RHH).

VM – According to valence model, every emotion has a valence meaning a tendency to be preferable – positive and rewarding or not preferable – negative and aversion inducing. The positive, rewarding emotions are processed in left hemisphere and negative, punishing emotions are processed in right hemisphere of the brain.

RHH – Right Hemispherical Hypothesis says that whatever may the emotions be – positive or negative, rewarding or punishing – all are processed in right hemisphere of the brain.

Neuroscientists are yet to reach a consensus on which of these two ideas are right. Certain observations are supported by VM and others are supported by RHH. It’s not about what is wrong and what is right, it is about which model explains given dataset better and predicts better.

Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) – this is one of the chemicals – a neurotransmitter which inhibits/ blocks certain neural signals thereby is responsible for creating calmness. If GABA is released more, we feel calmer and more relaxed. The opposite effect i.e. restlessness, excitement is generated by glutamate. For a healthy brain balance between GABA and Glutamate is important.

*gamma*-aminobutyric acid – neurotransmitter of calmness

Glutamate is the main excitatory and GABA the main inhibitory neurotransmitter in the mammalian cortex. The prescription drugs for reducing restlessness/ improving calmness ensure high levels of GABA in our central nervous system.

**Glutamic acid aka glutamate** – neurotransmitter of excitement

Now that we have understood certain basic ideas to understand the experiment, let us see how certain languages of love in romantic couples affect their neural responses.

The Experiment

The neuroscientists studied three conditions in romantic couples namely – speech, hug and kiss.

The participating romantic partners were asked to wear the EEG system to record the brain signal during the experiment. Scientists recorded a baseline – a neutral state for speech, hug and kiss. Then the emotional states were recorded through certain assigned tasks.

In neutral state for speech, one of the partners listened to a generic weather report, whereas in the emotional state for speech the partner listened to a recording of their partner reading an emotional shared life experience.

In neutral state for hugging/ embracing the partner hugged a pillow while the another being absent and in emotional embrace, they hugged each other.

In neutral state for kissing one partner kissed their hand and in emotional state the partners kissed each other.

Why this experimental setup is important?

According to the authors of this paper, most of the studies to understand the brain activities are always performed in controlled setup which conditions the brain signals in a set template. The observations may create certain insights but are less close to the reality as they were not observed in real life conditions. Authors claim that this method to actually measure the brain signals in real life scenarios creates more relevant, closer to real life dataset. The responses in such setup are more natural. That is why they claim this experiment having more “ecological validity”

The authors make a great attempt to understand the main and most preferred language of love in romantic couples i.e., kissing, embracing, speaking shared experiences. It will be really interesting to see what “flashes” we have when we are experiencing such events.

Observations – looking from a neuroscientist’s perspective

Following are the key observations authors present in this paper:

Participants were more positive after executing the behavioral tasks.
Brain gets lateralized during emotional processing.
High asymmetry index in front lobe electrodes was found during emotional kissing compared to neutral kissing. Researchers found high alpha AI during emotional (real/ organic) kissing than neutral (artificial) kissing baseline.
Found lower alpha AI during speech.
Higher AI in kissing and emotional speech.
Researchers didn’t find overall effects in alpha or beta for embracing. Only males showed higher beta AI in the embracing condition.

Conclusions

Pardon my oversimplification for the sake of understanding.

The first observation is the easiest to understand. Kissing, hugging, and telling a shared memory/ experience of love surely makes the romance to flourish more (duh!)
The lateralization of brain means that certain emotions are flagged in one of the hemispheres of the brain. It’s not like all the emotions activate only one side of the brain.
This one is interesting. High alpha asymmetry index during kissing means that left brain is more activated during kissing. The authors put forward that this is related to release of GABA molecules in right hemisphere which inhibit the neural signals thereby create a calming effect. Valence model says that left hemisphere processes positive and rewarding emotions. So, this observation shows that kissing surely creates a positive effect in the brain of the romantic couples. Higher left hemispherical activity is attributed to more positivity in a study. It is important observation of high alpha asymmetry because its opposite i.e., lower alpha activity is linked with suicidal tendencies in depression as observed in a study.
The authors found that the VM theory holds best to explain events in frontal part of the brain whereas the RHH theory can explain the posterior events in brain. That is exactly why low alpha AI in romantic/ emotional speech cannot be directly correlated negative emotions which the Valence Model says. Rather according to the RHH theory the speech invokes strong right hemispherical activity. The authors found an observation to link VM and RHH theories according to the regions of brain considered for discussion. Both theories are not completely wrong but are successful when implemented to specific region of the brain. Simply put, it is not just about preference to left or right hemisphere – it is also about whether the activity is in front or back portion of the brain.
High asymmetry indices during kissing and emotional speech show how strongly they affect the lovers. Emotional speech is as effective as kissing. (it’s like kissing your lover’s brain with your emotional words!)
This one is also one more interesting observation. As there are no significant effects in alpha or beta asymmetries during hugging activity, it means the hugging is less effective than kissing or emotional speech. But the authors present a catch here! They found a sex specific observation. It says, high beta AI in males during embracing. High beta AI is linked with increased emotional, cognitive processing. This means that men consider hugging more emotional than women. Women process hugging as a casual act but men consider it more thoughtful especially when they are hugging the existing and well-familiar female partner. Authors attribute this to the fact that women generally hug each other (female-female hug) more than men do (male-male hug).

What does this mean to common person?

The experiment authors performed was really interesting and was closer to the real-life conditions. If you want more interesting details on how what and why the experiment was designed in a certain way and how the results were interpreted, I have provided the link at the end. Going through this article puts front some really deep insights on how love, romance affects our brain. How these languages to express love create a deep connection between lovers.

The authors have tried to remain as objective as possible. But, again pardon my oversimplification, here is what one can understand from this experiment:

Having emotional discussions with your partner is as effective as kissing your partner. No wonder people resort to poetry, music, and literature to express their love. The more you are able to express your love for your partner the more positively it is going to influence your brain thereby you. You also feel better for yourself if you can express your love to your partner. It is like the act loving your partner is providing strength to yourself. Maybe this is how lovers become strong mentally. (No wonder couples madly in love are ready to fight the whole world!) Kissing your romantic partner has calming effect on you mental state. (I think almost no one needs explanation on that! But don’t forget that speech is equally potent)

And finally, men need more hugs compared to women! Although hugging is a common act in society, men are highly emotional when it comes to hugging. So, this is an advice not only for women but also for men and especially for men that you hug your bro, your buddy whenever you feel like expressing your love for them.

Our brain being one of the least understood wonders of the universe has always tricked us in spite of being the most vital part of our existence. The insights from such experiments in neuroscience with this closeness to reality bring more clarity in the ways we handle our relationships. We definitely owe thanks to the authors/ researchers involved in such studies for their valuable insights.

Reference article –

Investigating real-life emotions in romantic couples: a mobile EEG study – Packheiser, J., Berretz, G., Rook, N. et al.

Riding on the ‘Hype Wave’ of Technological Breakthroughs

Countless breakthroughs are happening around the globe everyday but very few hold the potential to change the world and the future. Due to our cognitive limitations and biases, we wrongly estimate the impact of the emerging innovations in near future and long-term future. Amara’s Law and ideas of Hype Cycle can provide insights into how a technology evolves over time from its emergence and how to spot the technology which truly holds the potential to change the future course of the humanity. Understanding the phases in the development of an innovation and its coherence to reality can help entrepreneurs, researchers, investors, policymakers and even a common man to have practical expectations from any technological breakthrough.

How to gauge the trend and acceptance of any emerging technology?

The Wheel and The Fire

One of the key differentiating factors that created a totally separate path for the evolution of humans from the apes and other species is the invention of tools. Right from the invention of the wheel and the fire to the invention of steam engines to the invention of the computers, smartphones to the invention of artificial intelligence – our tools to interact with the world around us keep on getting more and more sophisticated thereby uplifting our lifestyle. This is way different than how other species live, interact with the world around them and exist on the earth – our home, their home.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is equivalent to magic
Arthur C Clarke

Imagine if you traveled back in time and showed ancient Egyptians a smartphone? You may explain it to them as a tablet sitting in hands made up of the components built from sand which could show you the extremely detailed real-time pictures from the location far from their locations or you can send your voice and receive the voice from the other side. Given that Egyptians created some of the astounding engineering marvels that world has ever seen, even after that a smartphone will be equivalent of a pure magic for them.

Now coming back to the future- present times, if you are told that a company has built a device which can teleport you instantly to other planet, what would be your reaction? Though seemingly magical, it is just a fiction for us due to practical reasons. We haven’t even teleported an insect from point A to point B till date.

The Think Tanks For The Future

So, there is an limit to realize the practicality of every technology. Many technological breakthroughs are happening all around the world every day but very few of them actually change the course of the humanity. That is why it is very important to identify which technology really holds the true potential. The earlier one realizes potential of the technology, the faster and bigger will they have the grasp over the world, politics, economy and society thereby maybe the whole humanity.

Many think tanks around the worlds are always invested in the prediction of the future scenarios in global politics, war fares, technological breakthroughs, epidemics. These people are called as ‘the futurists’ who are striving to predict the long-term future obviously for the sake of readiness, survival and sometimes dominance. These futurists have certain tools in their kit which can help us to understand and point out which next technological revolution will change the course of the humanity in near future. Although we are not experts of all technologies and breakthroughs happening in the world daily, these tools can help us to understand which technology can actually benefit and uplift our daily lives. These tools can help an innovation manager to point out the technology which can create differentiation to his product in the market, these tools can help an entrepreneur to select the technology to boost his/her business or startup. This can also help a common man to gauge whether a technology claimed by a company can actually bring a difference in his life.

There are these questions we keep on asking ourselves when we are dealing with new technologies coming to our doorsteps, into our hands –

Why Apple brings the technologies in their phones really late when every other device manufacturer has already made it mainstream and sometimes obsolete?

Why AI won’t actually take over the world in near future? Why EV’s may face a cold death? Why flying cars are still not practical and common product as predicted in back to the future? Why teleportation is not a reality and only a magical part of the today’s Science fiction?

What is the future of the innovations and breakthroughs we are making every day? Is there any way to predict the future value of certain emerging technology and built a product around it to create a fruitful venture/ business? How to be confident while investing in any technology based on its current condition or stage?

Amara’s Law from the futurist Roy Amara gives a deep insight into the phases every technology goes through and it also helps us to make any decision for given technology.

Influence Of Technological Breakthroughs On Humanity And Its Future

Roy Charles Amara was the president of Institute for the future (ITFT) an American non-profit think tank which works for the better prediction of long-term future. The prospects of ITFT include the exploration for the possible futures for the USA and the world, to figure out the preferences/desirability of these futures and to increase the chances to bring that future possibility into reality by finding out ways that support it.

Roy Amara gave a very important insight into how we as the human beings perceive future of any technological breakthrough and most of the times the masses are wrong about these technological breakthroughs.

Amara’s Law

“We overestimate the power and effects of the technology for a short period of time, while we underestimate the power of technology for a long period of time.”
Roy Charles Amara

In simple words, our expectations (positive or negative) from recent technological breakthroughs are always high and we are very skeptical about already existing technologies to be revolutionary and mainstream in the future.

Take for example the LHC experiments which were started in CERN to better understand the subatomic particles. Some scientists predicted that there may be chances that some small black holes may form in this experiment which would engulf the whole earth into it. Same fear was lingering around the Trinity test, where many scientists thought that the Atomic Bomb test would initiate a chain reaction which could ionize the whole atmosphere of the earth thereby leading to the end of the humanity.

But, look what happened? Nothing dangerous happened during the LHC runs, the runs confirmed the presence of Higgs Boson. Although atom bomb proved to be really fatal and formidable invention of humanity, the Trinity test at Los Alamos didn’t ionize the earth’s atmosphere.

In our times, people are speculating that the AI will take over humanity and will rule over the world by enslaving everyone. Now look what ChatGPT responds when you ask some fundamental philosophical questions? (Although it is excellent in certain tasks but there is still long way to go in order take over the humanity!) There are some examples where the AI image generator could not create proper images of human hands as the orientation of fingers relative to each other is “confusing” for the AI image engine. It is also known that certain biases can be created in the AI engine based on the sample training data provided, so there is still a long way for the AI to catch up with the humanity and there is no doubt that AI will totally revolutionize our lives but, in the ways, we are yet to imagine or grasp. (although AI has already revolutionized some parts of our lives already)

Amara’s Law points out a cognitive limitation in us where it is really difficult for us to predict the non-linear behavior of technology in the coming future. We human beings are very great in predicting the linear incremental behavior, somewhat ideal and constant incremental behavior of things around us. The moment we infuse multiple variables and some non-ideality in these predictions, we make wrong decisions based on our survival instincts. We “overhype” the technology’s potentials. For given technology people may think that it will revolutionize the ways of doing things and uplift the society, some think that certain technology will take people’s jobs and push society into dystopia. Look what is happening with cryptocurrency and NFT – the technologies which were supposed to revolutionize the complete world economy. Although, blockchain is there to remain forever as an excellent invention it will change the world in totally different way than people actually predicted.

The AI which is supposed to take over the humanity

Amara’s Law is famously explained by the S-shaped curve to represent the difference between anticipated impact and actual impact of the technological breakthroughs.

Gartner Hype Cycle

Gartner Hype Cycle also throws light on some interesting concepts on the actual non-linear impact of technologies over the time. This idea was developed by an American consultancy firm Gartner Inc. named after Gideon Gartner who is called as ‘the father of the modern analyst industry’. Gartner Hype Cycle establishes certain phases in the implementation, growth and acceptance of any technology.

These phases are given as follows:

Innovation/ Technology trigger – A new technology is presented to the world which creates intrigue, sometimes fear in the minds of the masses. The competitors panic sometimes for the probable upcoming uncertainties in business
Peak of inflated expectations – As the technology is something new, there are very few experts to truly understand it. The hype build around it due to the insufficient knowledge of the media and communicators. This builds unrealistic expectations among the masses.
Trough of disillusionment – There comes a time when this hyped technology starts getting implemented into real life where practical limitations keep piling up. Not only practical but also some economical, social problems start peeking this pile of problems. The expectations were already high and when such failures start becoming apparent to the mass users, the technology enters the rock bottom, the cold death
Slope of enlightenment – After remaining in the abyss of failures there comes a time when the exact technology finds a better purpose for implementations; it’s newer generation become more people relevant more practical which people accept properly, where the society is evolved enough to accept it as their way of life. From here on this technology enters ‘the plateau of productivity’. The true value and proper points to implement the technology are identified and widely accepted in this plateau.

Many experts in the industry critic Gartner hype cycle as it does not provide any instructions or actions to control these behaviors for any emerging or disruptive technological revolution. One can safely say that Gartner Hype Cycle gives a generalized view on acceptance of new technology.

There is also an Extended Gartner Hype Cycle where after the plateau of productivity, the technology loses its value to the reduced returns to the business over time which further ends into the obsolescence – “the cliff of obsolescence”.

Key Takeaways From The Hype Cycle

When a policy maker, an entrepreneur, a manager understands the Gartner Hype Cycle, it will definitely help them to make informed decisions which can reduce risks and maybe save many lives.

Being patient and not getting tempted to ride on the hype wave is the first important response.

Updating the knowledge and current trends regularly will help in creating fruitful strategies against the hype.

Change is the only thing that remains forever and embrace this. Adaptations to stay ahead in the practical technology is the optimum move for any leader/ policymaker.

Understanding the long-term viewpoint from a sustainable perspective with the closeness to reality/ practicality immediately breaks the illusion of hype.

It is really important for a policymaker, a leader and even a common man to understand that creating a breakthrough does not guarantee the success in the practicality of the innovation/ technology. The innovation even though called as breakthrough has to be practical, relevant and realistic.

The Gartner Hype Cycle can explain why some tech companies wait for the technology to evolve and establish in order to deliver complete consumer experience. The hype cycle also explains why many startups who have found breakthroughs initially, fail to deliver at the end as the hype wave builds unnecessary expectations among the investors. ‘Edison’ by ‘Theranos Inc.’ founded by Elizabeth Holmes is one such example. The company was expected to create revolution in the medical diagnostic industry and was touted to be ‘the iPhone’ of the medical and healthcare industry. Look what has happened after that!

Internet and GPS (Global Positioning System) are the examples which were supposed to remain military secrets for years eventually have become the walk and talk of everyday lives and influence every part of our life now. (There was a time called dot com bubble which reiterates the hype of internet companies!)

Once you understand the Amara’s Law and Gartner Hype Cycle you can clearly see how any new technology launched in the market will behave in near future. It is not just about creating disruptive innovation to the market; it is also about solving realistic problems and understanding the key pain points of the masses.

Roy Amara’s Futurist Legacy for Predicting Breakthroughs

Any innovation which will truly impact the future should be studied for three main parameters/ premises.

The possible – as the breakthroughs are practically ‘the trend breakers’, the study for their possibility should involve unconventional approaches that defy formalization/ structured-ness. There should also be some human element of intuition which gives a personal touch to such innovations. For example, the Science Fiction authored by a well-versed scientist/ artist who understands its practical limitations for today but anticipates that it will get solved in near future. (The motion capture technology evolved during the creation of James Cameron’s Avatar is one such good example)
The probable – defining probability requires to understand ‘what is connected to what?’ What action will increase the chances of certain event? Thus, the process of quantifying the probability of the success of the breakthrough innovation immediately establishes the chain of reasoning to its future projection.
The preferable – Even though the innovation is possible and most probable but if it is not required by the time and the society then it may surely face the cold death. So, prefer-ability anticipates the societal, economical, and humanistic aspects to accept the innovation. If the innovation has no net positive utility, then it won’t come out as the most probable future. (For example, even though we know that the Grade 5 Titanium is one of the lightest and the strongest materials in the mechanical world, we also know that people can’t afford the cars made out of it for daily use as the costs of manufacturing will be exceptionally high which ultimately will get transferred to end users who won’t pay for it – even when it comes to saving their lives for the amount they invest.)

This makes it very clear that an innovation needs to be realistically possible, the most probable and most preferable in order to be called as a breakthrough which holds the potential to change the course of humanity.

These are the exact reasons why people over-anticipated the trip to the Mars when Elon Musk expressed his SpaceX proposition. Now that we are seeing how difficult it is to create a rocket, how many resources, how many allied innovations need to happen, how many relevant financial, behavioral mindsets need to evolve in order to send few humans (alive!) to Mars then we are getting hold of the practicality behind sending humans to settle on Mars.

This also explains why the flying cars shown in Back to the Future are not a common reality or way of life today, it still will take time or maybe it won’t happen in future due to some other breakthroughs (like teleportation!). Back to the future successfully predicted 3D projections, Video calling, digital currency, smartwatch which were possible due to practicality and relevance.

Once you understand the Amara’s Law you can grasp that creating many innovations is not important to change the course of future, a single innovation which is practical, relevant and realistic is sufficient enough to change the course of the humanity. One can also do so by making the innovations implementable in real life,not every breakthrough guarantees immediate revolution.

“Our nations rely on innovation to improve productivity and fuel economic growth. But to be competitive, nations and organizations do not necessarily have to excel at originating innovation—they have to be able to apply innovation successfully.”
Mastering the Hype Cycle by Jakie Fenn and Mark Raskino

References and further reading:

Mastering the Hype Cycle – How to choose the right innnovation the right time by Jakie Fenn and Mark Raskino, Harvard Business Press
Here’s Why AI Is so Awful at Generating Pictures of Humans Hands
Why Are AI-Generated Hands So Messed Up?
Views on futures research methodology – An essay by Roy Amara, FUTURES July/August 1991

Halo in F1 – One simple hoop design to save them all

A simple hoop design of HALO saved many precious lives in adrenaline filled, thrilling motorsport like F1. The story of evolution of halo in F1 tells us about the minimalist and functional design for safety. Not even single part of halo is in excess, unnecessary or unwanted. The designers and engineers deserve special recognition for saving important lives and maintaining the spirit of the sport.

Formula 1 is the pinnacle of the motorsports on the planet. It is the most intense, most tech-intensive, strategy packed and the richest sport in the world. Important thing to understand here is that Formula 1 is not just about driving fast cars and securing the first position on grid out of all the competitors. There is a reason why it is called “Formula” One. All the cars and teams competing in this sport must abide to certain set of rules on car design, sporting conditions and (now) stringent budget restrictions. The cars are supposed to be “formulated” thus designed within certain rules defined by FIA (Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile as in International Automobile Federation) to ensure that no team gets an unfair advantage. Now with the technological advancements the complexity in this motorsport has touched new heights.

Here is an excerpt from Walter Koster – famous F1 Journalist in his world famous “short” interview question to explain the complexity and F1 drivers dealing with it –

The question posed here is very important. Many of the innovations and technologies we see and use in our routine motor vehicles have emerged from the competitive motorsports like Formula 1. The technologies well known and common today like ABS (Anti-Lock or Anti-Skid Breaking System), Traction Control, Active Suspension, Advanced aerodynamics to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of power from power units, Hybrid power units, Incorporation of various sensors and using the data from such sensors to optimize the vehicles behavior are some of the notable examples. As newer and newer technologies are developing, F1 is getting more and more complex. Real F1 fans want exactly that in some sense. In this way the game is not only about racing on the circuit rather now it encompasses the initial car design, machine building, people management, policy management, finance and strategy on and off the racing circuit.

In this whole organized chaos what one must understand is the risks F1 driver faces while driving at such high speeds. One must understand that F1 cars are totally different from the cars that we use in our day-to-day life. The RPMs of F1 cars operate generally above 10000 RPM (for normal cars even the RPM of 2000- 4000 is really high), the highest speeds an F1 car can achieve is around 350 km/h to 390 km/h. The power rating of these F1 cars is around 1000 HP. The current engines used in an F1 car is 1.6L V6 engine. You must understand that a normal car with 1.6L engine has power rating of roughly 150 HP which is used in medium sized SUVs and family hatchbacks. The engineering marvel with which this high performance is extracted is one interesting topic in itself. With such machine and top speeds, for an F1 driver any moment missed during the blink of an eye can lead to a fatal injury, permanent disability and even instant death. F1 is also known for some serious injuries and fatalities. Hence, maintaining and improving the overall safety of everyone involved in the sports is important for FIA.

We will see one such simple yet effective design decision that FIA implemented in F1 which has saved many important and invaluable lives of the drivers in the recent times. That is the incorporation of Additional Frontal Protection (AFP) also known as Halo. It may sound exaggerated, but one can say that after the usage seat-belts, Halo is the second-best innovation which can be credited to immediately save many lives in F1 and its equivalent motorsports like F2, F3, IndyCar racing. It is also important to note that the incorporation of Halo was not an instant decision, rather FIA has always evolved and taken many decisions in improving the safety of the drivers in F1. Detachable headrest and padding and HANS are two notable decisions of them.

Formula 1 and Safety

If one looks back at the incident histories in F1, they will immediately realize that instant dangers are deeply rooted in the sports format itself. Ayrton Senna – 3 times world champion known as the greatest F1 driver in the history died from an accident in 1994 which triggered many safety decisions in F1. Senna’s Williams F1 car crashed into the concrete barrier at the speed of 304 km/h at Tamburello Corner of the Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari in Imola, Italy. The lateral crash resulted in severe injuries and complete disfigurement of the car in crash. Stricter standards for helmets, changes in circuits to eliminate dangerous corners/ turns, changes in the circuit barriers, stringent impact tests with stringent tolerances, speed limits in the pit lanes and practice sessions were incorporated after this incident.

The story does not end here. In order to improve the safety further, in 1995 lateral crash tests were incorporated, by 1999 high cockpit heights to save the head injuries and wheel tethers to avoid the lose wheels flying off in crash were incorporated. By 2003, Head And Neck Support (HANS) device was made mandatory. Senna’s accident completely changed the safety regulations in F1 and this can also be seen in the reduced number of serious and major accidents in those times.

Need for Halo

In 2014, one incident shook the whole motorsport world. Jules Bianchi – an emerging F1 driver lost the control of his Marussia F1 car on Suzuka Circuit during 2014 Japanese Grand Prix. Due to unfavorable weather conditions – heavy rainfall his car lost grip and he crashed into a recovery vehicle which was trying to recover another crashed F1 car. Jules went into coma after suffering a diffused axonal injury and could not win the fight with death. After Senna’s loss in 1994 the world shook to the core with the loss of a young driver in 2014. The incident investigation demanded various changes in whole system and FIA realized the need for a closed cockpit-like solution to save the lives of drivers from frontal collisions.

FIA evaluated a closed canopy design like fighter jets and some tests were already ongoing in 2011-12. But the closed canopy had some practical limitations which prevented their immediate implementation in the F1 cars.

Limitations of the Closed Canopy-

One can accept that the closed canopy will prevent the direct contact of projectiles from front on the drivers. The closed canopy will also relatively interfere less with the aerodynamics of the car. But when there will be need of instant extraction of driver during crash or internal fire, the canopy will increase the extraction time and would make the job of fire/ emergency marshals more difficult. According to the standards, driver should be extracted from the car within 7 seconds.
An F1 car is just a machine, a wild animal with humongous power. Human controller brings that discipline, that life into such beastly machine. Driving in such extreme machine tests the human limits of the driver. The closed cockpit would limit all the airflow through the driver thereby making him more uncomfortable which would further increase the probability of incidents.

Closed canopy was tested in IndyCar designs with the help of Red Bull designers and engineers. The issue with the extraction was solved by keeping the canopy open from the top. But that does not address the issue fully. Even after keeping the canopy open from the top the airflow would anyways will be restricted to the driver. This issue was solved by nostril design of the canopy. Air intake gaps on the canopy’s leading edge would allow air inlet for the driver. Even some dedicated air channels were designed through the driver’s helmet to allow the airflow to ventilate driver sufficiently. IndyCar adopted these designs at first and there was still a long way for F1 to adopt these changes in their format.

Problems and Challenges

The closed cockpit design faced big resistance in F1 due to some really obvious reasons. You cannot completely have a fully closed cockpit for immediate extraction of driver from cockpit. If one goes for top open i.e., aeroscreen cockpit, driver ventilation is one issue.

When dedicated ventilation is incorporated it will add extra weight and devices/instrumentation on car. Please note that F1 car designers are accounting for single gram of the extra weight of the vehicle. It is very common to go for the fastest lap attempt in the last lap of F1 racing only for the reason that the car bears lowest fuel weight and thereby lowest overall weight in the last laps providing more horsepower per gram to the car (now the cars are fueled only once in the whole race).

One more and the most important problem with the aeroscreen is the interference it would create in the aerodynamics of the car. The air intake of the F1 car engine just lies to the back and over the head of the driver. The aeroscreen canopy would not only affect and reduce the air input to the engine but it would also create the “dirty air” which results in the net performance reduction in the car.

To understand this, one should know that F1 car is not just about putting a high power unit in the low weight carbon composite car. When a car is running on the track with high speeds the air resistance is significantly higher, the car is literally punching a hole through the air. The car cutting through such high speeds bears the ability to literally get lifted and fly in the air with the same principle the an airplane takes off. According to Bernoulli’s principle if one creates net difference in the velocities of a fluid over a body it results in net pressure difference over the body. When this pressure difference becomes significant enough with the weight of the body it can provide lift to the body, it will cause the body to fly. As airplanes are designed to fly up, the F1 cars are designed to not fly up and remain glued to the track. This is done by creating down-force in the car. Simply put, its like rotating the wing of an airplane upside down to keep it glued down to the track instead of lifting up. More the down-force, more the car will remain glued to the track, more traction it will have which will make high speed turns on the cars possible. But down-force generation also comes with one design challenge called drag. When a continuous, uniform airflow is traveling over the car imparting net down-force the moment this steady-like airflow gets detached from the surface of the car it gets disturbed, turbulent air containing relatively high velocity loops of air or “eddies” are generated. This air turbulence is known as “the dirty air” in F1. Due to this, the air velocities at the back of the car become higher than the air velocities to the front of the car which creates net pressure difference thereby net low pressure zones are created behind the car. The car experiences a resisting force called “drag” which reduces the speed of the car. So, design of a good performing F1 car is always about finding that sweet spot of balance between down-force, drag and lift.

Now back to the cockpit design. The fully closed cockpit design ensures streamlined airflow over the car but it also compromises the extraction of the driver in emergency. If one puts aeroscreen cockpit in the car, the streamline passing over the would be disturbed before it even exits the overall car’s body. It will create a “wake” of air which will not be dense, streamlined thereby adding the drag to the car. It will reduce the speed of the car substantially. Please note that the differences of speeds and lap times in F1 are really close to the 10^th of a second.

The biggest problem with incorporation of cockpits was related to the chaos in the aerodynamics of an F1 car which is one of the only things F1 teams can have larger overall control on.

If such design standards are related to safety, then they are supposed to be mandatory to every team which would reduce the net speeds of all F1 cars thereby removing the thrill of the game, the soul of the sports. Hence everyone opposed this idea of open canopy cockpit – aeroscreen design.

The Emergence of Halo

After the tragic death of Jules Bianchi in 2014 FIA realized that the front-end protection is also important aspect to improve the overall safety in the motorsport. As FIA were already in the process of frontal protection from 2011-12 testing fighter jet level closed canopies, it became apparent that some immediate and more practical solution is required for the F1 cars. This resulted in the design of Halo.

A halo also known as additional frontal protection (AFP) is a hoop made from aerospace grade Titanium alloy – Grade 5 Titanium (an alloy of titanium with aluminum and vanadium) with has 3 joints to enable connection to the car. It was designed by Mercedes.

The parts of Halo (FIA Standard 8869-2018)

The halo weighs just 7 kg but can handle the loads of 12000-15000 kg (yes, those are 12-15 tons). Precisely speaking, according to FIA standard 8869-2018, a halo is made up of Ti6Al4V Grade 5 alloy weighing 7.0kg, +0.05kg, -0.15kg and should withstand quasi-static (simply put – slow and steady enough to seem unnoticeable movement) load of at least 125 kN with deflection less that 17.5 mm in Test 1 and deflection less that 45 mm in Test 2. (125 kN = 12.7464 metric ton, average weight of a Double-Decker bus). You have to understand that its not just about the integrity of the structure of halo. When halo is attached to the F1 car, the car chassis should also be able the withstand such loads transferred from the halo. Otherwise only halo would withstand the impact but the whole chassis may fail, resulting in many complicated failures, damage, injuries even fatality.

Test 1 with front load (Source – FIA Standard for AFP 8869-2018)

Test 2 with lateral load (Source – FIA Standard for AFP 8869-2018)

Halo is a standard supply part meaning that everyone must have the same part in their car obtained from the FIA certified and approved manufacturer. No modification is allowed on halo.

Mercedes AMG W08 F1 car in 2017 without halo

Mercedes AMG W09 F1 car in 2018 with halo

Challenges with Halo

The biggest outburst from F1 fans, F1 teams, F1 designers/ engineers and even F1 drivers for halo was due the reason that it is the ugliest part of the F1 car. Many said that it destroys the whole look, beauty of the car.

Second and more practical reason to resist halo was the disturbance in the aerodynamics of the car. Though the disturbances in airflow are lesser than the canopy it still meddles with the performance of the car in total. The top hoop of the halo disturbs the airflow creating a wake of dirty air over the rear wing thereby increasing the drag on car and reduced speeds.

Drag Reduction System (DRS) became less effective due to incorporation of halo. DRS consists of a moving flap on the rear wing of the car which alters the airflow over the rear end of car thus when this flap is lifts up while the car is on straights the down-force thereby drag on car is reduced hence gaining the speed.

When the DRS flap lifts up the drag on the car is reduced.
(Source- See reference 8)

Now due to the incorporation of halo, the streamlined airflow which was expected to get extended over the rear wing of the car during the DRS was already getting disturbed thereby making the DRS less effective. (F1 fans know the madness and thrill of chase upon DRS activation on straights of the circuits)

Halo messes with the streamline flow over the DRS on tail and engine intake. You can see in this image the streamlined – parallel airflow lines are disturbed due to halo’s leading edge causing eddies (Source- See reference 7)

Third reason for resisting halo was the obstruction in the vision of an F1 driver. The central pylon of the halo connects just in front of the eyesight of the driver. Such immediate frontal obstruction in vision is big red alarm for everyone. The implementation of halo was tested in 2017 free practice session and every driver hated it as it was the immediate blockage in vision. Still the updated 2018 FIA standards mandated installation of halo.

One design to save them all

Despite the negative reception, halo has proved its effectiveness right from its year of implementation.

In 2018 Belgian Grand Prix on the circuit of Spa. Fernando Alonso’s McLaren car rolled over Charles Leclerc’s Sauber F1 car. The possible direct impact of rear tire and read wing would have caused permanent neck damage or possible death to Charles but it didn’t happen due to the protection from halo. According the simulations from the data of the accelerometers and other sensors from the cars, the impact force was of 56 kN (5.7 ton of weight)

Damaged air fairing in inset, halo remained undamaged during the crash. Simulated tire contact from Alonso’s car on Leclerc’s helmet eye-shield that halo saved in second inset image

In the same year in an F2 race in Catalunya, Spain Tadasuke Makino’s life was saved during the accidental crash landing of rival car.

Halo prevented the contact of sweeping rear end with Makino’s head

In 2019, F3 race in Monza, Italy Alex Peroni’s car went airborne, flipped in the air, rotated thrice and car landed upside down on his head. If it was not for halo, Alex would have been dead, the impact was directly on his head if halo wouldn’t have provided the barrier.

We do have flying cars. Peroni’s car landed on the halo part during crash and saved him from severe injuries

In 2020, Romain Grosjean driving Haas F1 car directly crashed into the barrier in Bahrain Grand Prix. The crash was so dangerous that it split the car in two pieces which was nearly impossible for a modern Formula 1 car. The collision was head on from the front end of the car. Romain experience 53 G force when he crashed through the barrier at the speed of 250 km/h. The halo protected his head from such intense front collision. People called it a miracle of god but it was one safety decision evolved from simple yet effective engineering solution which saved a man’s invaluable life from an unimaginable incident.

The impact so powerful that it split the modern F1 car in two. The halo saved Grosjean’s life from from powerful front crash into barrier. The man on fire emerging from the yellow fire can be seen here.

In 2021, Max Verstappen’s Red Bull F1 car crash landed over Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes F1 car. The Red Bull car’s rear tire (or tyre) literally traveled over Lewis’s head. The halo prevented this direct contact otherwise it was definitely for 7 times world champion’s neck and life.

The halo that saved 7 times world champion

In 2021, in W Series qualifying session at Spa, Belgium a really weird accident caused 6 cars to pile up within few seconds. In this multiple collision pile up the halo of Sarah Moore’s car deflected a flying wheel saving her life from instant impact. In the same incident Beitske Visser’s car landed on the halo upside down which saved her life. Belen Garcia was also saved from frontal impact in this crash.

Moore’s head saved from loose tire contact

Garcia saved from the contact with loose tire from front

Visser saved from multiple flips and dangerous landing on head

In 2022, British F2 race in Silverstone the car of Denis Haugher’s car went airborne, just like a vehicle jumping off a ramp on a corner and it went cross through the car of Roy Nissany’s head. The halo experienced side impact and only because of the implementation of halo Roy Nissany was saved from literal decapitation. It was a great save only due to halo.

Nissany’s stars were bright on this ramp flight contact

In 2022, British Grand Prix at Silverstone, in the start and the first corner of the first lap Pierre Gasly’s Alfa Tauri F1 Car touched George Russel’s Mercedes F1 car on rear which resulted in his crash with Zhou Guanyu’s Alfa Romeo F1 car. The crash caused the Zhou’s car to flip upside down and in the same orientation the car went off track skidding only on the support of the halo over the gravel till the barriers. Zhou did not suffer any injury and was safe in all this accident, as if nothing happened.

Guanyu’s crash tested halo from all possible angles. Halo was the angel which brought him back from the doors of death.

Are design decisions all about aesthetics?

Here are some highlights of halo-

Halo solved most of the problems related to the closed canopy and aeroscreen.

There is no moving part in halo thereby eliminating the unpredictable failures in extreme cases.

The problem of visual obstruction was more related to the development of habit in drivers. We can see our own nose with our own eyes (which is relatively easy to check for people with big and pointy nose) when we make a conscious attempt to see it. Our brain is normally ignoring our nose in routine vision. When you hold a pencil in front of your face and close, if you try to focus on distant objects the eyes can see what there is behind the pencil too. As if the pencil doesn’t exist. In the same sense drivers became comfortable with halo’s obstruction after some learning curve.

Regarding the aerodynamics, FIA is always in development to establish new design standards to maintain competitiveness in the sports. FIA in 2022 established some design changes to enable close chases between cars. Air fairing is allowed over halo, so teams have found out the ways to minimize the dirty air created due to halo.

FIA allows air-fairing to reduce the dirty air from halo

The implementation of halo was one of the most resisted decisions of the famous and important motorsport like F1. The reasons behind halo’s rejection seemed fair until it proved its effectiveness. Halo saved at least 10 lives in three years immediately. FIA simulation analysis predicted that there would be 1 incident in 1 – 2 years where halo will play key role. After such incidents in series, it became clear that halo is the life saver.

The major backlash for halo was for the reason that it would mess with the aesthetics of the F1 cars. F1 cars are known for their slick aesthetics. But there is more to it. The slickness, sophistication in an F1 car is not just about its design looks or its visual beauty it is also about the functional design. For a design to become perfect, there should always be some intent for certain part to remain there. The implementation of halo and the developments that resulted it show us some really interesting ideas about what a design should be. Development of halo also shows that the process to design a simple yet effective engineering piece is really complex, rigorous, thoughtful, precise and continuously evolving process.

The story of evolution of halo in F1 tells us about the minimalist and functional design for safety. Not even single part of halo is in excess, unnecessary or unwanted. The designers and engineers deserve special recognition for saving important lives and maintain the spirit of the sport. Maybe halo is truly the best design and safety decision after the design of seat belt. And there will always be scope for evolution and improvements. Given that the simplest, most effective design of halo is to stay forever in motorsports like F1, whatever comes after halo will be and has to be groundbreaking.

The precious lives that halo saved:

The story of evolution of halo in F1 tells us about the minimalist and functional design for safety. Not even single part of halo is in excess, unnecessary or unwanted. The designers and engineers deserve special recognition for saving important lives and maintain the spirit of the sport.

Starting from left – Charles Leclerc, Tadasuke Makino, Alex Peroni, Romain Grosjean, Lewis Hamilton, Sarah Moore, Beitske Visser, Belen Garcia, Roy Nissany, Zhou Guanyu.

References and further reading:

Ferdinand Porsche
FIA Standard 8869-2018 SINGLE-SEATER ADDITIONAL FRONTAL PROTECTION – HALO
2018 FORMULA ONE TECHNICAL REGULATIONS
2023 FORMULA ONE TECHNICAL REGULATIONS
Technical F 1 Dictionary
A Critical Review of the ‘Halo’ Device in Formula One by Charmian Monroe – Oxford Brookes University
Effect of Halo Protection Device on the Aerodynamic Performance of Formula Racecar by Mark Lin, Periklis Papadopoulos, International Journal of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering Vol:14, No:1, 2020
Aerodynamic Study of a Drag Reduction System and Its Actuation System for a Formula Student Competition Car, Loução, R.; Duarte, G.O.; Mendes, M.J.G.C., Fluids, 2022, 7, 309. https://doi.org/10.3390/fluids7090309
Crash images from telecasts of F1, F2, F3 and W series

Music of a painting and portrait of a song

Can we extend our experiences beyond the limitations of our senses?

A picture is worth thousand words, they say. You try to explain something to your friends and they get confused then you show them the photo/ video of the same thing and the need to explain things disappears. Visual media is literally ruling over all other types of media. This also highlights our dominant way of consuming information, any information. Hence, we can definitely say that vision is the most important of all the senses we use to interact with our surroundings. Important thing to understand is that we can perceive only certain range of light obviously known as the visible spectrum. What if we could extend this sense of vision?

Extending human vision

There are already good attempts for us to see in ultraviolet and infrared region which lie on the both sides of visible spectrum. Special optical filters and thermal sensors can create visuals in ultraviolet and infrared which normal human vision cannot see. In a way, we have achieved UV, IR vision which can increase our understanding about surrounding. This story goes good for people with normal vision. But how does a blind person can understand this highly visual world? Many of us would have experienced and will agree that the lack of a sense for a long time elevates the other senses in such differently-abled persons which helps them to perceive same object with different attributes of senses. We will see one such interesting story of a person who is not completely blind but the way in which he solved the problems in his vision have created a totally different understanding about our ideas on vision and our senses.

Neil Harbisson – the cyborg with antenna

Neil Harbisson has a condition called ‘Achromatopsia’ also known as ‘Total Color Blindness’ where he cannot perceive the color of objects. The whole world is like black and white television for him. There are some types of spectacles available in market for partially color-blind people which effectively help them to distinguish different colors but there is no such solution for people with total color blindness. Neil solved this problem in a different way.

The problem of perception of different colors of objects was solved by converting the light into the sound. This simply means that certain sound frequency is assigned to certain color. When a digital camera scans such color, it will create auditory feedback which can be heard by the ears of the person. Now it becomes a learning for the color-blind person to differentiate between different sounds to understand the respective color. With the help of Adam Montadon, a computer scientist, Neil developed an antenna which is physically connected to his head – the rear part of skull – occipital bone. This antenna was further upgraded by Peter Kese and Matias Lizana. The early model of this eyeborg developed for Neil was like a headset with camera and later on it evolved to an antenna, reduced computer weight to computer integrated to a chip. Now, Neil has one tentacle-like antenna over his head.

The “eyeborg” and its feedback

Not only the design and evolution of eyeborg is fascinating but the feedback it provides is very interesting. As we know already that the different frequencies of color are converted to different sound frequencies. Whenever the camera in the antenna is pointed to any object, it gives sound feedback to Neil which enables him to distinguish and experience the color in a different way.

In the early version of eyeborg the sound was fed to Neil through the headphones to his ears. This blocked the ambient sounds for Neil making him unaware of the surroundings. It was like he sacrificed the ambient sound to understand the colors of surrounding objects. The smart update Neil did was to integrate the auditory feedback of eyeborg directly through his skull bones. This eliminated the over the ear feedback of eyeborg thereby freeing his ears for ambient sound. Now Neil hears ambient sound through his ears and the sound for color feedback is heard through bone conduction! Everyone can understand the difference between bone conducted sound and the ambient sound actually. When you hear your voice through a recording you always hate it (maybe this doesn’t happen with good singers!) because it sounds so weird and creepy. This happens because you have always heard your voice through bone conduction and others hear your voice as an ambient sound.

This doesn’t stop here. Neil was unable to understand the saturation in the color in the early versions so he assigned loudness of the frequency to the saturation of the color. The antenna containing camera serves as a Bluetooth/ Internet connection so that he can receive and transfer data to other devices.

Hearing music from a painting

Neuroplasticity of our brain has allowed Neil to understand the world in a different manner. The sonochromatic scale developed to understand the colors through the sound has elevated Neil’s understanding about colors to next level. First obvious thing is that his brain perceives the surrounding colors in terms of different sounds; this allows his brain to associate certain sound to certain objects. For normal humans when we say bus, we generally picture a red bus, when one says an airplane, we generally picture a white airplane, when someone says an ocean, we generally picture a blue ocean. Interestingly, Neil’s brain has developed itself to associate the objects to certain sounds which creates different synaptic feedback in his mind. His perception for general objects is totally different than all the people who can experience color.

We should understand how deeply colors are rooted into our fundamental understanding of nature. And when this understanding is changed to feedback of different sense which is a sound in Neil’s case the experiences are totally different and otherworldly. Even his dreams are filled of sounds for different colors, this is how deeply the ‘hybrid sense’ has been developed in Neil.

NASA released some images from James Webb Space Telescope where they assigned certain sounds to certain colors and tones to stars in the image. When tracked in a pattern you can experience the image in terms of sound which is on crude way of understanding the image through sound (crude way as in it is nowhere closer to the actual sound of the location, it is just conversion of image data to sound date with one to one replacement)

Sound from an image
Source:JWST, NASA

The colors from a song

Turns out, that the reverse of feedback from the eyeborg is equally interesting. The process of association of sound to a color has gifted Neil to understand the sounds in different way. Though the initial purpose was to comprehend the color through different sensorial feedback, it has given Neil a different type of intellect. Now, when he listens to a song, sound or music he can picture some series of colors. In simple words, he can create a visual and colorful output of an audio array. Though we visualize the sounds or music through complicated waveform, they were never associated to colors to the scale that Neil has experienced before. According to Neil’s experiences now he has a color scheme for certain music pieces, world famous speeches, musical symphonies.

Neil’s Eyeborg and Synesthesia

Actually, there is one human condition which is much closer to the experiences of Neil. There is one condition where a person associates the feedback of a sense to a totally different sensorial experience. The feedback from a sense stimulates some different type of experience. For example, for people with a synesthesia, they may associate certain color to certain number, some people associate the sound to certain color. This stimulation of totally different cognitive pathway by the experience of a cognitive pathway is called as synesthesia. Synesthesia is a natural and rare condition. Neil has artificially developed this condition in him to heighten his awareness of the colors. There are different types of synesthesia based on the association of cognitive stimuli.

In Grapheme–color synesthesia person associated a color for a letter as in A will stimulate the color red in his mind, in Spatial sequence synesthesia people associate events to certain stimuli so that they have exact memory of events as in with exact date and time, in Auditory–tactile synesthesia people experience touch or sensation in certain body parts when they hear certain sounds, in Ordinal linguistic personification synesthesia the person associates some objects, sequences like number sequences, calendar months to certain people or genders, in Misophonia synesthesia the person invokes certain emotions like anger, happiness, fear when certain sounds are heard, in Mirror-touch synesthesia the person are said to have heightened empathy so heightened that they experience the touches to the person in front of them as if someone has touched them actually, in Lexical–gustatory synesthesia the person experiences certain taste upon hearing certain words.

Chromesthesia is the synesthesia which deserves separate explanation for our discussion. In Chromesthesia, the person assigns a color to the sound they hear. Which exactly what is happening in the case of Neil but artificially. According to art historians the famous artist Vincent Van Gogh has Chromesthesia which made his paintings so vibrant. According to one such comment Vincent tried to learn Piano but left it midway because the notes of piano invoked different colors in his mind thereby overwhelming him.

Jack Coulter – one of the artists of our generation has Chromesthesia. He is known for his abstract art pieces which reflect the way he interprets the sounds and music. In simple words, he paints the songs. Jack’s paintings of are such an experience. You can find his paintings on some famous songs on his official Instagram page which includes ‘Love of My Life’ by Harry Styles, ‘The Best Day’ by Taylor Swift, ‘Running Up That Hill’ by Kate Bush, ‘Don’t Tell Me’ by Avril Lavigne, ‘Take me Home Country Roads’ by John Denver, ‘As It Was’ by Harry Styles. He even has created an art piece for the world famous ‘Cornfield Chase’ soundtrack from Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar.

Jack Coulter’s ‘Mr. Bad Guy’ painting based on Freddie Mercury’s song of same name

A mix-tape of senses and the hidden reality – philosophical implications

This crisscross of our senses and the stimulus actually questions the nature of our reality. If we question the nature of evolution by question like why can only eyes see color and why can only ears hear the sound which are very fundamental philosophical questions (so fundamental that the person who poses them may be called a mental person), then we will understand that it is the nature of light to impart the color to the object, it is the nature of sound to impart the vibration of the object which developed such organs in a way.

But if we dig deeper and question the limitations of our perception of sound and light then we will realize that what we perceive or feel through our senses is just a sample or small piece of all the experiences presented by the reality. For simple example, though sound (mechanical) and light (electromagnetic) are all but vibrations, the extent of their experience or the ranges in which they exist or the things they are made up of cause them to collapse into two distinct sensorial experiences.

And when we are trying to resolve such questions about the senses, the conditions like Synesthesia or the cyborg movement created by people like Neil try to modify our understanding of the reality that we live in. If these people can interpret the colors into sounds and sounds into colors, are our senses limiting us from a different type of awareness? Are we missing some extra information from reality due the limitation of our senses? In simple words, even though there are many colors around us we cannot see in dark but most of the animals have awareness of infra-red spectrum or night vision which gives them extra information of the same surrounding where we all coexist. Bees, butterflies, insects can detect ultraviolet light to understand the pollen part of the flowers which we cannot see by or normal vision. This questions the reality and our experiences from it

For a no person with complete awareness of his/her senses, the cognitive stimulus and feedback is almost hardwired. This stimulus and feedback are what create reality for us. We cannot experience even a common thing without experiencing the interactions of our senses with the surrounding. And when we realize that there are other ways to experience the same reality by connecting it to totally different sense and stimulus, this opens a new chapter in our understanding of the nature. It’s like being aware of the ultrasonic sounds as same as owls experience it. This opens a totally different universe for all of us – the hidden one which was already there. Maybe this is the sixth sense many people talk about. Actually, our lives and the experiences that we have, are always being dictated by the five senses that we experience.

Bertrand Russel had made some attempts to crack such question in his world-famous book called ‘The Problems of Philosophy’. In the very first chapter called “Appearance and Reality” of this book Russel concludes that this can be a question which may remain unsolved forever. He uses a concept called ‘sense-data’ as in the information which we immediately know from our senses as in smell, color, sound. Russel clarifies based on a structured thought process that what we perceive as a reality is mere the what it appears to us based on the senses we experience (also known as sense-data). If our sense-data gets limited our understanding of reality will be limited. As the reality we experienced through our limited senses will be a reality for us, it will not be the complete reality as in “the reality” – “the ultimate/absolute reality”. (I know this gets confusing from hereon) And if the reality through our senses is not complete reality that how could we transcend to the realization of “the ultimate/absolute reality” by extending our senses? Or is it a completely different pathway? Russel leaves that idea to the power, need and importance of philosophy.

There is definitely much more information that we are missing only because of the limitation of our senses. So, the reality is not we experience through our senses only, it is more than that which maybe is impossible for us to grasp for now. Maybe in near or distant future we will be able to understand reality in different way like Neil, Jack and many people like them.

P.S. – Most of the artists have mastered this transcendence of senses in their own ways, which is what makes art so special for humanity. Maybe it is the only way we have right now to extend our senses.

References:

“A picture is worth a thousand words” – image by ElizabethHudy from flickr
Neil Harbisson: I listen to color – TED
Neil Harbisson – Image by Don Walton
Jack Coulter’s ‘Mr. Bad Guy’ painting -Photograph by Richard Gray for Freddie Mercury Estate
jackcoulter.com/
cyborgfoundation.com/

Chasing The Hidden Nature of Reality

Bell’s Inequality and The Completeness of Quantum Mechanics

“The Nobel Prize in Physics for 2022 to Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser, Anton Zeilinger is important in the sense of how we understand the nature. The works of these three Nobel Laureates have confirmed that the fundamental things which make up the whole Universe follow the rules which are not consistent with the reality we experience”

“If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics.”
Richard Feynman

Ever since that damn apple fell off frw3om the tree on Newton’s head the world of science has exploded and expanded faster than maybe the Universe in which we are continuously questioning the nature of our existence, the nature of reality. Although if one really tries to understand how Newton worked out his ideas on the laws of motion, law of gravity, the calculus, they will know that it surely wasn’t the apple that did all the trick. (Given that “apples” have already contributed to change the course of the humanity in different ways)

Classical Mechanics

Sir Isaac Newton
The discovery of Gravity was not a coincidence

What made Newton’s work great is the predictability, structured-ness of the theories he developed. Newton described gravity as the force of attraction between each and every object in the universe. Higher the masses, closer the objects stronger will be the gravity. These theories make predictions which can be tested and then checked to be right or wrong. And for a long time, they were true. Then there came a time – the time. The time of Albert Einstein, where some people say that he proved Newton wrong. I will say Einstein found more generalized form for Newton’s theory of gravity. The ideas of Newton’s theory of gravity are a chunk of the bigger picture of Einstein’s theory of relativity. The theory of relativity considers the gravity not a force but rather curvature of the fabric of space-time. The mass of the object causes the space-time to curve around it hence causing the nearby objects to fall towards it. It’s like a trampoline where a heavy object is curving the elastic sheet around it wherein if other smaller objects are brought in this elastic sheet, they will be eventually pushed into the heavier objects. Newton thought of gravity as an attraction- a pull, whereas Einstein’s gravity pushes. Like Newton, the Einstein’s theory of general relativity makes predictions which can be tested by doing experiments and are proved to be right. Newton’s gravity could not predict the motion of planet Mercury around the Sun due to its limitations. Einstein’s theory of relativity predicted it accurately. Thereby proving it’s superiority.

Albert Einstein
Gravity is the bending of the fabric of Space-Time

The most important thing about Einstein’s theory of relativity is that it created the awareness of the fourth dimension and made it accessible to humanity in some indirect ways. Although, multiple dimensions are possible in abstract mathematics, but they were never accessible to humanity before the establishment of the theory of relativity. Einstein’s theory of relativity is still standing strong and predicting some of the wonders only universe can manifest.

But you know what, Einstein’s theory of relativity is not the generalized theory of our understanding of the universe. Einstein’s theory of relativity though fits for heavenly bodies, even to the grain of sand but it cannot explain the behavior of the subatomic particles making the atoms of the same grain of the sand. There are still some missing pieces in our understanding of the universe. Meaning that Einstein’s theory of relativity is applicable some special case of the reality we exist.

Rise of Quantum Mechanics and the EPR Paper

Einstein’s attempt to formulate the theory of everything sets the Quantum mechanics in motion. The basic idea is that Newton’s and Einstein’s approaches were top-down approaches to understand the nature whereas the approaches of quantum mechanics are bottom up where the discussion starts from the subatomic particles and the fields responsible for the generation of the fundamental forces (Electromagnetic force, Strong force, Weak force) in nature. One must understand that gravity is still not explained by quantum mechanics. Which is what in a way was the point of concern for Einstein. The theory of relativity breaks at subatomic levels.

This is the part where the EPR paradox comes in picture.

In order to understand the comments in the EPR Paper, one needs to understand some basic ideas in quantum mechanics.

The model of an atom has evolved greatly over time which also showcases how we improved our understanding of the universe.

John Dalton thought that matter on many divisions will end up in its smallest indivisible part called atom. Which established different elements will have their own characteristic atoms. This idea helped to establish the weight of an atom of each element. Combination of elements would give weight of the molecule made from that specific combination of atoms. With this idea one can exactly tell the molecular weight of product formed by the chemical reaction of two reactants.

J J Thomson in his experiments on Cathode Ray tube (exactly similar technology used in our old heavy box TVs) found out that if a high voltage is applied between two metal electrodes in a vacuum there is formation of a ray which gets attracted to the positively charged terminal thereby showing the negatively charged particles in this ray “The Cathode Ray”. Stronger the magnetic field stronger the cathode ray will deflect. And based on the relationship between the strength of magnetic field and the extent of deflection ray, Thomson found out that the weight of the particles in the Cathode Ray is very small compared to the weight the atoms. In this way the Dalton’s atomic model was revised to Plum Pudding. Where the electrons are scattered throughout the positively charged environment (Literally like the plum pieces randomly scattered in the pudding)

On further experimentation, Rutherford found out that there is vastly bigger space between the positively charged nucleus and the negatively charged electrons. This was a sort of weird plum pudding. The atom’s plum pudding has all the dough at center which positively charged and is the heaviest part of the atom. The plum pieces i.e., electrons are actually floating around this nucleus which are negatively charged. This devised the planetary model of an atom.

From here on now the real fun begins,

If the electrons are floating around the nucleus, how do they always remain in contact with their own nucleus. What makes them remain “attached” to their nucleus? If they are remaining attached to their own nucleus and are floating around it, after some time the tired light weight negative electron should get attracted towards the strong and dense positive nucleus, thereby becoming unstable. And this doesn’t happen in reality, otherwise nothing would exist from such atom as it will not hold itself longer. Technically, an accelerated electrically charged particle emits electromagnetic energy thereby losing its energy – getting “tired” and eventually falling into the nucleus.

The Quantum Leap

Niels Bohr further sophisticated the model of Rutherford by assigning circular highways to the electrons around the nucleus. Each highway/freeway (autobahn!) has its speed limit which here in atomic model is the energy level. The difference between energy level of each highway is “quantized”. Meaning that there is no middle lane between each highway, no lane cutting/ lane crossing and no overtaking. The energy gap between each highway i.e., “orbit” is fixed. The change in highway is only possible when the electron gains or losses this fixed “quantized energy”. This jump of electron from on orbit to other coined the term the “Quantum Leap”.

Bohr’s idea was usable for simple atoms like hydrogen but it could not explain the behavior of heavier atoms and hence there was still something missing in the model of atom.

The Wave Particle Duality

Erwin Schrödinger formulated that the electrons don’t actually have discrete highways around the nucleus. Electrons are the particles that behave like a wave around the nucleus. This idea was inspired from the Louis de Broglie’s hypothesis that the subatomic particles like electron actually are the waves around the nucleus. Meaning that you cannot pinpoint the electron around the nucleus. The electron will be anywhere in the space around the nucleus, but it follows certain schedule/ timetable which is the famous Schrödinger Wave Equation.

The schedule of electron is always tightly packed. Electron is not that person who confirms his arrival to a party by immediately saying Yes or No. An electron is that friend in your group who will always has his plans and will ditch you at the last moment. To meet such type of an “electronic friend” i.e., the electron itself you have to study its behavior, its routine which is its waveform. The waveform will give you an idea where your electron hangs out the most. Such hangout places where you have largest chance of finding your electron are the “clouds of high probability” called the orbitals.

This is where the real problems start to happen. You thought you knew everything about your dear “electronic friend”. The whole foundations of quantum mechanics are based on wave particle duality of subatomic particles.

Spin of an electron

Spin of an electron is actually term used to signify the angular momentum of an electron. Please note that spin of electron does establish that an electron is exactly a ball or a top which is spinning around the nucleus. Rather, spin only represents that there is some measurable angular momentum for an electron.

Quantum measurements are never “Gentle”

The first and most important idea in quantum mechanics is that on subatomic levels the measurements disturb the state they are trying to measure.

The Heisenberg’s Uncertainty principle tells that if you go for the measurement of the spin of an electron the interaction between your measuring equipment and the electron will change its location. Same thing will happen when you go for the measurement of the position of an electron. The interaction between the equipment measuring the position will change the angular momentum of the electron.

Means, the effects we are trying to measure at such subatomic levels are so interaction sensitive that mere the interaction of measurement will disturb the state of the subatomic particle. Thus, you can either measure the momentum of an electron or position of an electron at a time.

The famous American physicist Leonard Susskind’s own words say,

“You can learn nothing about a quantum system without changing something else”

The quantum measurements are so interaction sensitive that they will change the state of the subatomic particle by merely interacting with the measuring equipment.

It’s like the measuring rotations of a ball in the air where you are physically flying with the ball with tachometer in hand in contact with the ball’s surface. The frictional interaction between tachometer and ball will either change the position or the rotation. Hence, you will only know about either the spin of ball or the position of the ball correctly at once. (I agree that it is one exhausting way to perform such measurements, but it serves the purpose here!)

Interaction during quantum measurements will change the state of the quantum particles

Einstein’s problem with the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics

The wave nature of electron, the so called “fault” to measure the exact conditions of the subatomic particles all at once, the probabilistic nature of the quantum mechanics puzzled Einstein. Please note that the ideas discussed in quantum mechanics are not just some wild thoughts, these are legitimate mathematical proofs which are conceptually established in place. Einstein despised the idea of entanglement, which was not consistent with the reality he had already developed.

The entanglement- the bizarre child of an innocent mother

One bizarre concept born from an innocent concept is entanglement. As far as nature’s fundamental laws go- for creation of anything, something has to be invested in first place. This is called “conservation”. Law of conservation of energy says that the net energy of a system remains same, remains conserved always, it will change its forms but will always remain same in total. Conservation of mass says that one mass can change to other mass with totally different properties but the net mass of the system will always remain the same. Law of conservation of momentum says that if two objects of different momentum come in contact – collide, the total momentum before collision will be equal to the total momentum after collision.

In the same sense, angular momentum is also conserved in the natural phenomena.

So, now consider that two particles are generated from a particle with certain spin. In order to conserve the angular momentum of the system, the two particles will have exactly opposite spin of each other. This nullifying spin with the spin of the object they are created from will give the net constant spin to the system, thereby conserving the angular momentum of the system.

For any system the momentum is conserved

This type of connection between the new two particles from a system is called as the entanglement in quantum mechanics. (This may be, is the exact cinematic love that transcends all the barriers, all the dimensions in your favorite SCI-FI movies and fantasy movies!)

God does not play dice

In quantum mechanics, when one tries to measure the state of a subatomic particle, the act of measurement gives a state of that particle, but this act of measurement for getting the information about that particle also fixes the state of another particle entangled with it.

Meaning that if you separate the two entangled particles at a distance and measure the spin of one particle then spin of another particle gets fixed at the moment of measurement. The question is that, how does the other particle get the information of the first particle being measured and its state? Einstein called this idea as “spooky action at a distance”.

The EPR Paper

Einstein was so sure that there is something lacking in the theory of quantum mechanics that he published his idea about the incompleteness of quantum mechanics today famously known as the EPR Paper. Albert Einstein with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen published the paper to explain why theory of quantum mechanics was still incomplete.

The abstract of this paper itself is intriguing:

Einstein debates that the reality is bound with all variables perfectly known. Hence, for a theory to be complete and to perfectly explain the reality there has to be one variable for each behavior. Hence, according to Einstein, as the quantum theory is completely based on wave function thereby becoming probabilistic (because wave function only gives the probability of measuring the information of the electron and does not pinpoint it) it is not giving the certain, definite, sure answers to the questions thrown at it. In simple words, if you ask a quantum physicist to pinpoint the electron around a nucleus, she/he won’t pinpoint the electron, instead they will tell that in this area there are high chances that you will find electron. As if, the quantum physicists have not studied the system completely, there is some unknown behavior that they haven’t identified yet which will complete the whole theory. Knowing this unknown variable will remove the tolerances in the theory, will remove the probabilistic nature of the theory.

Hence, Einstein puts the argument in two pieces:

First one attacks the lack of awareness of the all the variables in the quantum theory

The second one attacks on the reality, reality implying that the condition of having a definite state.

In short, either we don’t know completely about what is happening in quantum world or the quantum world does not have a real state.

Where the determinism and theory of relativity breaks

You have to understand the implications of the ideas put forth by Einstein and his colleagues in this paper. Einstein debated that the entangled particles when getting entangled secretly decide the state they are going to be. Hence, when one measures the information of the entangled particles, they seem to have been decided already. As if they have conspired about their states and our quantum theory is lacking to explain this conspiracy. The idea of fixing this state already established the concept of determinism. That every behavior in nature is already decided, it is only our lack of knowledge about nature which actually surprised us about the outcomes we experienced. If we have complete model of nature’s behavior we will not be surprised by the outcome, rather we will predict the outcome in advance. This was the heart of Einstein’s debate.

One more reason for Einstein’s debate on incompleteness of quantum mechanics was his own theory of relativity. According to Einstein’s theory of relativity, nothing in the universe can travel faster than the speed of light. The clever trick quantum mechanics holds it that even after being separated at larger distance where the light will take significant time to travel from one particle to its entangled counterpart the information of the first particle being measured is instantaneously transferred to the another entangled one. If this is happening instantaneously, then the information of one particle being measured has to travel faster than light to the another entangled one. This was also one point of concern for Einstein.

The concept of locality becomes important here. According to the principle of locality, only the immediate surrounding can affect the state of an object thereby limiting the speed information lesser than the speed of light. But, in quantum mechanics the information transfer is instantaneous irrespective of the distance, meaning that the state of one object even after not being in immediate surrounding is affecting the state of its entangled counterpart. (Park this idea of “locality” for one interesting concept called Quantum Cryptography). This meant that quantum effects if are true then they are non-local. Which established the concept of “non-locality” – challenging and exposing the limits of Einstein’s theory of Relativity. That is why Einstein always argued about the incompleteness of Quantum Mechanics. There were some practical explanations to believe so.

The understanding of Einstein about the incompleteness of quantum mechanics was not just a random philosophical pursuit or some complicated thinking done in the air which was incomprehensible for comparatively dumb people of the times. His idea of reality was influenced by the famous mathematician of his time called Jon von Neumann who was obsessed with structuredness of the fundamental theories. Rather he was the one who defined the standards of a good fundamental theory.

Einstein was unsettled with the idea of the probabilistic nature of the quantum mechanics.

This is the only reason which got Einstein into formulating “The Theory of Everything”. A theory which will combine the gravity from his theory of relativity to the theory of generation of fundamental forces of nature from quantum mechanics (if proven right in his time). Even in his last moments of his life, Einstein was working on “The Theory of Everything”. Today String theory and Loop Quantum Gravity are two strongest contenders for theory of everything. Humanity’s most brilliant minds are working on these theories. The problem is that these theories are completely abstract, conceptual to date and still in incubation mode to design a measurable experiment to check and validate the predictions.

The Nobel Prize in Physics for year 2022 is actually awarded to the contributions made for the real- life experimentation done to prove the completeness of the Quantum Mechanics and its implementation in real world.

The Nobel Pursuit- Bell’s Inequality

The EPR paper went in hibernation for years but, this actually became a reality in near future. The paper attracted the attention of one of the physicists at CERN called John Stewart Bell. Bell formulated a mathematical argument to explain the idea of hidden local variable in system. If this mathematical argument is proved to be right then this would also prove that Einstein was right all the time.

The Bell’s Paper where he established the inequality due to hidden variable

The beauty of Bell’s inequality is that that it gathers the intangible ideas and inspirations from EPR paper and probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics, wave function into a one definite, measurable and quantifiable equation. The equation given by Bell was testable in real world so that some concrete conclusions could be drawn about the completeness of quantum mechanics.

Bell developed a mathematical expression which was based on the assumption that the quantum mechanics has to be “Locally Real”. Where, Local means that the phenomena in quantum mechanics are not faster than the speed of light as explained and proven by theory of relativity; Real means that quantum mechanics is actually deterministic meaning that every measurement done in quantum mechanical system will give an exact answer, a definite value, a surety, it is only our lack of understanding of some hidden variables which cause the quantum mechanics to not be real.

Once the hidden variable/s in the quantum mechanics are identified, then theory will become consistent with the Classical Mechanics.

Smart thing about Bell’s equation is that it used the ideas of probability to show that quantum mechanics is not probabilistic.

Here is simplification of the idea explained by Bell:

We will set up an experiment where we will measure the spin of two entangled particles. You have to understand that in quantum mechanics the act of measurement itself changes the state of the quantum particle. So, when you are measuring the spin of a particle in say Z-direction, after measurement it spin value will no longer be the same as the measured value.

Now what we will do is that we will measure Z-direction component of the spin of one particle in Lab 1 and X-directional component of the spin of the another one which is entangled with the previous particle in Lab 2. Please note that the distance can be as large as possible on the condition that both labs receive undisturbed, un-interacted entangled quantum particles. The measurements will be exactly simultaneous.

So, the possible measurements we will get from the experiments where we only measure two variables are as follows:

The set of measurements when there are only two variables will be:

Here, M1, M2, M3, M4 are the measurements taken. Thus, for set of all measurements:

Now, the real game begins. According to EPR paper, if there are additional hidden variable/s in the model of quantum mechanics which we are not considering, the number of possible outcomes from the same experiment will increase. Say, if there is one hidden variable which we had not considered before while devising the Quantum theory called Q1, and now we are measuring this additional variable in the experiment then the number of possible states of entangled particles increase as follows:

When a new hidden variable is present in the system and if we measure that additional measurement as Q the number of possible combinations of measurement will increase. See below:

The set of measurements will be:

So, what will be the probability, the chance of getting Z directional spin positive and X-directional spin positive? i.e., What will be P (Z+, X+)?

Now, if there is one hidden variable and we are measuring that hidden variable then for the person who measures Z and Q the value of P (Z+,Q+) will be:

Similarly, for the person measuring X with hidden variable Q the value of P (X+,Q+) will be:

Now pay attention,

If we combine these three equations to establish the relation between them, the equation will be as follows:

Which is the Bell’s Inequality.

And is true, if we put the exact values,

In simple words, more variables driving the system, more will be the combinations of the measurements and thereby more complex the equation need to be to completely explain the system.

If there is hidden variable in the system, the number of possible combinations of measurements will be more than the system with lesser variables considered in the study. Which in turn will affect the balance of the possibilities of the events.

Now understand where does the quantum mechanics starts playing its tricks.

When we start to put the one-to-one values in this equation, we will realize what probabilistic nature can do. Due to the probabilistic nature of the quantum system, the measurements will not have a discrete value which lies on a straight line, rather it follows a sine wave, and if we substitute the values of the measurements from the sine wave function the inequality actually breaks.

The wave function in quantum mechanics actually tell what value it will have for measurement at certain angle. Which is indicated by the blue line in the graph below. The wave function only tells that what will the possibility that the spin will be +1 or the possibility that the spin will be – 1. The red line indicates that the measurements will be discrete (either up spin (+1) or down spin (-1)).

Wave function does not give discrete values

For our example, if one makes a measurement of so-called hidden variable between Z- component and X-component i.e., along Q axis lying between 45 degrees from both Z and X axes the outcome will break the equality as follows:

The values for the Bell’s Inequality for quantum mechanical measurements is given by using the sine wave given in the graph above:

Hence, from the Wave Function in Quantum Mechanics:

Hence, for Bell’s Theorem in Quantum Mechanical System the inequality breaks as follows:

Which is not possible, indicating that Bell’s inequality does not hold true for quantum mechanics. Proving mathematically that there is no hidden variable in Quantum Mechanics. Quantum measurements are not discrete and give definite values, rather the measurements can take any value until we are measuring them, we can only give the probability of how the measurement will be.

This was a shock for those who considered reality as a very sophisticated and definite. The wave function of quantum mechanics does not follow the Bell’s Inequality. There was a strong need for devising an experiment to check and confirm what actually is true. But you must appreciate the power of mathematics and the intellectual level of human mind which can give such deep insight about the nature of reality.

John Stewart Bell
You can see that he has written the outcomes by classical way as 2 and by quantum way as 2 multiplied by square root of 2

The CHSH inequality

The first person with Nobel Prize in Physics of 2022 called Jon Clauser devised an actual experiment to check the Bell’s Theorem and to confirm whether there is any hidden variable in quantum mechanics. Jon Clauser, Michael Horne, Abner Shimony, and Richard Holt created the experiment and the CHSH inequality for the experiment from the Bell’s inequality.

The setup for experiment is as follows:

Two experimenter Alice and Bob (two important people in quantum cryptography. We will discuss about them in upcoming part) will receive a quantum particle simultaneously. The particles are entangled. Meaning that if Alice measures the Z-directional spin of her particle the spin will change in that direction so Bob again measuring the Z-directional spin of his particle which is entangled with Alice’s particle will give new and changed spin value in Z-direction thereby making the measurement meaningless.

So, what Bob will do is that he will measure the X – directional spin of his particle exactly when Alice measures the Z-directional spin of her particle. As the two particles are entangled with each other, we will know two states of the entangled quantum particles simultaneously (which seems like some type of cheating but is a pure possibility). The CHSH inequality for the system becomes as follows:

For any number of measurements, when spin of Alice’s particle in Z-direction indicates +1 then the Bob’s entangled one will have spin -1 in X-direction and vice versa. So, according the spin measurements, the maximum possible outcome of the equation is 2. When the experiment is repeated multiple times to converge to a fixed value, we get the statistical average of the measurements (remember that the wave function is probabilistic in nature, hence only statistical average of the measurements will yield a definite value for the equation)

Thus, for hidden variable in quantum mechanics,

Where the angular brackets indicate the statistical average of the measurements known as Dirac’s bracket notation.

But, from actual experiments done by John Clauser the CHSH inequality breaks. And the result is:

This proved that quantum mechanics does not follow the local realism as conventional classical mechanics do. Quantum mechanics does not have any hidden variable which are causing its probabilistic nature. Rather the reality is probabilistic instead of deterministic, predefined.

In the experiment done by John Clauser and his colleagues, they measured the polarization of entangled photons in two directions.

There was one loophole in the experiment of John Clauser. The angles of polarizers were preset or fixed before the entangled particles were sent out to observers from the source. This adds additional determinism in the experiment thereby making “Locally Real” to some extent, therefore the observations were to some extent discrete. I simple words, the experiment done by John Clauser and his colleagues proved a special case of for inconsistency of Bell’s inequality in Quantum Mechanics.

What Alain Prospect the second Nobel Laureate for Physics in 2022 did, that he closed this “loophole of locality”. Alain Prospect and his colleagues devised an experiment where it was possible to switch the detector settings after the entangled particles are released from the source. In simple words, Alain Aspect’s experiment increased the randomness of the combinations and the removed deterministic, predefined nature of measurement.

Quantum Teleportation and Quantum Cryptography

So, now know that the quantum entanglement is real phenomena and not only mathematics but the experiments also follow the principles, it demands the value addition to the society. The third Nobel Laureate for Physics in 2022 – Anton Zeilinger used these principles for transfer of encrypted information.

It is now established that if one particle’s state is measured in a setup at that exact moment the state of the particle entangled with it gets fixed irrespective of the distance. It shows that the information of the first particle being measured is transferred with the speed faster than the speed of the light.

But there is one more catch,

If we have to check the state of the second entangled particle to understand how the first particle behaved, we need to understand in what orientation of the equipment the first particle was measured. This information of the orientation of the equipment cannot be shared to the other end beyond the speed of light. But there is still use of this information. If only the people at both the ends measuring the entangled particles know the settings, orientation of measuring equipment, then only they can understand what the states of particle are.

If the entangled particles interact with some other particles or are intercepted by some enemy, there states will no longer remain the same. The information of the orientation of the equipment will show that.

Hence, the orientation of the equipment for measuring the state of entangled particles becomes a secret key for two observers- one of them is sender and another one is the receiver.

And this is exactly called as Quantum Cryptography. Quantum Teleportation refers to the transfer of information irrespective of the distances as the entanglement is instantaneous.

This implementation of quantum teleportation was done Anton Zeilinger and his colleagues using photons.

Alice will decide the equipment orientation while measuring the state

Bob will use the information of Alice’s equipment orientation for decryption

The one where someone tried to intercept

The name Alice and Bob- The “Power-couple of Quantum Cryptography” first appeared in a paper. The Alice and Bob characters were invented by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman in their 1978 paper “A Method for Obtaining Digital Signatures and Public-key Cryptosystems”. Instead of using some boring name Machine A and Machine B they used Alice and Bob. (Some say that the secret message is Valentine’s Day Poem). The names became popular in no time and for any experiment in quantum mechanics you need to involve Alice and Bob. (Given that the love they have for each other!)

Philosophical implications of Bell’s inequality

The breaking of Bell’s Inequality shows that the quantum mechanical system has no hidden variables. Please note that the quantum mechanical systems are the most fundamental systems to date for the whole humanity’s understanding of the universe. This implies that even though the fundamental nature our reality is consistently changing, there are ways to completely understand. One can know the complete system without understanding it’s hidden variables.

The breaking of this inequality both theoretically and experimentally proves that the reality is not definite, predefined. This shows that nature is not deterministic. The idea that reality is mere superposition of infinite possibilities and the one of them becomes apparent only when you interact with them measure is really enlightening. The approach of your measuring equipment, the way you approach the things in nature is like the perspective you hold. The things will define their states their nature according to your perspective is such a humbling idea and learning from all these efforts of humanities greatest minds.

References and Further Readings:

Press release: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2022
Three scientists share Nobel Prize in Physics for work in quantum mechanics
Quantum Mechanics – The Theoretical Minimum by Leonard Susskind and Art Friedman
The EPR Paper – Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete? A. Einstein, B. Podolsky, and N. Rosen Phys. Rev. 47, 777 – Published 15 May 1935
What exactly is the ‘spin’ of subatomic particles such as electrons and protons? – Scientific American
The Universe Is Not Locally Real, and the Physics Nobel Prize Winners Proved It– Scientific American
Is the Moon There When Nobody Looks? Reality and the Quantum Theory – N. David Mermin, Physics Today 38, 4, 38 (1985)
Pioneering Quantum Physicists Win Nobel Prize in Physics – Quanta magazine
Einstein’s ‘spooky action at a distance’ spotted in objects almost big enough to see – Science
How Bell’s Theorem Proved ‘Spooky Action at a Distance’ Is Real – Quanta magazine
Bell’s Theorem – Brilliant.org
The EPR Paradox & Bell’s inequality explained simply by Arvin Ash – YouTube
Local Reality and the CHSH Inequality – Qiskit
The Experiment that Disproved Reality by Keystone Science – YouTube
Security’s inseparable couple: Alice & Bob
Poster Image of The History of the Atom – Theories and Models – http://www.compoundchem.com/
Images References: Alain Aspect | John F. Clauser | Anton Zeilinger | Sir Isaac Newton | Albert Einstein | John Stewart Bell

The Cost of An Apology

Rocketry- The Nambi Effect by R. Madhavan

I recently watched a movie by R Madhavan called ‘Rocketry- The Nambi Effect’. The movie is about the ambitions and the hardships of an Indian Aerospace Engineer to put his nation in the front-seat of rocket competition and the struggles faced by him due the false accusation of espionage and defamation caused after that. The movie has made a successful attempt to develop the feeling of proud for Nambi Narayanan in the first half and the feeling of real sorrow in the second half in the heart of every Indian. I think, this magic of creating a roller coaster of emotions, the magic of touching people’s heart is what movies and storytelling is all about. One can see R Madhavan’s sincere efforts, his dedication and the respect for the character in every frame of the movie.

The first half of the movie tells us about the scholastic levels of Mr. Nambi Narayanan, the smart decisions, the boldness of his character which developed the foundations of the ISRO in an aggressive and cost-effective ways. Right from the idea of visionary thinking of Cryogenic rocket engines, to the pointing out an error in the famous author’s books, to completing time-consuming full fledged research work in mere 10 month, to getting hands on French technology, solving the flaws in it, to getting the technology from Russians knowing the high levels of risks associated with it are the highlighted events which show the greatness of Nambi Narayanan’s love for the nation and his genius.

The second half is about the false charges put on Nambi Narayanan on selling secrets to other country for personal gains. Then the mental and physical torture he and his family went through will break your heart. One can only imagine what could have happened in reality with the person and his family. The second half is about the attitude of Mr. Nambi Narayanan’s persistence, the attitude of not giving up, the belief in truth and his unending love for the nation.

The conclusion of the movie is an apology to Nambi Narayanan which is such a smart and humble execution by R Madhavan for which he deserves very special recognition. We are really sorry for failing such ‘heroes of the nation and the society’.

While watching the scene of the interrogation of Nambi, there is this moment where the government officer asks Nambi that why nobody of his acquaintances from ISRO came to visit him when everybody is now aware of the accusations against him. They would have definitely tried to meet him if he was really innocent. Here, Nambi explains one common behavior of scientists- such behavior can be expected from majority of people but not scientists. Majority of people would have had thought of visiting their loved ones or their colleagues when jailed but scientists are somewhat eccentric when it comes to such “social-ideas”. This thing is effectively depicted in mere few seconds of the movie, which struck me.

One important thing that hit me during watching the movie ‘Rocketry’ was that history has similar examples of hardships faced by the flag bearers of science, knowledge and truth. Some notable examples are the Socrates, Alan Turing, Galileo Galilei, Rhazes and even Albert Einstein.

Socrates

One of the greatest philosophers the history has ever known, the founder of western philosophy was also victim of a trial which finally led to a death penalty for him. The trial of Socrates was one of the notable events in the ancient Greek history. The charges laid on Socrates were: corrupting the youth, worshiping false Gods and not worshiping the state religion. Socrates tries to defend himself but was unsuccessful. This was the time when the Athens was strongly under the influence of Sparta which was trying to take down the ancient Greece and taking down the greatest mind in Greece was pivotal move.

Anyways, despite having the chance to flee from Athens, Socrates accepted the death by consuming a poisonous liquid called “Hemlock”, knowing that what was done against him was wrong. Many people think that there were two different intentions – one political and one religious, which caused to this irreparable loss to Greek society then. The only hopeful thing is that his learnings lived forever through his disciples Plato and Xenophon. The ideas of Socrates corrupted (please mind the sarcasm!) great philosophers Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche and today’s youth till date. The famous painting called The Death of Socrates by Jacques-Louis David in 1787 tries to display the emotions at the final moments of Socrates which is a world-famous art.

The Death of Socrates by Jacques-Louis David

Galileo Galilei

The famous astronomer, engineer, physicist who invented the refracting telescopes which are practically in use still today, the ideas of projectile motion, the motions of pendulums, the inventor of an ancestor to the thermometer called thermoscope was also victim of the wrong charges from Catholic Church.

The sad thing about Galileo was he was accused for believing in the right idea which was against the ideas of the church of his time. The idea of “Heliocentrism”- the idea of Sun being the in the center and not the Earth disturbed the Catholic Church at that time. The ideas of Galileo were backed up by his telescope observations of cosmological bodies like The moon, Jupiter and its moons, Venus, Milky Way and The Sun.

Galileo remained under house arrest for the rest of his life for going against the wrong beliefs. His ground-breaking book called “The Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems” was banned, the publication, future writing was banned. Galileo had to take back his idea and remain in imprisonment for the rest of his life due to the pressure of the catholic church of those times.

On a bittersweet note, after the life of Galileo, the Vatican apologized Galileo for the wrong they had done. On 31st October, 1992 Pope John Paul (II) formally apologized for the case of Galileo and it took 359 years for an apology to such a scholar.

Alan Turing

One of the greatest mathematicians, the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence also had a painful story which should not remain unmentioned here. The Enigma machine – a sophisticated message scrambler- ciphering device’s code was successfully broke by Alan Turing which gave Britain the competitive edge in the second world war. Though his contributions remained unknown to the world during his lifetime due to the “Official Secrets Act”, the works of Alan Turing is influencing our modern lives in almost every possible way.

Alan Turing was prosecuted for being a homosexual which was illegal during those times and has to undergo a hormone treatment to lower his sexual desires which is also known as “Chemical Castration”. This treatment had great impact on Alan Turing. Alan Turing died by cyanide poisoning at the age of 42.

61 years after the prosecution of the homosexual act on Alan Turing, Queen Elizabeth II gave posthumous pardon to Alan Turing in 2013. It took 61 years for an apology to Alan Turing. This too has bittersweet ending like Galileo.

Rhazes

One lesser-known event and a person from history is the person called Abū Bakr al-Rāzī also known as “Rhazes”. Al-Rāzī from Baghdad, Persia is considered as one of the world’s first great medical experts; he is known for the very first diagnosis of Smallpox and Measles where he identified the epidemic nature of the diseases. He is also known for the introduction of psychology and psychotherapy in medical sciences.

Al-Rāzī introduced the ideas of Hippocrates- known as the father of Medicine to the Arab world which led to his arrest on the orders of local Priest. His ‘western’ teachings, his books were abandoned under the claims of heresy. One day, the torturers hit his head with his own manuscript which eventually led to permanent blindness. He couldn’t continue his practice due to blindness and died in poverty.

Today, al-Rāzī is considered as the greatest and the most original of all Muslim physicians by famous historians. He is recognized as the father of pediatrics. Iran celebrates 27 August as ‘Pharmacy Day’ – ‘Razi Day’ in the honor of al-Rāzī as his birthday.

Conclusion

In the movie ‘Rocketry- The Nambi Effect’ the director gives us the idea of the moment when the Nambi Narayanan is officially declared as innocent by the Supreme Court of India. One can see the immediate behavioral changes in people around him. At this moment, Nambi Narayanan tells his wife about how he will be dedicating his whole life only to his family especially her, which is chilling enough to highlight the dedication he had for his nation which had taken his priorities on nation over family. This is the moment when audiences also realize that scientists though eccentric, different in a way are still humans and have families, are father, are husband, are friend to someone.

One cannot compensate for the amount of mental and physical loss such scholars go through when they are charged with such bottomless accusations. This needs specific awareness amongst us as a conscious crowd. It becomes our responsibility as a society to treat the great minds, special minds with the respect and dignity they deserve.

Humans are flawed, people make mistakes. Mistakes can be corrected too. At this point it is also important to weigh out the mistakes, all mistakes cannot be weighed equal in such extremely sensitive cases because there is no turning back once cascade of events starts happening. This requires simple habit of stopping for a moment, responding to the rumors, events rather than reacting to them.

One important thing to highlight is that, “It is only sheer luck of Indians to be able to apologize, to get a chance to say sorry to such a great personality called Nambi Narayanan who sacrificed so much for the nation, personally and professionally”. His belief in the greater good for the nation’s development even after such mistreatment is the proof of his humble, honest and great character. We have R Madhavan to thank for giving every Indian this opportunity. The granter of opportunity to correct the mistake in some way also becomes important in this sense. The movie really proves its point as “Sometimes a man wronged is a nation wronged.” Indians rather every society should be thoughtful about such ill-treatments to their scholars and consider themselves lucky enough to have this chance within time (which is not comparable to the loss happened to them) to apologize such great minds.

I think, an apology is not an event or a moment which separates and erases the ill-happenings from the conditions today and hereon; an apology is an attitude, a process which should get reflected in the behavior of a person, a society for the present and the coming future.

The best apology is changed behavior
anonymous

Dune’s Ornithopters and Biomimicry

I recently watched Denis Villeneuve’s Dune in theater. The movie is a visual masterpiece. I would say it is a dark chocolate for eyes rather than eye candy. The character development is more visual and not just a general exposition. The most fascinating things in the dune universe are the equipment, machinery, tools which do not involve a computer intelligence to control or maneuver. Impressive thing is that the technology shown in the universe of dune, looks futuristic but people, their culture, beliefs, politics, religion remains frozen in the time. It seems the harshness and difficulty of living has made the advanced technology shed its attractive- rather ‘showpiece’ aspects and only the utilitarian aspects of technology are maintained forever. Here, the technology is truly representing as a tool of people.

One of the things from ‘the Duniverse’ that intrigued me is ‘the Ornithopters’. When I saw them taking flight, the only thing that came into my mind was ‘Hummingbird’. Ornithopters are the helicopters equivalents on Arrakis- the desert planet. The ornithopters on Arrakis are six or eight winged flying pods which look like dragonflies, in fact Denis Villeneuve intended their design in that way. They fly by flapping their wings like hummingbird and have far better maneuvering abilities that a normal helicopter. They can glide way better due to their aerodynamic dragonfly-like shape. Here, the technology draws inspiration from the nature. Hummingbirds are the birds which can fly backwards, side-ways and downwards; they can do somersaults and are better in long term hovering compared to other birds.

There are many examples in real life especially in technology, where inspiration is drawn from the nature. Inspirations from nature are taken to solve the design problems and is known as Biomimicry or Biomimetics. The word is self-explanatory- ‘Bio’ means nature and ‘mimicry’ means imitation, enactment, copying.

Popular example of biomimicry is the design of bullet train. The engineers were facing problem of sonic booms when the train entered through a tunnel with high speed. The engineers solved the problem by designing the front end of the train similar to the Kingfisher’s beak. The inspiration was drawn from a picture of kingfisher diving into the pond for fishing. When a kingfisher dives for fish, there is no splashing on the water surface. The picture is captured just at the moment when beak of the bird enters the surface of water. In order to execute a successful fish hunt, the entry through the water must remain swift; For proper target there should not be splashing of water because undisturbed water surface will have more clarity. Same phenomena, functionality was implemented in the design of the bullet train.

Lotus effect is also one good example of bio-mimicry. We all know the water repellent properties of lotus leaves, lily leaves. Two German botanists namely Wilhelm Barthlott and Christoph Neinhuis were studying highly magnified plant leaves. At high magnification of 1-20 nano-meters magnification, even a speck of dust can ruin the image. The botanists realized that there was no special need of sample cleaning for the lotus leaves samples. Upon detailed studies they found out that, there were two features contributing to the cleanliness of the leaves. One was the layer of wax, which is obvious for everyone. The second and the most unexpected feature was the presence of micro bumps on the surface. These small bumps trap air which creates higher contact angle between water and leaf surface. The water drop literally becomes spherical on these bumps as the air trapped between the bumps is pushing the water film inwards and surface tension is helping more and more to the formation of curvature.

This effect was replicated using negative- positive molding processes for the preparation of Self-cleaning surfaces. It is like molding a wax statue but the here the technique is precise to microscopic scale. Self cleaning paints are getting introduced in the market recently.

Main thing to understand is that, not everything we derive from the nature could be called as biomimicry. Biomimicry is more about functionality of the design. Giving wings to a machine to fly won’t be called as a biomimicry, it will be called as a ‘Bio-inspired design’. A Bio-inspired design is more inclusive term which covers Biomimicry (functions like nature), Bio-morphism (as in more similar in looks with nature) and Bio-utilization (uses nature as an agency). In the case of the ornithopters, it is the higher pivot providing design of the wings. The hummingbirds have these wings with highest pivot angle between wings and shoulders which enables them to maneuver exceptionally.

Hummingbird have wings with high pivot angle

There is one organization focusing on the Biomimicry. The ‘Biomimicry Institute’ is a non-profit organization striving for bringing people together to solve the problems using biomimicry. Nature itself is running the largest laboratory for billions of years and we can look for solutions to our problem by just asking one simple question- ‘How would nature solve this?’ Janine Benyus– Cofounder of Biomimicry Institute popularized biomimicry. Her TED talk is available on the institute’s website- biomimicry.org. You should visit the website to explore more.

Biomimicry has made us realize that nature is the largest library that humans can ever have. Its conservation is not just important for the sustenance, but it can highly contribute to the technological advancements of humanity. Whenever we are losing a species, we are losing an immense source of knowledge which was result of millions-billions years of nature’s research. The thought itself can bring us closer to nature- natural resources and its conservation. Biomimicry will create more pro-nature solutions to the problems. Sometimes modern problems require bio-mimicked solutions! (Yes, I did that ;D)

For further explorations just google these:

biomimicry.org
How a steppe eagle’s wingtip solved Airbus A380 Wake Turbulence problem – Richard Hammond’s Engineering Connections- Airbus A380 documentary by National Geographic
Gecko’s feet and surface adhesion
Lotus effect and self-cleaning paints
Invention of Velcro

How Frank Herbert used human psyche in the creation of Dune’s antihero?

Existentialism in Dune Part Two

The Prophecy – A Perfect Example of Confirmation Bias

Cognitive Dissonance and Identity – What Makes Paul to Seek the Ultimate Power?

The Pygmalion Effect – Is Paul Really the Messiah?

The Prophecy – Does ‘Free Will’ Really Exist in Dune?

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Dilemma of morality in the character arc of Paul Atreides

Boundaries of Right or Wrong – What is Moral? What is Ethical?

Are Morality and Ethics Objective?

Philosophy of Morality

Power and Aesthetics

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Neuroscience of the languages of love

Background – What is love? What is an emotion?

Love language

Brain vs heart – Neuroscience of love

How does a neuroscientist interpret love?

The Experiment

Why this experimental setup is important?

Observations – looking from a neuroscientist’s perspective

Conclusions

What does this mean to common person?

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How to gauge the trend and acceptance of any emerging technology?

The Wheel and The Fire

The Think Tanks For The Future

Influence Of Technological Breakthroughs On Humanity And Its Future

Gartner Hype Cycle

Key Takeaways From The Hype Cycle

Roy Amara’s Futurist Legacy for Predicting Breakthroughs

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Formula 1 and Safety

Need for Halo

Problems and Challenges

The Emergence of Halo

Challenges with Halo

One design to save them all

Are design decisions all about aesthetics?

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Can we extend our experiences beyond the limitations of our senses?

Extending human vision

Neil Harbisson – the cyborg with antenna

The “eyeborg” and its feedback

Hearing music from a painting

The colors from a song

Neil’s Eyeborg and Synesthesia

A mix-tape of senses and the hidden reality – philosophical implications

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Bell’s Inequality and The Completeness of Quantum Mechanics

Classical Mechanics

Rise of Quantum Mechanics and the EPR Paper

The Quantum Leap

The Wave Particle Duality

Spin of an electron

Quantum measurements are never “Gentle”

Einstein’s problem with the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics

The entanglement- the bizarre child of an innocent mother

God does not play dice

The EPR Paper

Where the determinism and theory of relativity breaks

The Nobel Pursuit- Bell’s Inequality

The CHSH inequality

Quantum Teleportation and Quantum Cryptography

Philosophical implications of Bell’s inequality

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Socrates

Galileo Galilei

Alan Turing

Rhazes

Conclusion

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