Sunday, December 18, 2011
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Friday, September 30, 2011
I have, for the first time measured my latitude....
Hello!
On this equinox, i.e.on 23rd September, I have for the first time calculated the latitude of my location, Hyderabad, India. The trick is simple, at the time of the local noon mark the tip of the gnomon's shadow. For this you have to set your watch accurately to the GMT based time and add your local time difference to that.
Then measure the length of the shadow as well as that of the gnomon. All that you need to find is the angle made by the Sun. On the equinox day the angle made by the Sun is nothing but the latitude of the location.
To know the angle, just divide the length of the shadow by the length of the gnomon and inverse it with the angle of tangents. You get your latitude.
And how you find your longitude?
You can conduct the experiment in India to find out longitude using Gnomon on any of the following 4 dates in a year: Apr 16, Jun 14, Sept 02, Dec 25. You will need a watch set to correct and the Shortest shadow experiment setup. Just conduct the shortest shadow experiment at noon and note the time of the shortest shadow, this is the time of your local noon as well.
- On the above 4 dates, the local noon happens exactly at 12:00 noon at
the 82.5° E longitude.
- If your local noon happens after 12:00 noon, you are further east of
82.5, else you are west.
- Now simply divide the difference (in minutes) between your local noon
and 82.5 (which is 12:00 noon) by 4. You will get the difference in
longitudes.
- Subtract the difference in longitude from 82.5 if you are west. Add if
you are east.
On this equinox, i.e.on 23rd September, I have for the first time calculated the latitude of my location, Hyderabad, India. The trick is simple, at the time of the local noon mark the tip of the gnomon's shadow. For this you have to set your watch accurately to the GMT based time and add your local time difference to that.
Then measure the length of the shadow as well as that of the gnomon. All that you need to find is the angle made by the Sun. On the equinox day the angle made by the Sun is nothing but the latitude of the location.
To know the angle, just divide the length of the shadow by the length of the gnomon and inverse it with the angle of tangents. You get your latitude.
And how you find your longitude?
You can conduct the experiment in India to find out longitude using Gnomon on any of the following 4 dates in a year: Apr 16, Jun 14, Sept 02, Dec 25. You will need a watch set to correct and the Shortest shadow experiment setup. Just conduct the shortest shadow experiment at noon and note the time of the shortest shadow, this is the time of your local noon as well.
- On the above 4 dates, the local noon happens exactly at 12:00 noon at
the 82.5° E longitude.
- If your local noon happens after 12:00 noon, you are further east of
82.5, else you are west.
- Now simply divide the difference (in minutes) between your local noon
and 82.5 (which is 12:00 noon) by 4. You will get the difference in
longitudes.
- Subtract the difference in longitude from 82.5 if you are west. Add if
you are east.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Why does it matter exploring matter?
Hello all!
Matter as we know is something which we can feel touch and sense. Matter is everything around us and of course, we are made of matter. Our home, food, water, books, clothes, trees, seas, oceans, planet, Moon, Sun, stars, galaxies, the whole Universe are all made of something fundamental which is worth thinking deep into the roots of science, on which we are born, evolve and will die.
The thinking of matter can be traced back to the centuries before Christ. It was an age of understanding the basics of nature, and how it works. Theologians like Leucippus and Democritus were the first persons to ask the question 'what are we made of '? This question may sometimes seem to be intriguing to you and me, but think about because thinking is a way in which you can attempt to answer the most burning questions in your life, it is the prerequisite of knowledge.
In his first attempt, Democritus answered that as- when you cut an apple pie into a half, and that two into halves and that four into halves and so on till you go for nearly ninety cuts, you get a finer pulpy stuff. Pick up a grain from it. Look closely and even try to squash it, squeeze it. If you have a magnifying glass, have a look through it.
This tiny speck of bread is still remained with millions and millions of atoms in it which are 'bonded' to each other to form substances that eventually make a sense of taste on your tongue.
The combination of these atoms to form substances called compounds which are unique in composition and even absence or addition of one atom can make a lot of difference in physical and chemical properties such as colour, taste, state, etc.
For example, take two different gases. Hydrogen, which lights up the stars and Oxygen, on which we respire. Now mix these two gases in a vessel and light em' up with a match and pop! you can see water droplets hanging on the walls. This is just one examples out of thousands in our daily lives. Similarly soft metals like sodium and poisonous gases like chlorine form salt with which you cook food. Like these, there are totally 118 elements which we have been accounted from the age of early man till the age of nuclear wars. Humans made and had a great deal with all these individual and unique atoms in various, say 'n' number of ways, we have found some naturally and some we extracted from earths crust and some we have artificially synthesized in laboratories. All these elements have been classified according to their composition, physical and chemical properties such as atomic number to form a periodic table.
Now lets go much deeper. As you know when you look inside an atom, you can see swarms of electrons humming around the central nucleus which has tightly bunched up the protons having positive charge and neutrons having no charge. When you try to split them up, it is called nuclear fission which releases vast amount of energy and when you try to join them, its nuclear fusion which even gives much more energy and fission process.
Fission is the one going in our nuclear plants on earth and fusion is the one going on inside the Sun and other stars where trillions of tons of hydrogen gets converted into billions of tons of helium each and every second. The Sun is really a giant furnace............
Now lets talk about the elements. How do they differ from each other? It all depends on whats inside an atom of an element and how its configured. Primarily it depends upon the number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus. For example in Carbon, the building block of life has 6 protons and 6 neutrons whereas hydrogen has got just 1 proton and 1 electron. From Carbon, if we take out 1 proton, it turns into boron and if we add 1 proton and 1 neutron, it turns into nitrogen. So in this way we have discovered and configured and discovered a total of 118 elements till now and are trying our best to know more.
So far we have discussed about something on a very tiny scale, to a limited space. Not just on Earth but on the scale of the cosmos, we come across much more disturbing sort of things which do not at all seem to look like reality in our 'coomon' sense amount which we will discuss later in this article.
Now, how do we know how something works. Answer, is to peep inside. But how can we peep inside an atom which is very very tiny ans bounded by energies of grand orders. The only way, is to smash them with each other, 'So, why don't we break them in a pressure cooker?' you may ask. Since the kinetic energy of the atoms increase to such levels that their speeds increase and collide with each other. But that is not at all enough. The energy applied on the gas molecules by a pressure cooker is only a fraction it is supposed to get.
For this, we use use tunnels. Long circular tunnels kilometers in diameter with powerful electromagnets which trap, guide and accelerate bunches of extracted individual subatomic particles like protons at very very high speeds, nearly to the speed of light by applying huge amount of electricity that is worth rising their electric bills to cross millions of dollars, and just smashing them into each other at the right place and at the right moment, to observe the movements of much tinier particles after collision with the help of sensitive detectors. The recent craze in these particles accelerators such as LHC of CERN and Tevetron of Fermilab are the subjects of anti-matter and Higgs Boson. These are the disciplines which are gripping scientists day and night to unravel the mystery of the small.
The concept of anti-matter is some what intriguing. When you look yourself in a mirror, what do you see? simple, yourself. But wait, did you anytime wonder if that person ever existed. This is worth thinking because there may be a universe, there may be a Sun, an Earth, a you and a me on the other side of the mirror i.e. a parallel universe which entirely consists of anti matter.....
Then the Higgs Boson is a particle formerly believed to be just a fairy tale, but now being searched extensively only because it is said to hold the secret of matter. Without it we all would be waves hanging around the empty universe.
So why do we do this stuff? Why particle physicists along with a whole new scientific community is spending millions of bucks just to find out and know about the tiny by smashing atoms and wasting resources? Why does it matter exploring matter????
In the start, you have read that we are born, evolve and will die on matter. The same implies with the stars, the same implies with the galaxies.............. and the same seems to imply with the cosmos. God must be partial to us, but I think he is not at all with the universe we are living in. The universe, for us seems to be benign as well as hostile at the same time. The benevolent creator chose a good location for us, a nice star, a habitable orbit, perfectly suited........ at the same time, being such smooth in evolution without any gene mutation is a great thing, otherwise it would have altered our fate. We had our own race involved in wars, crimes, conflicts. Along with these, we have harmed our own environment. But little did we think of how we are created, we would be really glad and humble to ourselves.
Nearly 15 billion years ago, after the explosive outpouring of matter and energy of the big bang, the cosmos was without form. There were no galaxies, no planets, no life. Deep impenetrable darkness was everywhere,hydrogen atoms in the void. Here and there denser accumulations of gas were imperceptibly growing, globes of matter were condensing - hydrogen raindrops more massive than suns. Within these globes of gas was first kindled the nuclear fire latent in matter. A first generation of stars was born, flooding the Cosmos with light. There were in those times not yet any planets to receive the light, no living creatures to admire the radiance of the heavens. Deep in the stellar furnaces the alchemy of nuclear fusion created heavy elements, the ashes of hydrogen burning, the atomic building materials of future planets and lifeforms. Massive stars soon exhausted their stores of nuclear fuel. Rocked by colossal explosions, they returned most of their substance back into the thin gas from which they had once condensed. Here in the dark lush clouds between the stars, new raindrops made of many elements were forming, later generations of stars being born. Nearby, smaller raindrops grew, bodies far too little to ignite the nuclear fire, droplets in the interstellar mist on their way to form the planets. Among them was a small world of stone and iron, the early
Earth.
Congealing and warming, the Earth released the methane, ammonia, water and hydrogen gases that had been trapped within, forming the primitive atmosphere and the first oceans. Starlight from the Sun bathed and warmed the primeval Earth, drove storms, generated lightning and thunder. Volcanoes
overflowed with lava. These processes disrupted molecules of the primitive atmosphere; the fragments fell back together again into more and more complex forms, which dissolved in the early oceans. After a time the seas achieved the consistency of a warm, dilute soup. Molecules were organized, and complex chemical reactions driven, on the surface of clays. And one day a molecule arose that quite by accident was able to make crude copies of itself out of the other molecules in the broth. As time passed, more elaborate and
more accurate self-replicating molecules arose. Those combinations best suited to further replication were favored by the sieve of natural selection. Those that copied better produced more copies. And the primitive oceanic broth gradually grew thin as it was consumed by and transformed into complex condensations of self-replicating organic molecules. Gradually, imperceptibly, life had begun.
Single-celled plants evolved, and life began to generate its own food. Photosynthesis transformed the atmosphere. Sex was invented. Once free-living forms banded together to make a complex cell with specialized functions. Chemical receptors evolved, and the Cosmos could taste and smell. One-celled
organisms evolved into multicellular colonies, elaborating their various parts into specialized organ systems.
Eyes and ears evolved, and now the Cosmos could see and hear. Plants and animals discovered that the land could support life. Organisms buzzed, crawled, scuttled, lumbered, glided, flapped, shimmied, climbed and soared. Colossal beasts thundered through the steaming jungles. Small creatures emerged, born live instead of in hard-shelled containers, with a fluid like the early oceans coursing through their veins. They survived by swiftness and cunning. And then, only a moment ago, some small arboreal animals scampered down from the trees. They became upright and taught themselves the use of tools, domesticated other animals, plants and fire, and devised language. The ash of stellar alchemy was now emerging into consciousness. At an ever-accelerating pace, it invented writing, cities, art and science, and sent spaceships to the planets and the stars. These are some of the things that hydrogen atoms do, given fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution.
It was a long journey from the first hydrogen atoms to the international space station. We have really came a long way and have a long way to go. The lifetime of humans is not even a speck. In this elegant motion picture, we are just a frame lasting for a very short span of time.We, being gifted the presence of mind need to make a re account of our own history and it is truly mandatory for us to know ourselves and what we are made of much deeper and deeper. Now that matters a lot..........
Thanks
The thinking of matter can be traced back to the centuries before Christ. It was an age of understanding the basics of nature, and how it works. Theologians like Leucippus and Democritus were the first persons to ask the question 'what are we made of '? This question may sometimes seem to be intriguing to you and me, but think about because thinking is a way in which you can attempt to answer the most burning questions in your life, it is the prerequisite of knowledge.
This tiny speck of bread is still remained with millions and millions of atoms in it which are 'bonded' to each other to form substances that eventually make a sense of taste on your tongue.
The combination of these atoms to form substances called compounds which are unique in composition and even absence or addition of one atom can make a lot of difference in physical and chemical properties such as colour, taste, state, etc.
For example, take two different gases. Hydrogen, which lights up the stars and Oxygen, on which we respire. Now mix these two gases in a vessel and light em' up with a match and pop! you can see water droplets hanging on the walls. This is just one examples out of thousands in our daily lives. Similarly soft metals like sodium and poisonous gases like chlorine form salt with which you cook food. Like these, there are totally 118 elements which we have been accounted from the age of early man till the age of nuclear wars. Humans made and had a great deal with all these individual and unique atoms in various, say 'n' number of ways, we have found some naturally and some we extracted from earths crust and some we have artificially synthesized in laboratories. All these elements have been classified according to their composition, physical and chemical properties such as atomic number to form a periodic table.
Fission is the one going in our nuclear plants on earth and fusion is the one going on inside the Sun and other stars where trillions of tons of hydrogen gets converted into billions of tons of helium each and every second. The Sun is really a giant furnace............
Now lets talk about the elements. How do they differ from each other? It all depends on whats inside an atom of an element and how its configured. Primarily it depends upon the number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus. For example in Carbon, the building block of life has 6 protons and 6 neutrons whereas hydrogen has got just 1 proton and 1 electron. From Carbon, if we take out 1 proton, it turns into boron and if we add 1 proton and 1 neutron, it turns into nitrogen. So in this way we have discovered and configured and discovered a total of 118 elements till now and are trying our best to know more.So far we have discussed about something on a very tiny scale, to a limited space. Not just on Earth but on the scale of the cosmos, we come across much more disturbing sort of things which do not at all seem to look like reality in our 'coomon' sense amount which we will discuss later in this article.
Now, how do we know how something works. Answer, is to peep inside. But how can we peep inside an atom which is very very tiny ans bounded by energies of grand orders. The only way, is to smash them with each other, 'So, why don't we break them in a pressure cooker?' you may ask. Since the kinetic energy of the atoms increase to such levels that their speeds increase and collide with each other. But that is not at all enough. The energy applied on the gas molecules by a pressure cooker is only a fraction it is supposed to get.
For this, we use use tunnels. Long circular tunnels kilometers in diameter with powerful electromagnets which trap, guide and accelerate bunches of extracted individual subatomic particles like protons at very very high speeds, nearly to the speed of light by applying huge amount of electricity that is worth rising their electric bills to cross millions of dollars, and just smashing them into each other at the right place and at the right moment, to observe the movements of much tinier particles after collision with the help of sensitive detectors. The recent craze in these particles accelerators such as LHC of CERN and Tevetron of Fermilab are the subjects of anti-matter and Higgs Boson. These are the disciplines which are gripping scientists day and night to unravel the mystery of the small.Then the Higgs Boson is a particle formerly believed to be just a fairy tale, but now being searched extensively only because it is said to hold the secret of matter. Without it we all would be waves hanging around the empty universe.
So why do we do this stuff? Why particle physicists along with a whole new scientific community is spending millions of bucks just to find out and know about the tiny by smashing atoms and wasting resources? Why does it matter exploring matter????
In the start, you have read that we are born, evolve and will die on matter. The same implies with the stars, the same implies with the galaxies.............. and the same seems to imply with the cosmos. God must be partial to us, but I think he is not at all with the universe we are living in. The universe, for us seems to be benign as well as hostile at the same time. The benevolent creator chose a good location for us, a nice star, a habitable orbit, perfectly suited........ at the same time, being such smooth in evolution without any gene mutation is a great thing, otherwise it would have altered our fate. We had our own race involved in wars, crimes, conflicts. Along with these, we have harmed our own environment. But little did we think of how we are created, we would be really glad and humble to ourselves.
 |
| info-graphic showing the Big Bang, the moment till the present |
Nearly 15 billion years ago, after the explosive outpouring of matter and energy of the big bang, the cosmos was without form. There were no galaxies, no planets, no life. Deep impenetrable darkness was everywhere,hydrogen atoms in the void. Here and there denser accumulations of gas were imperceptibly growing, globes of matter were condensing - hydrogen raindrops more massive than suns. Within these globes of gas was first kindled the nuclear fire latent in matter. A first generation of stars was born, flooding the Cosmos with light. There were in those times not yet any planets to receive the light, no living creatures to admire the radiance of the heavens. Deep in the stellar furnaces the alchemy of nuclear fusion created heavy elements, the ashes of hydrogen burning, the atomic building materials of future planets and lifeforms. Massive stars soon exhausted their stores of nuclear fuel. Rocked by colossal explosions, they returned most of their substance back into the thin gas from which they had once condensed. Here in the dark lush clouds between the stars, new raindrops made of many elements were forming, later generations of stars being born. Nearby, smaller raindrops grew, bodies far too little to ignite the nuclear fire, droplets in the interstellar mist on their way to form the planets. Among them was a small world of stone and iron, the early
Earth.
Congealing and warming, the Earth released the methane, ammonia, water and hydrogen gases that had been trapped within, forming the primitive atmosphere and the first oceans. Starlight from the Sun bathed and warmed the primeval Earth, drove storms, generated lightning and thunder. Volcanoes
overflowed with lava. These processes disrupted molecules of the primitive atmosphere; the fragments fell back together again into more and more complex forms, which dissolved in the early oceans. After a time the seas achieved the consistency of a warm, dilute soup. Molecules were organized, and complex chemical reactions driven, on the surface of clays. And one day a molecule arose that quite by accident was able to make crude copies of itself out of the other molecules in the broth. As time passed, more elaborate and
Single-celled plants evolved, and life began to generate its own food. Photosynthesis transformed the atmosphere. Sex was invented. Once free-living forms banded together to make a complex cell with specialized functions. Chemical receptors evolved, and the Cosmos could taste and smell. One-celledorganisms evolved into multicellular colonies, elaborating their various parts into specialized organ systems.
Eyes and ears evolved, and now the Cosmos could see and hear. Plants and animals discovered that the land could support life. Organisms buzzed, crawled, scuttled, lumbered, glided, flapped, shimmied, climbed and soared. Colossal beasts thundered through the steaming jungles. Small creatures emerged, born live instead of in hard-shelled containers, with a fluid like the early oceans coursing through their veins. They survived by swiftness and cunning. And then, only a moment ago, some small arboreal animals scampered down from the trees. They became upright and taught themselves the use of tools, domesticated other animals, plants and fire, and devised language. The ash of stellar alchemy was now emerging into consciousness. At an ever-accelerating pace, it invented writing, cities, art and science, and sent spaceships to the planets and the stars. These are some of the things that hydrogen atoms do, given fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution.It was a long journey from the first hydrogen atoms to the international space station. We have really came a long way and have a long way to go. The lifetime of humans is not even a speck. In this elegant motion picture, we are just a frame lasting for a very short span of time.We, being gifted the presence of mind need to make a re account of our own history and it is truly mandatory for us to know ourselves and what we are made of much deeper and deeper. Now that matters a lot..........
Thanks
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
When you light a candle in orbit........
Hello!
You must have seen a candle flame.......
always upright, even if you tilt the candle the flame always stays up. Why???????
Because hot gas is lighter than its surroundings so it tries to float above cool air just like air bubbles in a pool.
But I would like to think of lighting a candle in one of the science capsule of the ISS orbiting Earth i.e. in outer space. How would it be and in which way the candle flame points, if you can think of it please write it down in the comments............
Thanks
You must have seen a candle flame.......
always upright, even if you tilt the candle the flame always stays up. Why???????
Because hot gas is lighter than its surroundings so it tries to float above cool air just like air bubbles in a pool.
But I would like to think of lighting a candle in one of the science capsule of the ISS orbiting Earth i.e. in outer space. How would it be and in which way the candle flame points, if you can think of it please write it down in the comments............
Thanks
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Review - Cosmos, the book
Hello!
Sagan has covered a wide variety of subjects, from dark ages to nuclear age, from Ionia to Alexandria, from Plato to Einstein to make you understand how significant we we in the stretches of this Universe.This book is worth reading by everyone who really ponders about what life is about in this complicated web of events, seemed to be connected in the Cosmos.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Development in Zero Gravity
Hello!
We have seen in the past decades aboard space stations, something curious as well as bewildering. In zero gravity insects, plants, chemical reactions, physical processes, animals as well as human beings behave quite differently in their mechanisms as compared to the things seen on the surface.
So, how would it be if a human embryo or any other intelligent form's like chimps were taken to outer space and developed? Would it result in a different mode of development including skeletal, muscular, nervous and in turn what type of abilities like IQ, memory, Physical fitness,etc. would be acquired by the newborn baby when returned to Earth?
Just think about it and If you have guessed something write it down in the comments........
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Teacher's day special
Hello!
Education, as defined by concise Oxford dictionary - is the process of educating or being educated. So what do we mean by 'to educate'. People have several notions behind this. For some, this means that to learn something so that he or she can earn some livelihood in future. To some, this can be the basic requirement to survive the future or to stand on his or her own feet. But the true meaning of educating is to build up the prerequisites of life such as skills, character, abilities, communication so that the person could be a good, responsible member of the society.
For this there must be someone who can do this, who can sow the seeds of curiosity at an early stage for the individual to come up with thoughts. Teacher is a requirement for education, the one who guides his or her student and makes sure that he can soon be independent of others. Teachers have been around on the planet since the time of early man. They helped each other, in other words they taught each other and their children to make spears, to cook, to hunt,etc.
Not only Humans get educated. Each and every animal, from sparrows to bears, from tigers to cats, gets first taught by their mothers. So we can say that mothers are the first teachers for ones life and I owe to my mother very much for her constant advice regarding my career and life.
A teacher-student relationship is enormous in terms of friendship, curiosity, learning and it cannot be described in words.Times have changed a lot with social networking sites, digital classrooms, e-teaching techniques, etc. but there cannot be an e-teacher. Because all this without an actual teacher is some thing like a beautiful coconut without any water in it. A teacher is required to be physically present on the other end for a better learning.
In my school days I had a good impression among my teachers. Each and every teachers day used to very memorable for the entire academic year with cakes, cola, chips, confetti, stage shows, dances, gifts and we used to have great days.
In my own life, teachers have played a crucial role in bringing me to a position where I can always say that I was a student of a particular teacher and I would always like to meet once again as a 'student' but not as a 'former student'........
Thank You very much........
To all my teachers...........
Education, as defined by concise Oxford dictionary - is the process of educating or being educated. So what do we mean by 'to educate'. People have several notions behind this. For some, this means that to learn something so that he or she can earn some livelihood in future. To some, this can be the basic requirement to survive the future or to stand on his or her own feet. But the true meaning of educating is to build up the prerequisites of life such as skills, character, abilities, communication so that the person could be a good, responsible member of the society.
For this there must be someone who can do this, who can sow the seeds of curiosity at an early stage for the individual to come up with thoughts. Teacher is a requirement for education, the one who guides his or her student and makes sure that he can soon be independent of others. Teachers have been around on the planet since the time of early man. They helped each other, in other words they taught each other and their children to make spears, to cook, to hunt,etc.
Not only Humans get educated. Each and every animal, from sparrows to bears, from tigers to cats, gets first taught by their mothers. So we can say that mothers are the first teachers for ones life and I owe to my mother very much for her constant advice regarding my career and life.
A teacher-student relationship is enormous in terms of friendship, curiosity, learning and it cannot be described in words.Times have changed a lot with social networking sites, digital classrooms, e-teaching techniques, etc. but there cannot be an e-teacher. Because all this without an actual teacher is some thing like a beautiful coconut without any water in it. A teacher is required to be physically present on the other end for a better learning.
In my school days I had a good impression among my teachers. Each and every teachers day used to very memorable for the entire academic year with cakes, cola, chips, confetti, stage shows, dances, gifts and we used to have great days.
In my own life, teachers have played a crucial role in bringing me to a position where I can always say that I was a student of a particular teacher and I would always like to meet once again as a 'student' but not as a 'former student'........
Thank You very much........
To all my teachers...........
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Live curious
Hello!
Whats the difference between a speculation and a fact? The only thing when people make when they speculate is to assume something or somebody to be true, then ponder about it. There are no boundaries for speculation, you can think and think and think until you seem to reach the edge of your understanding. But strictly speaking, a fact is a fact.......... here you cannot assume things to be going according to your wish.
Science is not just a fact but a collection of deeply interwoven facts which are highly consistent with each other and cannot be separated just like that. You cannot imagine science, you can work it out and to do that, you need some thing called an evidence but absence of evidence is however not evidence of absence. In our daily hectic lives we use several gadgets and technology about which we don't even think of such as things like television......... what lies inside it and how it came out of a long evolution of radios, cathode ray tubes to electron guns. If we do not know about these stuff, we sometimes just shrug saying that thinking about things like these does not influence our lives much. Isn't it?
Wait. It isn't over. what would happen if Columbus did his own intercontinental trading just like that without thinking of any new undiscovered worlds? What would happen if Newton would have just shrugged when he saw an apple falling down? and the answers to these questions changed the world and the finding an evidence to the true facts gave birth to a new culture of understanding things called experimentation, a method which have evoked us to a new age, Renaissance. The society before the age of Galileo was the time of thinkers. As the name suggests, they used to think about nature just without asking one thing 'why'?
'Why?' is the very essence of science and by saying this word we express our curiosity to know something, and curiosity is the gift to human to distinguish fact from speculation and only this guided us through the ages and helped us to understand the nature and how it works.
Whats the difference between a speculation and a fact? The only thing when people make when they speculate is to assume something or somebody to be true, then ponder about it. There are no boundaries for speculation, you can think and think and think until you seem to reach the edge of your understanding. But strictly speaking, a fact is a fact.......... here you cannot assume things to be going according to your wish.
Science is not just a fact but a collection of deeply interwoven facts which are highly consistent with each other and cannot be separated just like that. You cannot imagine science, you can work it out and to do that, you need some thing called an evidence but absence of evidence is however not evidence of absence. In our daily hectic lives we use several gadgets and technology about which we don't even think of such as things like television......... what lies inside it and how it came out of a long evolution of radios, cathode ray tubes to electron guns. If we do not know about these stuff, we sometimes just shrug saying that thinking about things like these does not influence our lives much. Isn't it?
Wait. It isn't over. what would happen if Columbus did his own intercontinental trading just like that without thinking of any new undiscovered worlds? What would happen if Newton would have just shrugged when he saw an apple falling down? and the answers to these questions changed the world and the finding an evidence to the true facts gave birth to a new culture of understanding things called experimentation, a method which have evoked us to a new age, Renaissance. The society before the age of Galileo was the time of thinkers. As the name suggests, they used to think about nature just without asking one thing 'why'?
'Why?' is the very essence of science and by saying this word we express our curiosity to know something, and curiosity is the gift to human to distinguish fact from speculation and only this guided us through the ages and helped us to understand the nature and how it works.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Friday, July 22, 2011
Search for little worlds - part 2
Hello Everyone!
Where were we in the previous part of this? Well I shall further continue from there..........
Unlike our Sun, these did not form planets. The early solar system was filled with collisions due to high density of dust, lumps and gases. Several bits of matter gradually formed one or two big masses. In this way many big bodies are formed and still there were many remnants left over such as asteroids and at far off the disk, these formed what now we call comets. The ones which have nearly circular orbits around the Sun sustained collisions and avoided bumping into each other to form today's planets.
As earlier discussed, due to the arrangement of gases in the solar nebula formed on the basis of the molecular weights of the respective gases. This caused the lighter gases such as hydrogen and methane to go near the disk whereas the heavier elements come near the Sun, thus forming the gas giants and rocky balls. Since the formation, the probability of inter-planetary bumping reduced gradually.
This process also left a ring of asteroids in the form of a belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. There are many theories why this is left as a ring rather than a planet.
So, as we discussed there were many remnants in the 'now' solar system. But there is still some probability of the 'tiny' bits of rocks hitting any planet and if these hit our home planet .................. it would be a disaster for the human race......... to be continued.............
Where were we in the previous part of this? Well I shall further continue from there..........
Unlike our Sun, these did not form planets. The early solar system was filled with collisions due to high density of dust, lumps and gases. Several bits of matter gradually formed one or two big masses. In this way many big bodies are formed and still there were many remnants left over such as asteroids and at far off the disk, these formed what now we call comets. The ones which have nearly circular orbits around the Sun sustained collisions and avoided bumping into each other to form today's planets.As earlier discussed, due to the arrangement of gases in the solar nebula formed on the basis of the molecular weights of the respective gases. This caused the lighter gases such as hydrogen and methane to go near the disk whereas the heavier elements come near the Sun, thus forming the gas giants and rocky balls. Since the formation, the probability of inter-planetary bumping reduced gradually.This process also left a ring of asteroids in the form of a belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. There are many theories why this is left as a ring rather than a planet.
So, as we discussed there were many remnants in the 'now' solar system. But there is still some probability of the 'tiny' bits of rocks hitting any planet and if these hit our home planet .................. it would be a disaster for the human race......... to be continued.............Alexander Calder, an innovative artist
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| This is one of the famous hanging mobile art by Calder in 1930's |
"How can art be realized?
Out of volumes, motion, spaces bounded by the great space, the universe.
Out of different masses, tight, heavy, middling—indicated by variations of size or color—directional line—vectors which represent speeds, velocities, accelerations, forces, etc. . . .—these directions making between them meaningful angles, and senses, together defining one big conclusion or many.
Spaces, volumes, suggested by the smallest means in contrast to their mass, or even including them, juxtaposed, pierced by vectors, crossed by speeds.
Nothing at all of this is fixed.
Each element able to move, to stir, to oscillate, to come and go in its relationships with the other elements in its universe.
It must not be just a fleeting moment but a physical bond between the varying events in life.
Not extractions,
But abstractions
Abstractions that are like nothing in life except in their manner of reacting."
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- - From Abstraction-Création, Art Non Figuratif, no. 1, 1932.
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Thursday, July 21, 2011
IS ANYONE OUT THERE?
Will some readers of this article walk on Mars? I hope so indeed. I think it is very likely that they will. It will be dangerous perhaps the most exciting exploration of all time. In earlier centuries pioneer explorers discovered new continents, went to the jungles of Africa and South America, reached the North and South Poles and scaled the summits of the highest mountains. Those who traveled to Mars will go in the same spirit of adventure.
It would be wonderful to traverse the mountains, canyons and craters of Mars, or perhaps fly over them in a balloon. But no body would go to Mars for a comfortable life. It will be harder to live there than at the top of the Everest or at the South Pole.
But the greatest hope of these pioneers would be to find something on Mars that was alive.
Here on Earth, there are literally millions of species of life - slime, moulds, mushrooms, trees, frogs, monkeys and humans as well. Life survives in the most remote corners of our planet-in the dark caves where sunlight has been blocked for thousands of years, on arid desert rocks, around the hot springs where water is at the boiling point, deep underground and high in the atmosphere.
Our Earth teems with extraordinary range of life forms. But there constrains on shape and size. Big animals have fat legs but still cannot jump like insects. The largest animals float in water. Far greater variety could exist on other planets. For instance, if gravity is weaker, animals could be larger and creatures our size could have legs as thin as insects.
Mercury and Venus are nearer the Sun than the Earth is. Both are very much hotter. Earth is a Goldilocks planet i.e. not too hot or not too cold. If the Earth were too hot, even the most tenacious would fry. Mars is bit too cold but not absolutely frigid. The outer planets are colder still.
What about Jupiter, the biggest planet in our solar system? If life had evolved on this huge planet, where the force of gravity is far stronger than on Earth, it could be very strange indeed - for instance huge balloon like creatures floating in the dense atmosphere.
Jupiter has four large moons which could, perhaps, harbour life. One of these, Europa, is covered in thick ice. Beneath that there lies an ocean. Perhaps there are creatures swimming in this ocean? To search for them, there are plans to send a robot in a submarine.
But the second biggest moon in the solar system is Titan, one of Saturn's many moons. Scientists have already landed a probe on Titan's surface, revealing rivers, lakes and rocks. But the temperature is about minus 170 degrees Celsius, where any water is frozen solid. It is not water but liquid methane that flows in these rivers and lakes - not a good place for life.
If there was a signal back, it might come from aliens very different from us. Indeed, it would come from machines whose creators have long ago been usurped or become extinct. And, of course, there may be aliens who exist and have big 'brains' but are so different from us that we wouldn't recognize them or be able to communicate with them. Some may not want to reveal that they exist even if they are actually watching us! There may be some super-intelligent dolphins, happily thinking profound thoughts deep under some alien ocean, doing nothing to reveal their presence. Still other 'brains' could actually be swarm of insects, acting together like a single intelligent being. There may be a lot more out there than we could ever detect. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.
There are billions of planets in our galaxy and our galaxy itself is only one of billion. Most people would guess that the cosmos is teeming with life but that would be no more than a guess. We still know too little about how life began, and how it evolves, to be able to say whether simple life is common. We know even less about how likely it would be for simple life to evolve in the way it did here on Earth. My bet is that simple life is indeed very common but intelligent life is much rarer.
Indeed, there may not be any intelligent life out there at all. Earth's intricate biosphere could be unique. Perhaps we really are alone. If that's true, it is a disappointment for those who are looking far alien signals or who even hope that some day aliens may visit us. Bur the failure of searches need not depress us. Indeed it is perhaps a reason to be cheerful because we can ten be less modest about our place in the great scheme of things. Our Earth could be the most interesting place in the cosmos.
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| This was the plaque that was carried by Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecrafts which digitally stored all sorts of sounds, music, pictures, greetings in different languages on the Earth. In case some extraterrestrial intelligence finds this they may soon contact us. |
If life in unique to the earth, it could be seen as just a cosmic sideshow though it needn't be. That is because evolution isn't over indeed, it could be nearer its beginning than its end. Our solar system is barely middle aged and it will be 6 billion years before the Sun swells up, engulfs the inner planets and vaporises any life that still remains on Earth. Far future life and intelligence could be as different from us as we are from a Galaxy, evolving into a teeming complexity far beyond what we can imagine. If so our tiny planet, this pale blue dot floating in space could be the most important place in the entire cosmos.
(Extracted from 'George's cosmic treasure hunt' by Lucy Hawking)
THE MAN AND THE VIRTUAL WORLD
Chat online, tickets online, banking online, mail online, travel online, jobs online, shopping online, gaming online, socializing online, cinema online. Everything in this world seems to be going online. Don't be surprised. People can even pray, eat, and even have a cup of coffee online in the near future. It may sound absurd, but remember who could have imagined a hundred years ago that we could locate our school and homes from a satellite in outer space and see them on monitor.
Yes, amazing things have happened with the beginning of the internet. No need to stand in long queues in the hot summer to book bus or rail tickets. We can now do banking online at the click of the button. Books from the whole world are up for grabs online, that too for free. Postal mail has really become a thing of the past. Now we have faster, accurate and simpler email. Online video tutorials have made education easy and accessible to every one. Sitting in the comfort of our home, we can attend the lecture of a professor in Harvard. We can video-chat with our friends anywhere in the world. In simpler words, distances do not matter in this internet world. Listing these benefits, one can reach the conclusion that that the internet has changed the way we lived better.
But wait a minute, anything in excess can lead to problems. Look at the internet generation. Most of you spend hours on the so-called social networking sites like Orkut, Facebook, twitter, etc. without realizing how much it can affect your mental and physical growth. Students have got so addicted to these virtual worlds that they forget there is more to life than just sitting in front of a plastic box.
Children at young age have got cut off from their parents, friends and relatives. They now prefer online gaming in the air-conditioned rooms of their homes to sweating it out on the playground. How can they learn the importance of team spirit and physical exercise? Students are suffering a lack of concentration due to the addiction to social networking sites. People spend hours of office hours just updating their Facebook status, thus decreasing productivity.
No doubt, the internet helps us keep in touch with friends but there is no substitute for human interaction. Now people prefer sending e-cards for birthdays, etc.Thus it turns into e-friendship but we need a pure one to sustain.
In short, we have lost the human touch. We were born to live in a society, not in a virtual world where people fake their identities. After all, we are not robots. We have our own feelings and emotions which a programmed computer cannot understand. We cannot live in our virtual fantasy world ignoring the real world. We need to realize that we have invented the internet technology. We are the masters and we should not become slaves to this technology. We should not allow the internet to rule us but allow it to work for us.The internet in a wonderful technology but it needs to be used wisely.
MUSIC INSPIRED RELATIVITY
After two weeks, he came out walking down the steps rather weak. He showed his wife just two sheets of paper. Those two sheets contain the Theory of Relativity.
Amazing isn't it? That's Determination!!
The simplified version of relativity
What do you think of Einstein? Is he Genius? Is he Smart? Is he Intelligent?
Well, Once he said" Imagination is more important than knowledge". This might wonder you but only with his imagination he was able to travel at the speed of light in his thought experiments and wreaked havoc on this Earth. These are the simple conclusions of the theory of relativity to whom understanding relativity seems to be extremely difficult task ever done.
- Time slows down in a moving vehicle
- There is no such thing as 'meanwhile'
- Moving things shrink
- Space and time are linked
- Gravity slows down time
- Matter bends space
- Light and matter follow the shape of space-time
Your destiny doesn't lie in the heavens
Hello everyone!!!
Before you go through this, some of you might have initially checked out your horoscope in the ‘astro’ section of the newspaper, magazine, internet, iphone or whatever source it is. You may find today very good or an average from daily routine. Whatever astrological sign you may belong to the things around you change and keep changing endlessly. If anything goes wrong you sometimes blame saying ‘bad times’ or ‘unlucky’, etc and even a pure skeptic sometimes seems to admit that his stars are not on the right track.
Suppose you are reading this sipping some tea and then you turn the page and stumble upon another saying that having tea that’s too hot, daily increases the chances of getting cancer! First, you put your tea aside and share the news with someone near you or ponder about it but you don’t know the exact consequences. The same comes when you think of the future or what’s going to happen.
For this purpose, people use their curiosity and try to know what’s going to happen the next day, the next month or the next year and its human tendency to believe that things always go in a systematic order of periodicity similar to the numerical system or the chemical periodic table. That’s why our ancestors in Babylonia, Greece and Egypt tried to construct the model of the then known universe. They observed the skies day by day and recorded the movements of the Sun and the five visible planets on clay tablets (ancient ancestors of modern day silicon chips) and came to the conclusion that the Sun along with the planets always seemed to move across a band in the sky called ‘zodiac’ and surprisingly along this band lies 12 constellations (patterns in the night sky by stars but created by pure human imagination. You can also create your own sky, however wild it is) which were already known. So, the planets and the Sun ‘revolving around the Earth’ (remember the Geocentric theory before Copernicus introduced Heliocentric theory opposed then) seemed to traverse across the 12 zodiacal constellations that have definite boundaries. So, the Sun with the planets pass across these constellations i.e. from Aries to Pisces. Here, you can say that each constellation in this band is a zodiac sign. For example, if you were born on 12th November 1986, you belong to Scorpio, but astronomically speaking this means that the Sun in the course of his annual cycle was then passing through the constellation of Scorpius and on that day of any year, when you try to look at the Sun (obviously it’s not at all good), Scorpius will be hiding behind the Sun. It’s just a line of sight effect. Got it!
Also, there are good theories and bad theories. A theory is a set of principles which determines the outcome of an experiment or a phenomenon precisely. A good theory, even if fails contributes to science but whereas a bad theory doesn’t even have a basis of creation. For example, the steady state theory is now a hot topic among astronomers and several cosmologists. This in turn creates a healthy environment for the search for truth. Astrology is an example of bad theory because when we say that ‘whatever has to happen will certainly happen’, we can think deeply and again say that if this is true, then we cannot even think of development there will certainly be several limits to what we do and also the recent inclusion of 13th sign, Ophiuchus conflicts this bad theory. If this is true, then our lives will be controlled by the stars and planets looking down upon us. This is ridiculous since humans did, can and will do wonders such as the reusable space shuttles, cruise ships, maglev trains, atomic clocks, particles accelerators, supersonic jets, whatnot everything!
From now onwards, when you again watch out for the ‘horoscope’ or ‘astro’ section or visit an ‘astrologer’ just think how a line of sight between the mere random imaginative patterns of stars, balls of rock or gas, very hot and huge ball of gas which are millions and millions of miles away can influence the lives of you and me.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Search for little worlds - part 1
Hello everyone!!!
Glad to meet you once again in the blog
Till now you might be thinking what are these little worlds I am gonna tell about. First, we start our voyage through the history of the solar system, then I shall explain you what experiences I have faced and the new techniques used in the modern astrometry to search for these little ones.
First, we begin with a cloud of dense gas, a nebula. This is a remnant of either a supernova or might be in one of the arms of our galaxy.Due to the high density of the gas, some where in the nebula, a still more dense blob of gas formed which was slowly attracting some more gas from its neighborhood. This is called a protostar. At some moment, the center of the blob gets denser and denser, so denser that the temperatures raised to fifteen million degrees Celsius at the core which triggered of nuclear reactions and a star was born.
"So, this lighted up the life?" you would ask. But no.
After sometime a cloud a gas and interstellar dust from which the star was born, the sun gathered round this sibling star and due to the Sun's rotation, this gas gradually Flattened like a chef's dough who manually spins it in the air. So, a disk of flat interstellar gas and dust surrounded our sibling Sun.
Now, due to the virtue of weight of several gases, the heavy gases and compounds circled near the Sun whereas the lighter gases such as hydrogen circled away from the Sun.
This arranged gas disk slowly turned to liquid blobs of matter which slowly developed a solid core with lots of heat in them formed the protoplanets (planetesimals)
to be continued........
Glad to meet you once again in the blog
Till now you might be thinking what are these little worlds I am gonna tell about. First, we start our voyage through the history of the solar system, then I shall explain you what experiences I have faced and the new techniques used in the modern astrometry to search for these little ones.
The solar system is the only part of the universe which we can explore with a spacecraft of the kind we can build today. It is made up of one star, eight planets, several dwarf planets and various lesser bodies such as satellites, asteroids, comets and meteorites. |
First, we begin with a cloud of dense gas, a nebula. This is a remnant of either a supernova or might be in one of the arms of our galaxy.Due to the high density of the gas, some where in the nebula, a still more dense blob of gas formed which was slowly attracting some more gas from its neighborhood. This is called a protostar. At some moment, the center of the blob gets denser and denser, so denser that the temperatures raised to fifteen million degrees Celsius at the core which triggered of nuclear reactions and a star was born. "So, this lighted up the life?" you would ask. But no.
After sometime a cloud a gas and interstellar dust from which the star was born, the sun gathered round this sibling star and due to the Sun's rotation, this gas gradually Flattened like a chef's dough who manually spins it in the air. So, a disk of flat interstellar gas and dust surrounded our sibling Sun.
This arranged gas disk slowly turned to liquid blobs of matter which slowly developed a solid core with lots of heat in them formed the protoplanets (planetesimals)
to be continued........
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
I AM BACK
HELLO EVERYONE! After a very long time I have again posted on this blog. Since I will be not in touch with this very often, I may be posting once a month. THANK YOU
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