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Varun's Blog - At the Speed of Light !

A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective. ~Edward Teller

A very warm welcome to my th reader.Why speed of light ? Well, the aim of this blog is to reach the impossible by exploration and scientific fervor. Exploration never ends, knowledge never dies but Speed of Light can be achieved ....

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Thursday, October 19, 2006

You can remember your future !


Reversal of Time

Well, humans might be able to remember events in the future. This means if you placed a bet with your friend, you will surely win because you would know the result beforehand. Sounds little absurd, eh? I will try to answer this question in very simple words and easy logic.

One thing we have to agree with is that there are always more disordered states than the ordered ones. Consider a Jigsaw puzzle. There are many disordered states but the ordered state is only one i.e. only one arrangement will complete the puzzle.

Now, suppose that a system starts with small number of ordered states. Eventually, as time progresses, it will evolve according to laws of science and will become disordered because disordered states are always more in number for the system. This means that with increase in time, disorder will tend to increase. In simple words, disorder of a system increases as time progresses obeying the initial condition of high order.

Consider that god wants to finish the universe in a state of high order. Now, the situation is totally opposite to what we have seen in the above paragraph. Universe has to “end” in a state of high order and it is for sure that in “early stages” of universe, it would have probably been in a disordered state. As the time progresses, the end of the universe comes closer. In other words, disorder will decrease, as the universe will approach its end. We can also put it like this – “Disorder is decreasing with time.” Now, keep this statement in mind and read further.

This means that we would see broken tea cups pieces gathering together and jumping back on the kitchen shelf.

A human living in the same universe would see this and this would have a psychological impact on his mind. He will remember events in the future, and not the events of the past. When the teacup was broken, he would remember it being on the shelf, but when it was on the shelf, he would remember it being on the floor in the broken form. So, every event that he will remember is in a way “of the future”. It is difficult to talk about human memory and perception as we don’t know its working in thorough detail.

If the universe begins to contract, we can say that the universe is nearing its end and disorder is decreasing with time. Now, would we be able to remember events in the future ? Would we be able to remember tomorrow’s prices and make a fortune on stock market ? The problem is we can’t observe this because the universe would not contract for at least another 10,000 million years. But there is a way out to check this: Jump into a black hole. Entering a black hole is same as experiencing a collapse of the universe. Suppose an astronaut enters a black hole, he would be able to make money at roulette by remembering where the ball would go before placing the bet. But, unfortunately, he would not be able to bank his winnings, as there is no way out from a black hole.

The idea is attractive because it means contracting phase of the universe will be reverse of expanding phase. Therefore, people would die before they were born in a contracting universe.

I know the entry has exceeded the word limit (as our English teachers say – “Marks will be deducted for exceeding the word limit.”) but I hope it has put the point across.

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Monday, October 09, 2006

Rover reaches Victoria - safe driving needed.



NASA’s newest Mars orbiter has reached at the rim of the Red Planet’s massive Victoria Crater.Appearing almost as a shiny boulder, Opportunity’s and its camera-mast shadow can easily be seen in the image by NASA’s MRO.

It just another great image which is taken from a distance of 200 million miles.
Victoria Crater is large enough to fit up to five football stadiums inside and is the biggest Martian crater to be visited by NASA’s red planet rovers.

Rover - Help in Exploration
The rovers together have taken upto approximately 160,000 images of the red planet. They have been a great help in studying the planet.Opportunity has spent 21 Earth months exploring the Meridiani Planum region of Mars. The rover’s robotic twin Spirit rolled across its own Gusev Crater landing site, scaled one of the region’s Columbia Hills and clambered down the other side.

This is the deepest thing studied on this planet. Certainly, it uncovers the secrets and provides us information about the conditions and composition of rocks in the early years. Early estimates pin Victoria Crater at somewhere between 10 million and 100 million years old, but the rocks within the depression themselves are likely much older – as in a few billion years in age.

Opportunity has already found evidence that subsurface water once soaked rocks at Meridiani Planum based on studies at Eagle Crater and the larger Endurance Crater, both of which are dwarfed by Victoria’s size.A complete trip around the crater’s 1.5-mile (2.5-kilometer) rim would take up to nine months.

Very Careful Drive
The interesting and the most difficult of all is to keep the rover safe from diving into the crater. Mission controllers have to find a safe path to enter and then exist from this crater. Everything needs to be done carefully.

Opportunity is now into the 960th Martian day of a mission that was initially planned to span just 90 sols, the term for days on Mars. Now pushing more than 10 times its expected lifetime, Opportunity could fail at any moment.

Click
to see Victoria Crater

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Can you play this game ?

This game is a conversation between people. However, instead of traditional statements and responses, each response must be in lyrics that come from the top of your head.Here's how it works. When you visit Mr.Keller's posting and after that the most recent comment left under it, write some lyrics that come from the top of your head in response to the previous lyrics. Also, include the artist/author with each set of lyrics and the song title (if you can).The winner will be the one who would have submitted the greatest number of entries by that time.And, for you goal oriented folks, the winner will have a song written for him/her by Mr.Keller with the lyrics posted on his blog by Midnight (MST) on January 10,2007.

The game is hosted by Mr. Keller on his blog. You can land on his blog to play this game.

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Monday, October 02, 2006

Software Solves Moon Mystery

According to an MSN news source, an Australian computer programmer has found the missing “a” from Armstrong’s famous first words from the moon in 1969, when the world heard the phrase,

That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

Some historians and critics have dogged Armstrong for not saying the more dramatic and grammatically correct, “One small step for a man ...” in the version he transmitted to NASA’s Mission Control. Without the missing “a,” Armstrong essentially said, “One small step for mankind, one giant leap for mankind.” But Armstrong intended to say it properly and he believes he did.Some high-tec sound editing computer programmer, Peter Shann Ford proved Armstrong right.

Ford said he downloaded the audio recording of Armstrong’s words from a NASA Web site and analyzed the statement with software that allows disabled people to communicate through computers using their nerve impulses.

In a graphical representation of the famous phrase, Ford said he found evidence that the missing “a” was spoken and transmitted to NASA.“I have reviewed the data and Peter Ford’s analysis of it, and I find the technology interesting and useful,” Armstrong said in a statement.

Well, this proves that Armstrong did say the "a". But the Moon Hoax is still generating questions in the minds of people.Its the most debatable topic on the net.Did we really go to moon ? This document has all the evidences , proofs and other neccessary graphics supporting the fact that we went on moon.It also contains the myths and what hoax believers say.Deep anaysis - Go through it !

Moon Documents

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This is science !

When you are speaking to technically illiterate people you must resort to the plausible falsehood instead of the difficult truth.

Photos of Comet Mcnaught !
Astro-photographer? Send your photos to pics@exploreuniverse.com and have them featured on this blog with your name. Comet Mcnaught : Pictures taken with Nikon D100 on 19/1/07 from Manning Point, northern NSW, Australia by Mr. Peter Enright.
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