EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED PART-I

Written by: Ankush Bhalerao

THE WORLD’S A LINKED LIST; WE’RE ALL ITS NODES

This very idea will leave you awe-struck: a wrong turn of a car has framed much of the reality you are experiencing around. At Sarajevo, on June 28, 1914. Archduke Franz- Ferdinand, the heir of Austria-Hungary's throne, had come for a royal visit to the newly annexed Serbian province. Despite several warnings, the royal convoy was proceeding through the streets, where an assassination attempt of the Archduke took place. He escaped without a scratch, as the bomb was catapult on a car that was far behind. The royal couple went on for a reception at the City Hall, which raised sympathy for him for risking life after the incident. They further decided to visit the victims at the hospital. The streets were still jam-packed. While speeding the open-touring car a few metres away from the hospital, the driver took a turn in the wrong direction. Too late. Before he could reverse, a Serbian youth made a way through the crowd, from a point-distance took aim and shot the Archduke and his wife. When in a period when the sympathy for the Prince was developing, this event angered Austria-Hungary to issue an ultimatum to the Serbian government and instantly declaring war. The tension mounted and bifurcated the European continent into two powers, thus beginning the conflict, now known as the First World War. Politics changed, maps changed, ideologies changed. The end of the war still sowed the seeds of the second world war. The tussle between powers led to many inventions and technological advancements, and here we land in a much different world.

This little event of taking the wrong turn, accident to be precise, sparked the spirits of nationalism, which otherwise were on the wane, for in the next few days, many peace agreements were to be signed. But no matter how far you drive, fate brings you back to the acclaimed philosophy- 'EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED.'

If you connect the dots accurately, you realize the links present between things, incidents, people, entities, and everything that exists, no matter how insignificant they are. As if something undistinguished courses through all and binds us together. Well, in fiction like Star Wars, they conveniently refer to this as 'the Force' that surrounds everything. Although this is just an imagination for the audience to glue themselves for straight three hours in theatres, science today does explain how everything is still intact.

There are special events, which could be more in number than now imagined, in which two separate particles like photons exist in such a manner that their characteristics cease to prevail independently. It does not depend upon the separation between them; they could be a few galaxies apart. It is one of the most impressive quantum physical phenomena called quantum entanglement that relates and confirms the theory of connections. The space-time fabric approach suggests everything in the universe is joined with this space-time fabric and distorts it uniquely. The no-hiding theorem is experimental evidence for the fact that information is neither created nor destroyed. It just changes form and establishes affiliations.

Let's scale to the gargantuan universe. Everything commenced with a singularity, a point, which exploded, known as 'the Big Bang' and kept on expanding and still does. Whatever you see around you, below on the ground or up above in the sky, even light-years apart, traces back to that single point. Among many pieces of proof for this is the cosmic microwave background radiation. This radiation is detected to have filled all the space. Generated by the photon decoupling in the early stages of the universe, which sent photons in all directions, this radiation still propagates and marvellously conjoins everything. The fact which leaves in amazement is that the beautiful 26 universal constants like gravitational constant are such interwoven that they all together form conditions that favour life on the earth. This fine tuning, therefore, brings us to the conclusion that a planet with similar conditions could sustain life. If any of these constants would have a different value, there could be a different universe, maybe one without life. Our body literally speaks with the universe; our elements link back to the stars. The iron that runs through the blood vessels was synthesized in the core of a star. Gold, by which the body ornaments, came from a supernova. Neil DeGrasse Tyson well comprehends this and says, "We are all connected, to each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe, atomically. We are not figuratively, but literally stardust."

If in such endless space-time there are so many associations, then think about those on the earth. Life began as a single cell and went on evolving, and now we look around to see a spectrum of biodiversity, all derived from the same cell. Only when you connect with yourself, with others, and the cosmos, will you realize that it's a small world.

An interesting six-handshakes rule suggests that every person on-average is at the most six social connections away from others. It means you can link up any two persons with the statement 'friend of a friend' repeated six times. You are related, to the people you've never met, to the places you've never been.

Perhaps this thought leaves a person in bewilderment, who wonders,

I am a part of the world, but why am I here?

Life in everything is a part of me.

The earth calls to me and says, "You are the only you."

I whisper back, "And we are the only we!"

To be continued...