From boson sub-atomic particles to bosenova supernovas, the Indian scientist who pierced mysteries of the universe

Both the boson and the bosenova are named after Satyendra Nath Bose.

Albert Einstein was impressed enough with Bose’s work to collaborate with him to develop an entire new field of quantum physics, which he called “Bose-Einstein statistics”—not “Einstein-Bose”, acknowledging that Bose contributed more than he did. The sub-atomic particle was named “boson” by legendary physicist and Nobel laureate Paul Dirac. The fermion—the other fundamental particle—is named after the Italian-American physicist and Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi.

Of course, Bose never got the Nobel Prize.

To get a sense of how important his work was, let’s look at sizes.

The radius of a Higgs boson is 1^-18 (1 raised to the power of minus 18), a hundred-billion-billionth of a centimetre.

The radius of a supernova can extend to several light years—a light year being the distance covered by a ray of light in a year, about 1000^15 metres, that’s a kilometre followed by 15 zeros. The sun is a mere 8.3 light minutes away from the earth, and that too is a humungous 152 million kilomeres.

Bose’s name appears at both extreme ends. His work clarified a lot about how the universe works.

Bosenovas were in the news in the global physics community recently when, in late June, a team of American astrophysicists published a pre-peer-reviewed paper on the net. It claimed that massive “invisible” bosenovas may be occurring all around us all the time.

One of the biggest puzzles in astrophysics is “dark matter”. We have no clue about what constitutes 85 percent of the mass of almost every galaxy in our universe. None of our instruments can detect these things, bodies, entities or clouds, whatever you may like to call them. We only know that it’s out there. Dark matter.

A bosenova is a mysterious type of supernova where, after a star explodes, half the atoms that it emits simply vanish. We have no idea where they go. The only explanation that we have till now is that the explosion is accompanied by an implosion where a part of the star shrinks into a “Bose-Einstein condensate” that is too tiny for our instruments to detect.

If we can see some supernovas where matter just vanishes, it stands to reason that there could be stars or even galaxies that are dark matter or become dark matter when they explode. As far as our current knowledge goes, these celestial bodies have to be entirely composed of bosons. They are “boson stars”. That is, they are laptops that weigh nearly nothing and are only the thud they make when dropped on the floor. It’s the Cheshire Cat’s smile.

All stars age and die. They die in different ways, depending on their size. It is entirely possible that there are stars made of dark matter that meet their end in spectacular explosions. But instead of light, they would emit incredibly powerful “dark” waves which we cannot see, feel, sense or measure. These bosenova explosions could be taking place right inside our solar systems and we would not be aware. We don’t yet have the technology that can get us a glimpse of the last cries of these stars. Yes, this is crazy stuff that challenges everything that we think we know.

Of course, it’s all hypothetical. But as of now, the only credible explanation of what dark matter stars are and how they behave comes from Bose’s work.

In 1924—he was only 30 then, and an assistant professor in the University of Dhaka—he sent a paper he had written, which had been rejected by British journals, to Einstein in Germany. He wrote: “Though a complete stranger to you, I do not feel any hesitation in making such a request. Because we are all your pupils though profiting only by your teachings through your writings. I do not know whether you still remember that somebody from Calcutta asked your permission to translate your papers on Relativity in English. You acceded to the request. The book has since been published. I was the one who translated your paper on Generalised Relativity.”

Einstein personally translated the paper in German and got it published in the journal Zeitshrift fur Physik. But it still took him a few months to realize how revolutionary Bose’s thesis was. He then started working on what Bose had revealed and took it forward. A whole new field of quantum mechanics was born.

A few years later, when Bose met Einstein, Einstein asked him if he had been aware that he had added a whole new dimension to quantum physics. Bose said no, he just studied the science, had a couple of doubts and did his own thing.

I have had the extraordinary privilege of meeting Bose. I was a child and he must have been close to 80 then, but he had this mischievous smile that I can never forget. He walked with the help of a stick, but was the coolest guy you can dream of. He gave a damn about the Nobel Prize and other honours. “I was an extremely naughty boy and my parents had given up on me,” he told my parents after having patted me on the head. “Now I’m old and people keep asking me to give advice to children. What can I tell them? I was the naughtiest child.” I am sure my parents were a bit dismayed.

This cool guy’s name spans the cosmos, even though very few of us have ever heard of him.