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Space, Time and The Universe
Prof GR Jain
The noblc laurcalc Sir Albert Einstein, thc branicst mon in the world, who Mas declared as a good man for nothing by his teachers in the school, startlcd the scientists all over the world by his theory of Relativity The birth centenary of this great scientist has been just cclcbrated all over the world He pave the dimensions of the Universe as in Table 1
Table 1 Einstein's Dimensions of the Unnerse I Mass
2 143 x 1055 gm 2 Mean density
1 05/10_97 gm /mi 3 Radius
1 01 x 107 cms or 1068 million light years 4 Number of clcctrons1 29 1079
in the Unicrec
With regard to its origin, he announced the Cylinder theory according to which this Universe of ours is a four dimensional space continuum consisting of three dimensional space with time as its fourth dimension This is limited in thrcc dimensions of space like a cylinder but un-limited in the direction of lime In common language, it means that thc universe is limited in three directions, but in the direction of time it runs from an infinite past into an infinnc future It is interesting to note that if we regard our universe as infinite, it cannot be stable at the same time, for in that casc all our energy would get scattered into the infinity of space and the attractions of myriads of other universes filling this infinite universe would scatter it into the infinity The picture of the universe as given by Jain thinkers is very similar to this which we shall develop into the following here The volume of the Universe according to the Jains is 343 cubic Rajju, a Raju being a quantity of the order of 1021 milcs The use of the word Brahmanda (Universe of the ellipsoidal form) by the Hindus for the universe is also suggestive of the finitude of the latter
The Universe - The Universe of Jains is composed of six substances The substance has been defined as that reality which undergocs modifications through permanance To give one example of such modification, consider an ingot of gold