What will happen in 2012????

SCIENTIFIC EXPERTS from around the world are predicting that 20 months from now, all life on Earth could well come to an end. Some are saying it’ll be humans that would set it off. Others believe that a natural phenomenon will be the cause. And the religious folks are saying it’ll be God himself who would press the stop button. The following are some likely arguments as to why the world would end by the year 2012

Reason one: Mayan calendar

The first to predict 2012 as the end of the world were the Mayans, a bloodthirsty race that were good at two things -- building highly accurate astrological equipment out of stone and sacrificing virgins.

Thousands of years ago they managed to calculate the length of the lunar moon as 329.53020 days, only 34 seconds out. The Mayan calendar predicts that the earth will end on December 21,2012. Given that they were pretty close to the mark with the lunar cycle, it’s likely they’ve got the end of the world right as well.

Reason two: Sun storms

Solar experts from around the world monitoring the sun have made a startling discovery. Our sun is in a bit of strife. The energy output of the sun is, like most things in nature, cyclic and it’s supposed to be in the middle of a period of relative stability. However, recent solar storms have been bombarding the earth with lot of radiation energy. It’s been knocking out power grids and destroying satellites. This activity is predicted to get worse and calculations suggest it’ll reach its deadly peak sometime in 2012.

Reason three: The atom smasher

Scientists in Europe have been building the world’s largest particle accelerator. Basically, its a 27 km tunnel designed to smash atoms together to find out what makes the universe tick. However, the mega-gadget has caused serious concern, with some scientists suggesting that it’s properly even a bad idea to turn it on in the first place. They’re predicting all manner of deadly results, including mini black holes. So when this machine is fired up for its first serious experiment in 2012, the world could be crushed into a super-dense blob the size of a basketball.

Reason four: The Bible says it

If having scientists warning us about the end of the world isn’t bad enough, religious folks are getting in on the act as well. Interpretations of the Christian Bible reveal that the date for Armageddon, the final battle between good an evil, has been set for 2012. The I Ching, also known as the Chinese Book of Changes, says the same thing, as do various sections of the Hindu teachings.

Reason five: Super volcano

Yellowstone National Park in United States is famous for its thermal springs and old faithful geyser. The reason for this is simple -- it’s sitting on top of the world’s biggest volcano and geological experts are beginning to get nervous sweats. The Yellowstone volcano has a pattern of erupting every 650,000 years or so, and we’re many years overdue for an explosion that will fill the atmosphere with ash, blocking the sun and plunging the earth into a frozen winter that could last up to 15,000 years. The pressure under the Yellowstone is building steadily, and geologists have set as a likely date for the big bang.

Reason six: The physicists

This one’s case of bog -- simple maths mathematics. Physicists at Berkely University have been crunching the numbers. They’ve determined that the earth is well overdue for a major catastrophic event. Even worse, they’re claiming that their calculations prove that we’re all going to die, very soon. They are also saying that their prediction comes with a certainty of 99 per cent; and 2012just happens to be the best guess as to when it occurs.

Reason seven: Earth’s magnetic field

We all know the Earth is surrounded by a magnetic field that shields us from most of the sun’s radiation. What you might not know is that the magnetic poles we call North and South have a nasty habit of swapping places every 750,000 years or so -- and right now we’re about 30,000 years overdue. Scientists have noted that the poles are drifting apart roughly 20-30 kms each year, much faster than ever before, which points to a pole-shift being right around the corner. While the pole shift is under way, the magnetic field is disrupted and will eventually disappear, sometimes for up to 100 years. The result is enough UV outdoors to crisp your skin in seconds, killing everything it touches.

A blast that is equivalent to few billion Nuclear Bombs 

The Sun and Limitless Energy

Man has always looked for different sources of energy, economic, efficient and practical sources. It has always been a dream of getting unlimited free energy. Though impossible, but by overcoming certain difficulties it is somewhat possible. The word ‘unlimited’ here means that a certain source of energy that will run for a lifetime of may be even more.

Every day in the morning we wake up when the gleaming rays of the sun falls on our eyes or the window. But there must be something that keeps the sun glowing every morning of our lives or may be a thousand lives. At the very beginning of the universe or may be the galaxy, what we call the sun was a glowing mass of gas. As the gasses cooled they became denser. More is the density greater the gravity. The gasses compacted with their own gravity. As more masses of gas started to accumulate around the condensed gas the force of gravity increased. The sun began to get crushed under its own gravity. As the density increased the gas molecules became more and more closer and. The kinetic energy of the gasses started to increase. Two nuclei could collide with each other overcoming the force of repulsion between them. Thus lighter elements like hydrogen combined to form comparatively heavier elements like helium with the liberation of huge amount of energy, like those of the hydrogen bomb. The forces of nature began a war between themselves: the gravitational force and the nuclear force. The gravitational force tries to crush the sun to a smaller volume and the nuclear explosions try to break the sun to smaller masses. In this galactic war if gravity wins we get a black hole, if nuclear forces are stronger we get smaller planets and cold stars. But we don’t want anybody to win otherwise we won’t exist. Lucky for us the two forces are at par with each other in the sun. None of them are winning. That’s how we get to see our sun glowing every morning.

We know almost everything about gravity, bur the nuclear forces are a little hard to control. Man has been able to control the atom bomb and turn it into a nuclear reactor. Bur the hydrogen bomb involves fusion, where more amount of energy is liberated. The heat from an atom bomb is used to trigger the hydrogen bomb which in turn releases huge energy. If somehow fusion reaction is controlled then we can have another sun in the palm of our hands. We can control the emissions, heat and every kind of energy liberated from it. The fuel to this reaction can be sea water, which is almost limitless.

In the movie Spiderman 2, we saw Doc Ock trying to control the sun, but somehow the experiment fails. Then everything was being pulled into the sun, this was because the gravitational force was winning and increasing. But creating a sun isn’t that easy. It requires huge amount of electricity to control the shape of the sun. It may require almost all the electrical energy produced in the world to do that.

May be a decade or even a century later we won’t have to turn off the lights and fan when we leave the room. 

                               

The sun

The Force Fields

There are four types of forces in the entire universe known to man: the gravitational force, the electromagnetic force, the strong and the weak nuclear forces. Imagine a fifth type of force, much stronger than the rest. It is called the force field. It is a thin sheet but invisible barrier that prevents any rockets or lasers to penetrate it. It is not that simple that someone scientist will announce that the force fields have been created. If we could build one then the army would have an impenetrable sheet or a barrier that will prevent any kind of missiles or bullets to penetrate. We could build skyscrapers taller than ever using this. The buildings built would be unharmed by the natural forces like the wind, storm and the rain. It could replace every building material. We could build huge architectural structure like flyovers, bridges, huge buildings in just a click of a button. We can even create cities under oceans, in deserts, or in any place we like. The force fields can create an absolute vacuum. It could be used to build the tunnel of the gravity train (refer to previous article) and keep the hot magma out.

Yet it is one of the most difficult things to create in a laboratory, some scientists say that it is almost impossible.

In 1995 a plasma window was created, something like the force fields. When we heat a solid we get a liquid, then a gas. If we superheat the gas what we get is plasma. A particular gas can be heated to create plasma then by using magnetic field t can be shaped according to our need. For example, a sheet or like a window. The plasma can keep out the air to create a complete vacuum. The plasma window created was no bigger than 3ft in diameter. Thus creating it in larger volume is quite difficult. The plasma window can keep down the pressure from all directions, in this case the air from the outside. Nowadays wielding is done by using acetylene gas which melts the wielding rods to join metals. But electron wielding is done in vacuum by firing electrons. It is a much cheaper and more efficient way. But it requires a vacuum. That is where force fields and plasma windows come in handy.

But why aren’t we building a plasma window when it’s already create in the lab?

Because it requires a lot of electricity to keep the temperature of the plasma to a certain degree. The electrical energy cost outruns the savings or the benefit we get from it. Thus it does not find any its place in practice. If we can somehow manage to get free electricity from a renewable source or in a very cheap price we can overcome architectural challenges in just a click of a button.

Creating a force field would make us invincible. It would make us much safer from the inter-galactic radiations. We can also be saved from the meteorites. No one ever imagined hundred years back that we could land on the moon…may be a few decades or a century later we can make nature dance to our tunes.

Invisible Woman from Fantastic4 uses the force field to safeguard herself

The Gravity Train

It takes twenty hours from Los Angeles to Beijing, eighteen hours from India to Australia, twenty one hours from Canada to Malaysia. But imagine going from any part of the earth to the other in just under an hour.

Is it really possible?

Well, on paper, very much. But in practice it has certain difficulties to overcome.

Imagine a train without fuel and travels much faster than anything in the planet. Imagine a gravity train. Let a tunnel dug through the core of the earth joining any two antipodal points on its surface. Let somehow we can suck out all the air to a complete vacuum to avoid any kind of friction by the air. If a body, in this case a transport is built which will travel through that tunnel, then it will take just over 42mins to get to any other point on the earth. The body will freefall due to gravity. It will accelerate till the centre of the earth. Just after crossing the core it will travel against the force of gravity so it will decelerate and stop just at the surface of the earth reaching its other surface. To make it a little bit simple let us suppose that we throw a ball upwards. The ball attains a certain height before falling to our hands. It will reach the ground with the same velocity we threw it. The same happens with the gravity train but let straighten out the path followed by the ball...and that is what we get as a gravity train.

But there are certain difficulties in building a gravity train. Firstly, digging through the earths mass will get more difficult as we move towards the core as the rocks will harden and will rise in temperature. To overcome this problem, we have come with a solution, if the tunnel be built, not through the core but like a chord in the circle. Then the travel distance would shorten but the time will remain exactly the same. Longer the distance faster we go. Ultimately it will take 42mins and 12secs. Secondly, at the core in melting heat and enormous pressure it is extremely difficult to keep the heat out and the pressure down. Very little construction material is available for these purposes which are too expensive to be used. Thirdly, making the whole tunnel vacuum is almost impossible. Due to less pressure in the inside and crushing force outside the tunnel will be crushed.

If some how with some special method or with some ingenious ideas we can make this possible……may be we would be having our breakfast in LA and lunch in Tokyo.

   The nearer we move towards the core the faster we will get.

The Big Bang and its after effects

Everything on the universe has to be born to live on it. Babies are born cute, pleasant and soft. But our universe was born in a little different way. It was the largest explosion ever recorded in all time. Just like the babies the universe was small, smaller than even a proton (a sub-atomic particle).

Time began with the beginning of the universe. If someone says that what was there before the Big Bang? Time started from it. The whole mass of the entire universe was concentrated in a mass no bigger than a proton. It was in a temperature of 10^{32 o}C. In one (trillion trillion trillion trillion)^th of a second the universe expanded rapidly with a huge explosion. The temperature dropped rapidly to 10^{27 o}C. Now the quarks (sub atomic particles) were formed. After a minute the light nuclei hydrogen, helium atoms were born. Time passed and newer atoms started to form. After 397,000 years the temperature stabilized to 2390K.The Universe was now somewhat stable. Shattering into a trillion pieces it made the galaxies (cluster of billion stars). Slowly and slowly the stars in the galaxies cooled and in a few million years formed planets. These planets took some another million years to solidify from a burning gas ball to a solid mass.

But in all the destructive explosions and vaporizing heat how was the delicate life created?

It is predicted that when the planets cooled down various protons, neutrons, electrons fused together to form different atoms. Nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen, carbon etc. by random collisions formed different molecules. Amino acids were created: the carriers of life. That is the way some life like algae and some bacteria were created. Time to time the smaller species evolved and with mutations gave rise to the newer ones.

….this is the way we stand here. Our lives are hanging in a balance. A little change in our surrounding atmosphere may result in the loss of a billion lives.

In this destructive universe we are not alone…we are not the only one. It’s not we who are exploring it…

…Someone’s always watching