My Interest in Science
The young specialist in literature, lectured me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the Universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern "knowledge" is that it is wrong.
My answer to him was, “when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
- Isaac Asimov
I have a broad interest in many fiends of sciences, including biochemistry, molecular biology, organic and inorganic chemistry, nuclear chemistry and particle physics, as well as astrophysics. Unfortunately, my knowledge in some of these fields are quite limited, but the curiosity is still there.
One subject I have little interest, is traditional biology. Many people find it surprising, considering my major of biochemistry, because they mistaken biochemistry with biology. Generally speaking, biochemistry is a new branch of chemistry with a life science touch to it. It basically studies the chemical substances and chemical reactions occurring in organisms, such as proteins, DNA, and their chemical reactions. Biology, on the other hand, studies organisms and their growth, habitat, evolutions, etc. I do not have a strong interest in the latter because Biology seems very observational: the experiments or calculation one can do to predict future phenomena is extremely limited. The conclusions one can draw from each observation is often, well, inconclusive. This attitude also influences what kind of biochemical experiments I feel more comfortable doing. For instance, I feel much far more comfortable performing in vitro protein assay than in vivo genetic screening, because I feel as though I have complete control of everything in vitro. Where in vivo, there are always elements you cannot account for, therefore it usually makes the experimental results seem more suspicious to me. In vitro experiments also enable us to figure out the exact mechanism which some reaction occurs, something very difficult to do in vivo.
Another area where I have a very intense interest is physics. Theories regarding black holes, space-time and general relativity are very intriguing. I believe the reason for my intense interest is the possibility of time travel.
I always have some thoughts that puzzle myself. If time is a dimension, why prevents us from traveling freely in time, at least when we have the proper technology. We can travel in other 3 dimensions, what makes time so special? Therefore, I believe at least some type of time travel into the "past" is possible.
For a moment, let's assume we have indeed invented a time traveling machine. If we travel back into the past, can we change the history? If we can change history, what would happen to the present? Some simple little alteration in the past can have a drastic change in the present/future events. Now the following can be seen as philosophical. If we cannot change the history, can we change the future? After all, the present is merely a point in the 4-dimention space-time. If history cannot be changed, what makes the future so special, that it can be changed? Likewise, if future can be "changed," what makes the past so special, that it cannot be changed? Is the future pre-determined? Well, if I understand Heisenberg's Uncertainly Principle right, one cannot know exactly what will happen in the future. Even if one obtain all the information of every single particle in the universe, and the future is still a probabilistic model. These thoughts lead me into entertaining with the possibility of a parallel universe.
For the time being, without any concrete evidence of any kind, I personally believe in the existence of parallel universe. At least according to my limited knowledge, parallel universe allows to explain all these seemingly paradoxes. When one travels back in time, and the moment ANY discrepancy is made from the original history, another universe is "created" in a sense that, although the "future" is being changed, it did not happen in the original universe the time traveler come from. Two sets of universes exist simultaneously, each with a distinct reality of its own.
If multi-verse does contain multiple or even an infinite number of parallel universes, is it possible for the different universes to communicate with each other? Perhaps not. Each reality would be of its own. Perhaps yes. Maybe it is possible to travel to different universes through another dimension. String theory, anyone? I'll write something when more crazy thoughts come up. I may be completely out of whack, but hey, I'm only a biochemist. This kind of stuff is completely out of my area of expertise. Cheers!