Thursday, February 4, 2010

Spin - The Fundamental Force of Nature

I have been looking at the photographs of certain remnants of supernova explosions released by NASA and other agencies recently. One thing that struck me was that most of them were of ring-shaped. They were hollow from the middle. I was wondering why the remnants were not spherical in shape. The debris thrown around by an exploding star should normally travel in all directions and not selectively in flat disk form.

This brings to my mind that most of the galaxies have spiral shape. These disk-shaped galaxies far out number the spherical ones. Our own galaxy is mainly a disk. It is generally flat except that towards the middle it is more thick than it is near its spiral arms or its edges.

Near home, our own solar system is, by and large, a disk. The little mass of the solar system that exists outside the Sun, is spread out over a very nearly level plane which is more or less parallel to the equator of the Sun. Why? I have not come across an explanation either in the Newton's gravitational laws nor in Einstein's system of curvature in the space-time.

The rings of Saturn and about a dozen of its moon are all spread out in a plane which is flat and which is nearly parallel to the equator of Saturn. Why?

The orbits of all the major moons of Jupiter are in one plane which is again parallel to the equatorial plane of the Jupiter. Why?

I remember a teacher once told me that a spherical shape was a naturally preferred shape as it accommodates the gravity driven mass in a minimum amount of space. That is why the shape of the Sun, Moon and Earth are spherical, I was told. If this is so, what force is that which drives the matter to spread out in a ring-shaped or say a disk shaped structure?

It is my hunch that like gravity the spin is one of the fundamental properties of the Universe. Whereas the massive bodies, driven by gravity, tend to get pulled towards their center, the spinning bodies tend to distribute their mass over a plane perpendicular to their axis. In other words, if the presence of massive bodies like Jupiter creates a curvature in the neighbouring space-time the spin of those bodies creates a plane in the surrounding space-time. The first makes the moons of the Jupiter etc. to orbit the parent body the second makes those moons orbit in its plane. But I have not come across any scientific discussion on this point. I have a feeling, therefore, that the functions of the spin in the macro structures of the matter are not as well understood as those of gravity and other fundamental forces. There is much more to spin than meet the eye. Any comment?

It is also my hunch that matter is created out of space and the spin is deeply involved in this act of creation, so much so that at micro level, i.e. at the very root of it all, matter may be defined as 'space in a spin'. Any comment?