Nov 26 2016 65 mins 23
What does a bee see? Do we see light? What are we blind to? Is the universe dark? Does darkness have a physical basis? Is light a wave or a particle or both or something else? Does this depend on the nature of the detector? Is light (like a) photon for living systems? Are photons wave packets? Why haven’t all the contradictory theories of light been permanently overthrown? Is the discipline reorganized differently when we revisit it after several centuries? How is heat different from light? Is it probable that there is life somewhere vis-à-vis another (non overlapping) wavelength band of electromagnetic radiation? Do gamma rays almost don’t diffract, & why? Does light interact with 'each other'? How do a combination of optical, chemical, electrical, vibrational, and ‘dark’ processes produce visual perception? Can we simulate what the other animals see without simulating the brain? Are there other light dependent biological functions besides vision? Are we ‘stuck’ with the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics? Can the nature of light be known? &, would ‘shelved’ theories continue to be picked up and reinterpreted? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from history & philosophy of science (Prof. Dhruv Raina, JNU, New Delhi), optics (Prof. Chandrasekhar Roychoudhuri, University of Connecticut, Connecticut), & chemistry (Prof. Anil Kumar Singh, IIT Bombay, Mumbai). Listen in....
