“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.” – Charles Dickens. 

March is already over and April is following the same path, still the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold, when volume 4, number 2 of our journal ‘Towards Unification of Sciences’ with five papers makes its due arrival. While Charles Dickens finds summer in the light, our authors make good analysis of various phenomena of light. It starts with the classical explanation of grazing of light, followed with interference and diffraction, then ending with polarization and scattering of light; subsequently, giving details about ancient Indian thoughts profusely contributing to the field of mathematics and science that includes calculation of speed of light centuries back within two percent from the present accepted value;  finally coming back to throw still some more light on unified field theory – this time bringing in Indian scholars’ contribution. 

The first three papers are by Prof. Bishnu Charanabinda Mohanty, and the titles, in order, are: ‘Grazing of light’, ‘Interference and Diffraction of light’, and ‘Analysis of Polarization and Scattering of light through the New Particle Concept.’ In fact, all three papers are based on the new particle concept which the author has introduced in the earlier papers in this journal while analyzing the phenomena of reflection, refraction and the constant velocity of light. Here, in the first paper, the author openly expresses his failure to accept the feasibility of propagation of light wave in vacuum medium without having the required wave propagating properties, and therefore, provides an alternative justification in support of the particle concept of light. He has introduced the rest mass of micro-micro domain particles such as photons, mass-space structure with nucleus and extra-nuclear space structure, charge in photonic charge units, spin and energy with energy level; thus, classical physics has a new scope of dealing with micro as well as micro-micro domain physics in a clear conceptual manner. Then, he proceeds to successfully provide new understanding of grazing of light from classical physics point of view. He starts with the fact that the phenomenon of grazing is common to micro-micro particles (light particle), micro particles (electrons, ions and atoms) and macro bodies such as football. Starting with the macro domain, the grass cuter shot of football which resembles the phenomenon of grazing where the ball hitting the ground at a shallow angle has two velocity components, one, normal to the surface and another, parallel to the surface; he goes on explaining how these two components initially making the ball bounce, gradually, bring it just to role and finally to stop. However, even though the light particle maintains a constant speed in a uniform medium due to a different mechanism, still the velocity of light undergoes acceleration and deceleration in the highly polarized photonic charge field structure within the interface. The author has elaborately explained this with the help of a neat figure; then, with the help of another figure, he explains the mechanism of grazing of light. 

In the second paper, Prof. Mohanty, from the beginning, contradicts with the traditionally assumed idea of diffraction and interference being caused due to the wave nature of light, that too, the wave being propagated through empty space without any suitable physical medium. He terms this idea as purely hypothetical and totally unrealistic, and hence, brings in the reality-based particle concept of light as an alternate idea to justify the phenomena of interference and diffraction of light. Then, after explaining interference through the phenomena of field-particle interaction, he demonstrates, through neat figures, bending of light near sharp edges, diffraction of light passing through single as well as double slit. In the third paper, he has introduced another concept that the neutral photon can be ionized by attachment or detachment of negative charge particles (pholetrons). This paper explains polarization and scattering phenomena of light by using the same new concept of light particle and the medium. Finally, he concludes that the revised particle concept of light is feasible, reality-based and capable of explaining all phenomena of light without duality.

The title of the fourth paper is ‘Ancient Indian Thought Contributing to the Field of Mathematics and Science.’ Here, the author Prof. Niranjan Barik has elaborated how the free-flowing ideas and thoughts in the ancient Indian civilization has contributed to all possible subject areas though he has concentrated on only two of them, namely Mathematics and Physics, in this paper. While commenting that the sages and seers of this land contributed to this rich culture as great thinkers, scholars and scientists in their own capacity; has cited the names of mathematician Aryabhatta, Vedic scholar Acharya Pingala, Bhaskara I and Bhaskar II, and many others. He has cited various texts starting from Vedic and Vedantic verses to Aryabhattiya, ‘Chandah Sastra’, ‘Yuktibhasa’, Lilavati Bhasya, Vaisheshika Sutra and many others. The author has shown that India is the birthplace of several mathematical concepts including ‘zero’, ‘infinity’, decimal system, binary numbers, Fibonacci numbers, square root, cube root of numbers, algebra, algorithms, studies of infinite series, convergence, differentiation and iterative methods of solving nonlinear equations, ideas of calculus as well as geometry etc. India was also the birthplace of ‘pancha mahabhootas’, five human sense perceptions, atomic constitution of material world, introduction of units of time and length, gravitation and many more. The title of the final paper is: ‘Unified field theory: Indians’ Part of Research.’ This paper is by me, here, I have tried to give a brief account of contributions of Indian researchers to unified field theory research. The contributions started with Satyendra Nath Bose, already known to Einstein, in early 1950s, then continued by other leading researchers such as Gaganbihari Bandyopadhyay, J. R. Rao, Ratna Shanker Mishra, and the USA based Jogesh Chandra Pati. Indian contributions to UFT research, mostly solutions of Einstein and Schrödinger’s equations except that of Pati which belongs to GUT, may be termed commendable, even though, they fall short of achieving a complete unification.

This issue of ‘Towards Unification of Sciences,’ starting from light enters the shade with enough thought-provoking ideas to keep the cool mind suitably engaged. 

By

Dr. Raja Kishore Paramguru