The universe could well be nearly twice as old as the widely accepted 13.797 billion years. That extraordinary contention in a recent paper by University of Ottawa Professor Rajendra Gupta has the potential to upend much of what one has come to accept about the age of the universe.
Prof Gupta’s paper revives a nearly 100-year-old tired light theory and lets it coexist with the expanding universe to arrive at its real age of 26.7 billion years. In a sense, he reinterprets the redshift, or the light stretched by the expanding universe into the red end of the electromagnetic spectrum, as a hybrid phenomenon, rather than purely due to expansion. He spoke to Mayank Chhaya Reports to explain the physics of the age of the universe.
Prof Gupta’s paper revives a nearly 100-year-old tired light theory and lets it coexist with the expanding universe to arrive at its real age of 26.7 billion years. In a sense, he reinterprets the redshift, or the light stretched by the expanding universe into the red end of the electromagnetic spectrum, as a hybrid phenomenon, rather than purely due to expansion. He spoke to Mayank Chhaya Reports to explain the physics of the age of the universe.
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00:36 - The universe could well be nearly twice as old
00:41 as the widely accepted 13.797 billion years.
00:46 The extraordinary contention in a recent paper
00:49 by University of Ottawa, Professor Rajendra Gupta
00:52 has the potential to upend much of what we have come
00:57 to accept about the age of the universe.
00:59 What triggered Professor Gupta's study
01:02 was some profoundly puzzling discoveries
01:04 by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope,
01:08 to in particular through of the astrophysics community,
01:12 a star named Methuselah,
01:14 which is at least a billion years older than the universe,
01:18 and several fully mature galaxies
01:22 within barely 300 million years of the Big Bang.
01:26 In other words, what should have taken billions of years
01:29 of cosmic evolution was evident in these galaxies
01:33 so soon after the Big Bang.
01:36 These discoveries were seen by many
01:38 in the astrophysics community
01:40 as having the potential to force
01:43 the reinvention of cosmology.
01:45 Professor Gupta's paper revives
01:48 a nearly 100-year-old tide light theory
01:51 and let it coexist with the expanding universe theory
01:55 to arrive at its real age.
01:57 In a sense, he reinterprets the red shift
02:01 or the light stressed by the expanding universe
02:04 into the red end of the electromagnetic spectrum
02:07 as a hybrid phenomenon,
02:09 rather than due purely to the expansion.
02:13 Professor Gupta spoke to Mahindra Shire Reports
02:16 to explain the physics of the age of the universe.
02:20 Welcome to Mahindra Shire Reports,
02:22 Professor Rajendra Gupta.
02:23 It's a great pleasure to have you on.
02:25 Likewise, I'm very happy to be talking to you.
02:29 I hope I can answer your question.
02:31 I can't guarantee, but I will try.
02:33 - Well, you've written that extraordinary paper.
02:36 I'm sure I'll fall short of my question.
02:38 So let's begin with the remarkable
02:42 tide light hypothesis,
02:43 which is at the heart of your paper.
02:46 - Yeah. - I know what it is.
02:47 I mean, I understand broadly
02:49 and how it's making sort of a comeback
02:51 after it was first proposed in 1929 by Fritz Zwicky.
02:57 Tell my viewers a bit about what tide light hypothesis is
03:02 and why you turned partly to that.
03:04 - Actually, tide light theory has been,
03:09 as you said, it has been something
03:14 which was proposed by Zwicky a long time ago.
03:16 And the basis of that tide light theory
03:20 is that they thought that the light traveling
03:26 very large distances,
03:29 perhaps get tired
03:32 and the loss of energy of photons or light
03:37 is proportional to the energy of the photon itself
03:42 in the distance traveled.
03:44 And based on that, and using the Hubble's law,
03:48 which says that essentially recessional velocity
03:52 or so-called recessional velocity,
03:55 he thought at that time,
03:57 which Zwicky did not think it was recessional at that time,
04:02 using the Hubble's law that says
04:05 velocity is proportional to the distance
04:08 and proportionality constant is H zero, for example,
04:11 the Hubble's constant, what we call it today.
04:13 And he derived a relation
04:19 between the distance and the photon energy loss.
04:23 And that became known as the tide light theory.
04:28 What happens that whether you take the expansion model
04:33 or the tide light theory,
04:37 in the limit of very small redshift,
04:40 they all reduce to the same expression.
04:43 So as a result, in the early days,
04:47 the redshift of the galaxies measured
04:50 or galaxies which they could see in the telescope
04:53 were relatively nearby.
04:55 Means Z was in the range of about 0.1 or less,
04:59 in that kind of range.
05:01 So as a result, this model, Zwicky's model,
05:06 as well as the expansion model,
05:08 they both fitted the data.
05:10 But the problem, there were other problems
05:14 which tide light could not explain.
05:18 And those were like the Tolman surface brightness
05:23 and why all those things were not very dominant
05:28 at that time.
05:29 But another thing was,
05:31 what is the mechanism of the energy loss?
05:34 And mechanism of the energy loss at that time
05:37 was taught as some kind of a scattering process,
05:40 similar to Compton scattering or something.
05:43 But if scattering happens,
05:45 then the image will get blurred.
05:49 But that was not found.
05:50 The images were very sharp.
05:53 So this is the reason the tide light
05:58 was not considered very seriously
06:01 and it lost ground after the launch of Hubble telescope.
06:06 Hubble telescope essentially led to
06:14 led us to see far distant galaxies,
06:19 Z redshift, we can go to about two or even higher.
06:25 And more recently, even higher redshift just by Hubble.
06:28 And that means people could really see that the data
06:33 which was available using Hubble
06:38 was not fitted by the tide light.
06:40 So tide light theory went on the sideline.
06:44 Essentially it was forgotten.
06:46 - I see.
06:47 So do I understand it right that both the expansion model
06:51 as well as the tide light model
06:53 do result in some measure of redshift?
06:56 - Yes, yes.
06:58 Both of them result in the redshift.
07:01 As I write in the book, I said,
07:03 the photons lose energy, they say,
07:08 that is proportional to the photon energy itself.
07:11 Loss of energy is proportional to the photon energy itself
07:14 and the distance traveled.
07:15 What is the mechanism?
07:16 That is not understood.
07:18 Even today, I can only hypothesize if you will ask me,
07:23 what is the cause?
07:25 I think is for the tide light,
07:28 I cannot say what exact physics is based on what we know.
07:33 But we don't know a lot of things.
07:36 So I say it is perhaps cosmic drag,
07:39 similar to the drag on particle
07:43 moving through a fluid with some viscosity.
07:47 And there are viscous models.
07:49 A lot of people talk about various things, you know,
07:52 but the field itself, see the field,
07:55 it has to be conservative.
08:00 Conservative fields, excuse me, I got disturbed.
08:06 - No, that's okay.
08:06 - The phone coming in.
08:07 The conservative fields are the one
08:12 in which you don't lose energy.
08:15 Means you enter the field, you may change in the energy,
08:19 but when you leave the field, you regain that energy.
08:22 But even if smallest component of the field
08:27 is lossy component, you might say,
08:31 then you will lose energy.
08:33 So it doesn't have to, it doesn't require a lot of
08:36 lossy component when you are traveling
08:40 such a long distances, large distances
08:43 for the energy to get lost.
08:45 So I feel there may be some way
08:49 that the photon lose energy, not through scattering.
08:52 - I see.
08:54 This is again, I'm diverging a bit,
08:56 say for the sake of argument,
08:59 the tide light theory had prevailed completely.
09:03 Would that then mean that the universe is necessarily static?
09:08 It's the tide light redshift that's the reality.
09:12 - That's right.
09:15 That's the prevailing concept at the time
09:19 when Einstein developed his theory,
09:21 that the light was, I mean,
09:25 the universe was a steady state
09:28 and it was always the same,
09:29 what they used to call perfect cosmological principle.
09:34 Perfect cosmological principle mean
09:37 not it is the same everywhere,
09:39 but every time it is the same.
09:42 So this is, see from anywhere,
09:45 anytime it should look the same.
09:47 Today we say it is the same,
09:50 look from anywhere it is the same,
09:52 but it is evolved through time.
09:55 - Okay.
09:56 Your paper explores if a hybrid between tide light
10:00 and an expanding universe can resolve
10:03 the impossible early galaxy problem
10:06 thrown up by the James Webb Space Telescope.
10:09 It's a remarkable combination that you've come up with.
10:13 Tell me a little more about it
10:15 in a way that some of my ordinary readers
10:18 and viewers would understand.
10:20 - Yeah, actually what I have done
10:24 is not really something very new.
10:29 If you recall at the time in the 17th century,
10:35 Newton proposed corpuscular theory of light
10:42 to explain his observations or observations of that time.
10:47 And it prevailed in the 18th century.
10:52 However, it could not explain diffraction pattern
10:55 of monochromatic light,
10:57 which were observed in the 19th century.
10:59 But the corpuscular theory was then replaced
11:07 with the wave theory of light.
11:10 However, wave theory could not explain
11:12 the photoelectric effect,
11:14 which was observed in the later part of the 19th century
11:19 and early part of the 20th century.
11:22 Einstein then invoked the particle concept of light
11:27 that was inspired by the Planck's work.
11:33 And he then explained the photoelectric effect.
11:37 So essentially he brought back the corpuscular idea,
11:42 but that doesn't mean that wave theory was not there.
11:46 So eventually people accepted that the photon or light
11:51 has both the properties, particle property
11:56 or corpuscular property,
11:58 which Newton proposed as well as the wave.
12:00 And eventually we know now every particle
12:02 has wave-like property
12:04 as well as the particle-like property.
12:07 So, you know, what I have proposed is something similar.
12:12 What I have done is I have,
12:15 I see, I saw some paper which said,
12:19 which explained very well the,
12:23 some of the observations of the James Webb Telescope
12:27 resolving impossible early galaxic problem.
12:31 And especially the sizes of the galaxies.
12:37 It took the sizes of the galaxies.
12:40 What we see is really from here,
12:43 the angular size of the galaxies.
12:45 We don't see what their physical sizes are.
12:49 And angular sizes are then converted
12:52 into physical sizes based on the model.
12:55 Now, if you use the Big Bang model,
12:59 then these sizes turn out to be very, very,
13:03 physical sizes are turning to be very small.
13:05 Whereas when you convert those angular sizes
13:11 using tire light model,
13:13 then they turn out to be reasonable.
13:15 So the position is that, yes,
13:18 you observe these very massive galaxies.
13:21 First problem is that how were they so early
13:25 in the Big Bang created and so quickly,
13:30 and they became similar in size and masses
13:35 as not size because size they thought were very small
13:38 according to the model,
13:40 but masses and shapes,
13:42 all these were and the frequency,
13:44 the metallicities of some of the galaxies
13:47 were similar to what we observe today.
13:50 So how it happened so quickly.
13:53 So this is the dilemma which was faced by the Big Bang model,
13:58 but the size was explained by this tire light.
14:04 So I read that paper, it was late last year.
14:09 And that gives me an idea because I always thought about
14:12 the tire light theory when I was very young at IIT Kanpur.
14:18 I was taught about those things,
14:22 but then I never worked on it.
14:23 So I went back to that and say,
14:26 maybe I can combine the two.
14:30 So why not take the best of the two worlds,
14:33 which explains the observations at the,
14:38 which Hubble telescope has at the,
14:42 you might say cosmic noon,
14:44 that is what they call it redshift around two to three range
14:49 and later, and also the other observation,
14:57 which is the JWST at cosmic dawn.
15:00 So if we combine the two,
15:02 then we can explain both of these things
15:05 and there'll be no conflict.
15:07 That was the inspiration I had.
15:09 - I see.
15:10 Within that context,
15:11 you did talk about the impossible early galaxy problem.
15:14 They were about 300 million years after the post Big Bang.
15:18 What about the Mesosceles, the star,
15:21 which is apparently a billion years older
15:23 than the old age of the universe?
15:26 - Yeah, these are the conflict things people have.
15:29 They don't understand how the star can be older
15:34 than the universe,
15:36 but then they say maybe our models for star formation
15:39 are not perfect.
15:41 So they tried to tune the star formation model.
15:45 Similarly, when they couldn't explain
15:49 the very largest galaxy formation,
15:52 they came up with the initial mass function,
15:54 for example, for the formation of galaxies,
15:58 that is modified.
16:00 The theories of the formation of stars and galaxies,
16:04 they try to modify and then say,
16:06 "Yes, if you modify these things,
16:08 then it can fit the observed data."
16:12 - I see.
16:12 What was your first reaction
16:14 when you first heard of the web images
16:17 about the impossible early galaxy
16:20 as well as the Mesosceles star?
16:22 - Actually, I wasn't sure about that.
16:27 I thought maybe these things are very early observation
16:31 and they might need some correction later on,
16:34 which happens.
16:35 And it did.
16:36 In one of the galaxy,
16:37 which was supposed to be at the redshift
16:41 of about 16 or 17 in that range,
16:44 it was eventually found to be at much lower reps,
16:47 redshift about four or five.
16:50 So they were concerned,
16:53 but at the same time,
16:54 people eagerly waited for the confirmation.
16:59 But many galaxies then did receive
17:02 spectroscopic confirmation of these galaxies.
17:07 And then we knew that a lot of galaxies
17:10 were in the range of from 350 to 500 million years
17:15 after the Big Bang.
17:20 So how can they be created so rapidly?
17:23 So people develop models to explain very quickly
17:26 how it can happen.
17:27 For example, some very large primordial black holes
17:32 were created and then set the material around it
17:37 with super editing rate.
17:42 As a result, these supernovas were formed
17:46 and all these things happen very rapidly.
17:48 But even 300 million years or 500 million years,
17:51 it's not very small timescale.
17:54 It is still quite significant timescale.
17:58 And very large stars, they live very short life.
18:02 So if you can form population three stars,
18:07 very large stars, the early stars,
18:10 very quickly, if you can find a way
18:12 of forming them very quickly,
18:14 and you do have higher density at that time
18:17 of matter compared to now when you are forming.
18:20 So there are a lot of things which can be used
18:24 to really produce these things.
18:26 But I think not everybody is convinced about that.
18:31 Not me only.
18:34 I mean, I have cited in my paper so many people
18:38 who are skeptical about these kind of approaches
18:43 which people have offered.
18:44 - At what point did you begin to consider
18:48 the idea of revising the age of the universe?
18:53 - Actually, I didn't revise the age of the universe.
18:56 I combined the two models.
18:57 And one of the way to combine is
19:03 that the distance traveled by light is the same.
19:08 Whether you use tired light
19:12 or you use the expansion of the universe,
19:16 the distance travel is the same.
19:18 Or if you use even both, the distance is still the same.
19:22 So this puts a constraint.
19:23 And that way you have two models.
19:27 One gives one distance.
19:29 One has a formula for distance,
19:33 one formula for distance.
19:34 Another one has another formula
19:36 or equation for a distance.
19:38 Now you equate these two distances.
19:40 They relate, then they are redshifts in certain ways.
19:47 You might say one causes redshift, that tired light.
19:52 Another expansion of the universe causes, say, ZX.
19:59 Okay, now this relationship, because distances are the same,
20:06 it can provide a relationship between ZX and ZT, tired light.
20:14 So this way you are not required to find another constant
20:19 or another kind of parameters to fit the data.
20:25 You don't require.
20:26 This is the advantage of doing this way.
20:29 Now, when I combine these things
20:32 and I do the analysis like the normal models are done,
20:36 I get that age.
20:39 Okay, so it is not that I put that age in.
20:43 It came out from the model.
20:44 - Oh, fair enough.
20:46 So, but you know what one reads around in regular press,
20:51 and I'm always somewhat skeptical
20:53 because more often than not,
20:54 they are driven by the ordinary readership,
20:58 their comprehension, et cetera.
21:00 But the figure of 26.7 billion light years,
21:04 which is almost double what we have been told
21:07 for decades now,
21:10 that specific figure I'm very interested in.
21:13 If you don't mind giving us a flavor
21:16 of how you calculate that.
21:18 - See, okay, for that to know is how is it calculated
21:24 with the standard Lambda CTM model.
21:29 - Okay.
21:29 - It is calculated based on extrapolating essentially
21:39 when the big bang might have offered,
21:41 which causes the expansion of the universe observed today.
21:46 So you essentially,
21:50 if you have observed an expansion of the universe today,
21:55 and it is accelerating at certain place,
21:57 you can backtrack it and see when it started.
22:02 That's the, if something is expanding,
22:07 then you have to know when did it start expanding.
22:10 For example, you launch something in,
22:15 when we have fireworks,
22:16 fireworks are going in the space
22:18 and we see they are exploding.
22:20 So you can see, okay, at this time they exploded,
22:23 and this is the way they are exploding in the sky
22:26 when they explode is very easy to calculate.
22:29 So essentially, the expansion rate provides you,
22:34 you trace it backward and you get the age of the universe.
22:38 And that expansion rate essentially,
22:40 it's a very simplified term, it's not exactly,
22:43 but approximately just to explain the concept
22:47 is that the Hubble parameter, which is H,
22:51 H is called H zero,
22:53 Hubble parameter is the rate of expansion parameter.
22:56 So it gives you rate of expansion in terms,
23:00 it says kilometer per second per megaparsec,
23:05 for example, that's the unit of it.
23:10 Now you extrapolate it and you can get
23:12 when the universe has started.
23:15 When you add another way of light to lose its energy,
23:25 that means all of the expansion
23:30 or all of the redshift is not due to the expansion.
23:35 That means your H zero parameter
23:38 becomes the Hubble constant parameter
23:42 related to the expansion part gets reduced.
23:46 If that reduces, that increases the H.
23:49 That means if it is expanding much more slowly,
23:53 that means it must have started much more earlier
23:57 to reach at this state.
23:59 If it is expanding faster,
24:01 then it must have started later.
24:03 That's the basic concept.
24:05 - Is it fair to say that the JWST findings
24:11 may begin to shake up the core of the Big Bang theory?
24:16 And there are already very passionate,
24:20 steady status even now.
24:21 For instance, I mentioned in my email
24:23 that I had spoken to Dr. Vikram Sinha,
24:26 who was one of the associates with Fred Hoyle,
24:29 the original founder of steady state theory.
24:33 And you do write in your paper
24:35 that you do refer to steady state theory in your paper.
24:38 Is it fair to assume that at least some measure
24:43 of reinstatement of that thinking?
24:48 - I think, okay, what is the hybrid
24:52 of an expansion universe and a steady state?
24:55 It means this is more slowly expanding?
24:57 - Right.
24:59 - If you combine the two, you say one theory says
25:03 it is expanding very fast, another we say no,
25:06 and then you combine,
25:07 then you get a slowly expanding universe.
25:09 Yes, so it is a hybrid thing.
25:13 But at the same time,
25:15 lot of findings of the Big Bang will remain.
25:20 There is no doubt about that.
25:21 Whatever astrophysics has been developed there,
25:24 most of the astrophysics is developed
25:26 observing the near universe,
25:32 not too far universe, but near time universe.
25:36 So all these things are still valid.
25:39 So this doesn't disappear,
25:41 just like Newton's law of physics.
25:44 They don't disappear in the everyday life.
25:47 But when you try to consider your GPS system
25:51 and GPS system has to correct
25:53 according to general relativity theory of Einstein,
25:56 otherwise soon you will lose your precision of the GPS.
26:01 So that's what kind of example I give that, yes,
26:06 when you come to very, some of the observation,
26:11 like as I mentioned, Hubble telescope when it was launched,
26:16 then it changed a lot of things,
26:18 our perception of the universe.
26:20 It doesn't, it put the Big Bang
26:24 on a firmer footing than before.
26:27 And then before that, you know,
26:30 the age of the universe when Hubble
26:33 found the recession of galaxies,
26:37 it was 2 billion years.
26:39 - Right.
26:40 - And before the Hubble,
26:43 it was between seven and 20 billion years.
26:47 Hubble then crystallized it to 13.8 billion years.
26:53 - Fine.
26:54 - Now, when we go back and analyze based on JWST data,
26:58 we find that this is not really easily explainable
27:05 with the, that kind of age perhaps.
27:10 It is more, much better explained with the,
27:15 I mean, it has more room to explain.
27:18 It's not only, see, you have 26.7 billion years
27:23 and you say it is about double of that.
27:25 But during the early time when the redshift was only
27:30 about 10 or 15,
27:35 at the time of 10,
27:37 the age of that time
27:42 was 10 times more than that of the Lambda CDM model.
27:47 So you have, instead of 300 million years
27:52 or 350, 400 million years available,
27:55 you have about 5 billion years available
27:58 for forming the galaxies.
28:00 That's a lot of time to be able to create your galaxies
28:03 and make them mature.
28:06 - I see.
28:07 - So it is more than double.
28:08 Double is today, but really a whole lot bigger
28:11 at the earlier times.
28:13 (indistinct)
28:16 - I'm going to propose something
28:18 which might sound ridiculous, silly,
28:20 but I'm going to do it anyway.
28:22 Decades ago, I had interviewed Dr. Jain Narlikar
28:27 in India.
28:29 And my sense from him talking about the steady state
28:33 was that even if the big bang,
28:35 ironically the big bang was coined as a mocking term
28:38 by Fred Hoyle himself.
28:39 - Of course, of course.
28:41 - So my point, I mean,
28:42 what I understood from that conversation
28:44 was that the universe has always been around.
28:49 The big bang was a mere local phenomenon, which goes on.
28:54 Is that a reasonable way to look at this at all?
29:00 - See, I think one could see it in different ways.
29:05 - Okay.
29:07 - One is big bang.
29:08 Big bang is extrapolation of what we know.
29:13 And then we say, okay, the element we observe,
29:16 how were they created?
29:17 And that's where the particle physics start coming.
29:21 You extrapolate to the extent to the very high density.
29:24 And then you say, okay, how do we get the elements?
29:27 Are they being created the ways in steady state theory
29:31 they are created or they are being created all at once,
29:35 at one point in time.
29:38 So according to Jentner, Likar and Hoyle,
29:40 they are continuously being created.
29:43 According to the big bang theory,
29:46 no, they were all created simultaneously.
29:48 And there may be a possibility that people say,
29:51 maybe it is going through the phases of expansion
29:54 and contraction and expansion and contraction.
29:56 And that's what we are observing.
29:58 And that could be as well, pulsating universe you might say.
30:02 So there are so many things,
30:04 all we know based on the observation, what people do,
30:08 they create the best possible model
30:10 to explain the observation.
30:11 And when we have some new observation,
30:15 then we try to fit them and then we may have to modify.
30:18 This is a continuous evolving process in science.
30:21 - Right.
30:23 You know, Roger, speaking of all that,
30:26 Roger Penrose has been really pushing
30:29 the conformal cyclic cosmology,
30:32 much to the chagrin of many physicists.
30:35 In fact, he has gone on record saying,
30:39 it is a bit more like Hindu philosophy.
30:41 These are his exact words.
30:43 I'm not the type who gets excited about these assertions,
30:48 especially in the nationalistic India now,
30:50 but this is coming from a very serious,
30:53 very highly regarded physicist
30:55 of the caliber of Roger Penrose,
30:58 where he says the universe seems to go through
31:00 cycles of some kind.
31:02 Our universe is what I call an eon
31:05 in an endless sequence of eons.
31:06 Now that sounds extraordinarily like what we grew up
31:11 listening to in India, don't you think?
31:13 - Yes, I think it is.
31:17 But these things are more conjunctures,
31:20 means what is the proof we have for that?
31:24 The thing is this, in science,
31:28 we try to find the simplest solution possible.
31:31 And this is, we can always have lot of things.
31:35 We might say it might happen this way,
31:37 it might happen that way,
31:39 but unless we have a proof for that,
31:42 it is very difficult to say which way or the other.
31:46 All we can say, based on this,
31:49 we can only say what the expansion phase we have today
31:53 and how far we can extrapolate.
31:57 Maybe we are extrapolating this too much
31:59 because when we talk about inflation and all that,
32:03 that itself is something not very convincing
32:08 to a lot of people.
32:11 But up to the point of inflation, for example,
32:14 you can extrapolate and see,
32:16 yeah, it explains what we have.
32:19 But what happened beyond that,
32:21 maybe it was cyclic as Penrose suggested,
32:25 or it was suggested by many other people.
32:28 Yes, it could be, but we cannot go beyond.
32:31 If we can find, okay,
32:32 you have a signature of that from the past
32:35 and we can prove that it is from the past,
32:37 then you can say,
32:38 but if all the things from the past have been erased
32:42 by creating extremely high dense matter,
32:46 then it is just a conjuncture.
32:48 - That's true.
32:51 Then how about this?
32:52 Given the astounding complexity of this universe,
32:56 why couldn't it be that all of these,
32:59 what we are saying are true in some sense,
33:01 somewhere at some point?
33:02 - I think all these things, again,
33:07 I would cite the same thing.
33:08 Anytime in science we say something happened,
33:12 it should be proved in some way or the other,
33:16 not just leaving it as a conjuncture.
33:19 For example, Dirac, based on his large number of hypotheses,
33:24 predicted the variation of the speed of light
33:28 and of the finest structure constant,
33:32 or some other things and all that.
33:34 And people tried to verify their variation
33:37 because this was just a hypothesis
33:40 and nobody can prove that they are varying
33:42 because they tried to do it
33:44 and they found that they constrain their variations
33:47 through laser landing to about a one part in 10 to the power
33:52 minus 15, one part in 10 to the power 15,
33:57 that it is not varying.
34:00 Now I have shown,
34:01 this is another thing I want to bring here.
34:05 I have shown that the constants I'm inspired by
34:10 in this paper itself,
34:11 I talk about the co-varying coupling constant,
34:14 that's why CCC.
34:16 So these coupling constants are,
34:18 I say if they are all varying,
34:22 and according to Ouzan,
34:25 who is a very famous physicist of current time,
34:30 he has said that if one varies,
34:32 then others must vary as well.
34:34 And there should be a related variation of each other.
34:39 Anyway, inspired by that,
34:41 I come up with this thing theory.
34:43 If I had the slides to show,
34:45 I would have shown you that better,
34:47 but at the same time,
34:49 based on the energy conservation
34:51 and based on dimensional analysis,
34:53 we can say the constants vary simultaneously.
34:58 And if you constrain the variation of one,
35:02 you constrain of all others.
35:04 So what people do when they are seeing the variation of G,
35:09 gravitational constant,
35:11 they are keeping all the other constant constant.
35:14 So naturally in this way,
35:19 how can they see the variation of the gravitational constant
35:23 when they are constraining the speed of light
35:25 to be constant?
35:26 Because they have to vary in a correlated way.
35:29 So this is another thing which I,
35:31 and this is the basis of my derivation
35:36 of the equations in there.
35:37 You know.
35:39 - How has been the response of your fraternity
35:43 to this remarkable idea about the age of the universe?
35:48 What's been the response so far?
35:51 - I think if I were the fraternity,
35:55 I will be very skeptical.
35:57 So naturally people are skeptical.
36:01 And what I have been trying to do,
36:03 because this is the very elementary stage of this work.
36:08 And I never expected that I would get this kind of
36:15 media coverage of this.
36:19 Like I have more than 30 videos that have been produced
36:23 for this, and there were about 135, 150
36:31 press releases and other coverages which are there.
36:35 I never expected, I thought, okay,
36:37 some people will notice it, that's fine, it's great.
36:40 It's just like any other paper.
36:41 But one thing is good.
36:42 Good media coverage does help me finding the critics of it.
36:47 People like you who would want to discuss.
36:50 And one of the thing is this,
36:52 criticisms are the best thing to improve a model.
36:55 Not the pat on the back.
36:58 It doesn't help.
36:59 What helps is the critics.
37:01 So I am looking for all the critics which are there
37:05 so I can respond to them and find an answer if I can.
37:10 Or it is quite possible, it is quite possible it is wrong.
37:18 It just fits some of the data,
37:20 the rest of the data just doesn't fit.
37:22 Recently, I must say,
37:24 I should say that it does not really,
37:30 just one second, I have to shoot something.
37:33 - Please.
37:33 - My battery might be a little bit low.
37:40 So if it run out, then I'll have to connect to the battery.
37:44 - Okay.
37:45 - But I think for now it is, okay, let's continue.
37:49 - No, I'm saying, I'm surprised that you did not expect
37:53 this kind of media response for the simple reason
37:56 that when you say that the age of the universe
37:59 is almost twice as what we know,
38:03 which would mean that at the stage of evolution
38:06 that we are now,
38:07 imagine 13.8 billion to 26.7 billion,
38:13 we are so far away from the age of the universe
38:16 at this stage.
38:17 That means so many other things would have evolved
38:19 over these many billion years,
38:21 possibly even intelligent civilizations,
38:24 which evolved and died out.
38:27 See, these are the things that people think about
38:29 when you talk about the age having been doubled.
38:32 - Yeah, actually, this thing could have happened
38:35 even in 13.8 billion years.
38:37 - True.
38:38 - Because after all, our solar system
38:40 is only less than 5 billion years old.
38:43 - Yeah, but--
38:44 - We could have happened.
38:46 - No, but 5 in 13 to 5 in 26,
38:50 it's a fairly big difference, isn't it?
38:53 - That's right, instead of three times
38:55 if more civilizations happening,
38:58 it could have been happened five times,
39:00 but that's all, it's not a big deal.
39:02 - Speaking of which, as a serious physicist,
39:06 do you wonder about themes like that?
39:10 That there could have been more intelligent civilizations
39:14 in a more expanded age of the universe before us?
39:19 - Again, being a scientist and not a storyteller,
39:24 I would say it is, unless I have a proof,
39:33 I cannot say about it, but at the same time,
39:36 I cannot deny it either,
39:38 because if you consider the perfect
39:42 or even cosmological principle
39:44 that we are not unique in this universe,
39:48 our position is not unique in the position.
39:52 So to say that we are the only civilization
39:55 which ever happened seems to be a stretch.
39:59 - Right, at this stage, where do you come?
40:02 I know it's rather simplistic
40:04 to ask a serious physicist this,
40:06 but at this stage, where do you come down
40:08 on the Big Bang versus steady state debate?
40:12 - As I said, Big Bang and steady state debate,
40:16 we have to combine the two.
40:18 - Okay. - There are two things are,
40:22 at the moment, it appears to be
40:24 they are not one or the other.
40:27 Perhaps they are the two sides of the same coin.
40:32 But coin has both together, not one or the other.
40:39 - Right.
40:41 - Similarly, as I said about the photon,
40:46 you have particle as well as wave behavior
40:49 of the photon or other particles.
40:52 - It would be fascinating to think
40:55 what Fred Hoyle would say to what you just said,
40:59 because he was revived toward the end of his life
41:03 for talking about, in fact,
41:05 there are people who still ridicule him
41:06 for the steady state theory, which I find strange.
41:09 I don't know why people have such visceral reaction to that.
41:15 - Yeah, actually, this is one of the thing,
41:18 and I personally feel that it is very difficult
41:23 to take one side or the other easily in cosmology,
41:31 because this is based on observation.
41:33 You cannot do controlled experiments, only observations.
41:38 So based on observation, you might say
41:41 the proof favors this side or the other side.
41:45 And I think that's all what we can say.
41:48 And in this way, I want to add, for example,
41:51 you say about the criticism, I want to complete that side,
41:55 that already we have done additional work beyond the paper,
42:00 which shows it confirms the, at least part
42:04 of the cosmic microwave background thing,
42:07 as well as the baryonic acoustic oscillation,
42:10 which is another very important factor.
42:13 We find they are confirmed with the new model.
42:16 I just wanted to say something new in your talk
42:20 beyond what was in the paper.
42:22 - No, that's interesting.
42:25 Are you continuing to track what the JWST produces?
42:28 Because they are saying that it's going to rewrite
42:32 textbooks, the way it's coming up with discoveries.
42:35 - Actually, I wouldn't say it will write the textbook.
42:41 A lot of material is still is the same.
42:45 As I said, Newton's laws don't change.
42:47 They are still there for everyday things.
42:50 Yes, there will be something at the frontier of knowledge
42:54 that will change, but the basic knowledge,
42:57 which is in the textbook may not change that much.
43:00 But even textbook, we know we change certain things
43:04 all the time.
43:05 So certain things will have to be included.
43:07 The quantum mechanics was not there.
43:10 It was classical mechanics only.
43:11 And when quantum mechanics came,
43:13 then it became part of the mainstream curriculum.
43:17 Not, so I think these are the kind of evolutionary things
43:20 which will happen.
43:21 - I see.
43:22 And finally, before I let you go,
43:24 I regularly engage Dr. Abhay Ashtekar,
43:29 the pioneer of quantum gravity.
43:32 - Yes.
43:33 - Remarkable figure himself.
43:34 And the question that I ask him, I'm going to ask you,
43:38 given the kind of universe that we live in,
43:40 why can't there be more than one operating system?
43:43 What is the need to unify
43:46 and create a grand unified theory?
43:48 Why can't the universe have several operating systems?
43:51 - Yeah, those kind of very, very difficult questions
43:57 to answer, you know.
43:58 There could be, you see,
44:03 one of the thing is this,
44:04 having simultaneously so many theories together
44:09 makes life very difficult.
44:13 - Yeah.
44:15 - So you have to eventually,
44:16 you propose a lot of things
44:20 and then you crystallize
44:23 or you bring it down to something concrete.
44:26 So yes, you can definitely have several operating system.
44:31 But what is today?
44:32 You remember how many of the word processors
44:36 were available in the '90s?
44:39 - Correct.
44:40 - When the computer came out,
44:41 or late '80s and '90s, so many.
44:45 And then eventually we are happy
44:48 that now we have one only,
44:50 major one, which everybody uses.
44:52 So I think it becomes life very difficult
44:56 if you have various theories,
44:57 people are trying to propose and all that.
44:59 We have to eventually come to some conclusion.
45:02 - Thank you.
45:03 (audience applauding)
45:07 (audience cheering)
45:10 [BLANK_AUDIO]