Indian Literature & Quantum Strangeness: Books & Brain-Food: No. 3.

Marc Salazaar takes his pick of top inspiring content online.

This Month's Inspiration:

…Is the treasury of Hindu scriptures on Vedabase.com. It makes interesting reading, whether you are actually seeking some form of spiritual wisdom from India, or just enjoy classical literature from an entirely secular perspective. It is particularly nice that the verses on vedabase.com come in a wide range of languages with the original Sanskrit transcribed into the familiar Roman alphabet and a word-by word translation-

http://www.vedabase.com/en

http://www.vedabase.com/en/bg/10/20

Book/Art/ Picture-Gallery of the Month:

Sticking with the Indian Culture theme, this month’s e-gallery is of work by Keralan artist

Raja Ravi Varma (1848- 1906)-

http://ravivarma.org/Mythological-Characters-by-Raja-Ravi-Varma#.WWaaTumQw2w

This Month's Recommended Popular Science Articles are:

1) It has been widely and repeatedly reported that "the world of Physics" is "really very excited by..." Quantum Tunnelling, Quantum Computing and, frankly, everything Quantum. Even Canada’s President Justin Trudeau found himself answering questions on the subject last year . A good starting point for a lot of science topics is (unexpectedly) Wikipedia- presumably this is because a lot of their scientific articles are written by researchers and PhD students in the relevant subjects, rather than by impassioned passers-by. . . The Wikipedia entry on quantum Tunnelling follows in this well-written tradition-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_tunnelling#Faster_than_light

2)Following on this theme, one of the best and most readily readable articles I have seen on Quantum Theory in recent years is this elegant essay from 28th June 2017 by Phil Ball writing for Nature.com –

http://www.nature.com/news/how-quantum-trickery-can-scramble-cause-and-effect-1.22208

If you have ever wanted to know “How quantum trickery can scramble cause and effect”, look no further…

3) Finally, one subject that is perhaps even less understood than even Quantum Physics is sleep.

Even the purpose and necessity for sleep are not fully understood, let alone its processes or the rhythms driving sleep.

For a long time, the most common sentiment was that being an “early bird” was preferable to being a “night owl” and that the latter tendency was not merely suboptimal for social purposes, but bad for a host of mental- and physical- health reasons.

An article (“Night Owls Are More Productive than Early Birds”, which dates from 2009, reports on research done in Belgium and Switzerland on the topic). Research proceeds in this subject area, but articles from a few years ago still remain interesting reading.

- M. Salazaar.