Beyond Nature

100 Strangest Mysteries - Download E-Book

noreply@blogger.com (Sunny) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:00:00 +0000

Were the Amityville hauntings cynical media manipulation? Is levitation possible? Has Earth been visited by UFOs from other realms? All these questions, and more, are considered in 100 Strangest Mysteries. Paranormal investigator Matt Lamy documents in detail the numerous phenomena and events which can be termed 'mysterious' and cannot be dismissed as mere hysteria or wild imaginings.

Divided into themed sections, the book includes:

The Beast of Bodmin ? whether it is an escaped exotic pet, a feral cat or something more sinister, it certainly causes concern for inhabitants of its local area

Area 51 ? conspiracy theorists believe it is a centre for the U.S. government's investigations into UFO activity, whilst others consider it to be 'only' a military air base

Ley lines and other energy fields ? are they sacred sites going back thousands of years or modern New Age notions?

The Holy Grail ? dismissed by organized religion, thought by some to have been a chalice brought to Britain by Joseph, many consider it to be nothing more than a romantic Arthurian legend

# Publisher: Metro Books; 2007 edition edition (2007)
# ISBN-10: 0760791929
# ISBN-13: 978-0760791929

Download E-book :

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=P3VOTDD3
or
http://rapidshare.com/files/149299193/100smys.rar

Password: theseekersoasis.org

NASA probe to study the mysterious confines of solar system

noreply@blogger.com (Sunny) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 09:32:00 +0000

NASA has launched a probe into orbit high above the earth to study the distant edge of the solar system where hot solar winds crash into the cold outer space.

The Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) was launched at 17-45 GMT on Sunday, according to images broadcast live by the U.S. space agency.

The small probe was deployed on a Pegasus rocket which dropped from the bay doors of a Lockheed L-1011 jet flying at 12,000 metres over the southern Pacific Ocean near the Marshall Islands.

“The count went really smooth… and everything appears to be going well,” NASA assistant launch manager Omar Baez said shortly after the launch.
The IBEX is on a two-year mission to take pictures and chart the mysterious confines of the solar system — including areas billions of kilometres from earth.

Remote region

The small, stop-sign-shaped probe is equipped with instruments that will allow it to take images and chart, for the first time, a remote region known as the interstellar boundary, where the solar system meets interstellar space. The area is a vast expanse of turbulent gas and twisting magnetic fields.

“The interstellar boundary regions are critical because they shield us from the vast majority of dangerous galactic cosmic rays, which otherwise would penetrate into earth’s orbit and make human spaceflight much more dangerous,” David McComas, IBEX principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San Antonio, Texas, said.

The only information that scientists have of this distant region is from the twin Voyager 1 and 2 probes, launched in 1977 and still in service today.

The two probes have travelled past the inner solar system, where the planets are, and on their way to its farthest edge.

In December 2004 Voyager 1 reached an area that scientists describe as the “termination shock” zone, where solar winds crash into the gas of interstellar space, marking the boundary of the solar system.

Fascinating

“The Voyager spacecraft are making fascinating observations of the local conditions at two points beyond the termination shock that show totally unexpected results and challenge many of our notions about this important region,” said Mr. McComas.

In 2007 Voyager 2 reached the heliosheath — the area where the termination shock begins — and on its current path and speed, should reach the heliopause in 2010. The heliopause constitutes the boundary between solar winds and interstellar winds.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) remains in regular contact with the two probes, which return data recorded by their particle detectors.

By 2020, however, contact with Voyager probes will be lost because of the weakening of their plutonium generators.

Revealing images

IBEX, armed with two very large aperture single pixel “cameras” that measure energetic neutral atoms, is to produce images of the region that will allow scientists for the first time to better understand what happens where the solar system meets the galaxy.

The mission will also study cosmic radiation, which has a negative impact on human health and space exploration. The IBEX probe weighs about 462 kg and is shaped like an octagon. It measures a mere 52 cm high and 97 cm across.

The Pegasus put the IBEX in a low orbit some 96 km above the earth. The IBEX spacecraft’s own solid rocket motor will then carry the probe into a much higher altitude orbit of around 200,000 miles, NASA said in a statement.

Intel India Unleashes Xeon 7400 Processor (Dunnington Processor)

noreply@blogger.com (Sunny) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 04:42:00 +0000

Intel has rolled out its first chip with six brains, unveiling a "multi-core" microprocessor that boosts computing muscle while cutting back on electricity use. The new Xeon 7400 series microprocessor has been designed by none other than Intel engineers at Bangalore from scratch.

The Bangalore design centre is the first Intel team outside the US to complete the design of a 45-nanometer processor.

Post its inception in 2001, the Xeon 7400 series is the first chip to come out of Intel's Bangalore design centre. The centre had previously worked on another Xeon server chip called Whitefield.

But that chip never made it to market. It was cancelled in 2005, when Intel revised its product road maps to better compete with Advanced Micro Devices, and the Indian design team soon put its focus on Dunnington.

The Dunnington chip design marks a technical milestone for Intel, as it uses a monolithic die, the term engineers use to describe putting all of the cores on a single piece of silicon.

Intel's existing quad-core processor lines use two pieces of silicon, each with two cores, packaged together. That approach made the older quad-core chips easier to produce and avoided the manufacturing difficulties that hampered the release of AMD's Barcelona chip, an x86 server chip with four cores on a single piece of silicon. Those difficulties were compounded by AMD's transition to a new 65-nanometer manufacturing process.

The giant chipmaker has clarified that they have no intention to create virtual bridge between Intel and AMD by introducing the first of it’s kind 6-core x86 microprocessor Xeon 7400 from it’s India’s off-shore unit. The newly introduced Intel microprocessor is powered with six processing cores with each of it’s chip. Designed by 1.9 billion transistors, the Xeon 7400 will support shared cache memory in the tune of 16 MB.

Dell, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Unisys and Fujitsu are among the computer
makers building the new Xeon 7400 chips into servers designed for
business networks, according to Intel.

With the introduction of Dunnington, and the upcoming Nehalem line of quad-core processors that also uses a monolithic design, Intel waited until its 45-nanometer process was in mass production, with any technical difficulties presumably ironed out, before making this transition.

After successful launching of the new chip, India has entered in the list of exclusive countries that have high expertise and infrastructure to design and fabricate such a complex microprocessor. Entire design operation of the chip, including it’s front-end and back-end design, pre-silicon logic validation etc., has been performed by about 300 people at the Bangalore unit of Intel. “The quality of available talent, technology ecosystem and business potential are factors which make India a strategic business site for Intel,” says Intel India president Mr. Praveen Vishakantaiah.

The new Intel processor, Xeon 7400 series, is highly compatible with the Intel Xeon 7300 series and the Intel 7300 chipset.

With availability of the new Intel Xeon 7400 processors, VMware customers will now be able to move freely between two servers running on different Intel chips. Earlier, people had to use same type of Intel chips on two servers to allow vMotion to work, but now no such limitation exists.

The Xeon 7400 series is priced between $856 (Rs39,279) and $2729 (about Rs1.09 lakh), the company said

Intel executives say the Xeon 7400 is part of an "incremental migration" toward chips with limitless numbers of "cores" that seamlessly and efficiently share demanding computer processing tasks.

Intel and rival Advanced Micro Devices have two-core and four-core chips on the market. The six-core chip delivers 50 per cent more performance than its quad-core predecessor while using 10 per cent less electric power, according to Intel enterprise group vice president Tom Kilroy.

Electricity and cooling expenses can account for nearly half the cost of running company computer servers.

"It isn't just performance and energy efficiency but the use models," Kilroy said of the boon promised by increasingly powerful chips. "One of the major ones is virtualisation."

Multi-core chips are boons to computing trends including high-definition video viewing online; businesses offering services applications on the Internet; and single servers running many "virtual" machines.

Product brief: Intel® Xeon® processor 7400 series (PDF 478KB)

Video:

Intel executive VP, Pat Gelsinger announcing world record performance results for XEON 7400-series processors. Industry first 1.2 million database tranactions per minute on 8 slot IBM server.

EKA - The Fastest SuperComputer in Asia

noreply@blogger.com (Sunny) — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 08:07:00 +0000

India has surprisingly broken into the Top Ten in a much-fancied twice-yearly list of the fastest supercomputers in the world, marking a giant leap in its push towards becoming a global IT power.

EKA (the Sanskrit name for number one) is a supercomputer ranked as the 8th fastest in the world and fastest in Asia as of June 2008, according to the Top 500 Supercomputer list built by Hewlett-Packard.

The supercomputer built at the Computational Research Laboratories (CRL) by Hewlett-Packard facility at Pune, India, marked a milestone in the Tata Group's effort to build an indigenous high-performance computing solution. CRL built the supercomputer facility using dense data centre layout and novel network routing and parallel processing library technologies developed by its scientists. It was reported to have cost $30 million dollars to build.

Ashwin Nanda, who heads the CRL, told the conference that its supercomputer had been built with HP servers using Intel chips with a total of 14,240 processor cores. The system went operational last month and achieved a performance of 117.9 teraflops.

It is the first supercomputer to have been developed totally by a corporation without any government help, now shares the rarefied heights of supercomputing with two American and one German supercomputer.

Eka is an important milestone because it almost restarts the train of supercomputing in India, which stalled after the PARAM supercomputers developed by the C-DAC. “It is a team effort rather than an individual’s effort. This has put India on the world map and brought a national sense of pride,” said S Ramadorai, chairman, CRL, and also the CEO of India’s largest software firm, TCS. TCS is a key partner in the entire supercomputer project.

The project was also important because it was done with a small work-force and with global partners like Hewlett Packard, Intel and Mellanox. But the most noteworthy achievement of the team was that it finished the project in time even after CRL lost its technical spearhead, Dr Narendra Karmarkar.

Details:

System Name: EKA
Site: Computational Research Laboratories, TATA SONS
System Family: HP Cluster Platform 3000BL
System Model: Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c
Computer: Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c, Xeon 53xx 3GHz, Infiniband
Vendor: Hewlett-Packard
Application area: Not Specified
Installation Year: 2007
Operating System: Linux
Interconnect: Infiniband DDR
Processor: Intel EM64T Xeon 53xx (Clovertown) 3000 MHz (12 GFlops)

For more comprehensive details click here

Proposed Applications:

Supercomputers are typically used for highly calculation problem solving in quantum mechanical physics, molecular modeling, weather forecasting and climate research, and physical simulation including that of nuclear tests.

The term supercomputer is quite relative. It was first used in 1929 to refer to large custom-built tabulators IBM made for Columbia University. The supercomputers of the 1970s are today's desktops.

"The supercomputer system will have a direct effect on the lives of Indians, espcially in areas such as earthquake and Tsunami modelling, modellings of the economy and potential for drug design," said Mr S. Ramadorai, chairman of the Computational Research Laboratories, which is a subsidiary of Indian firm Tata.

Having developed the machine, the Tata group is busy developing a marketing strategy for it. “In another six-nine months, we would be able to build applications and a software library, following which we would take the offering to commercial use,” Raju Bhinge, chief executive, Tata Strategic Management Group — a Tata Group company involved in the development of the facility in Pune told ET. CRL’s capabilities are currently being used by another Tata Group company, Tata Elixsi for high speed animation rendering work. CRL is also looking at newer opportunities in the weather forecasting, automotive crash simulation, computational fluid dynamics in aerospace sector, gaming and animation and drug discovery among many others.

According to company officials, CRL has already been in touch with the likes of Boeing and Airbus for its aerospace applications and there is also interest from Tata Motors for its crash testing application. S Ramadorai, CEO & MD of TCS one of the partners for CRL and chairman of CRL said that the company was also in discussion with a host of government agencies as well, for the use of its new computing prowess.

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Is Life on Earth Originated in Mars or Vice-Versa ???

noreply@blogger.com (Sunny) — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 18:36:00 +0000

In 1996 the controversial discovery of what appeared to be Martian fossils in a meteorite from Antarctica ignited a furor in the scientific community.

The idea that a rock billions of years old was flung into space with traces of life aboard was intoxicating, fueling thoughts of panspermia -- the idea that all life on Earth could have originated on Mars or some other alien planet.

Twelve years on, scientists still debate whether the tiny structures are Martian or not, or even fossils. But now a new study has shown it's possible for traces of life to survive a punishing interplanetary journey.

Frances Westall of the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France and a group of researchers attached a 2-centimeter-thick rock to the heat shield of a Foton M3 space capsule.

Nestled between the shield and rock was a layer of the hearty bacteria Chroococcidiopsis, commonly found in the harshest deserts on Earth.

When the capsule hit Earth's atmosphere, the rock was heated to at least 3,056 degrees Fahrenheit (1,680 degrees Centigrade). Most of it burned away, leaving only 8 millimeters of material behind. What was left was a gooey, melted white crust of quartz.

The rock's original structure -- along with visible microfossils -- was preserved at the core.

"This is a great positive result in searching for traces of extra-terrestrial life on meteorites," Westall said. "If ever Martians fossils land on Earth, we should be able to see them."

The desert-dwelling organisms were not so lucky, however.

Westall said the screws that held the rock to the heat shield loosened during re-entry, allowing temperatures between the shield and the rock to climb to between 570 and 930 degrees Fahrenheit (300 and 500 degrees Centigrade).

"[The bacteria] were carbonized," she said, "so it's a negative result for the idea of panspermia, but we'll have to run the experiment again."

"This certainly does not disprove the idea of panspermia," David Kring of the Lunar and Planetary Science Institute said.

For life on Mars to make it to Earth, it would have to survive a perilous interplanetary crossing. Scientists have calculated that the first stage -- launching off the surface with debris created by a meteorite impact -- is survivable.

Little is known about the long journey through the vacuum of space, but microbes living inside rock could be protected enough to make the trip.

Then comes re-entry. If life were to survive the heat of rocketing through Earth's atmosphere at 12-15 kilometers per second (33,000 mph), it would still have to live through the impact. At this point, no one knows if it can.

"This is a piece in the puzzle of the origin of life, and the distribution of life in the solar system," Kring said of the team's research. "If life did originate on Earth and was transferred elsewhere in the solar system, it would be interesting to everyone to know that, and vice versa -- if life began on Mars and simply propagated better on Earth, that would be interesting, too."

laser powered spacecraft

noreply@blogger.com (RAJESH) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:16:00 +0000

The future technolgy:laser propulsions
Imagine a small saucer like structure reaching speeds of rockets,its not a ufo...its our future rocket.. In few days we may be able to lauch spacecrafts with saucer like structure with reflecting surfaces... Laser beams are user to provide the initial thrust to it....
The Lightcraft propulsion research employs the Pulsed Laser Vulnerability Test System (PLVTS), a 10 kilowatt laser built by AVCO TEXTRON for the Army. PLVTS is the highest average power, pulsed carbon dioxide laser presently operating in the United States.

The laser-propelled vehicle, called "Lightcraft" because it flies on a beam of laser light, is designed to harness the energy of a laser beam and convert it into propulsive thrust. The Lightcraft receives the kilojoule pulses from the PLVTS laser at a rate of 10 times per second upon the concentrating mirror that forms its rear section. The function of this parabolic mirror is to focus the pulsed laser energy into a ring-shaped "absorption/propulsion" chamber. Here the laser beam is concentrated to extremely high intensities, sufficient to momentarily burst the inlet air into a highly luminous plasma (10-30,000 K), with instantaneous pressures reaching tens of atmospheres providing thrust. This airbreathing pulsed detonation engine concept owes its origins to the German V1 "Buzz Bomb" of WW II that ran on aviation fuel.
see this video to get a good idea of the laser craft...

The laser Lightcraft concept was first proposed and developed by Prof. Leik Myrabo of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, under sponsorship of the Laser Propulsion Program of the former Strategic Defense Initiative Office (SDIO). He is now collaborating with the Air Force Research Laboratory's Propulsion Directorate at Edwards AFB CA to conduct field tests to demonstrate how the craft can be propelled using available high powered lasers. Dr Franklin Mead of the lab's advanced propulsion group studied the initial SDIO proposal, and offered Myrabo a multi-year sabbatical position at the lab and assistance in developing and validating the concept.

Myrabo's original SDIO Lightcraft concept was designed as a single-stage-to-orbit spacecraft that would become a microsatellite upon reaching orbit. The spacecraft lifts-off in a laser propelled airbreathing engine mode, and as it nears Mach 5 speed and 30 km altitude, shifts into a laser propelled rocket mode. The airbreathing engine mode would develop quasi-steady thrust by pulsing at hundreds to thousands of times a second -- depending on the mach number and altitude flown along the boost trajectory into orbit. The rocket mode would use on-board propellant, in the form of liquid hydrogen or nitrogen, to convert and expand the laser energy for propulsion once the Lightcraft had climbed above the atmosphere. Unlike Goddard’s rocket engine, no oxydizer is required. The SDIO study showed that all launch to orbital conditions for a laser propelled vehicle could be satisified by a single, high-power ground-based laser -- with, or without the aid of a low altitude laser relay mirror.

Myrabo and Mead are the project team co-directors for this laser Lightcraft research and development effort. Five different Lightcraft designs have been flight tested using the pointing and tracking system on the PLVTS laser, run by Stephen Squires and Chris Beairsto of WSMR's Directorate of Applied Technology Test and Simulation.

Laser boost capability has been demonstrated at the White Sands facility with Lightcraft reaching 14 feet vertically in 2-second gyroscopically stabilized free flights, as well as 400 foot horizontal guide-wire flights lasting 10 to 20 seconds.

The researchers plan to increase the Lightcraft's free flight altitude in November by moving the launch stand outside Test Cell #3, where the flights will no longer be limited by lab ceiling height. The near-term goal is to reach an altitude of 1 Kilometer in the next 18 months with the PLVTS laser. To climb even higher, e.g., 10 to 100 km or near the edge of space, will require re-activation of the 150-Kw pulsed "Driver" CO2 laser, now stored in Test Cell #2 at HELSTF. Preparations are underway to enlist this powerful infrared laser that was developed at the AVCO Research Laboratory (Everett, MA) in the mid '70's -- under the guidance of Dr. Arthur Kantrowitz, a long time advocate of laser propulsion.

The predominant reason for investigating this laser launch concept is its low cost, simplicity and responsiveness upon demand. Laser Lightcraft and their propulsion modes are a radical departure from the chemically fueled rockets used today. If successful, this new energy beam propulsion technology will supplement rather than replace current manned and unmanned launch systems.

The approach holds great promise for reducing the launch costs of microsatellites by several orders of magnitude less than today's chemical-fueled rocket technology. The evolution of ultra-lightweight high temperature materials, dual-mode laser propulsion engines, powerful lasers, and the opportunity to change science fiction into scientific fact are the driving forces behind this joint AFRL/ MSFC research effort, pursueing an innovative and promising method for reaching space.

Large hadron collider HALTED

noreply@blogger.com (RAJESH) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 03:48:00 +0000

The particle collider that was launched with fanfare on September 10 has been damaged to a degree than previously thought and will be out of commission for at least two months,its operators said on saturday..... A Cern spokesman said damage to the £3.6bn ($6.6bn) particle accelerator was worse than anticipated.

The LHC is built to smash protons together at huge speeds, recreating conditions moments after the Big Bang.

Scientists hope it will shed light on fundamental questions in physics.

DAMAGE :
it seems to be a faulty electrical connection between two magnets that stopped super conducting, melted and led to a mechanical failure and let the helium out...

in detail.....
On Friday, a failure, known as a quench, caused around 100 of the LHC's super-cooled magnets to heat up by as much as 100C.

The fire brigade were called out after a tonne of liquid helium leaked into the tunnel at Cern, near Geneva.

Cern spokesman James Gillies said on Saturday that the sector that was damaged would have to be warmed up to above its operating temperature - of near absolute zero - so that repairs could be made, and then cooled down again.

While he said there was never any danger to the public, Mr Gillies admitted that the breakdown would be costly.

He said: "A full investigation is still under way but the most likely cause seems to be a faulty electrical connection between two of the magnets which probably melted, leading to a mechanical failure.

"We're investigating and we can't really say more than that now.

"But we do know that we will have to warm the machine up, make the repair, cool it down, and that's what brings you to two months of downtime for the LHC."

SETBACK:

The first beams were fired successfully around the accelerator's 27km (16.7 miles) underground ring over a week ago.

The crucial next step is to collide those beams head on. However, the fault appears to have ruled out any chance of these experiments taking place for the next two months at least.

The quench occurred during final testing of the last of the LHC's electrical circuits to be commissioned.

At 1127 (0927 GMT) on Friday, the LHC's online logbook recorded a quench in sector 3-4 of the accelerator, which lies between the Alice and CMS detectors.

The entry stated that helium had been lost to the tunnel and that vacuum conditions had also been lost.

The superconducting magnets in the LHC must be supercooled to 1.9 kelvin above absolute zero, to allow them to steer particle beams around the circuit.

As a result of the quench, the temperature of about 100 of the magnets in the machine's final sector rose by around 100C.

The setback came just a day after the LHC's beam was restored after engineers replaced a faulty transformer that had hindered progress for much of the past week.

The collider, in design and consruction stages for more than 2 decades, is the world's largest atom smasher...

it fires beams of protons from nuclei of atoms around the tunnels at nearly the speed of light...

for more....

source

BBC news

Ten Ways to destroy Mother Earth

noreply@blogger.com (Sunny) — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 15:44:00 +0000

Whether it took the Earth 4.5 billion years to get to where it is today (or a mere seven days), destroying it might take a lot less time. Take a look at these spell-bounding new ways of destroying our Earth and how far man can reach from today's perspective.

10. Total existence failure

You will need: nothing

Method: No method. Simply sit back and twiddle your thumbs as, completely by chance, all 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms making up the planet Earth suddenly, simultaneously and spontaneously cease to exist. Note: the odds against this actually ever occurring are considerably greater than a googolplex to one. Failing this, some kind of arcane (read: scientifically laughable) probability-manipulation device may be employed.

Utter, utter rubbish.

9. Gobbled up by strangelets

You will need: a stable strangelet

Method: Hijack control of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in Brookhaven National Laboratory, Long Island, New York. Use the RHIC to create and maintain a stable strangelet. Keep it stable for as long as it takes to absorb the entire Earth into a mass of strange quarks. Keeping the strangelet stable is incredibly difficult once it has absorbed the stabilizing machinery, but creative solutions may be possible.

A while back, there was some media hoo-hah about the possibility of this actually happening at the RHIC, but in actuality the chances of a stable strangelet forming are pretty much zero.

Earth's final resting place: a huge glob of strange matter.

8. Sucked into a microscopic black hole

You will need: a microscopic black hole. Note that black holes are not eternal, they evaporate due to Hawking radiation. For your average black hole this takes an unimaginable amount of time, but for really small ones it could happen almost instantaneously, as evaporation time is dependent on mass. Therefore you microscopic black hole must have greater than a certain threshold mass, roughly equal to the mass of Mount Everest. Creating a microscopic black hole is tricky, since one needs a reasonable amount of neutronium, but may possibly be achievable by jamming large numbers of atomic nuclei together until they stick. This is left as an exercise to the reader.

Method: simply place your black hole on the surface of the Earth and wait. Black holes are of such high density that they pass through ordinary matter like a stone through the air. The black hole will plummet through the ground, eating its way to the center of the Earth and all the way through to the other side: then, it'll oscillate back, over and over like a matter-absorbing pendulum. Eventually it will come to rest at the core, having absorbed enough matter to slow it down. Then you just need to wait, while it sits and consumes matter until the whole Earth is gone.

Highly, highly unlikely. But not impossible.

Earth's final resting place: a singularity of almost zero size, which will then proceed to happily orbit the Sun as normal.

Source: "The Dark Side Of The Sun," by Terry Pratchett. It is true that the microscopic black hole idea is an age-old science fiction mainstay which predates Pratchett by a long time.

7. Blown up by matter/antimatter reaction

You will need: 2,500,000,000,000 tons of antimatter

Antimatter - the most explosive substance possible - can be manufactured in small quantities using any large particle accelerator, but this will take some considerable time to produce the required amounts. If you can create the appropriate machinery, it may be possible - and much easier - simply to "flip" 2.5 trillion tons of matter through a fourth dimension, turning it all to antimatter at once.

Method: This method involves detonating a bomb so big that it blasts the Earth to pieces.

How hard is that?

The gravitational binding energy of a planet of mass M and radius R is - if you do the lengthy calculations - given by the formula E=(3/5)GM^2/R. For Earth, that works out to roughly 224,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Joules. The Sun takes nearly a WEEK to output that much energy. Think about THAT.

To liberate that much energy requires the complete annihilation of around 2,500,000,000,000 tonnes of antimatter. That's assuming zero energy loss to heat and radiation, which is unlikely to be the case in reality: You'll probably need to up the dose by at least a factor of ten. Once you've generated your antimatter, probably in space, just launch it en masse towards Earth. The resulting release of energy (obeying Einstein's famous mass-energy equation, E=mc^2) should be sufficient to split the Earth into a thousand pieces.

Earth's final resting place: A second asteroid belt around the Sun.

Earliest feasible completion date: AD 2500. Of course, if it does prove possible to manufacture antimatter in the sufficiently large quantities you require - which is not necessarily the case - then smaller antimatter bombs will be around long before then.

6. Destroyed by vacuum energy detonation

You will need: a light bulb

Method: This is a fun one. Contemporary scientific theories tell us that what we may see as vacuum is only vacuum on average, and actually thriving with vast amounts of particles and antiparticles constantly appearing and then annihilating each other. It also suggests that the volume of space enclosed by a light bulb contains enough vacuum energy to boil every ocean in the world. Therefore, vacuum energy could prove to be the most abundant energy source of any kind. Which is where you come in. All you need to do is figure out how to extract this energy and harness it in some kind of power plant - this can easily be done without arousing too much suspicion - then surreptitiously allow the reaction to run out of control. The resulting release of energy would easily be enough to annihilate all of planet Earth and probably the Sun too.

Slightly possible.

Earth's final resting place: a rapidly expanding cloud of particles of varying size.

Earliest feasible completion date: 2060 or so.

Source: "3001: The Final Odyssey," by Arthur C. Clarke

5. Sucked into a giant black hole

You will need: a black hole, extremely powerful rocket engines, and, optionally, a large rocky planetary body. The nearest black hole to our planet is 1600 light years from Earth in the direction of Sagittarius, orbiting V4641.
Method: after locating your black hole, you need get it and the Earth together. This is likely to be the most time-consuming part of this plan. There are two methods, moving Earth or moving the black hole, though for best results you'd most likely move both at once.

Very difficult, but definitely possible.

Earth's final resting place: part of the mass of the black hole.

Earliest feasible completion date: I do not expect the necessary technology to be available until AD 3000, and add at least 800 years for travel time. (That's in an external observer's frame of reference and assuming you move both the Earth and the black hole at the same time.)

Sources: "The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy," by Douglas Adams; SPACE.com

4. Meticulously and systematically deconstructed

You will need: a powerful mass driver, or ideally lots of them; ready access to roughly 2*10^32J

Method: Basically, what we're going to do here is dig up the Earth, a big chunk at a time, and boost the whole lot of it into orbit. Yes. All six sextillion tons of it. A mass driver is a sort of oversized electromagnetic railgun, which was once proposed as a way of getting mined materials back from the Moon to Earth - basically, you just load it into the driver and fire it upwards in roughly the right direction. We'd use a particularly powerful model - big enough to hit escape velocity of 11 kilometers per second even after atmospheric considerations - and launch it all into the Sun or randomly into space.

Alternate methods for boosting the material into space include loading the extracted material into space shuttles or taking it up via space elevator. All these methods, however, require a - let me emphasize this - titanic quantity of energy to carry out. Building a Dyson sphere ain't gonna cut it here. (Note: Actually, it would. But if you have the technology to build a Dyson sphere, why are you reading this?) See No. 6 for a possible solution.

If we wanted to and were willing to devote resources to it, we could start this process RIGHT NOW. Indeed, what with all the gunk left in orbit, on the Moon and heading out into space, we already have done.

Earth's final resting place: Many tiny pieces, some dropped into the Sun, the remainder scattered across the rest of the Solar System.

Earliest feasible completion date: Ah. Yes. At a billion tons of mass driven out of the Earth's gravity well per second: 189,000,000 years.

3. Pulverized by impact with blunt instrument

You will need: a big heavy rock, something with a bit of a swing to it... perhaps Mars

Method: Essentially, anything can be destroyed if you hit it hard enough. ANYTHING. The concept is simple: find a really, really big asteroid or planet, accelerate it up to some dazzling speed, and smash it into Earth, preferably head-on but whatever you can manage. The result: an absolutely spectacular collision, resulting hopefully in Earth (and, most likely, our "cue ball" too) being pulverized out of existence - smashed into any number of large pieces which if the collision is hard enough should have enough energy to overcome their mutual gravity and drift away forever, never to coagulate back into a planet again.

A brief analysis of the size of the object required can be found here. Falling at the minimal impact velocity of 11 kilometers per second and assuming zero energy loss to heat and other energy forms, the cue ball would have to have roughly 60% of the mass of the Earth. Mars, the next planet out, "weighs" in at about 11% of Earth's mass, while Venus, the next planet in and also the nearest to Earth, has about 81%. Assuming that we would fire our cue ball into Earth at much greater than 11km/s (I'm thinking more like 50km/s), either of these would make great possibilities.

Obviously a smaller rock would do the job, you just need to fire it faster. A 10,000,000,000,000-tonne asteroid at 90% of light speed would do just as well. See the Guide to moving Earth for useful information on maneuvering big hunks of rock across interplanetary distances.

Pretty plausible.

Earth's final resting place: a variety of roughly Moon-sized chunks of rock, scattered haphazardly across the greater Solar System.

Earliest feasible completion date: AD 2500, maybe?

2. Eaten by von Neumann machines
You will need: a single von Neumann machine

Method: A von Neumann machine is any device that is capable of creating an exact copy of itself given nothing but the necessary raw materials. Create one of these that subsists almost entirely on iron, magnesium, aluminum and silicon, the major elements found in Earth's mantle and core. It doesn't matter how big it is as long as it can reproduce itself exactly in any period of time. Release it into the ground under the Earth's crust and allow it to fend for itself. Watch and wait as it creates a second von Neumann machine, then they create two more, then they create four more. As the population of machines doubles repeatedly, the planet Earth will, terrifyingly soon, be entirely eaten up and turned into a swarm of potentially sextillions of machines. Technically your objective would now be complete - no more Earth - but if you want to be thorough then you can command your VNMs to hurl themselves, along with any remaining trace elements, into the Sun. This hurling would have to be achieved using rocket propulsion of some sort, so be sure to include this in your design.

So crazy it might just work.

Earth's final resting place: the bodies of the VNMs themselves, then a small lump of iron sinking into the Sun.

Earliest feasible completion date: Potentially 2045-2050, or even earlier.

Source: "2010: Odyssey Two," by Arthur C. Clarke

1. Hurled into the Sun

You will need: Earthmoving equipment

Method: Hurl the Earth into the Sun. Sending Earth on a collision course with the Sun is not as easy as one might think; even though you don't actually have to literally hit the Sun (send the Earth near enough to the Sun (within the Roche limit), and tidal forces will tear it apart), it's surprisingly easy to end up with Earth in a loopy elliptical orbit which merely roasts it for four months in every eight. But careful planning can avoid this.

This is impossible at our current technological level, but will be possible one day, I'm certain. In the meantime, may happen by freak accident if something comes out of nowhere and randomly knocks Earth in precisely the right direction. Earth's final resting place: a small globule of vaporized iron sinking slowly into the heart of the Sun.

Earliest feasible completion date: Via act of God: 25 years' time. Any earlier and we'd have already spotted the asteroid in question. Via human intervention: given the current level of expansion of space technology, 2250 at best.

Source: "Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers," by Grant Naylor.

Europa n Titan--Next destinations of mankind???

noreply@blogger.com (VeNoM) — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 15:36:00 +0000

I have written about the Extraterrestrial and the Alien Mania stuff here in my previous posts. Now this post is all about life beyond Planet Earth! Man has always been in a constant search for a hospitable place in our solar system and studies reveal that his long cherished dream of living off the earth may come true one day! Europa and Titan--The two moons may be the next destinations of mankind! This post should have come up right after the science explorations but its just that I recently ran into a documentary on History Channel called "Histories Classroom" and that is how my curiosity grew regarding this topic! And hence here I am trying to bring about yet another interesting aspect of Beyond-Nature! Lets digg deeper...

Europa

It is the sixth of Jupiter's known satellites and the fourth largest; it is the second of the Galilean moons. Europa is slightly smaller than the Earth's Moon. It has fascinated the humans for hundreds of years now ever since it was discovered by Galileo in 17th century.

It has been suggested that life may exist in Europa's under-ice ocean, perhaps subsisting in an environment similar to Earth's deep-ocean hydrothermal vents or the Antarctic Lake Vostok. Life in such an ocean could possibly be similar to microbial life on Earth in the deep ocean. So far, there is no evidence that life exists on Europa, but the likely presence of liquid water has spurred calls to send a probe there.

Until the 1970s, life, at least as the concept is generally understood, was believed to be entirely dependent on energy from the Sun. Plants on Earth's surface capture energy from sunlight to photosynthesize sugars from carbon dioxide and water, releasing oxygen in the process, and are then eaten by oxygen-respiring animals, passing their energy up the food chain. Even life in the ocean depths, where sunlight cannot reach, was believed to obtain its nourishment either from consuming organic detritus rained down from the surface waters or from eating animals that did. A world's ability to support life was thought to depend on its access to sunlight. However, in 1977, during an exploratory dive to the Galapagos Rift in the deep-sea exploration submersible Alvin, scientists discovered colonies of giant tube worms, clams, crustaceans, mussels, and other assorted creatures clustered around undersea volcanic features known as black smokers. These creatures thrive despite having no access to sunlight, and it was soon discovered that they comprise an entirely independent food chain. Instead of plants, the basis for this food chain was a form of bacterium that derived its energy from oxidization of reactive chemicals, such as hydrogen or hydrogen sulfide, that bubbled up from the Earth's interior. This chemosynthesis revolutionized the study of biology by revealing that life need not be sun-dependent; it only requires water and an energy gradient in order to exist. It opened up a new avenue in astrobiology by massively expanding the number of possible extraterrestrial habitats. Europa's unlit interior is now considered to be the most likely location for extant extraterrestrial life in the Solar System.

While the tube worms and other multicellular eukaryotic organisms around these hydrothermal vents respire oxygen and thus are indirectly dependent on photosynthesis, anaerobic chemosynthetic bacteria and archaea that inhabit these ecosystems provide a possible model for life in Europa's ocean. The energy provided by tidal flexing drives active geological processes within Europa's interior, just as they do to a far more obvious degree on its sister moon Io. While Europa, like the Earth, may possess an internal energy source from radioactive decay, the energy generated by tidal flexing would be several orders of magnitude greater than any radiological source. However, such an energy source could never support an ecosystem as large and diverse as the photosynthesis-based ecosystem on Earth's surface. Life on Europa could exist clustered around hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, or below the ocean floor, where endoliths are known to habitate on Earth. Alternatively, it could exist clinging to the lower surface of the moon's ice layer, much like algae and bacteria in Earth's polar regions, or float freely in Europa's ocean. However, if Europa's ocean were too cold, biological processes similar to those known on Earth could not take place. Similarly, if it were too salty, only extreme halophiles could survive in its environment.

The Surface of Europa as pictured by satellite Galileo

In 2006, Robert Pappalardo, an assistant professor within the University of Colorado's space department, said, "We’ve spent quite a bit of time and effort trying to understand if Mars was once a habitable environment. Europa today, probably, is a habitable environment. We need to confirm this … but Europa, potentially, has all the ingredients for life … and not just four billion years ago … but today."

Regarding the info. about Ice-Surface, The Explorations and the History of this Moon we recommend you to visit the following sites..

Nine Planets

Solar Views

Europa-The Wiki Link

Titan

This brownish-yellow satellite might have appealed more to the TitanWorld-The Watch Manufacturers that they named their company after this moon . Known for its earth like atmosphere , rugged mountains and climatic features this satellite has been cited as a possible host for microbial extraterrestrial life or, at least, as a prebiotic environment rich in complex organic chemistry.

Scientists believe that the atmosphere of early Earth was similar in composition to the current atmosphere on Titan. Many hypotheses have developed that attempt to bridge the step from chemical to biological evolution. The Miller-Urey experiment and several following experiments have shown that with an atmosphere similar to that of Titan and the addition of UV radiation, complex molecules and polymer substances like tholins can be generated. The reaction starts with dissociation of nitrogen and methane, forming hydrocyan and ethyne. Further reactions have been studied extensively.
All of these experiments have led to the suggestion that enough organic material exists on Titan to start a chemical evolution analogous to what is thought to have started life on Earth. While the analogy assumes the presence of liquid water for longer periods than is currently observable, several theories suggest that liquid water from an impact could be preserved under a frozen isolation layer. It has also been observed that liquid ammonia oceans could exist deep below the surface; one model suggests an ammonia–water solution as much as 200 km deep beneath a water ice crust, conditions that, "while extreme by terrestrial standards, are such that life could indeed survive". Heat transfer between the interior and upper layers would be critical in sustaining any sub-surface oceanic life.

Detection of microbial life on Titan would depend on its biogenic effects. That the atmospheric methane and nitrogen are of biological origin has been examined, for example. Hydrogen has been cited as one molecule suitable to test for life on Titan: if methanogenic life is consuming atmospheric hydrogen in sufficient volume, it will have a measurable effect on the mixing ratio in the troposphere.

Despite these biological possibilities, there are formidable obstacles to life on Titan, and any analogy to Earth is inexact. At a vast distance from the Sun, Titan is frigid (a fact exacerbated by the anti-greenhouse effect of its cloud cover), and its atmosphere lacks CO₂. Given these difficulties, the topic of life on Titan may be best described as an experiment for examining theories on conditions necessary prior to flourishing life on Earth. While life itself may not exist, the prebiotic conditions of the Titanian environment, and the possible presence of organic chemistry, remain of great interest in understanding the early history of the terrestrial biosphere. Using Titan as a prebiotic experiment involves not only observation through spacecraft, but laboratory experiment, and chemical and photochemical modelling on Earth.

An alternate explanation for life's hypothetical existence on Titan has been proposed: if life were to be found on Titan, it would be statistically more likely to have originated from Earth than to have appeared independently, a process known as panspermia. It is theorized that large asteroid and cometary impacts on Earth's surface have caused hundreds of millions of fragments of microbe-laden rock to escape Earth's gravity. Calculations indicate that a number of these would encounter many of the bodies in the solar system, including Titan.

Conditions on Titan could become far more habitable in future. Six billion years from now, as the Sun becomes a red giant, surface temperatures could rise to ~200K, high enough for stable oceans of water/ammonia mixture to exist on the surface. As the Sun's ultraviolet output decreases, the haze in Titan's upper atmosphere will deplete, lessening the anti-greenhouse effect on the surface and enabling the greenhouse created by atmospheric methane to play a far greater role. These conditions together could create an environment agreeable to exotic forms of life, and will subsist for several hundred million years, long enough for at least primitive life to form.

Landing on the Moon Titan

While the Cassini–Huygens mission was not equipped to provide evidence for biology or complex organics, it did support the theory of an environment on Titan that is similar, in some ways, to that of the primordial Earth.

There are a wide range of options for future missions to Titan that might address these and other questions, including orbiters, landers, balloons etc.

Additional Info.

Solar Views

planetary.org - Explore the Cosmos

Titan-A world of Rivers and lakes on Space.com

A New Yard Stick to measure the expansion of Universe

noreply@blogger.com (Sunny) — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 12:36:00 +0000

About seven billion years ago, the universe went into a sort of pubescent growth spurt that as far we know hasn't slowed down. Scientists call the growth stimulus dark energy, for lack of a better term or an understanding of the mechanics.

Now they've invented a tool called a laser comb that can measure expansion rates over time periods as short as 10 to 20 years.

Ronald Walsworth, with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, offers this as an example: Say you want to figure out if something big, like your house, has moved a millimeter. If you counted on a measuring stick that chalked off miles, you'd never know. But if you had a ruler nicely hashed out by the millimeter, it'd be a cinch.

Laser combs refine the technique of spectroscopy, a process that picks apart a photon's journey from its source to our telescopes by identifying what chemicals it has passed through.

The fingerprints emerge by splitting the light into component wavelengths and comparing absorption lines in its spectrum with the wavelengths of laboratory sources.

The laser combs take a target's light signature one step further. If you've ever sat at a railroad stop and heard the train whistle, you know how it changes pitch as it comes closer or as it recedes down the tracks. The same shift takes place not only in sound waves, but in all wavelengths, including visible and ultraviolet light.

Click on the image n see a enlarged one to have a broader perspective

As the universe expands, distant galaxies, which are used to chart the universe's motion, move further away from Earth, with a corresponding shift in their spectra. Current tools to measure the shift would be like using the mile-marker to tag your house's re-location

Scientists know the universe has expanded over billions of years. The laser comb can refine that measurement to well within a human lifetime.

"We have to measure the movement of these distant galaxies to a few centimeters per second and follow this over decades. These speeds are barely faster than a snail's pace," said Antonio Manescau, with the European Southern Observatory.

The ESO says that feat would be like measuring the circumference of Earth to a millimeter (.062 inches).

"Never before have we had the chance to see the shape of the universe change before our eyes. We have inferred it from the cosmic background radiation, but it takes billions of years to see," said Walsworth. "With sensitive tools, in a human time scale we can see change."

To make the measurements, scientists use ultra-short pulses of laser light at many frequencies, each separated by a precise and constant interval. By comparing shifts in the spectra -- which may be a small as a molecule -- researchers expect to be able to determine, for example, how much a distant galaxy has moved over a 10- or 20-year period. The measurements, however, will have to wait until new, extremely large telescopes, currently under development, begin operations.

The technique also can be used to look for Earth-sized planets in other star systems.

What's the worlds fastest supercomputer used for?

noreply@blogger.com (Sunny) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 19:07:00 +0000

The world's fastest supercomputer will probably never be known as the world's fastest supercomputer. RIKEN's MDGrape-3 is the first machine to break the petaflop barrier -- that's 1 quadrillion calculations (floating-point operations, to be specific) per second -- and it's three times faster than the currently ranked fastest computer in the world, IBM's BlueGene/L. But MDGrape-3 is so specialized that it can't run the software used to officially rank computing speed. What it can do is determine the effect of any chemical compound on one of the most intricate systems in the human body in a couple of seconds.

MDGrape-3 is designed for pharmaceutical research, specifically molecular dynamics simulation. In developing drugs, pharmaceutical companies have to analyze thousands on thousands of chemical compounds to find out how they'll affect the protein-bonding structures in the human body. Protein structures called enzymes are the building blocks that do all of the work within a cell, and the way these proteins bond with any drug compound introduced into the human body determines the body's response to that drug.

MDGrape-3 produces simulations of these molecular interactions. What takes most computers hours or days to analyze takes MDGrape-3 a few seconds. This functionality is invaluable in drug research, and it could drastically cut the research time involved in the development of new cures. A subsidiary of pharmaceutical giant Merck has already booked time on the machine.

Structurally speaking, MDGrape-3 is a parallel computing system consisting of two main sections: a primary server unit and a specialized-engines unit. The latter component is a cluster of 201 engines running proprietary chips developed by Riken specifically for MDGrape-3. It's this huge set of engines, running 24 MDGrape-3 chips each, that does the heavy protein-analysis lifting. Each chip has a maximum processing speed of 230 gigaflops (one billion operations per second).

The primary server unit manages the engine cluster. This parallel server setup runs two different types of processors: 65 servers run dual-core Intel 5000-series Xeon processors, 256 per server; and 37 servers run 3.3-GHz Intel Xeon processors, each with 2 MB of level 1 cache, at 74 processors per server. This hardware structure enables the 1-petaflop speed, which is the machine's theoretical maximum for certain processes.

MDGrape-3 took $9 million and about four years to build. And it's actually very efficient -- a total cost of $9 million breaks down to about $15 per gigaflop. The slower BlueGene/L cost about $140 per gigaflop to build.

BlueGene/L, which tops out at a theoretical 360 teraflops (trillion calculations per second), is also a biotechnology-specific machine. The advances in speed marked by these two supercomputers is indicative of a general trend in technology toward biologically-slanted systems. Some say the trend really started with the successful mapping of the human genome in 2000.

Regardless of what spurred the current biotechnology race, most experts agree that the logical end of the surge is a state of DNA-based medicine. In several decades, we could make an appointment with our doctor for a quick DNA analysis to find out what diseases we're at risk for and pop a single, gene-targeting pill that eliminates all of those foreseeable risks.

Know More:

SuperComputer @ Wikipedia

Top500 SuperComputing Sites - This project ranks and details the 500 most powerful known computer systems in the world

SuperComputing Online

Cluster Resources

Military SuperComputer

Your Suggestions are greatly entertained.

Please post your valuable comment to help us improve.

Beyond Atlantis - The Lost Continent

noreply@blogger.com (Sunny) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 15:01:00 +0000

The riddle of Atlantis is among the greatest of the world's unsolved mysteries. Where, for a start, was the exact site of this huge island civilization? did it really, as early historians reported, vanish from the earth in a day and a night? Small wonder that since the earliest times scholars, archaeologists, historians, and occultists have kept up an almost ceaseless search for its precise whereabouts. Beginning with the Greek philosopher Plato's first description of the lost land that was apparently "the nearest thing to paradise on Earth," this chapter examines in detail the basic evidence for the existence and cataclysmic destruction of Atlantis.

(Note: Plato was not the first one to know about Atlantis. He was the first to describe it in detail. Pythagoras taught Plato what he knew)

Of all the world's unsolved mysteries, Atlantis is probably the biggest. Said to have been a huge island continent with an extraordinary civilization, situated in the Atlantic Ocean, it is reported to have vanished from the face of the earth in a day and a night. So complete was this devastation that Atlantis sank beneath the sea, taking with it every trace of its existence. Despite this colossal vanishing trick, the lost continent of Atlantis has exerted a mysterious influence over the human race for thousands of years. It is almost as though a primitive memory of the glorious days of Atlantis lingers on in the deepest recesses of the human mind. The passage of time has not diminished interest in the fabled continent, nor have centuries of skepticism by scientists succeeded in banishing Atlantis to obscurity in its watery grave. Thousands of books and articles have been written about the lost continent.

It has inspired the authors of novels, short stories, poems, and movies. Its name has been used for ships, restaurants, magazines, and even a region of the planet Mars. Atlantean societies have been formed to theorize and speculate about a great lost land. Atlantis has come to symbolize our dream of a once golden past. It appeals to our nostalgic longing for a better, happier world; it feeds out hunger for knowledge of mankind's true origins; and above all it offers the challenge of a genuinely sensational detective story.

Today the search for evidence of the existence of Atlantis continues with renewed vigor, using 20th century man's most sophisticated tools in the hope of discovering the continent that is said to have disappeared around 11,600 years ago. did Atlantis exist, or is it just a myth? Ours may be the generation that finally solves this tantalizing and ancient enigma.

~Atlantis~

" is said to have been the nearest thing to paradise that the earth has seen. It was a consortium of Concentric Islands as shown in fig. Fruits and vegetables grew in abundance in its rich soil. Fragrant flowers and herbs bloomed n the wooded slopes of its many beautiful mountains. All kinds of tame and wild animals roamed its meadows and magnificent forests, and drank from its rivers and lakes. Underground streams of wonderfully sweet water were used to irrigate the soil, to provide hot and cold fountains and baths for all the inhabitants. - There were even baths for the horses.

The earth was rich in precious metals, and the Atlanteans were wealthier than any people before or after with gold, silver, brass, tin, and ivory, and their principal royal palace was a marvel of size and beauty. Besides being skilled metallurgists, the Atlanteans were accomplished engineers. A huge and complex system of canals and bridges linked their capital city with the sea and the surrounding countryside, and there were magnificent docks and harbors for the fleets of vessels that carried on a flourishing trade with overseas countries.

Whether they lived in the city or the country, the people of Atlantis had everything they could possibly want for their comfort and happiness. They were a gentle, wise, and loving people, unaffected by their great wealth and prizing virtue above all things. In time, however, their noble nature became debased. No longer satisfied with ruling their own great land of plenty, they set about waging war on others. Their vast armies swept through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean region, conquering large areas of North Africa and Europe.

The Atlanteans were poised to strike against Athens and Egypt when the Athenian army rose up, drove them back to Gibraltar, and defeated them. Hardly had the Athenians tasted victory when a terrible cataclysm wiped out their entire army in a single day and night, and caused Atlantis to sink forever beneath the waves. Perhaps a few survivors were left to tell what happened. At all events, the story is said to have been passed down through many generations until, more than 9200 years later, it was made known to the world for the first time."

~Plato's Hypothesis~

The man who first committed the legend to paper was the Greek philosopher Plato, who in about 355 B.C. wrote about Atlantis in two of his famous dialogues, the Timaeus and the Critias. Although Plato claimed that the story of the lost continent was derived from ancient Egyptian records, no such records have ever come to light, nor has any direct mention of Atlantis been found in any surviving records made before Plato's time. Every book and article on Atlantis that has ever been published has been based on Plato's account; subsequent authors have merely interpreted or added to it.

~Questions Raised~

Why, ask the scholars, are there so many remarkable similarities between the ancient cultures of the Old and New Worlds? Why do we find the same plants and animals on continents thousands of miles apart when there is no known way for them to have been transported there?

How did the primitive peoples of many lands construct technological marvels, such as Stonehenge in Britain, the huge statues of Easter Island in the Pacific and the strange sacred cities of the Andes? Were they helped by a technically sophisticated race that has since disappeared?

Above all, why do the legends of people the world over tell the same story of an overwhelming natural disaster and the arrival or godlike beings who brought with them a new culture from a far? could the catastrophe that sank Atlantis have sent tidal waves throughout the glove, causing terrible havoc and destruction?

And were the 'gods' the remnants of the Atlantean race - the few survivors who were not on or near the island continent when it was engulfed?

Map of Atlantis by the 17th-century German scholar Athanasius Kircher. Kircher based his map on Plato's description of Atlantis as an island west of the Pillars of Hercules - the Strait of Gibraltar - and situated Atlantis in the ocean that has since been named after the legendary land. Unlike modern cartographers, he placed south at the top of the map, which puts America at the right.

Even without Plato's account, the quest for answers to these mysteries might have led to the belief by some in a 'missing link' between the continents - a land-bridge populated by a highly evolved people in the distant past. Nevertheless, it is the Greek philosopher's story that lies at the heart of all arguments for or against the existence of such a lost continent.

I have collected some useful info/sites which provide exaggerated info on these mystic questions:

Timaeus by Plato

Critias by Plato

The Wave that destroyed Atlantis - by Harvey Lille

Atlantis: the Myth - by Alan G.Hefner.

Atlantis Evidence Found in Spain and Ireland

The Sunken Kingdom by Peter James

Mystery of Atlantis - Legend or Fact

A Rare Documentary on Atlantis:-

Running time:- 8 minutes.

Suggestions from you are greatly entertained.

Please Comment below so that we can improve on the previous one and present ourselves in a more sophisticated way. Your Comment is an impetus to us.

The Mayan Calendar Mystery - 2012 and Beyond

noreply@blogger.com (Sunny) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 12:05:00 +0000

Mayans - The Mayan Calendar is something profoundly different than just a system to mark off the passage of time. The Mayan Calendar is above all a prophetic calendar that may help us understand the past and foresee the future. It is a calendar of the Ages that describes how the progression of Heavens and Underworlds condition the human consciousness and thus the frames for our thoughts and actions within a given Age.

The Mayan Calendar is not predicting the end of the world 2012, but the start of a new era; the golden age.

The Mayan civilization predicted that on December 21, 2012 something will happen to the world we know. Something will happen that will change our civilization, value systems and the way we know human civilization forever.

What does that means? What did the Mayan see through their spiritual wisdom?

According to scientists and technologists something strange is happening behind the scene. The terrestrial and solar polar reversal peaks are coming within three weeks of that day, December 21, 2012. Innumerable UFOs are scouting our skies regularly and increasing as we approach that day. The tectonic plate shifts, underwater volcanoes, earthquakes, landslides and Tsunamis are increasing at rates never seen before. The solar flares are increasing. The earth’s magnetosphere and ionosphere are experiencing strange disturbances. The numbers of typhoons and cyclones have increased many folds. The number of floods and droughts has increased beyond imaginations in the last ten years.

Scientists who look beyond conventional science point out that that the Hyperspace that contain our Universe is also showing signs that something strange is happening in our universe. The multidimensional time research is showing that a parallel universe may be predicting strange effects.

According to some scientists it is possible that another Universe is slowly starting to claim a spatial dimension in our physical Universe. It is also possible that we will face major calamities because of the polar reversal in the Sun and in Earth. If that happens, it is possible that the hyperspace has to adjust the suction force known as gravity and Electromagnetic force fields to keep the earth and the solar system intact.

The biggest clue to what will happen comes from astrophysicists. There is a big possibility that the simultaneous polar reversal in earth and sun will throw the solar system out of whack. That will cause massive upheaval in the earth. At that point of time, the extraterrestrials will officially show up and put “cosmic seat belts” around us as they apply the superpower of the Hyperspace to bring the solar system back to what it is today.

According to think tanks, this has happened before. The extraterrestrials take care of the earth and the solar system whenever the solar system faces challenges like that.

December 21st, 2012 - Modern astronomy can tell us a lot about the facts of where we will be in space at that time, where our planets will be, etc. The thing is that the ancient Mayans, Sumerians and the Egyptians knew about this long ago, and left their art recordings behind for us.

What do we know about this date? Well, we know that on that date, our the bodies in our solar system will all be in alignment. The Transit of Venus will occur once again due to Venus passing in front of the Sun. Our Sun will also be in the peak of its solar cycle, causing some groups to speculate that the magnetic poles of our Earth and possibly other planets could be shifted or reversed altogether.

Besides all this activity occurring in our Solar System, the solar system itself will be in perfect alignment with the elliptical plane of our Milky Way galaxy. It will be the first time this has occurred in gazillions of years.

Also, the area of space that our solar system will occupy at that time will be in the middle of a strange nebulous cloud that scientists have been studying and tracking for a few years now. We do not have a clear understanding of what the clouds effects could be on our Solar System and the Earth itself.

1) Our sun will be at the peak of a Solar hissy fit.
2) Our planets will be in alignment.
3) Our entire Solar System will be aligned with the elliptical plane of the galaxy.
4) We will be in the middle of a strange nebula.

Take this modern astronomical knowledge, and apply it to the ancient legends of our ancestors. The Mayans refereed to this period as the "Cycle of Civilization." They even accurately predicted these alignments to the date, thousands of years ago. And they chose to end their calender on this date. Not to restart it, but to END it.

No one can know for sure what will happen during the strange times of late 2012, but as the date draws nearer, we are certain to learn more.

Video:

This is a short film I found on Youtube made about the mayan calendar . They tried to explain who the mayans are and what the calendar is all about along with the mystery behind 2012.

Author of the Film: notarecordplayer

For more detailed clues and description visit:

http://www.civilization.ca/civil/Maya/mmc06eng.html

http://www.lost-civilizations.net/mayan-calendar-prophecies.html

World's Most Powerful Magnet Under Construction

noreply@blogger.com (Sunny) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 11:30:00 +0000

Using the strongest materials known to man, scientists are building the most powerful electromagnet in the world -- one that won't blow up a split second after it's turned on.

The entire magnet will be a combination of coil sets weighing nearly 18,000 pounds and powered by jolts from a massive 1,200-megajoules motor generator. Once activated, the new magnet should be about two million times more powerful than the average refrigerator magnet.

"The new magnet at the High Field Lab is a fantastic leap forwards in terms of our capability as a scientific community to explore materials under extreme conditions," said Ian Fisher, a scientist at Stanford University.

"In several cases one needs to go to these sorts of extremes to fundamentally understand materials" used in high-temperature superconductors and other applications, said Fisher.

The electromagnet consists of two parts. The outer section, or outsert, will be a cylinder, 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) in diameter and 1.5 meters tall, and solid except for a small hole, less than 8 inches wide, bored through the middle.

Inside that hole rests the insert, nine coils made of copper and strengthened with silver wire as thin as 100 atoms across. Together, the copper and silver create the strongest material known to man, according to Greg Boebinger, Director of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Florida. The magnet is being built at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The pressures generated inside the insert will be equivalent to 200 sticks of dynamite going off together, or about 30 times the pressure at the bottom of the ocean.

Very few things can survive those kinds of forces for long -- including the new magnet.

The scientists expect each $20,000 insert to survive about 100 pulses. The $8 million outsert should last about 10,000 pulses. Each time the magnet pulses it bends the copper and silver wires, creating tiny cracks in the metal. The cracks in the copper run into the silver wires, which stops the cracks from spreading.

"It's like reinforced concrete," said Boebinger.

The copper acts like like the concrete, strong and tough. The silver acts like the steel rebars running through the concrete, providing flexibility.

Together the inner and outer magnets can already create 90 teslas.

Teslas measure the pull of a magnetic field. Even one tesla is quite powerful. The Earth's magnetic field is about 50 microteslas. An average MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) machine ranges from 0.5 to 1.5 teslas.

The scientists hope that within months they can develop the new electromagnet to reach their target goal of 100 teslas.

This won't be the first 100-tesla electromagnet. Technically it won't even be the world's most powerful magnet. Electromagnets as strong as 1,000 teslas have been created before. The new electromagnet will be the world's first reusable 100-tesla magnet.

All other magnets of this power were one-and-done. The powerful forces the other electromagnets created tore themselves, and usually the samples being studied, apart milliseconds after they were turned on. Those magnets have their uses, says Boebinger, but destroying samples can be a problem and building new magnets can be expensive.

Studying the same material over and over without destroying it could help scientists tease out the properties of superconductors and other novel materials, said Boebinger, who points out that previous magnet work at the lab helped produce neodymium magnets that enabled wireless phones, cordless drills, and other handheld electronic devices.

New materials, like iron oxyarsenide, could eventually lead to high definition MRI scans or power lines that don't lose any energy to heat and would save consumers millions of dollars each year.

Eventually, however, even this electromagnet will break under the incredible pressures, and when it does it will be loud.

"They have to evacuate the entire building when they turn the magnet on," said Boebinger. "A magnetic disassembly will make a big boom."

The Large Hadron Rap Video

noreply@blogger.com (Sunny) — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 17:21:00 +0000

Check out this video for the Large Hadron Rap, by far the greatest physics rap of all time. The flow is halfway decent, and it accurately covers a lot of knowledge related to particle physics and the LHC. Its by Katherine McAlpine, alter-ego of a science writer currently working at the LHC.

The video, posted on YouTube, begins with a narration, a beat, and images of the scientists in lab coats leaning out the windows of a compact CERN lab car approaching the facility as they move their hands to the beat.

Rapper Alpinekat, a CERN trainee whose real name is Kate MacAlpine, explains the theory that the Higgs Field is an invisible force through which particles move. Some, like the proton, move quickly. "It has no mass, but something heavy, like the top quark is dragging its --- (!)," MacAlpine explains as her words appear on the bottom of the screen.

The "Large Hadron Rap" explains, in rhyming terms that could be understood by elementary school students, how scientists plan to send protons speeding through an underground tunnel at near-light speed to make them collide. It also provides clear and simple explanations about dark matter, antimatter, undiscovered dimensions, and ions.

The video shows clips of the equipment and scientists dancing in the environment where they hope to test the big bang theory, learn about dark matter, or refute the validity of theories about matter, mass, and how the universe formed.

"The LHCb accelerates the protons and the lead and the things that it discovers will rock you in the head," MacAlpine raps in the song's refrain.

More than 13,200 people have rated the video, which scores five stars for quality according to YouTube users' ratings. About 9000 comments and more than 150 video responses were listed with the video as of Friday. One user reported, "I just got my geek on." The video was "favorited" more than 17,000 times. It was originally posted in late July.

The video ends with the narrator slowly saying, "Ah yeah, our understanding of the universe is about to change thanks to the Large Hadron Collider. This is C-to-the-E-to-the-R-to-the-N, coming straight out of Geneva," before MacAlpine signs off with, "Alpinekat, over and out."

The Time Dimension Explained!!

noreply@blogger.com (VeNoM) — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 09:26:00 +0000

So when have you last seen a Science Fiction Movie where Travel to Future was just as boarding a Flight to Mumbai!!??? :D The other day I was searching for an Article regarding the Black Holes and Anti-matter and I stumbled upon this Article By Ted Bunn . In his article he mentions about the Travel To Future.. He talks about a Phenomenon an Illusion which we face when we try to look beyond the Horizon of the Black-Hole. This article raised one issue that caught my eye. Yes Iam talking about whether Time can be Considered as another Dimension?? Incidentally Einstein seems to have mentioned Time as a Dimension in his 'Theory of Relativity'. Now this has raised many doubts than it solved any!

CAN WE TRAVEL TO OUR FUTURE??? CAN WE PREDICT THE FORTHCOMING?? CAN I EVER CHANGE MY BIRTH CERTIFICATE?? WILL I BE ABLE TO SHARE MY LAND WITH DINOSAURS?? The answers to these strange questions may lie with the concept of the 'Time-Travel' becoming a FACT.

To make matters easy let me put an Article that rather compelled me not to think beyond Future...! :P

Time and the Fourth Dimension

Now it is debatable whether time is actually a fourth dimension. But, for sake of argument, let's assume that is. The implications of this are threefold. One is that all time, past, present, and future exist together in some way and that what we consider time passing is really only our being traveling along a fourth dimension from past to present to future. It also seems to imply the possibility of traveling in the reverse direction from the present to the past or speeding up our travel forward into the future. Thirdly, from the foregoing you can only come to conclusion that the future is predetermined, since it already exists and cannot be changed.
If you could view the fourth dimension (if it is time), you would see yourself extending to the point where you were born in one direction and up to the point of your death in the future. The same with everything around you. If not too distant in the fourth dimension, you could view any object from the point of its origin to its dissolution and all the changes that occurred to it.

Now a person who could travel into time who have some of the powers of a fourth dimensional person. He could appear in a locked room simply by going back in time when the room was not locked. He could disappear and appear somewhere else. He could predict the future.

In a previous paragraph, I stated that if time is the fourth dimension, our future is predetermined. This would also hold for the past. Thus, a time traveler who went to the past would not have a choice. He would by necessity have to have arrived from the future at the exact time of his arrival. This implies no free will; even our thoughts and actions are predetermined. To get around this problem and other paradoxes involved with time travel, one must conjecture other dimensions in which one can travel at right angles from not only to the usual three but from the fourth time dimension. This introduces the concept of parallel time.

The concept of parallel time is that starting from the beginning of the universe, each moment introduces infinite possibilities and each possibility exists somewhere (possibly in a fifth or higher dimension). So, if I go back in time and prevent my mother from meeting my father, two universes exist, one where I did not prevent my parents from meeting and one where I did. When I return to what I consider my own present, I actually return to a different universe from the one where I started from, one in which I was never born.
Joe Vadalma

Crystal Ball-the Fortune Untold

noreply@blogger.com (VeNoM) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:19:00 +0000

Who doesn't want to know his future??? Its this instinct of man that brought the art of or rather the science of Fortune Telling into our existence. Well.. many of us might have wondered as how these fortune tellers actually make their so called prophesies! And sometimes they turn out to be true, but not many believe these Fortune Tellers.. even I don't for that matter. There are many a ways as how the fortune is told. Some resort to Palm Reading and some use Crystal balls while some turn to magic cards. Let us have a look at the Crystal Balls.

So What is a Crystal ball???

A crystal ball is a crystal or glass ball believed by some people to aid clairvoyance. It is sometimes known as a shew stone. A body of water, either in a container or on the ground, used for this purpose, is called a scrying pool.

History

Celtic tribes, known to exist in Britain as early as 2,000 B.C., were unified by a priesthood known as Druids. Druids are one of the earliest known peoples to have used crystals in divination. It's interesting to note that Druid religion had similarities to megalithic religion of an "earlier" Britain, thus it is possible the first use of crystal divination might have come from them.

Later, during central Europe's Medieval Period (500 – 1500 AD), seers, wizards, sorcerers, psychics, gypsies, fortune tellers, and all other types of diviners also used crystals to "see" into the past, present, or future.

Due to its transparent nature, a natural gemstone called Beryllium Aluminum Silicate (Beryl), was often used for alleged divination. Scottish Highlanders termed these objects "stones of power." Though early crystal balls were made from Beryl, they were later replaced by rock crystal, an even more transparent rock.

Scrying

The art or process of "seeing" is known as "scrying," whereby images are seen in crystals, or other mediums such as water, and are interpreted as meaningful information. The "information" gleaned then is used to make important decisions in one's life (i.e. love, marriage, finances, travel, business, etc).

When the technique of scrying is used with crystals, or any transparent body, it is known as crystallomancy or crystal gazing.

Crystal balls in State magic

Crystal balls are popular props used in mentalism acts by stage magicians. Such routines, in which the performer answers audience questions by means of various ruses, are known as "C. G." (Crystal Gazing) acts. One of the most famous C. G. performers of the 20th century, Claude Alexander, was often billed as "Alexander the Crystal Seer."

Extras

Let the Crystal ball Give you the answers , An online Interactive Astrology --> Click here

Ask Anything--Know your Future --> Click here

Mystical Ball.com

Universe Secrets revealed:Big bang machine

noreply@blogger.com (Sunny) — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 10:10:00 +0000

Mankind's Biggest scientific experiment to be conducted on Wednesday this week....
With this experiment we are going to know the answers for the questions which have been a mystery for us since ages......
It is the BIG BANG EXPERIMENT..
the experiment is being conducted by scientists from more than 112 countries only with an aim to unravel the mysteries of universe..
The experiment is done with the help of a huge machine named Large Hadron Collider (LHC)...

The most powerful physics experiment ever built, the Large Hadron Collider will re-create the conditions just after the Big Bang in an attempt to answer fundamental questions of science and the universe itself.

The Large Hadron Collider – a £4bn, 18-mile-long atom-smasher buried 300ft underground on the Swiss-French border...

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will smash two beams of particles head-on at super-fast speeds, recreating the conditions in the Universe moments after the Big Bang.

The Alice detector will investigate the moments after the Big Bang

Scientists hope to see new particles in the debris of these collisions, revealing fundamental new insights into the nature of the cosmos.

They will be looking for new physics beyond the Standard Model – the framework devised in the 1970s to explain how sub-atomic particles interact.

The Standard Model comprises 16 particles – 12 matter particles and four force-carrier particles. The Standard Model has worked remarkably well so far.

But it cannot explain the best known of the so-called four fundamental forces: gravity; and it describes only ordinary matter, which makes up but a small part of the total Universe.

Also, one of the most important particles in the Standard Model – the Higgs boson – has yet to be found in an experiment.

Today, the Standard Model is regarded as incomplete, a mere stepping stone to something else. So the LHC should help reinvigorate physics' biggest endeavour: a grand theory to explain all physical phenomena in Nature.

However, some physicists point out that Nature has a habit of throwing curve balls. And some of the most exciting discoveries at the LHC could be those that no-one expects.

THE HUNT FOR THE HIGGS

There is an essential ingredient missing from the Standard Model. Without it, none of the 16 particles in the scheme would have any mass.

An extra particle is required to provide all the others with mass – the Higgs boson. This idea was proposed in 1964 by physicists Peter Higgs, Francois Englert and Robert Brout.

According to their theory, particles acquire mass through their interactions with an all-pervading field, called the Higgs field, which is carried by the Higgs boson. It is the only Standard Model particle that has yet to be observed experimentally.

The CMS is one of two LHC experiments looking for the Higgs

As such, the search for the Higgs has become something of a cause celebre in particle physics. Finding the Higgs is one of the main science objectives for the LHC.

The Atlas and CMS experiments are both designed to see it, if it is there. This means that scientists working on these respective experiments will be competing to see it first, once the LHC begins its "science run" sometime in 2009.

The US Tevatron particle accelerator, though less powerful than the LHC, is also engaged in the hunt for the Higgs.

IN THE DARK

All the matter that we can see in the Universe – planets, stars and galaxies – makes up a minuscule 4% of what is actually out there. The rest is dark energy (which accounts for 70% of the cosmos) and dark matter (26%).

Dark energy cannot be observed directly, but it is responsible for speeding up the expansion of the Universe – a phenomenon that can be detected in astronomical observations.

Astronomers have mapped dark matter's distribution, but have no idea what it is

Like dark energy, dark matter can only be detected indirectly, as it does not emit or reflect enough light to be seen. But its presence can be inferred through its effects on galaxies and galaxy clusters.

Physicists know virtually nothing about the nature of either dark energy or dark matter. But they can speculate.

According to one idea, dark matter could be made up of "supersymmetric particles" - massive particles that are partners to those already known in the Standard Model.

A leading dark matter candidate is the neutralino, the lightest of these "super-partners". And some theoretical physicists have proposed a link between the Higgs mechanism and dark energy.

MIRROR, MIRROR

Each basic particle of "ordinary" matter has its own anti-particle. Matter and antimatter have the same mass, but opposite electric charge.

For example, a proton has an anti-particle called an anti-proton (a proton with a negative charge). An electron has an anti-particle called a positron (an electron with a positive charge).

What happened to the anti-matter that emerged from the Big Bang?

In the same way that an ordinary proton and electron can come together to form a hydrogen atom, an anti-proton and a positron can form an atom of anti-hydrogen.

When a particle of ordinary matter meets its anti-particle, the two disappear in a flash, as their mass is transformed into energy.

They are said to "annihilate" one another. But equal amounts of matter and anti-matter must have been produced in the Big Bang.

So why did matter and anti-matter not completely annihilate each another after the birth of the Universe?

Today, we live in a Universe almost entirely composed of ordinary matter. Scientists will use the LHC to investigate why this is, and what happened to all the anti-matter.

DOUBLE TROUBLE

Attempts to unify gravity with the other fundamental forces have come to a startling prediction: that every known particle has a massive "shadow" partner particle.

Atlas is one of the experiments that could find evidence for supersymmetry

All particles are classified as either fermions or bosons. A particle in one class has superpartner in the other class, "balancing the books" and doubling the number of particles in the Standard Model.

For example, the superpartner of an electron (a fermion) is called a selectron (a boson). Evidence for supersymmetry would enable the "unification" of three fundamental forces - the strong, weak, and electromagnetic – helping to explain why particles have the masses they have.

It would also give a boost to string theory – one stab at a grand "theory of everything". But string theory is not dependent on discovering evidence for supersymmetry.

OTHER DIMENSIONS

In addition to the four dimensions we already know about, string theory predicts the existence of six more.

Some physicists even think the existence of these extra dimensions could explain why gravity is so much weaker than the other fundamental forces. Perhaps, they argue, we are not feeling its full effects.

This might be explained if its force was being shared with other dimensions. If these extra dimensions do exist, the LHC could be the first accelerator to detect them experimentally.

At high energies, physicists could see evidence of particles moving between our world and these unseen realms. For example, they could see particles suddenly disappear into one of these dimensions.

Alternatively, particles originating from an extra dimension could suddenly appear in our world.

THE HOLE TRUTH

According to some physicists, the LHC can operate at high enough energies to generate mini-black holes.

However, the vast majority of particle physicists say there is no need for alarm. If any should be created, they should evaporate quickly.

How a black hole might look if it is generated in the collider

A recent report dealing with the collider's safety acknowledged the possibility that the LHC could create these primordial black holes.

The report says: "If microscopic black holes were to be singly produced by colliding the quarks and gluons inside protons, they would also be able to decay into the same types of particles that produced them.”

The suggestion that black holes could be made in the LHC has stoked fears in the online world that one of these micro-black holes could swell in size, swallowing up the Earth.

In March, plaintiffs requested an injunction in a US court stopping the LHC from switching on.

However, physicists stress that any such phenomena would be short-lived and thus would pose no threat to our planet.

Building the LHC

The Large Hadron Collider is not just an extraordinary science experiment, it is also a remarkable engineering undertaking. Just getting it built is an astonishing story in itself.

THE CHALLENGE

The LHC took 10,000 scientists a total of 14 years to assemble

How do you build a "Big Bang Machine"? That was the challenge which scientists at Cern began to ponder in the early 1980s, when the idea for the Large Hadron Collider was born.

Cern's governing council wanted to build a kind of time machine that could open a window to how the Universe appeared in the first microseconds of its existence.

If it could recreate the fleeting moments 13.73 billion years ago, when the fundamental building blocks of the cosmos took shape, then the world we live in today would be brought into much sharper focus.

It could discover how matter prevailed over antimatter, learn how dark matter was formed, and catch our first glimpse of the elusive Higgs boson - a "missing jigsaw piece" in our model of the universe.

We might even find evidence of the existence of other dimensions. But to conjure up these conditions, the Cern council new it needed to perform an engineering miracle.

The 12-storey ATLAS detector weighs in at 7,000 tonnes

To generate the necessary high energies, the designers required a particle accelerator more magnificently complex than any machine ever built.

Beams of protons would be hurled together at 99.9999999% of the speed of light, in conditions colder than the space between the stars and each travelling with as much energy as a car at the speed of 1,600km/h.

And yet the fruits of these explosions - high-energy particles - would decay and disappear from view in less than a trillionth of a second.

To "photograph" these valuable prizes would require a detector as large as a five storey building, yet so precise, it could pinpoint a particle with an accuracy of 15 microns - 20 times thinner than a human hair.

How on earth do you build a machine like that? The journey took 14 years, more than 10,000 scientists, from 40 countries, and a financial injection anticipated at up to 6.2bn euros - four times the original budget. But it was achieved, on time. Well, almost.

THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER

The last of the LHC's 1,700 dipole magnets is lowered into place

The plans for the Large Hadron Collider began to gather momentum in the early 1980s, inspired by the success of its predecessor at Cern, a collider known as the Large Electron Positron (LEP).

But it was not until 1994 that the formal proposal for the LHC was ratified by Cern's member states, and the engineering work began.

The accelerator would be housed in a near-circular 27km-long tunnel, buried 50m-175m underneath the Jura mountains, criss-crossing the Swiss-French border. The tunnel was already in place - being the once occupied by LEP, which was eventually disassembled in 2000.

Inside the LHC vacuum pipe, two parallel beams of subatomic particles (protons or lead ions) would hurtle in opposite directions at record energies.

Crashing together at specially designated junctions, they would release unstable, high-energy particles - including, perhaps, the elusive Higgs Boson.

To generate a magnetic field powerful enough to steer the high-energy particles around the pipe requires 1,740 superconducting magnets, which together required some 40,000 leak-tight welds and 65,000 "splices" of superconducting cables.

If you added all the filaments of these strands together, they would stretch to the Sun and back five times, with enough left over for a few trips to the Moon.

In order to conduct, the magnets must be cooled to within a couple of degrees of "absolute zero", the theoretical limit for how cold anything can get. This requires a constant supply of liquid helium pumped down from eight over-ground refrigeration plants - about 400,000 litres per year in total. Enough to fill 1000 swimming pools.

THE DETECTORS

Engineers excavating the cavern for CMS encountered serious difficulty

At the junctions where particles collide, four enormous detectors have been designed to observe the microscopic wreckage.

Between 1996 and 1998, approval was granted for four giant "experiments" - Alice, Atlas, CMS and LHCb - to be housed in four enormous underground caverns, dug strategically around the collider loop.

Excavating these caverns out of sand, gravel and rock was a considerable feat. In the case of the 7,000 tonne ATLAS detector, it took two years to burrow a cavern large enough to hold a 12-storey building.

But while Atlas may be the largest cavern, it was CMS - 10km up the ring below the village of Dessy - which proved the most problematic at the excavation stage.

The cavern shaft had to be bored through a 50m layer of glacial deposits, including fast flowing water, which threatened to flood the shaft. Engineers repelled these underground rivers by piping super-chilled brine down the shaft, allowing a wall of ice 3m thick to form around the circumference.

It took six months to freeze the walls of the two CMS shafts. But while the barrier worked initially, the water eventually broke through, forcing engineers to first pump down liquid nitrogen to turn the area into "Siberian permafrost", in the words of Austin Ball, CMS Technical Coordinator.

MANUFACTURING PARTS

LHC components were transported to Cern from all over the world

Building the components of both the accelerator and the detectors was a truly international effort.

In the case of the 12,500-tonne CMS detector, the coiled strands of its central solenoid magnet - all 50km of them - began their life in Finland, before travelling to factories in Grenoble, Neuchatel and Genoa, to be braided, coated, and welded.

After being shipped to Marseille, they went up the river to Macon, where they were unpacked and driven by lorry under the mountains to Cern.

In fact, the diameter of the magnet was restricted to ensure it was just narrow enough that components could squeeze through the tunnels. The clearance was a matter of centimetres.

The CMS magnet is the most powerful solenoid ever built - conducting a current of 12,000 amperes - to create a magnetic field 100,000 times stronger than the Earth's.

ASSEMBLING THE DETECTORS

The detector units of CMS were squeezed in with centimetres to spare

The next problem, of course, was how to get a 45m-long, 25m-high, 7,000-tonne detector, through a shaft hole 20m wide.

The answer of course is to do it in bits. ATLAS was lowered piece by piece over several years, and assembled almost entirely in the subterranean cavern.

The largest piece - the barrel toroid magnet - fitted down the cavern shaft with only 10cm of clearance on either side.

But the building of the detectors is not all heavy engineering. Layer upon layer of electronic sensors had to be wired and connected by hand, which meant up to 300 people a day working in the cavern cramped against each other.

Squeezing each piece into place was "like solving a wooden puzzle" - there is only one possible way of doing it, according to Professor Andy Parker of Cambridge University, one of the founders of Atlas.

"Everything fits together like Russian dolls. I saw one design for Atlas which fitted together, but you couldn't assemble it, because there was no room to move the pieces past each other. Every single millimetre of space was fought over," he said.

The CMS detector, on the other hand, was largely assembled above ground, in several enormous units.

The largest, at 2,000 tonnes (the weight of five jumbo jets, or one-third of the weight of the Eiffel tower) took 10 hours to lower down a 100m shaft, with a clearance of 20cm either side. The world's largest electromagnet had to be handled with extreme care.

Its cylindrically arranged silicon wafer detectors contain a vast network of micro-circuitry - including 73,000 radiation-hard, low-noise microelectronic chips, almost 40,000 analogue optical links and 1,000 power supply units.

To manufacture these required an entirely new method of auto-assembly.

PROBLEMS DURING TESTING

Failure of a magnet in testing delayed the LHC start-up by almost a year

Though the LHC was originally slated to begin operations in late 2007, the entire project was set back after a failure in one of the quadrapole magnets used to focus the beam, which buckled during testing.

This meant all similar magnets would have to be redesigned and replaced.

Other, less serious problems arose due to with leaky plumbing of liquid helium, and also when some copper "fingers" used to ensure electrical continuity between magnets buckled when the magnets were warmed up.

GOING OVERBUDGET

The final tab for the LHC is expected to come in at a colossal 6.4bn euros, four times the original budget set by the Cern Council in 1995.

But that sum still represents good value for money, according to Dr Chris Parkes, of Glasgow University, UK, who works on the LHCb detector.

He said: "Tom Hanks is to appear in the movie of Dan Brown's Angels and Demons, which involves scientists at Cern making anti-matter. But the new experiment at the LHC to understand anti-matter cost less than Tom Hanks will earn from the movie."

For knowing more visit

http://news.bbc.co.uk

Indian software for big bang machine

noreply@blogger.com (Sunny) — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 09:45:00 +0000

India offers software support to unravel Big Bang secrets...
India also has its part to do for the worlds biggest experiment.. If all goes well, the experiment will unravel the mysteries of the universe, particularly the very moment that led to the creation of time and space, a la the Big Bang.

Despite not being a member of CERN, the European nuclear research organisation, India made a significant contribution as an observer state to the build-up of the $9 billion experiment. Scores of Indian scientists and other professionals in nuclear and other material sciences took part in select areas of setting up the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) machine over the last 20 years.

The LHC is at the heart of the experiment that will contribute to the knowing of the unknown in the formation of the universe. “The privilege to participate in the 21st century’s biggest scientific experiment and the modest role played in setting up the LHC and experiments are indeed major achievements for India,” said Archana Sharma, staff scientist at CERN.

Built under 100 metres of rock and sandstone, the LHC is a giant machine that will work at full tilt by driving two beams of particles in clockwise and anti-clockwise directions around a specially constructed underground 27 km ring at almost the speed of light, i.e., 299,792,458 metres/second. Each beam will complete 11,245 laps of the machine per second.

When each particle — proton — collides with another proton coming in the opposite direction, it would result in a collision creating mass from energy via the famous Einstein equation in E = Mc2 — the mother of all creations of space.

“Within a second (after the Big Bang), the super-hot universe expanded and cooled dramatically, its temperatures falling from a few trillion to a few billion degrees,” observed Simon Singh, the author of the book Big Bang.

Scientists at CERN are now recreating that very second after all matter and energy, which were hitherto condensed, exploded at that very moment of the Big Bang. There are four major experiments that will be conducted at four points around the ring where the beams will be directed into head-on collisions and India is participating in the CMS experiment and the Alice experiment.

The CMS explores into the next developments in the world of physics, and more importantly, into the elusive Higgs boson particle — popularised as the God particle — that explains the origin of mass. The Alice experiment will study what happened when the super-hot universe expanded within a second after its creation 13 billion years ago, especially the protons, equivalent to hydrogen nuclei, reacted with other particles in a next few minutes to form light nuclei such as helium.

“The ratio of hydrogen to helium in the universe was largely fixed within these first few minutes, and is consistent with what we see today,” said Singh.

The LHC will search for all those extra dimensions through giant detectors that will examine the shower particle debris. Besides, the experiment might also create “dark matter” which is currently present in the universe. Scientists had calculated that about 23 per cent of the universe is dark matter, 73 per cent dark energy and 4 per cent ordinary matter.

“It is once in a generation experiment, and for 20 years, all the fine details have gone into conceiving this gigantic experiment,” Archana Sharma told Business Standard. “For years to come, we will see several results emanating from this experiment at CERN that will advance the understanding of several unknown factors in universe,” she said.

Indian research establishments including the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research (TIFR), Bhaba Atomic Research Centre, Saha Institute, and Punjab University were involved in providing software and quality-testing services of detectors.

“To study and view the experiments from 70 million channels, you need awesome computing infrastructure and TIFR is involved in addressing some of the software requirements,” Sharma said, suggesting that India contributed about $25 million towards the LHC project.

The LHC project also generated some legal challenges and led to fears about the possible creation of a black hole that would wreck the planet. But the attempts to stop the machine from experimenting were dismissed in courts.

Super humans:steroids

noreply@blogger.com (RAJESH) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:36:00 +0000

Benjamin Sinclair "Ben" Johnson broke the world record in 100m sprint in olympics with a mind boggling timing of just 9.79 seconds..but later he was disqualified as he used steroids..
Barry bonds famous baseball player admitted he used steroids and ruined his carrer...
and there are many superheroes whoz names cannot be revealed who have used steroids...
This image is not a work of graphics its the magic of steroids..
lets know how this super heroes are made..

steroids are of many types..
some of the common categories of steroids:

Animal steroids
Insect steroids
Ecdysteroids such as ecdysterone
Vertebrate steroids
Steroid hormones
# Sex steroids are a subset of sex hormones that produce sex differences or support reproduction. They include androgens, estrogens, and progestagens.
# Corticosteroids include glucocorticoids and mineralocorticoids. Glucocorticoids regulate many aspects of metabolism and immune function, whereas mineralocorticoids help maintain blood volume and control renal excretion of electrolytes.
# Anabolic steroids are a class of steroids that interact with androgen receptors to increase muscle and bone synthesis. There are natural and synthetic anabolic steroids. In popular language the word "steroids" usually refers to anabolic steroids.
Cholesterol which modulates the fluidity of cell membranes and is the principle constituent of the plaques implicated in atherosclerosis.
Plant steroids
Phytosterols
Brassinosteroids
Fungus steroids
Ergosterols

There are steroids which are used by doctors for operations and are suggested to patients as medicines..
but now we are only going to discuss of those steroids which make a huge difference in humans... In popular language the word "steroids" usually refers to anabolic steroids.so we talk about anabolic steroids in specific..
A steroid has a capability of converting a normal human to a super human..
atheletes become worlds fastest human and body builders turn to giants...
and shot putters just throw away the shotput miles away...

howz this possible..??
this is an attempt to make a lay man understand what is a steroid and the ill effects of it..
By nature humans have got some standards and capabilities both biologically and physically..
steroids are an attempt to go beyond this nature..

WHAT IS A STEROID?
In simple terms a anabolic steroid is a male hormone TESTOSTERONE.male reproductive hormone..i.e steroid
is a man made testosterone in labs. .
this hormone is responsible for physical and biological changes in man at the age of maturity..
testosterone is released and males reproductive organs gain functionality ... growth of mustache and pubic hair are also
the observable changes...

HORMONAL CHANGES
At the age of maturity when this hormone is released the muscles of the males develop and their capability improves..
one such type of steroid is Anabolic steroids such as THG ...

THG's(tetrahydro-gestrinone)
THG's have been in demand in gyms and sports grounds for decades, and one study found that 9 per cent of body builders going to gyms in Britain were using them.
Made from the male hormone testosterone, they provide a chemical shortcut to strength and endurance. They promote the development of muscle, reduce fatigue and
speed recovery after physical exertion by stimulating the production of protein. This makes them especially attractive to sprinters, weightlifters and throwers
such as shot putters, for whom raw power is all-important....

EXPLANATION
when a person or a sportsman works hard for hours where he spends most of muscle power.. here the testosterone come into action...
they are utilized to maximum extent ... so the persons sexual power reduces ..people generally say that a person with jumbo muscles cant do the task but a cute boy with no muscles can do it....
so atheletes and others use steroids.. i don't say that it increases his sexual capability ..but it has ill effects instead..
when the steroids are taken in minimum amount it doesn't really affect him.. but to get a good performance in sports, and to build a good body these steroids are
taken in very large amounts.. this effects them drastically in both ways..
the ill effects of steroid are not observed as soon as they are taken but.. they have long term effects.. many persons after a age of just 40 have complains regarding their health who admit that they have used steroids
in their 20s... and there are cases of deaths registered because of heart attacks due to use of steroids..
after using steroids for just 1-2 weeks one can find the difference in his capabilities and structure of muscles..

The function of testes stops as intake of testosterone is more from outside into the body..
and there is no need for body to produce the hormone..
but if the user suddenly stops the usage of steroids the testis doesn't start producing the hormones and there are many other effects...
the person gets depressed and if he is alone he may attempt for a suicide.. so be careful ...
the person cannot stop the intake all of a sudden.. he should slowly stop it..

VERY POPULAR
steroids have become very popular and now a days they are available every where.. you may buy them over internet or
even u may get them at a local medical shop..
and in recent times teenagers are getting more addicted to steroids... so find them and stop them from doing this illegal practice..

UNDETECTABLE
The addition of four hydrogen atoms was all it took to make the anabolic steroid, gestrinone, undetectable by standard tests. A clever bit of work by chemists transformed it into tetrahydro-gestrinone (THG), providing some sportsmen, apparently, with the means to cheat.
The alarm was raised when a used syringe with a barely visible residue inside it was provided by an anonymous track and field coach to the US Anti-Doping Agency. From that residue, a University of California laboratory was able to identify the droplets as THG and then devise a test that would detect it in athletes' urine.

RISKS
Anabolic steroids carry many risks. They can harm the liver and may damage the heart by causing expansion of the cardiac muscle. They also promote growth of the bones, especially facial bones such as the jaw and teeth, and increase the risk of cancer.
One problem with detecting the use of anabolic steroids is that they are broken down and excreted by the body within five to 15 days but their effects are felt for three to four months.
Athletes may choose to use them during training and then stop a couple of weeks before a competition. Drug testing out of competition and at no notice were introduced to tackle this problem.
In addition to steroids, stimulants such as ephedrine are among the most widely abused drugs in sport. Erythropoietin, used by cyclists and long distance runners to increase the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood, is also in demand.

PUBLIC RESPONSIBLE
We public are considered to be the most responsible for this issue.. atheletes are taking steroid only to entertain us..
when people are expecting more from their favourite stars the the only alternate for them is to use steroids..
And to become famous they suddenly break records by using steroids.. All this is only to entertain the public..
We shouldn't encourage such practice.. lets unite to educate all about the risks involved and the degrading sports culture...
lets remake it and get it into the right path......

ALARMING
The most alarming issue is the usage of steroids by general public.. i don't know the reasons but i can interpret it as follows..
the growing challenges in the fast growing world wants people to work like machines..
they need to put more strain.. so to improve their work efficiency they are using steroids...
steroids not only build muscles but simply they enhance the persons ability in the work he does daily..
it may be running, shortputting ,body building or even industrial working etc

If u don't take care of this right now the results may be disastrous and more devastating..
the situation will be out of control..
so lets put a check to this.. And u public don't expect more from our sportsmen and atheletes..
so that to satisfy your expectation and entertain you they will not indulge in steroids....
lets hope they will perform only to their natural abilities but not created ones...

say no to steroids............

Do we have Neighbours ??

noreply@blogger.com (VeNoM) — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 10:37:00 +0000

Have you ever read any of Asimov's novels?? (The Robot series, The Robots and Aliens) . Ever wondered if there is any possibility in the near future that a person can actually get to another planet and if not investigate a case like Elijah, can at least explore the place and can one day share a meal with our counterparts! Is this possible?? Is there any life beyond the Planet Earth?? Is there a safe neighborhood out in the universe except Earth?? I feel that these questions are quite common , the very mention of the Alien and ET raises the eyebrows.

Imagine an Alien or lemme call it the 'ET' stepping down a Flying Saucer or UFO(Just as in the film ET) and walking straight to you..!!!! This very imagination is quite amazing, electrifying, terrifying or adventurous may be .. isn't it?? I do find myself lost in these thoughts sometimes when Iam alone starring the Night Sky , by the way sky looks quite beautiful! I wonder how an encounter with the Alien turns out to be like.. Would he/she look just as we do? Do they possess the same technology or are they any advanced?? Are they friendly or will they harm us( Just like any Alien that has so far been portrayed in the films)?? Its just an unquenchable thirst of we humans that has been keeping us busy over centuries trying to find out the existence of an outer world.

These are the kinds of questions Ken Nealson struggles with. A geo-biologist at the University of Southern California, Nealson is heavily involved in devising strategies for searching for extraterrestrial life. And his number one goal is to free himself and his colleagues from the confines of their own preconceptions about life.

"It seems to me the worst people to look for life are biologists," Nealson, also a senior scientist at the NASA/Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory, says. "Because theyre so darned sure of what life is that if it happened to be different, theyd miss it." Nealson admits this point of view isnt very popular with his colleagues. "Oh, they love me," he laughs. "At least I'm a biologist saying it, so they cant just claim I'm some mad physicist whos trying to take their funding away."

As a cautionary tale, Nealson points to the only previous mission to look for life on another planet. In 1976 two Viking landers arrived on the Red Planet, each outfitted with a miniature biological laboratory. Scoops of Martian soil were fed into a series of experiments, where they were exposed to a puff of humidity, or a drop of water, or a nutrient broth. If any microbes were present, the Viking biologists hoped, the instruments would detect their metabolic processes.

But the experiments didn't discover microbes, and Nealson says thats because they were based on the characteristics of Earthly life. Thats something he wants to avoid on future missions: "Id like to be one of the chorus of voices saying, Dont do this again."

But that doesn't mean Nealson wants to avoid Mars far from it. If anything, Mars has become even more alluring since the Mars Global Surveyor probe found signs that liquid water has recently flowed on the planets surface and may still exist underground.

More than anything, Nealson wants to send a new life-detection mission to the Red Planet. "If I get one thing done before I retire," Nealson says, "it would be to have a mission that went to Mars, because its the one place we probably can go in my lifetime that would do a serious attempt at what I would call non-Earth-centric life detection."

If you call that living

Even our understanding of terrestrial life is changing. Recently, scientists discovered a thriving community of microbes deep in a hot spring in Idaho. These microbes, ancient relatives of bacteria called Archea, make energy by combining hydrogen from rocks with carbon dioxide, and exist completely apart from the Sun. And yet, they may be as numerous as living things on Earths surface, an entirely independent biosphere within the crust of our planet.

And some researchers have speculated that the same kind of life may exist in the crusts of other planets, provided there is enough geologic activity to supply the necessary hydrogen. But designing a space mission with probes to look for such life, many hundreds of feet down, is too ambitious in the near term. Even so, the find reinforces a watchword for life-hunters: Expect the unexpected.[more...]

Robots rules of order

There's another pitfall for life-hunters:The desire to find what they're after. In 1996 NASA scientists claimed to have found evidence for fossil microbes inside a meteorite from Mars. The claim was extremely controversial, and since then most researchers have come to believe the features in the Martian meteorite can be explained by non-biologic processes. Nealson says the NASA team was seduced by their own data.This wasn't a bunch of amateurs; these were good people. Anybody can be fooled by their data; Ive been fooled by mine in the past." But the seduction, Nealson notes, was understandable.

"Almost everything they found was consistent with life," he says. "And when you find enough things that are consistent with life, you start feeling that you've found life. But theres a big difference between five or six things being consistent with life and five or six things needing life to explain their existence. That to me is the big difference: Is there anything there that absolutely couldn't be there if there wasn't life?"[more...]

Europa ocean cruise

Planetary scientist Chris Chyba of the SETI Institute in Palo Alto, California is also anxious to see the search for life on Mars resume. But he’s also focused on another alluring target -- Jupiter's moon Europa. Images from the Galileo spacecraft, with other data, have shown that there is probably an ocean of liquid water beneath Europa’s icy crust. It’s not an easy place to explore: Europa is some 400 million miles from Earth, and it lies deep within Jupiter’s powerful radiation belts, which pose a hazard to any spacecraft.

But planners have envisioned a number of possible missions, including orbiters and landers, to explore Europa. Some have proposed an ambitious mission to melt through the ice and deploy a "cryobot" in the ocean to hunt for life. But Chyba says, "That kind of mission is extremely far in the future. Maybe it will be this century; I hope so. I think it's a very distant mission."
"You probably don't have to fly a cryobot to, in effect, access the ocean," Chyba says. "What you've got to do is go to a spot where it looks as though liquid water from the subsurface has reached the surface. And we can already identify areas like that on the surface of Europa."

Be like Earth

When it comes to life on other solar systems, the statistics seem promising.Four decades ago, Chyba's colleague Frank Drake authored a now-famous equation that judged the likelihood of extraterrestrial civilizations, or any kind of life, based on the number of habitable planets thought to be orbiting other stars. Back then, that number was pure conjecture. But now, after discovering several dozen extrasolar planets, astronomers are on the verge of learning whether other solar systems like ours are scarce or plentiful."

My prejudice is that we're going to discover that our solar system is neither rare nor typical," Chyba says. "But it doesn't really matter what I think is going to happen. We're actually going to know. Probably this decade, we're going to know."That's because of the upcoming Kepler mission, which will search for Earth-like planets around 100,000 stars beginning in 2006. "We're about to have catalogs of other solar systems, the way we have catalogs of stars [today]," Chyba says.

Whether any of these other solar systems are home to living things is something scientists hope to answer without leaving home. With powerful telescopes, perhaps including space-based arrays of instruments, it might be possible to detect the presence of atmospheric gases typical of life.

"I think it's going to prove very difficult to do in a way that seems convincing," Chyba said. "That doesn't mean we shouldn't be trying to do it."[more...]

Can we stop aging and reverse it's effects?

noreply@blogger.com (Sunny) — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 06:29:00 +0000

Why do we age?

Over the centuries, people have often wondered how it is that our bodies grow and develop from a tiny fertilized egg, to a newborn baby, to a young child, then a teenager and, finally, a young adult. A huge number of very complex changes within our bodies must happen perfectly in order to achieve this.

Once we grow into our adult perfection, why can’t we just stay there? Why do we have to age?

And can we stop it?

Doctors and scientists used to take aging for granted. Scientists used to think that because aging was a natural process, there was no need to investigate it. Is it the wear and tear of the body that causes aging or the life span of a person is defined by his genetic structure?

You've heard it said many times before: "Youth is wasted on the young." Unfortunately, the trade-off for the life experiences and wisdom that comes with age is the gradual loss of youth and physical health. We're constantly reminded that "life's too short." Time eventually takes it toll, and the body simply doesn't work as well as it did before.

But what if that didn't have to be the case? Imagine what people could do with an extra decade or two of healthy years. Now how about an extra fifty? Hundred? Five hundred? Imagine accumulating wisdom and experience without the threats of disease and frailty. Imagine being able to stop aging and reverse its effects.

Sounds like a plot for a science fiction story? The truth is putting an end to aging isn't a far-off dream: it's quickly becoming a reality, according to speakers at ideaCity 2008. The conference, hosted and produced in Toronto by Moses Znaimer, featured the latest research on slowing and stopping the aging process. The goal: not just to increase human lifespan, but to increase the healthy years -- perhaps indefinitely. And the "cure" may be available sooner than you think. Here's what the speakers had to say:

Ray Kurzweil

Don't be fooled by appearances. On the outside, Ray Kurzweil looks like a baby boomer but on the inside he claims to be decades younger. Advances in science are paving the way for revolutionary treatments, and he plans to be around to take advantage of them.

Imagine being a "designer baby boomer". In his talk at ideaCity, Kurzweil outlined how the biotechnology revolution is changing the paradigm of medicine. New technology can design and simulate treatments, computers can simulate human intelligence and tiny robots (known as nanobots) and nanotechnology devices could soon be used to kill cancer cells or control insulin. Genes can be added or be "turned off" to prevent diseases. Organs and tissues will eventually be restored to their youthful state. He predicts the biotechnology revolution will peak around 2020 -- well within the grasp of today's Zoomers.

The challenge, Kurzweil argues, is getting through the next 15 years to reap the benefits. How? By slowing the disease and aging processes using the knowledge we have today. If you want to see the specifics, Kurzweil and co-author Terry Grossman outline their strategies in their book Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever. The book acts as a guide to the aggressive strategies you need to employ to retain your health, including regular exercise, managing stress, taking supplements and treating inflammation in addition to the chapters dedicated to a healthy diet.

Michael Rose

Imagine being in a dark factory with only a flashlight. That's how Michael Rose describes how we used to approach medicine: Try to detect the source (if you can see it) and correct the problem. The approach doesn't work well for the complex networks that make up the human body. However, genomics (e.g. the Human Genome Project and DNA mapping) has effectively "turned on the lights" to provide a better understanding of how components and systems work -- and where faults occur.

The problem is that our genome has an unfavourable vocabulary -- it tends towards what Rose calls "bad words" like cancer, Alzheimer's disease and heart disease. The solution is to find therapeutic treatments to rewrite these bad words in order to literally stop your genome from killing you. In the end, you'll have a longer life, but also a healthier and more robust constitution.

In his book, The Long Tomorrow -- How Advances in Evolutionary Biology Can Help Us Postpone Aging, Rose argues that there is no single "fountain of youth" or fabled "elixir of life", despite what the old legends say. Instead, the field of Nutrigenomics, the study of the relationships between nutrition and genes, will lead to nutritional supplements meant to protect health and put off aging.

Aubrey de Grey

"The first 1000-year-old is probably less than 20 years younger than the first 150 year old."

Say what?

In order to understand this statement, you have to stop thinking in straight lines. When it comes to life span, Aubrey de Grey, chairman of the Methuselah Foundation, sees exponential rather than linear increases. What starts as the doubling of small numbers (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, etc) soon explodes. The numbers almost sound too good to be true, but once the fundamental breakthroughs happen, then achievements will accelerate rapidly -- and so will life expectancy.

How will these miraculous numbers come about? De Grey argues that our metabolism causes damage on an ongoing basis. This damage eventually causes pathology (disease). What we need to do is prevent and repair damage at the metabolic level, and maintain our bodies to keep them in top shape. Damage can be repaired with engineering. This means getting rid of "junk" inside and outside of our cells, getting rid of excess cells, replacing lost cells and dealing with mutations.

In other words, repairing damage "buys time" until the next advances come along. Extending lives means saving lives, especially since more deaths are caused by aging than terrorism, war, accidents and natural disasters combined. It's not surprising that de Grey is a force behind getting people to understand the importance of this issue... and to do something about it.

For more information, check out de Grey's book, Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime, and the Methuselah Foundation website.

Overall, the ideas and methods may be different, but the speakers all seemed to agree on one thing: if you can maintain your health a little longer, you'll be able to benefit from the treatments when they become available. With all due respect to George Bernard Shaw, youth will no longer be wasted on the young, and aging will become a process of continued personal growth rather than decay.

Video :-

New aging research into living longer, disease prevention, quality of life, healthy lifestyles, longevity - conference keynote speaker Dr Patrick Dixon

Scientists have stopped the ageing process in an entire organ for the first time. Know More

Your Suggestions will be greatly entertained.

The Sixth Sense--An Extrasensory Perception(ESP)

noreply@blogger.com (VeNoM) — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 16:32:00 +0000

A lady gets a vague dream of losing her dearest in a plane crash the following day, she just ignores it and presumes it to be yet another nightmare. The next day she sees herself at the airport to give a send-off but something urges her not to and she asks them to cancel their flight. They find her acting crazy, call her being over-superstitious but she avoids them getting on board. The evening they hear the news reporting the crash of their flight(the one they are supposed to board). This sounds a scene from Final Destination, isn't it? yes it does but let me tell you there have been many instances such as these for the humans.

I am talking about the 'SIXTH SENSE' or the SECOND SIGHT' or an EXTRASENSORY PERCEPTION' . Did you ever experience a situation where you feel that you have already been through it though you are pretty sure that you didn't. A kind of hint, a haunch ,an instinct, a scene, an instance, a faint resemblance of the present, you might have very well experienced this. This is what professors and scientists refer as the Sixth sense. I always wondered as why this has to happen? Why are we pre-informed the future, Why are we warned off our dangers plying in near future? I guess this is the same with you and hence the following post deals with the very thought of Sixth Sense.

What is Sixth Sense/ESP??

Extrasensory perception (ESP) is the purported ability to acquire information by paranormal means independent of any known physical senses or deduction from previous experience. The term was coined by Duke University researcher J. B. Rhine abilities such as to denote psychictelepathy, the sensing of thoughts or feelings without help from the 5 known senses, precognition, the knowledge of future events, and clairvoyance, the awareness of people, objects or events without the help of the 5 known senses. ESP is also sometimes casually referred to as a sixth sense, gut instinct, a hunch, a weird vibe or an intuition.

Is it Scientific??

Every human being is equipped from birth with what they need to communicate with the spirit world from where they came, and to where they will eventually go when they give up their physical body. This is the same scientific phenomenon that works in the transmission of electronic information such as the television or radio. These require that you tune into a particular band or frequency to get the program that you want. The sixth sense is similar in that it requires tuning in to another person’s frequency or to the frequency of someone in the spirit world. Electronic tuning is done through electronic means that is mechanical in nature. Spiritual tuning is done through the brain with mental focus, intent and desire being the means.

The Research

In the mid-1960s, psychologist Charles Tart, Ph.D., of the University of California at Davis, measured skin conductance, blood volume, heart rate, and verbal reports between two people; called a sender-receiver pair. He, as the sender, received random electrical shocks to see if remote receivers could detect those events. Tart found that while they weren't consciously aware of anything out of the ordinary, the distant receivers' physiology registered significant reactions to the shocks he experienced.

In other, independent experiments, engineer Douglas Dean at the Newark College of Engineering; psychologist Jean Barry, Ph.D., in France; and psychologist Erlendur Haraldsson, Ph.D., at the University of Utrecht, all observed significant changes in receivers' finger blood volume when a sender, located thousands of miles away, directed emotional thoughts toward them. The journal Science also published a study by two physiologists who reported finding significant correlations in brain waves between isolated identical twins. These sorts of studies came to be known as Distant Mental Intention on Living Systems (DMILS).

Why do we need to study the ESP??

If scientists eventually agree that a sixth sense exists, how might this change society? On one hand, it may change nothing; we may learn that genuine psi abilities are rare and only weakly predictive, and thus inconsequential for most practical purposes.

On the other hand, it's possible that the study of the sixth sense will revolutionize our understanding of causality and have radically new applications. For example, in an article co-titled 'Exploring an Outrageous Hypothesis,' psychologist William Braud, Ph.D., professor and research director at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology and co-director of the Institute's William James Center for Consciousness Studies, discusses the concept of "retroactive intentional influence" as applied to healing. He poses the idea that in cases where serious illnesses disappear virtually overnight, perhaps a healer went back in time to jumpstart the healing process.

Braud is well aware of the mind-bending nature of this hypothesis, but it is not purely fantastical. In his article, he reviews several hundred experiments examining a wide range of retrocausal phenomena, from mental influence of random numbers generated by electronic circuits, to guessing picture targets selected in the future, to studies examining the "feeling of being stared at," to presentiment experiments. He concludes that this sizable but not well-known body of carefully controlled research indicates that some form of retroactive intentional influence is indeed possible, and may have important consequences for healing.

A less radical application might be for early warning systems. Imagine that on a future aircraft all the members of the flight crew are connected to an onboard computer system. The system is designed to continuously monitor heart rate, electrical activity in the skin, and blood flow. Before the crew comes aboard, each person is calibrated to see how he or she responds before, during and after different kinds of emotional and calm events. Each person's idiosyncratic responses are used to create a person-unique emotional "response template," which is fed into the computer.

Further Info

Wiki Link-Sixth Sense
Psychology Today Magazine, Jul/Aug 2000
thephysics.co.uk
Spiritual Research

Be proud to be an INDIAN

noreply@blogger.com (RAJESH) — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 09:52:00 +0000

India:
When we hear this name, the first thing that strikes our mind is population.........
then if people are asked what is india famous for.....?
these will be the answers....
Poverty,Illiteracy,Cricket,Taj Mahal, movies , tourism etc.........
but atleast one will be there who tells MATHEMATICS,SCIENCE,ASTROLOGY,CULTURE,CIVILIZATION....
he is the true indian..(he had recognized the greatness of our country)...

Do you know that ........?
earth's diameter was first calculated by an INDIAN
pie value was evaluated by an INDIAN
exact value of square root of 2 was given by an INDIAN
geocentric theory was proposed by INDIANS
Trigonometry was developed by INDIANS
0 was given by INDIANS
and many more......
But people say INDIANS CONTRIBUTION TO MATHS IS ZERO (in both ways)...

show this to them and say
INDIANS have really gone BEYOND NATURE
lets now know about ARYABATTA (born genius) and his works...

Biography

Though Aryabhata's year of birth is clearly mentioned in Aryabhatiya, exact location of his place of birth remains a matter of contention amongst the scholars. Some scholars argue that Aryabhata was born in Kusumapura, while others argue that Aryabhata was from Kerala.[1]Some believe he was born in the region lying between Narmada and Godavari, which was known as Ashmaka and they identify Ashmaka with central India including Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, though early Buddhist texts describe Ashmaka as being further south, dakShiNApath or the Deccan, while other texts describe the Ashmakas as having fought Alexander, which would put them further north. Recently in one of the scholarly studies based upon the astronomical readings in his works, it has been pointed out that Aryabhata's location may have been in Ponnani, Kerala .

However, it is fairly certain that at some point, he went to Kusumapura for higher studies, and that he lived here for some time. Bhāskara I (AD 629) identifies Kusumapura as Pataliputra (modern Patna). He lived there in the dying years of the Gupta empire, the time which is known as the golden age of India, when it was already under Hun attack in the Northeast, during the reign of Buddhagupta and some of the smaller kings before Vishnugupta.

Works

Aryabhata is the author of several treatises on mathematics and astronomy, some of which are lost. His major work, Aryabhatiya, a compendium of mathematics and astronomy, was extensively referred to in the Indian mathematical literature, and has survived to modern times. The mathematical part of the Aryabhatiya covers arithmetic, algebra, plane trigonometry and spherical trigonometry. It also contains continued fractions, quadratic equations, sums of power series and a table of sines.

The Arya-siddhanta, a lost work on astronomical computations, is known through the writings of Aryabhata's contemporary Varahamihira, as well as through later mathematicians and commentators including Brahmagupta and Bhaskara I. This work appears to be based on the older Surya Siddhanta, and uses the midnight-day-reckoning, as opposed to sunrise in Aryabhatiya. This also contained a description of several astronomical instruments, the gnomon (shanku-yantra), a shadow instrument (chhAyA-yantra), possibly angle-measuring devices, semi-circle and circle shaped (dhanur-yantra / chakra-yantra), a cylindrical stick yasti-yantra, an umbrella-shaped device called chhatra-yantra, and water clocks of at least two types, bow-shaped and cylindrical.

A third text that may have survived in Arabic translation is the Al ntf or Al-nanf, which claims to be a translation of Aryabhata, but the Sanskrit name of this work is not known. Probably dating from the ninth c., it is mentioned by the Persian scholar and chronicler of India, Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī.

Aryabhatiya

Direct details of Aryabhata's work are therefore known only from the Aryabhatiya. The name Aryabhatiya is due to later commentators, Aryabhata himself may not have given it a name; it is referred by his disciple Bhaskara I as Ashmakatantra or the treatise from the Ashmaka. It is also occasionally referred to as Arya-shatas-aShTa, lit., Aryabhata's 108, which is the number of verses in the text. It is written in the very terse style typical of the sutra literature, where each line is an aid to memory for a complex system. Thus, the explication of meaning is due to commentators. The entire text consists of 108 verses, plus an introductory 13, the whole being divided into four pAdas or chapters:

1. Gitikapada: (13 verses) large units of time - kalpa, manvantra, yuga, which present a cosmology that differs from earlier texts such as Lagadha's Vedanga Jyotisha(ca. 1st c. BC). Also includes the table of sines (jya), given in a single verse. For the planetary revolutions during a mahayuga, the number of 4.32mn years is given.
2. Ganitapada (33 verses), covering mensuration (kShetra vyAvahAra), arithmetic and geometric progressions, gnomon / shadows (shanku-chhAyA), simple, quadratic, simultaneous, and indeterminate equations (kuTTaka)
3. Kalakriyapada (25 verses) : different units of time and method of determination of positions of planets for a given day. Calculations concerning the intercalary month (adhikamAsa), kShaya-tithis. Presents a seven-day week, with names for days of week.
4. Golapada (50 verses): Geometric/trigonometric aspects of the celestial sphere, features of the ecliptic, celestial equator, node, shape of the earth, cause of day and night, rising of zodiacal signs on horizon etc.

In addition, some versions cite a few colophons added at the end, extolling the virtues of the work, etc.

The Aryabhatiya presented a number of innovations in mathematics and astronomy in verse form, which were influential for many centuries. The extreme brevity of the text was elaborated in commentaries by his disciple Bhaskara I (Bhashya, ca. 600) and by Nilakantha Somayaji in his Aryabhatiya Bhasya, (1465).

Mathematics

Place Value system and zero

The number place-value system, first seen in the 3rd century Bakhshali Manuscript was clearly in place in his work. ; he certainly did not use the symbol, but the French mathematician Georges Ifrah argues that knowledge of zero was implicit in Aryabhata's place-value system as a place holder for the powers of ten with null coefficients.

However, Aryabhata did not use the brahmi numerals; continuing the Sanskritic tradition from Vedic times, he used letters of the alphabet to denote numbers, expressing quantities (such as the table of sines) in a mnemonic form.

Pi as Irrational

Aryabhata worked on the approximation for Pi (π), and may have realized that π is irrational. In the second part of the Aryabhatiyam (gaṇitapāda 10), he writes:

chaturadhikam śatamaśṭaguṇam dvāśaśṭistathā sahasrāṇām
Ayutadvayaviśkambhasyāsanno vrîttapariṇahaḥ.
"Add four to 100, multiply by eight and then add 62,000. By this rule the circumference of a circle of diameter 20,000 can be approached."

Aryabhata interpreted the word āsanna (approaching), appearing just before the last word, as saying that not only that is this an approximation, but that the value is incommensurable (or irrational). If this is correct, it is quite a sophisticated insight, for the irrationality of pi was proved in Europe only in 1761 by Lambert).

After Aryabhatiya was translated into Arabic (ca. 820 AD) this approximation was mentioned in Al-Khwarizmi's book on algebra.

Mensuration and trigonometry

In Ganitapada 6, Aryabhata gives the area of triangle as

tribhujasya phalashariram samadalakoti bhujardhasamvargah

that translates to: for a triangle, the result of a perpendicular with the half-side is the area. His great contribution to mensuration and trigonometry is used in the current international mathematics.

From "ardha-jya" to "sine"

Aryabhata discussed the concept of sine in his work by the name of ardha-jya. Literally, it means "half-chord". Because of simplicity, people started calling it jya. When Arabic writers translated his works from Sanskrit into Arabic, they referred it as jiba (after driven by the phonetic similarity). However, in Arabic writings, vowels are omitted and it got abbreviated to jb. When later writers realized that jb is an abbreviation of jiba, they substituted it back with jiab, means "cove" or "bay" (in Arabic, other than being merely a technical term, jiba is a meaningless word). Later in 12th century, when Gherardo of Cremona translated these writings from Arabic into Latin, he replaced the Arabic jiab with its Latin counterpart, sinus (which has a same literal meaning of "cove" or "bay"). And after that, the sinus became sine in English, which is what the world now knows.

Indeterminate Equations

A problem of great interest to Indian mathematicians since ancient times has been to find integer solutions to equations that have the form ax + b = cy, a topic that has come to be known as diophantine equations. Here is an example from Bhaskara's commentary on Aryabhatiya: :

Find the number which gives 5 as the remainder when divided by 8; 4 as the remainder when divided by 9; and 1 as the remainder when divided by 7.

i.e. find N = 8x+5 = 9y+4 = 7z+1. It turns out that the smallest value for N is 85. In general, diophantine equations can be notoriously difficult. Such equations were considered extensively in the ancient Vedic text Sulba Sutras, the more ancient parts of which may date back to 800 BCE. Aryabhata's method of solving such problems, called the kuṭṭaka (कूटटक) method. Kuttaka means pulverizing, that is breaking into small pieces, and the method involved a recursive algorithm for writing the original factors in terms of smaller numbers. Today this algorithm, as elaborated by Bhaskara in AD 621, is the standard method for solving first order Diophantine equations, and it is often referred to as the Aryabhata algorithm.

The diophantine equations are of interest in cryptology, and the RSA Conference, 2006, focused on the kuttaka method and earlier work in the Sulvasutras.

Astronomy

Aryabhata's system of astronomy was called the audAyaka system (days are reckoned from uday, dawn at lanka, equator). Some of his later writings on astronomy, which apparently proposed a second model (ardha-rAtrikA, midnight), are lost, but can be partly reconstructed from the discussion in Brahmagupta's khanDakhAdyaka. In some texts he seems to ascribe the apparent motions of the heavens to the earth's rotation.

Motions of the Solar System

Aryabhata appears to have believed that the earth rotates about its axis. This is made clear in the statement, referring to Lanka , which describes the movement of the stars as a relative motion caused by the rotation of the earth:

Like a man in a boat moving forward sees the stationary objects as moving backward, just so are the stationary stars seen by the people in lankA (i.e. on the equator) as moving exactly towards the West. [achalAni bhAni samapashchimagAni - golapAda.]

But the next verse describes the motion of the stars and planets as real movements: “The cause of their rising and setting is due to the fact the circle of the asterisms together with the planets driven by the provector wind, constantly moves westwards at Lanka”.

Lanka (lit. Sri Lanka) is here a reference point on the equator, which was taken as the equivalent to the reference meridian for astronomical calculations.

Aryabhata described a geocentric model of the solar system, in which the Sun and Moon are each carried by epicycles which in turn revolve around the Earth. In this model, which is also found in the Paitāmahasiddhānta (ca. AD 425), the motions of the planets are each governed by two epicycles, a smaller manda (slow) epicycle and a larger śīghra (fast) epicycle. The order of the planets in terms of distance from earth are taken as: the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the asterisms.

The positions and periods of the planets was calculated relative to uniformly moving points, which in the case of Mercury and Venus, move around the Earth at the same speed as the mean Sun and in the case of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn move around the Earth at specific speeds representing each planet's motion through the zodiac. Most historians of astronomy consider that this two epicycle model reflects elements of pre-Ptolemaic Greek astronomy. Another element in Aryabhata's model, the śīghrocca, the basic planetary period in relation to the Sun, is seen by some historians as a sign of an underlying heliocentric model.

Eclipses

He states that the Moon and planets shine by reflected sunlight. Instead of the prevailing cosmogony where eclipses were caused by pseudo-planetary nodes Rahu and Ketu, he explains eclipses in terms of shadows cast by and falling on earth. Thus the lunar eclipse occurs when the moon enters into the earth-shadow (verse gola.37), and discusses at length the size and extent of this earth-shadow (verses gola.38-48), and then the computation, and the size of the eclipsed part during eclipses. Subsequent Indian astronomers improved on these calculations, but his methods provided the core. This computational paradigm was so accurate that the 18th century scientist Guillaume le Gentil, during a visit to Pondicherry, found the Indian computations of the duration of the lunar eclipse of 1765-08-30 to be short by 41 seconds, whereas his charts (by Tobias Mayer, 1752) were long by 68 seconds..

Aryabhata's computation of Earth's circumference as 24,835 miles, which was only 0.2% smaller than the actual value of 24,902 miles. This approximation was a significant improvement over the computation by the Greek mathematician, Eratosthenes (c. 200 BC), whose exact computation is not known in modern units but his estimate had an error of around 5-10%.

Sidereal periods

Considered in modern English units of time, Aryabhata calculated the sidereal rotation (the rotation of the earth referenced the fixed stars) as 23 hours 56 minutes and 4.1 seconds; the modern value is 23:56:4.091. Similarly, his value for the length of the sidereal year at 365 days 6 hours 12 minutes 30 seconds is an error of 3 minutes 20 seconds over the length of a year. The notion of sidereal time was known in most other astronomical systems of the time, but this computation was likely the most accurate in the period.

Heliocentrism

Āryabhata claimed that the Earth turns on its own axis and some elements of his planetary epicyclic models rotate at the same speed as the motion of the planet around the Sun. Thus it has been suggested that Āryabhata's calculations were based on an underlying heliocentric model in which the planets orbit the Sun. A detailed rebuttal to this heliocentric interpretation is in a review which describes B. L. van der Waerden's book as "show[ing] a complete misunderstanding of Indian planetary theory [that] is flatly contradicted by every word of Āryabhata's description," although some concede that Āryabhata's system stems from an earlier heliocentric model of which he was unaware. It has even been claimed that he considered the planet's paths to be elliptical, although no primary evidence for this has been cited. Though Aristarchus of Samos (3rd century BC) and sometimes Heraclides of Pontus (4th century BC) are usually credited with knowing the heliocentric theory, the version of Greek astronomy known in ancient India, Paulisa Siddhanta (possibly by a Paul of Alexandria) makes no reference to a Heliocentric theory.

Legacy

Aryabhata's work was of great influence in the Indian astronomical tradition, and influenced several neighbouring cultures through translations. The Arabic translation during the Islamic Golden Age (ca. 820), was particularly influential. Some of his results are cited by Al-Khwarizmi, and he is referred to by the 10th century Arabic scholar Al-Biruni, who states that Āryabhata's followers believed the Earth to rotate on its axis.

His definitions of sine, as well as cosine (kojya), versine (ukramajya), and inverse sine (otkram jya), influenced the birth of trigonometry. He was also the first to specify sine and versine (1 - cosx) tables, in 3.75° intervals from 0° to 90°, to an accuracy of 4 decimal places.

In fact, the modern names "sine" and "cosine", are a mis-transcription of the words jya and kojya as introduced by Aryabhata. They were transcribed as jiba and kojiba in Arabic. They were then misinterpreted by Gerard of Cremona while translating an Arabic geometry text to Latin; he took jiba to be the Arabic word jaib, which means "fold in a garment", L. sinus (c.1150).

Aryabhata's astronomical calculation methods were also very influential. Along with the trigonometric tables, they came to be widely used in the Islamic world, and were used to compute many Arabic astronomical tables (zijes). In particular, the astronomical tables in the work of the Arabic Spain scientist Al-Zarqali (11th c.), were translated into Latin as the Tables of Toledo (12th c.), and remained the most accurate Ephemeris used in Europe for centuries.

Calendric calculations worked out by Aryabhata and followers have been in continuous use in India for the practical purposes of fixing the Panchangam, or Hindu calendar, These were also transmitted to the Islamic world, and formed the basis for the Jalali calendar introduced 1073 by a group of astronomers including Omar Khayyam, versions of which (modified in 1925) are the national calendars in use in Iran and Afghanistan today. The Jalali calendar determines its dates based on actual solar transit, as in Aryabhata (and earlier Siddhanta calendars). This type of calendar requires an Ephemeris for calculating dates. Although dates were difficult to compute, seasonal errors were lower in the Jalali calendar than in the Gregorian calendar.

India's first satellite Aryabhata, was named after him. The lunar crater Aryabhata is named in his honour. An Institute for conducting research in Astronomy, Astrophysics and atmospheric sciences has been named as Aryabhatta Research Institute of observational sciences (ARIES) near Nainital, India.

The interschool Aryabhatta Maths Competition is named after him.

ARYABATIA: in detail

Structure and style

The text is written in Sanskrit and structured into four section, overall covering 121 verses that describe different results using a mnemonic style typical of the Indian tradition.

33 verses are concerned with mathematical rules.

The four chapters are:

(i) the astronomical constants and the sine table (ii) mathematics required for computations (gaNitapāda) (iii) division of time and rules for computing the longitudes of planets using eccentrics and ellipses (iv) the armillary sphere, rules relating to problems of trigonometry and the computation of eclipses (golādhyaya).

It is highly likely that the study of the Aryabhatiya was meant to be accompanied by the teachings of a well-versed tutor. While some of the verses have a logical flow, some don't and its lack of coherance makes it extremely difficult for a casual reader to follow.

Indian mathematical works often used word numerals before Aryabhata, but the Aryabhatiya is oldest extant Indian work with alphabet numerals. That is, he used letters of the alphabet to form words with consonants giving digits and vowels denoting place value. This innovation allows for advanced arithmetical computations which would have been considerably more difficult without it. At the same time, this system of numeration allows for poetic license even in the author's choice of numbers. Cf. Āryabhaṭa numeration, the Sanskrit numerals.

Contents

Crowning glory of Aryabhatiya is the decimal place value notation without which mathematics, science and commerce would be impossible. Prior to Aryabhatta, Babylonians used 60 based place value notation which never gained momentum. Mathematics of Aryabhatta went to Europe through Arabs and was known as "Modus Indorum" or the method of the Indians. This method is none other than our arithmetic today.

The Aryabhatiya begins with an introduction called the "Dasagitika" or "Ten Giti Stanzas." This begins by paying tribute to Brahman, the "Cosmic spirit" in Hinduism. Next, Aryabhata lays out the numeration system used in the work. It includes a listing of astronomical constants and the sine table. The book then goes on to give an overview of Aryabhata's astronomical findings.

Most of the mathematics is contained in the next part, the "Ganitapada" or "Mathematics."

The next section is the "Kalakriya" or "The Reckoning of Time." In it, he divides up days, months, and years according to the movement of celestial bodies. He divides up history astrologically - it is from this exposition that historians deduced that the Aryabhatiya was written in 522 C.E. It also contains rules for computing the longitudes of planets using eccentrics and epicycles.

In the final section, the "Gola" or "The Sphere," Aryabhata goes into great detail describing the celestial relationship between the Earth and the cosmos. This section is noted for describing the rotation of the earth on its axis. It further uses the armillary sphere and details rules relating to problems of trigonometry and the computation of eclipses.

Significance The treatise uses a geocentric model of the solar system, in which the Sun and Moon are each carried by epicycles which in turn revolve around the Earth. In this model, which is also found in the Paitāmahasiddhānta (ca. AD 425), the motions of the planets are each governed by two epicycles, a smaller manda (slow) epicycle and a larger śīghra (fast) epicycle. It has also been interpreted as advocating Heliocentrism, where Earth was taken to be spinning on its axis and the periods of the planets were given with respect to the sun (according to this view, it was heliocentric). Aryabhata asserted that the Moon and planets shine by reflected sunlight and that the orbits of the planets are ellipses. He also correctly explained the causes of eclipses of the Sun and the Moon. His value for the length of the sidereal year at 365 days 6 hours 12 minutes 30 seconds is only 3 minutes 20 seconds longer than the true value of 365 days 6 hours 9 minutes 10 seconds. In this book, the day was reckoned from one sunrise to the next, whereas in his "Āryabhata-siddhānta" he took the day from one midnight to another. There was also difference in some astronomical parameters. A close approximation to π is given as : "Add four to one hundred, multiply by eight and then add sixty-two thousand. The result is approximately the circumference of a circle of diameter twenty thousand. By this rule the relation of the circumference to diameter is given." In other words, π ≈ 62832/20000 = 3.1416, correct to four rounded-off decimal places. Aryabhata was the first astronomer to make an attempt at measuring the Earth's circumference since Erastosthenes (circa 200 BC). Aryabhata accurately calculated the Earth's circumference as 24,835 miles, which was only 0.2% smaller than the actual value of 24,902 miles. This approximation remained the most accurate for over a thousand years. Aryabhata's methods of astronomical calculations have been in continuous use for practical purposes of fixing the Panchanga (Hindu calendar). Significant verses shulva-sUtras: form a shrauta part of kalpa vedAnga - nine texts - mathematically most imp - baudhAyana, Apastamba, and kAtyAyana shulvasUtra. dIrghasyAkShaNayA rajjuH pArshvamAnI tiryaDaM mAnI. cha yatpr^thagbhUte kurutastadubhayAM karoti. The diagonal of a rectangle produces both areas which its length and bread produce separately. samasya dvikaraNI. pramANaM tritIyena vardhayet tachchaturthAnAtma chatusastriMshenena savisheShaH. sqrt(2) = 1 + 1/3 + 1/(3.4) - 1(3.4.34) -- correct to 5 decimals = 1.41421569 chaturadhikaM shatamaShTaguNaM dvAShaShTistathA sahasrANAm AyutadvayaviShkambhasyAsanno vr^ttapariNahaH. [gaNita pAda, 10] Add 4 to 100, multiply by 8 and add to 62,000. This is approximately the circumference of a circle whose diamenter is 20,000. i.e. PI = 62,832 / 20,000 = 3.1416 correct to four places. Even more important however is the word "Asanna" - approximate, indicating an awareness that even this is an approximation. tribhujasya falasharIraM samadalakoTI bhujArdhasaMvargaH It depicts the area of a triangle. jyA = sine, koTijyA = cosine jyA tables : Circle circumference = minutes of arc = 360x60 = 21600. Gives radius R = radius of 3438; (exactly 21601.591) [ with pi = 3.1416, gives 21601.64] The R sine-differences (at intervals of 225 minutes of arc = 3:45deg), are given in an alphabetic code as 225,224,222,219.215,210,205, 199,191,183,174,164,154,143,131,119,106,93,79,65,51,37,,22,7 which gives sines for 15 deg as sum of first four = 890 --> sin(15) = 890/3438 = 0.258871 vs. the correct value at 0.258819. sin(30) = 1719/3438 = 0.5 Expressed as the stanza, using the varga/avarga code: ka-M 1-5, ca-n~a: 6-10, Ta-Na 11-15, ta-na 16-20, pa-ma 21-25 the avargiya vyanjanas are: y = 30, r = 40, l=50, v=60, sh=70, Sh=80, s =90 and h=100 makhi (ma=25 + khi=2x100) bhakhi (24+200) fakhi (22+200) dhakhi (219) Nakhi 215, N~akhi 210, M~akhi 205, hasjha (h=100 + s=90+ jha=9) skaki (90+ ki=1x00 + ka=1) kiShga (1x100+80+3), shghaki, 70+4+100 kighva (100+4+60) ghlaki (4+50+100) kigra (100+3+40) hakya (100+1+30) dhaki (19+100) kicha (106) sga (93) shjha (79) Mva (5+60) kla (51) pta (21+16, could also have been chhya) fa (22) chha (7). makhi bhakhi dhakhi Nakhi N~akhi M~akhi hasjha 225, 224 222 219 215 210 205 skaki kiShga shghaki kighva ghlaki kigra hakya 199 191 183 174 164 154 143 dhaki kicha sga shjha Mva kla pta fa chha 119 106 93 79 65 51 37 22 7 given radius R = radius of 3438, these values give the Rxsin(theta) within one integer value; e.g. sine (15deg) = 225+224+222+219 = 890, modern value = 889.820. Both the choice of the radius based on the angle, and the 225 minutes of arc interpolation interval, are ideal for the table, better suited than the modern tables.

Translations

The Aryabhatiya was an extremely influential work as is exhibited by the fact that most notable Indian mathematicians after Aryabhata wrote commentaries on it. At least twelve notable commentaries were written for the Aryabhatiya ranging from the time he was still alive (c. 525) through 1900 ("Aryabhata I" 150-2). The commentators include Bhaskara and Brahmagupta among other notables.

The work was translated into Arabic around 820 by Al-Khwarizmi, whose On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals was in turn influential in the adoption of the Hindu-Arabic numerals in Europe from the 12th century.

Although the work was influential, there is no definitive English translation.

let talk about other great people who went BEYOND NATURE in the next post

Stephen Hawking - Next Generation Einstein

noreply@blogger.com (RAJESH) — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 11:59:00 +0000

In the year 1942 January 8.. a remarkable incident took place in the field of astronomy and theoretical physics.... has any one done anything amazing on that day????
No absolutely not on that fine day a kid was born to Frank Hawking...He was named STEPHEN HAWKING...
At that time no one recognized that day.. but it really matters today because its the day when another Einstein had come to earth....... None other than STEPHEN HAWKING...
you have ever wanted to know about the man who wrote the all-time best seller 'A Brief History of Time', and more recently the book that is still topping charts all over the world 'The Universe in a Nutshell' then this is an excellent place to start. These pages have been written so that you can learn more about not only Stephen, but also his work.

Biography

Stephen William Hawking was born on January 8, 1942 to Frank Hawking, a research biologist, and Isobel Hawking. He had two younger sisters, Philippa and Mary, and an adopted brother, Edward. Though Hawking’s parents were living in North London, they moved to Oxford while Isobel was pregnant with Stephen, desiring a safer location for the birth of their first child (London was under attack at the time by the Luftwaffe). After Hawking was born, the family moved back to London, where his father headed the division of parasitology at the National Institute for Medical Research.

In 1950, Hawking and his family moved to St Albans in Hertfordshire where he attended St Albans High School for Girls from 1950 to 1953. (At that time, boys attended the Girls school until the age of 10.) From the age of 11, he attended St Albans School, where he was a good, but not an exceptional, student. When asked later to name a teacher who had inspired him, Hawking named his Mathematics teacher, "Mr Tahta". He maintains his connection with the school, giving his name to one of the four houses and to an extracurricular science lecture series. He has visited to deliver one of the lectures and has also granted a lengthy interview to pupils working on the school magazine, The Albanian.

He was always interested in science. He enrolled at University College, Oxford with the intent of studying mathematics, although his father preferred he go into medicine. Since mathematics was not offered at University College, Hawking instead chose physics. His interests during this time were in thermodynamics, relativity, and quantum mechanics. His physics tutor, Robert Berman, later said in the New York Times Magazine, "It was only necessary for him to know that something could be done, and he could do it without looking to see how other people did it. ... He didn’t have very many books, and he didn’t take notes. Of course, his mind was completely different from all of his contemporaries." He was passing with his fellow students, but his unimpressive study habits gave him a final examination score on the borderline between first and second class honours, making an "oral examination" necessary. Berman said of the oral examination, "And of course the examiners then were intelligent enough to realize they were talking to someone far more clever than most of themselves."

After receiving his B.A. degree at Oxford University in 1962, he stayed to study astronomy. He decided to leave when he found that studying sunspots, which was all the observatory was equipped for, did not appeal to him and that he was more interested in theory than in observation. He left Oxford for Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he engaged in the study of theoretical astronomy and cosmology.

Almost as soon as he arrived at Cambridge, he started developing symptoms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (colloquially known as Lou Gehrig’s disease), a type of motor neuron disease which would cost him almost all neuromuscular control. During his first two years at Cambridge, he did not distinguish himself, but, after the disease had stabilized and with the help of his doctoral tutor, Dennis William Sciama, he returned to working on his Ph.D. He revealed that he did not see much point in obtaining a doctorate if he was to die soon. Hawking later said that the real turning point was his 1965 marriage to Jane Wilde, a language student. After gaining his Ph.D. Stephen became first a Research Fellow, and later on a Professorial Fellow at Gonville and Caius College.

Hawking was elected as one of the youngest Fellows of the Royal Society in 1974, was created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1982, and became a Companion of Honour in 1989. Hawking is a member of the Board of Sponsors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Jane Hawking (née Wilde), Hawking’s first wife, with whom he had three children, cared for him until 1991 when the couple separated, reportedly due to the pressures of fame and his increasing disability. Hawking married his nurse, Elaine Mason (who was also the previous wife of David Mason, designer of the first version of Hawking’s talking computer), in 1995. In October 2006, Hawking filed for divorce from his second wife.

In 1999, Jane Hawking published a memoir, Music to Move the Stars, detailing her own long-term relationship with a family friend whom she later married. Hawking’s daughter Lucy Hawking is a novelist. Their son Robert Hawking emigrated to the United States, married, and has one child, George Edward Hawking. Reportedly, Hawking and his first family were reconciled in 2007.

At the celebration of his 65th birthday on January 8, 2007, Hawking announced his plans for a zero-gravity flight in 2007 to prepare for a sub-orbital spaceflight in 2009 on Virgin Galactic’s space service. Billionaire Richard Branson pledged to pay all expenses for the flight, costing an estimated £100,000. Stephen Hawking’s zero-gravity flight in a "Vomit Comet" of Zero Gravity Corporation, during which he experienced weightlessness eight times, took place on April 26, 2007.

He became the first quadriplegic to float free in a weightless state. This was the first time in 40 years that he moved freely beyond the confines of his wheelchair. The fee is normally US$3,750 for 10-15 plunges, but Hawking was not required to pay the fee. A bit of a futurist, Hawking was quoted before the flight saying:

"Many people have asked me why I am taking this flight. I am doing it for many reasons. First of all, I believe that life on Earth is at an ever increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster such as sudden nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus, or other dangers. I think the human race has no future if it doesn’t go into space. I therefore want to encourage public interest in space."

Research fields

Hawking’s principal fields of research are theoretical cosmology and quantum gravity.

In the late 1960s, he and his Cambridge friend and colleague, Roger Penrose, applied a new, complex mathematical model they had created from Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. This led, in 1970, to Hawking proving the first of many singularity theorems; such theorems provide a set of sufficient conditions for the existence of a singularity in space-time. This work showed that, far from being mathematical curiosities which appear only in special cases, singularities are a fairly generic feature of general relativity.

He supplied a mathematical proof, along with Brandon Carter, Werner Israel and D. Robinson, of John Wheeler’s “No-Hair Theorem” – namely, that any black hole is fully described by the three properties of mass, angular momentum, and electric charge.

Hawking also suggested that, upon analysis of gamma ray emissions, after the Big Bang, primordial or mini black holes were formed. With Bardeen and Carter, he proposed the four laws of black hole mechanics, drawing an analogy with thermodynamics. In 1974, he calculated that black holes should thermally create and emit subatomic particles, known today as Hawking radiation, until they exhaust their energy and evaporate.

In collaboration with Jim Hartle, Hawking developed a modeling which the Universe had no boundary in space-time, replacing the initial singularity of the classical Big Bang models with a region akin to the North pole: one cannot travel North of the North pole, there is no boundary there. While originally the no-boundary proposal predicted a closed Universe, discussions with Neil Turok led to the realisation that the no-boundary proposal is also consistent with a Universe which is not closed.

Among Hawking’s many other scientific investigations, included are the study of: quantum cosmology, cosmic inflation, helium production in anisotropic Big Bang universes, large N cosmology, the density matrix of the universe, topology and structure of the universe, baby universes, Yang-Mills instantons and the S matrix; anti de Sitter space, quantum entanglement and entropy; the nature of space and time, including the arrow of time; spacetime foam, string theory, supergravity, Euclidean quantum gravity, the gravitational Hamiltonian; Brans-Dicke and Hoyle-Narlikar theories of gravitation; gravitational radiation, and wormholes.

At a George Washington University lecture in honour of NASA's 50th anniversary, Prof. Hawking theorised on the existence of extraterrestrial life: "Primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare."

Losing an old bet

Main article: Thorne-Hawking-Preskill bet

Hawking was in the news in July 2004 for presenting a new theory about black holes which goes against his own long-held belief about their behavior, thus losing a bet he made with Kip Thorne and John Preskill of Caltech. Classically, it can be shown that information crossing the event horizon of a black hole is lost to our universe, and that thus all black holes are identical beyond their mass, electrical charge and angular velocity (the “no hair theorem”). The problem with this theorem is that it implies the black hole will emit the same radiation regardless of what goes into it, and as a consequence that if a pure quantum state is thrown into a black hole, an “ordinary” mixed state will be returned. This runs counter to the rules of quantum mechanics and is known as the black hole information paradox.

Hawking had earlier speculated that the singularity at the centre of a black hole could form a bridge to a “baby universe” into which the lost information could pass; such theories have been very popular in science fiction. But according to Hawking’s new idea, presented at the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation, on 21 July 2004 in Dublin, Republic of Ireland, black holes eventually transmit, in a garbled form, information about all matter they swallow:

“

The Euclidean path integral over all topologically trivial metrics can be done by time slicing and so is unitary when analytically continued to the Lorentzian. On the other hand, the path integral over all topologically non-trivial metrics is asymptotically independent of the initial state. Thus the total path integral is unitary and information is not lost in the formation and evaporation of black holes. The way the information gets out seems to be that a true event horizon never forms, just an apparent horizon.

”

Having concluded that information is conserved, Hawking conceded his bet in Preskill’s favour, awarding him Total Baseball, The Ultimate Baseball Encyclopedia. Thorne, however, remained unconvinced of Hawking’s proof and declined to contribute to the award. Another older bet – about the existence of black holes – was described by Hawking as an “insurance policy” of sorts. To quote from his book, A Brief History of Time:

“	This was a form of insurance policy for me. I have done a lot of work on black holes, and it would all be wasted if it turned out that black holes do not exist. But in that case, I would have the consolation of winning my bet, which would win me four years of the magazine Private Eye. If black holes do exist, Kip will get one year of Penthouse. When we made the bet in 1975, we were 80 % certain that Cygnus was a black hole. By now, I would say that we are about 95 % certain, but the bet has yet to be settled.	”
—Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (1988)^[1]

According to the updated 10th anniversary edition of A Brief History of Time, Hawking has conceded the bet “to the outrage of Kip’s liberated wife” due to subsequent observational data in favour of black holes.

Illness

Hawking is severely disabled by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS (a type of motor neurone disease); this condition is commonly known in the United States as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

When he was young, he enjoyed riding horses and playing with other children. At Oxford, he coxed a rowing team, which, he stated, helped relieve his immense boredom at the university. Symptoms of the disorder first appeared while he was enrolled at Cambridge; he lost his balance and fell down a flight of stairs, hitting his head. Worried that he would lose his genius, he took the Mensa International test to verify that his intellectual abilities were intact. The diagnosis of motor neurone disease came when Hawking was 21, shortly before his first marriage, and doctors said he would not survive more than two or three years.

Hawking gradually lost the use of his arms, legs, and voice, and is now almost completely paralyzed. During a visit to the research centre CERN in Geneva in 1985, Hawking contracted pneumonia, which in his condition was life-threatening as it further restricted his already limited respiratory capacity. He had an emergency tracheotomy, and as a result lost what remained of his ability to speak. He has since used an electronic voice synthesizer to communicate. The voice synthesizer, which has an American accent, is no longer being produced. Asked why he has still kept it after so many years, Hawking mentioned that he has not heard a voice he likes better and that he identifies with it. Hawking is said to be looking for a replacement since, aside from being obsolete, the synthesizer (a DECtalk DTC01) is both large and fragile by modern standards. However, as of present, finding a workable software alternative has been difficult. In Hawking's many media appearances, he appears to speak fluently through his synthesizer, but in reality, creating the text is a tedious drawn-out process. Hawking's setup uses a T9-like entry system, which only requires the first few characters in order to auto-complete the word, but as he is only able to use his cheek for data entry, constructing complete sentences takes time. His speeches are prepared in advance, but having a live conversation with him provides insight as to the complexity and work involved in his responses. During a TED Talk, a posed question took 7 minutes to answer.

Despite his disease, he describes himself as “lucky" – not only has the slow progress of his disease provided time to make influential discoveries, it has also afforded time to have, in his own words, “a very attractive family”. When Jane was asked why she decided to marry a man with a 3-year life expectancy, she responded: “Those were the days of atomic gloom and doom, so we all had a rather short life expectancy."

Computer

The computer system attached to his wheelchair is operated by Hawking via an infra-red 'blink switch' clipped onto his glasses. By scrunching his right cheek up, he is able to talk, compose speeches and research papers, browse the World Wide Web, and write e-mails. The system also uses radio transmission to provide control over doors in his home and office. His computer was created by an American engineer. He once joked that his computer "had an American accent."

Hawking receives a new computer every 18-24 months donated by Intel. The latest computer was donated in June of 2007 and is based on the Centrino chipset. It consists of two pieces, a rear chassis which houses a single 300 watt hour battery, a laptop computer, and various external peripherals, and a front chassis, which houses a touchscreen LCD and speakers which project his hardware-synthesized voice. The two chassis are connected via a custom-designed umbilical cable which allows power and electrical signals to travel back and forth. Hawking’s computer can run for up to 7 hours without needing a recharge, or be switched to run directly from his wheelchair battery when needed.

The computer utilizes a wireless data card that runs on mobile phone networks. This allows Hawking to check his email and browse the web while away from a wireless LAN. Hawking can also make and receive voice phone calls via a mobile phone with an external microphone in front of his computer speakers.

Acclaim

Statues

On 19 December 2007, a unique statue of Professor Stephen Hawking by renowned late artist Ian Walters was unveiled at Centre for Theoretical Cosmology, Cambridge University.
In May 2008 a statue of Hawking was unveiled at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cape Town.

Distinctions

Hawking’s belief that the lay person should have access to his work led him to write a series of popular science books in addition to his academic work. The first of these, A Brief History of Time, was published on April 1, 1988 by Hawking, his family and friends, and some leading physicists. It surprisingly became a best-seller and was followed by The Universe in a Nutshell (2001). Both books have remained highly popular all over the world. A collection of essays titled Black Holes and Baby Universes (1993) was also popular. His most recent book, A Briefer History of Time (2005), co-written by Leonard Mlodinow, aims to update his earlier works and make them accessible to an even wider audience. He and his daughter, Lucy Hawking, have recently published a children’s book focusing on science that has been described to be “like Harry Potter, but without the magic.” This book is called George’s Secret Key to the Universe and includes information on Hawking radiation.

Hawking is also known for his wit; he is famous for his oft-made statement, “When I hear of Schrödinger's cat, I reach for my pistol.” This was a deliberately ironic paraphrase of “Whenever I hear the word culture... I release the safety-catch of my Browning”, from the play Schlageter (Act 1, Scene 1) by German playwright and Nazi Poet Laureate, Hanns Johst. His wit has both entertained the non-specialist public and helped them to understand complex questions. Asked in October 2005 on the British daytime chat show Richard & Judy, to explain his assertion that the question “What came before the Big Bang?” was meaningless, he compared it to asking “What lies north of the North Pole?”

Hawking is an active supporter of various causes. He appeared on a political broadcast for the United Kingdom’s Labour Party, and actively supports the children’s charity SOS Children's Villages UK.