Of Russell and Wrestle!

If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence.
.............. Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell was a very smart man and that was what he had to say on people's instincts. I had the taste of it last week. This week's blog is going to be a very long one. The week before the last I was in Chicago to pick up my old friend George. He flew from UC Santa Barbara and we were meeting after a span of almost four years. George was one of my friends who was very instrumental in encouraging me to take up Cosmology, even when we were doing our undergraduate program in Mechanical engineering. We had great debates during our weekend meetings at the bar. So it was a pleasure to meet him once again after such a long time.

My research, for those of you who are not familiar with, is to find an explanation to the existence of dark energy which constitutes 75% of the observed energy density of the universe. This is the most challenging problem in Cosmology today. Apparently it's also the most sought after, area even pursued by theoretical physicists who are not cosmologists. In Science it always happens that when we have more than one problem at hand, people tend to relate all of them. Particle physicists are trying to find a fundamental theory(of everything) for a long time now. So its no wonder why all these particle theorists have entered cosmology by now. The other aspect of which is, cosmologists have also trespassed into the standard model and beyond. So I am struck in between now. The net result of all of these things is we've got a lot of new things to learn and as many to unlearn also. The relevance of the quotation by Bertrand Russell is very apt, or atleast I feel so, when we confront the particle physicist. This is when I feel that the marriage of Particle physics and Cosmology gets controversial as gay marriage if not more so (Pun unintended). This wedlock seems to be a painful deadlock at times.
I've tried my level best to explain what we meant in our "Hidden Higgs" paper. But all my efforts seem to sink now, as I'am less hopeful about, the PRL paper seeing the light of the day. My last efforts to update the paper is underway. Within a day or two we should be able to post it somewhere.

Cosmology is a direct offshoot of General Relativity(GR), which is a classical theory, as opposed to Quantum field theory. The question is whether dark energy is a classical entity or quantum mechanical? Straight forward analysis points out that in the early universe, comparable to Planckian regime everything is quantum. Obviously, then everything has a quantum origin. So we assume that the universe was full of fields. What are fields now? As I understand, it is something which carries energy and information. Where did these fields come from? Now I am about to trespass into God's domain because theoretical physicists are suddenly forced to become law abiding citizens because they see a "NO TRESPASSING" sign, technically called "Singularity". Singularity is God's way of posting a no trespassing sign! What may have happened?
[To be continued tomorrow..............]